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.
With the aim of developing potential antimicrobials, a series of novel Ciprofloxacin methylene isatin derivatives incorporating different aromatic aldehydes were synthesized and characterized by FTIR, 1H NMR, Mass spectroscopy and bases of elemental analysis. In addition, the in vitro antibacterial and antifungal properties were tested against some human pathogenic microorganisms by employing the disc diffusion technique. A majority of compounds were showing activity against several of the microorganisms. The relationship between the functional group variation and the biological activity of the evaluated compounds is discussed. From comparisons of the compounds, 3c was determined to be the most active compound.
The aim of this research is to prepare a set of complexes with the general formula [M(HMB)n] , where M=VO (II) , Cr(III) and Cu(II) while n=2,3,2 respectively resulting from the reaction of anew ligand [N'-(2-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzyl)-4-methylbenzohydrazide] (HMB) derived from the reaction of the tow substances (4-methylbenzohydrazide and 2-hydroxy-3-methoxy benzaldehyde) with metal ions. The prepared compounds were identified by several spectroscopic methods such as Infrared, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Electronic Spectra. From the results of the measurements, it was suggested that the prepared complexes have different geometries such as square planar (Cu), square pyramidal (VO) and octahedral (Cr). DFT simulations backed up
... Show MoreBackground Microorganisms and fungal growth especially Candida albicans, on soft denture lining material are the most common problem which can lead to chronic mucosal inflammation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of zirconium nanoparticles into acrylic-based heat cured soft denture lining material against Candida albicans, and the amount of zirconium ion release of soft liner/ZrNPs composite. Furthermore, evaluate shear bond strength after ZrNPs addition to soft liner. Materials and methods: Zirconium nanoparticles were added into acrylic-based soft denture liner in various percentages (1%, and 1.5% by weight). Two hundred and fifty specimens were arranged and isolated into four groups as per the test to be done The antifu
... Show MoreThe study involved 45 male and 45 females of diabetic patients type- ?? aged from 40-69years , and with the same numbers of males and females for control , all the patients and controls were without any periodontal diseases and without any systemic disease. Diabetic patients were divided in to three groups according to the degree of periodontitis , and the inflamed gingiva of all groups of diabetic patients were treated with the dried fruits powder (crude) of medicinal plants Quercus robur , Thuja occidenalis , Terminalia chebula, Anethum graveolens , respectively and mixture. Some immunological and antimicrobial factors (IgA, Lactoferrin , Lysozyme ) , were detected in serum and saliva of diabetic patients and the control
... Show MoreBackground: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic and systemic autoimmune disease that is characterized by severe synovial inflammation, cartilage erosion, bone loss, and generalized vasculopathy. Although the immunologic mechanism of RA is still unclear, it is now thought to be a primarily Th17-driven disease. Along with other factors, IL-23 stimulates the expansion of Th17 cells from naive CD4+ T cells.
Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the circulating levels of interleukin (IL)-23 in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and determine the correlation between plasma/serum IL-23 levels and disease activity. So, we performed a systematic review with meta-analysis comparing
... Show Moreantimicrobial solutions against Coliforms, E. coli O157: H7, yeasts and molds were evaluated by agar well diffusion method. Chitosan (CH) exhibited best antimicrobial activity against the treated microorganisms at concentration of (5%) with contact time for 6hrs at refrigeration temperature (4ÚC), zones of inhibition for (GA) and (CH) for each solution alone ranging from (0 to 10 mm), chitosan solution (CH) exhibited both antibacterial and antifungal activities, Gum Arabic washing solution showed significant antibacterial activity (P < 0.05) against the microorganisms at concentration (15%), without inhibitory effect against E. coli O157:H7 at concentration (10%), in the current study the results confirmed that (15%) (w/v) of GA and 5%
... Show MoreEndothelin-1 (ET-1) is a potent vasoconstrictor hormone that has been identified as an important factor
responsible for the development of cardiovascular dysfunctions. ET-1 exerts its vasoconstrictor activity
through two pharmacologically distinct receptors, ETA and ETB that are found in vascular smooth muscle
cells (VSMCs) and the vasodilator activity through an ETB receptor located on endothelial cells. This study
aimed to show the impact of 1µM L-arginine (LA), 100µM tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), and their combined
effect on ET-1 activity in both lead-treated and lead-untreated rat aortic rings. This means, investigating how
endothelial dysfunction reverses the role of nitric oxide precursor and cofa
In this study, the effect of Nd: YAG laser on the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and alcoholdehydrogenase (ADH) was investigated. The Saccharomyces cells were irradiated using 532nm Q-Switched Nd: YAG laser with (1Hz) frequency. Different fluences 11.3, 22.6 and 33.9mJ/cm2 and different number of pulses 15, 30 and 60 pulse were used. The irradiated cells were incubated in a liquid nutritive medium for 24 hours. After incubation, the cells were harvested and disrupted to extract the intracellular enzymes and their activities were assessed. In comparison with the control, the irradiated cells showed a significant increase in the activity and the specific activity of SOD at energy densities of 11.3 and 22.6mJ/cm2 at 30 and 60 pulses
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