Stroke is a health problem experienced by many elderly people around the world. Stroke has a devastating effect on quality of life, causing death or disability. Hemiplegia is clearly an early sign of a stroke and can be detected through patterns of body balance and gait. The goal of this study was to determine various feature vectors of foot pressure and gait parameters of patients with stroke through the use of a wearable sensor and to compare the gait parameters with those of healthy elderly people. To monitor the participants at all times, we used a simple measuring device rather than a medical device. We measured gait data of 220 healthy people older than 65 years of age and of 63 elderly patients who had experienced stroke less than 6 months earlier. The center of pressure and the acceleration during standing and gait-related tasks were recorded by a wearable insole sensor worn by the participants. Both the average acceleration and the maximum acceleration were significantly higher in the healthy participants (p < .01) than in the patients with stroke. Thus gait parameters are helpful for determining whether they are patients with stroke or normal elderly people.
The effects of weather variations on winter hulless barley were analyzed using data obtained from winter crop situation test at Iksan from 1985 to 2015. The wintering stage in the 16 years from 2000 to 2015 has become colder and shorter than that in the previous 15 years from 1985 to 1999. This has resulted in an early sequence of regrowth date, heading date, and ripening date. Heading date of hulless barley was mostly influenced by regrowth date and period of stem elongation. Futher, the regrowth date and period of stem elongation were strongly negatively correlated with the average air temperature in February and the maximum air temperature in March, respectively. The number of spikes per m2 and 1000-grain weight of Saechalssal cultivated from 2003 to 2015 showed strong positive correlations with yield. In early heading years, yield increased with extended ripening period and with increased 1000-grain weight. There was a strong negative correlation between 1000-grain weight and the average temperature during the ripening period. In the 15 years from 1985 to 1999, warm winters contributed to yield increase with increase in the number of spikes per m2 and a long ripening period. In contrast, in the recent 16 years from 2000 to 2015, the large variability in air temperature during the wintering stage, the decreasing number of spikes per m2 and the steadily increasing air temperature and decreasing precipitation during the ripening stage have caused high temperature stress and yield loss in late heading years.