Study of a Vocal Feature Selection Method and Vocal Properties for Discriminating Four Constitution Types

The voice has been used to classify the four constitution types, and to recognize a subject's health condition by extracting meaningful physical quantities, in traditional Korean medicine. In this paper, we propose a method of selecting the reliable variables from various voice features, such as frequency derivative features, frequency band ratios, and intensity, from vowels and a sentence. Further, we suggest a process to extract independent variables by eliminating explanatory variables and reducing their correlation and remove outlying data to enable reliable discriminant analysis. Moreover, the suitable division of data for analysis, according to the gender and age of subjects, is discussed. Finally, the vocal features are applied to a discriminant analysis to classify each constitution type. This method of voice classification can be widely used in the u-Healthcare system of personalized medicine and for improving diagnostic accuracy

Effects and treatment methods of acupuncture and herbal medicine for premenstrual syndrome/premenstrual dysphoric disorder: systematic review

BACKGROUND: During their reproductive years about 10% of women experience some kind of symptoms before menstruation (PMS) in a degree that affects their quality of life (QOL). Acupuncture and herbal medicine has been a recent favorable therapeutic approach. Thus we aimed to review the effects of acupuncture and herbal medicine in the past decade as a preceding research in order to further investigate the most effective Korean Medicine treatment for PMS/PMDD. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted using electronic databases on studies published between 2002 and 2012. Our review included randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) of acupuncture and herbal medicine for PMS/PMDD. Interventions include acupuncture or herbal medicine. Clinical information including statistical tests was extracted from the articles and summarized in tabular form or in the text. Study outcomes were presented as the rate of improvement (%) and/or end-of-treatment scores. RESULTS: The search yielded 19 studies. In screening the RCTs, 8 studies in acupuncture and 11 studies in herbal medicine that matched the criteria were identified. Different acupuncture techniques including traditional acupuncture, hand acupuncture and moxibustion, and traditional acupuncture technique with auricular points, have been selected for analysis. In herbal medicine, studies on Vitex Agnus castus, Hypericum perforatum, Xiao yao san, Elsholtzia splendens, Cirsium japonicum, and Gingko biloba L. were identified. Experimental groups with Acupuncture and herbal medicine treatment (all herbal medicine except Cirsium japonicum) had significantly improved results regarding PMS/PMDD. CONCLUSIONS: Limited evidence supports the efficacy of alternative medicinal interventions such as acupuncture and herbal medicine in controlling premenstrual syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Acupuncture and herbal medicine treatments for premenstrual syndrome and premenstrual dysphoric disorder showed a 50% or better reduction of symptoms compared to the initial state. In both acupuncture and herbal medical interventions, there have been no serious adverse events reported, proving the safety of the interventions while most of the interventions provided over 50% relief of symptoms associated with PMS/PMDD. Stricter diagnostic criteria may have excluded many participants from some studies. Also, depending on the severity of symptoms, the rate of improvement in the outcomes of the studies may have greatly differed

Effects of Particle Size and Cement Replacement of LCD Glass Powder in Concrete

The high quality liquid crystal display (LCD) processing waste glass (LPWG) generated from the manufacturing process of Korea’s LCD industries, having the world’s highest technological level and production, was finely ground into particles smaller than cement particles (higher fineness than OPC) to verify their applicability and performance as a replacement for cement. For a concrete mix having a W/B ratio of 0.44, cement was replaced with LPWG glass powder (LGP) at ratios of 5, 10, 15, and 20% (LGP12) and 5 and 10% (LGP5) according to the particle size to prepare test cylinder specimens, which were tested with respect to air contents, slump in fresh concrete, and compressive strength and splitting tensile strength of hardened concrete. The microstructure of the concrete specimens was analyzed through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX), and a Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP). Replacement of cement with LGP for cement could effectively decrease the quantity of cement used due to the excellent performance of LGP. It may positively contribute to the sustainable development of the cement industry as well as waste recycling and environment conservation on a national scale

Generalized Guidance Scheme for Low-Thrust Orbit Transfer

The authors present an orbital guidance scheme for the satellite with an electrical propulsion system using a Lyapunov feedback control. The construction of a Lyapunov candidate is based on orbital elements, which consist of angular momentum and eccentricity vectors. This approach performs orbit transfers between any two arbitrary elliptic or circular orbits without any singularity issues. These orbital elements uniquely describe a non degenerate Keplerian orbit. The authors improve the reliability of the existing Lyapunov orbital guidance scheme by considering the energy term. Additional improvement is achieved by adding the penalty function. Furthermore, it is shown that the final suggested approach is suitable for the satellite passing the earth’s shadow area

Recent Progress in Voice-Based Sasang Constitutional Medicine: Improving Stability of Diagnosis

Sasang constitutional medicine is a unique form of tailored medicine in traditional Korean medicine. Voice features have been regarded as an important cue to diagnose Sasang constitution types. Many studies tried to extract quantitative voice features and standardize diagnosis methods; however, they had flaws, such as unstable voice features which vary a lot for the same individual, limited data collected from only few sites, and low diagnosis accuracy. In this paper, we propose a stable diagnosis model that has a good repeatability for the same individual. None of the past studies evaluated the repeatability of their diagnosis models. Although many previous studies used voice features calculated by averaging feature values from all valid frames in monotonic utterance like vowels, we analyse every single feature value from each frame of a sentence voice signal. Gaussian mixture model is employed to deal with a lot of voice features from each frame. Total 15 Gaussian models are used to represent voice characteristics for each constitution. To evaluate repeatability of the proposed diagnosis model, we introduce a test dataset consisting of 10 individuals’ voice recordings with 50 recordings per each individual. Our result shows that the proposed method has better repeatability than the previous study which used averaged features from vowels and the sentence

Free Vibration of Layered Circular Cylindrical Shells of Variable Thickness Using Spline Function Approximation

Free vibration of layered circular cylindrical shells of variable thickness is studied using spline function approximation by applying a point collocation method. The shell is made up of uniform layers of isotropic or specially orthotropic materials. The equations of motions in longitudinal, circumferential and transverse displacement components, are derived using extension of Love's first approximation theory. The coupled differential equations are solved using Bickley-type splines of suitable order, which are cubic and quintic, by applying the point collocation method. This results in the generalized eigenvalue problem by combining the suitable boundary conditions. The effect of frequency parameters and the corresponding mode shapes of vibration are studied with different thickness variation coefficients, and other parameters. The thickness variations are assumed to be linear, exponential, and sinusoidal along the axial direction. The results are given graphically and comparisons are made with those results obtained using finite element method