Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is considered as an important pre-processing step in speech processing systems such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, gender and age identification. VAD helps in reducing the time required to process speech data and to improve final system accuracy by focusing the work on the voiced part of the speech. An automatic technique for VAD using Fuzzy-Neuro technique (FN-AVAD) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to alleviate the problem of choosing the best threshold value in traditional VAD methods and achieves automaticity by combining fuzzy clustering and machine learning techniques. Four features are extracted from each speech segment, which are short term energy, zero-crossing rate, autocorrelation, and log energy. A modified version of fuzzy C-Means is then used to cluster speech segments into three clusters; two clusters for voice and one for unvoiced. After that, three feed forward neural networks are trained to adjust their weights, in which each network represents one cluster. To make the final decision regarding the class type of a given speech segment, the membership degrees of this segment in all clusters along with neural networks' decisions are given to a defuzzification step which finally gives the class type of that segment. The proposed FN-AVAD is tested on the public multimodal emotion database, Surrey AudioVisual Expressed Emotion (SAVEE), and the error rate was 2.08%. The achieved results are comparable to the results achieved by the current published works in the literature.
Cadmium is one of the heavy metal found in the wastewater of many industries. The electrocoagulation offers many advantages for the removal of cadmium over other methods. So the removal of cadmium from wastewater by using electrocoagulation was studied to investigate the effect of operating parameters on the removal efficiency. The studied parameters were the initial pH, initial concentration, and applied voltage. The study experiments were conducted in a batch reactor with with two pairs of aluminum electrodes with dimension and 2mm in thick with 1.5 cm space between them. The optimum removal was obtained at pH =7, initial concentration = 50 mg/L, and applied voltage = 20 V and it was 90%.
The current standard for treating pilonidal sinus (PNS) is surgical intervention with excision of the sinus. Recurrence of PNS can be controlled with good hygiene and regular shaving of the natal cleft, laser treatment is a useful adjunct to prevent recurrence. Carbon dioxide (CO2) laser is a gold standard of soft tissue surgical laser due to its wavelength (10600 nm) thin depth (0.03mm) and collateral thermal zone (150mic).It effectively seals blood vessels, lymphatic, and nerve endings, Moreover wound is rendered sterile by effect of laser. Aim of this study was to apply and assess the clinical usefulness of CO2 10600nm laser in pilonidal sinus excision and decrease chance of recurrence. Design: For 10 patients, between 18 and 39 year
... Show MoreCopper, and its, alloys and composites (being the matrix), are broadly used in the electronic as well as bearing materials due to the excellent thermal and electrical conductivities it has.
In this study, powder metallurgy technique was used for the production of copper graphite composite with three volume perc ent of graphite. Processing parameters selected is (900) °C sintering temperature and (90) minutes holding time for samples that were heated in an inert atmosphere (argon gas). Wear test results showed a pronounced improvement in wear resistance as the percent of graphite increased which acts as solid lubricant (where wear rate was decreased by about 88% as compared with pure Cu). Microhardness and
... Show MoreIn this paper, we will present proposed enhance process of image compression by using RLE algorithm. This proposed yield to decrease the size of compressing image, but the original method used primarily for compressing a binary images [1].Which will yield increasing the size of an original image mostly when used for color images. The test of an enhanced algorithm is performed on sample consists of ten BMP 24-bit true color images, building an application by using visual basic 6.0 to show the size after and before compression process and computing the compression ratio for RLE and for the enhanced RLE algorithm.
The development of analytical techniques is required for the accurate and comprehensive detection and measurement of antibiotic contamination in the environment. Metronidazole is a common antibacterial, antiprotozoal, and antibiotic drug. Thiamine is a vital biological and medicinal ingredient that is involved in the metabolism of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that produce energy. The study aims to identify the drugs in a mixture without separation to provide more information to confirm if a drug is present in a combination. Metronidazole and thiamine are two examples of pharmaceutical and environmental samples that can be identified using spectrophotometric techniques because of their low cost and simplicity of use. The operati
... Show MoreThe toxic lead additives to gasoline are no longer used in many countries around the world. Many other countries are now phasing out the lead in gasoline. Although the lead fuel is still in use in Iraq, several plans are considered to phase out the lead. The use of organic compounds to replace the lead additives in gasoline is considered now as an option in Iraqi refineries. The main objective of this project was preparation of premium gasoline, by blending of gasoline with Alternative additives (alcohol, aromatic) to enhancing octane number of Al-Doura gasoline pool. Improved gasoline was tested by ASTM standard method which includes octane number measuring by CFR engine analyzer. Gasoline pool RON (80) was used and selective components
... Show MoreThis project introduces a prospective material for photonic laser applications. The material is olive oil which is classified as organic compound, having a good nonlinear optical properties candidate to be used in photonic applications. A high purity sample of olive oil has been used. The theoretical calculation to generate third harmonic wave using olive oil has been determine using MATLAB program. THG (λ=355nm) intensity has been determined at two cases of sample thicknesses 1mm and 10mm. The minimum threshold incident intensity to obtain THG intensity are equal Iω=7530 mW/cm2 at L=1mm and Iω= 6220 mW/cm2 at L=10mm. The possibility of generation of third harmonic in olive oil inside
... Show MoreIn despite of the expansion of using the dummy variables as a explanatory variables, but their using as a dependent variables is still limited, and the reason of that may be return to may problems when using dummy variables as a dependent variables. the study aimed to using the quality Response Models to Measuring Efficiency of cows farms by random sample including (19) farm from (Abi gherak district). The study estimating the transcendental logarithmic production function by using stochastic frontier Analysis (SFA) to interpret the relation between the return achieved from the cows farms as a dependent variables and each of labor and capital as an independent variables. the function indicates that increasing in labor by (100%) will
... Show More