Age-Friendly Ecosystems: Expert Voices from the Field.

(1) Background: With the growth of the age-friendly movement, age-friendly ecosystems (AFE) garnered more attention. The successful development of an AFE is contingent on unified efforts across different stakeholders; however, limited efforts were made to help create a common understanding of the necessary components of an AFE. (2) Methodology: In response, The John A.

Deep learning-based robust automatic non-invasive measurement of blood pressure using Korotkoff sounds.

This paper proposes a method that automatically measures non-invasive blood pressure (BP) based on an auscultatory approach using Korotkoff sounds (K-sounds). There have been methods utilizing K-sounds that were more accurate in general than those using cuff pressure signals only under well-controlled environments, but most were vulnerable to the measurement conditions and to external noise because blood pressure is simply determined based on threshold values in the sound signal. The proposed method enables robust and precise BP measurements by evaluating the probability that each sound pulse is an audible K-sound based on a deep learning using a convolutional neural network (CNN).

The Impact of Changes in the Intake of Fiber and Antioxidants on the Development of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Diet is a health-related factor that can modify lung function. This study hypothesized that the change in age-related dietary intake affects lung function. The subjects who undertook a dietary assessment and spirometry in 2012 and 2017, were retrospectively collected in a health screening center.

Noise and Room Acoustic Conditions in a Tertiary Referral Hospital, Seoul National University Hospital.

Background And Objectives: Noise levels and room acoustic parameters at a tertiary referral hospital, Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) in Korea, are investigated.

Materials And Methods: Through a questionnaire, acoustically problematic rooms are identified. Noise levels in emergency rooms (ERs) and intensive care units (ICUs) are measured over about three days.

Reproduction of nearby sources by imposing true interaural differences on a sound field control approach.

In anechoic conditions, the Interaural Level Difference (ILD) is the most significant auditory cue to judge the distance to a sound source located within 1 m of the listener's head. This is due to the unique characteristics of a point source in its near field, which result in exceptionally high, distance dependent ILDs. When reproducing the sound field of sources located near the head with line or circular arrays of loudspeakers, the reproduced ILDs are generally lower than expected, due to physical limitations.

Experimental validation of sound field control with a circular double-layer array of loudspeakers.

This paper is concerned with experimental validation of a recently proposed method of controlling sound fields with a circular double-layer array of loudspeakers [Chang and Jacobsen, J. Acoust. Soc.

Sound field control with a circular double-layer array of loudspeakers.

This paper describes a method of generating a controlled sound field for listeners inside a circular array of loudspeakers without disturbing people outside the array appreciably. To achieve this objective, a double-layer array of loudspeakers is used. Several solution methods are suggested, and their performance is examined using computer simulations.

A plane wave generation method by wave number domain point focusing.

A method for generation of a wave-field that is a plane wave is described. This method uses an array of loudspeakers phased so that the field in the wave-number domain is nearly concentrated at a point, this point being at the wave-number vector of the desired plane wave. The method described here for such a wave-number concentration makes use of an expansion in spherical harmonics, and requires a relatively small number of measurement points for a good approximate achievement of a plane wave.

Scattering effect on the sound focused personal audio system.

Recently, a personal audio system has been studied that uses an array of loudspeakers to localize sound to only the area around a user. To realize this system, beamforming or acoustic contrast control has been applied on the assumption that sources radiate sound in a free-field. This means that not only reflection by walls, but also the scattering effect by the user's head is neglected.

A realization of sound focused personal audio system using acoustic contrast control.

A personal audio system that does not use earphone or any wire would have great interest and potential impact on the audio industries. In this study, a line array speaker system is used to localize sound in the listening zone. The contrast control [Choi, J.

Design of a proton microbeam of the PEFP.

The PEFP has been developing a 100 MeV proton linear accelerator and user facilities for 20 and 100 MeV proton beams. At one end of the five 20 MeV proton beam lines, a proton microbeam construction was considered for an application in the fields of material, biological, and medical sciences. To develop the proton microbeam, realization of a few MeV proton beam with a few tens of microamperes in diameter of a beam spot was essentially required.

Regularized image reconstruction algorithms for positron emission tomography.

We develop algorithms for obtaining regularized estimates of emission means in positron emission tomography. The first algorithm iteratively minimizes a penalized maximum-likelihood (PML) objective function. It is based on standard de-coupled surrogate functions for the ML objective function and de-coupled surrogate functions for a certain class of penalty functions.