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.
The study aimed to evaluating the inhibitory activity of apigenin extracted from Salvia officinalis leaves on the growth of L20B cancer cell in vitro, and through two incubation periods; 48 and 72 hours. Accordingly, eight concentrations (1.56, 3.13, 6.25, 12.5, 25.0, 50.0, 100.0 and 200.0 micromol) of apigenin and similar concentrations of vitamin C and carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) were tested. The apigenin revealed its significant inhibitory potentials against the growth of L20B cell line, especially at the low concentrations (1.56, 3.13 and 6.25 micromol) and at 72 incubation period in comparison with vitamin C and CCl4.
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
... Show MoreA simple physical technique was used in this study to create stable and cost-effective copper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles from pure copper metal using the pulsed laser ablation technique. The synthesis of crystalline CuO nanoparticles was confirmed by various analytical techniques such as particle concentration measurement using atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), the energy dispersive X-ray (EDX), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to determine the crystal size and identify of the crystal structure of the prepared particles. The main characteristic diffraction peaks of the three samples were consistent. The corresponding 2θ is also consistent, and the cytotoxicity of the nanoparticles was
... 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 MoreThis study investigated the outcome of Alstonia boonei stem bark on liver enzymes after inducing the Wistar albino rats with carbon tetrachloride (CCl4). This effect of plant extract was compared with silymarin – a drug commonly used for the treatment of chronic hepatocyte disorder. The plant sample was extracted with ethanol; acute toxicity study of the extract was performed on eighteen Wistar mice, while 30 rats were sacrificed for liver enzymes assay. The rats were divided into six clusters: each cluster has five rats, culster 1 served as control and was given 2 mL/kg b.w - distilled water; clusters 2 – 6 were CCl4 induced. Cluster 2 was untreated but served as the negative control while cluster 3 wa
... Show MoreCeliac disease (CD) is an inflammatory small intestinal disorder that can lead to severe villous atrophy, and malabsorption . Since the measurement of α-amylase activity is the most widely used biochemical test for the diagnosis of pancreatic and non pancreatic disease , therefore serum α-amylase were studied in the present study in an attempt to evaluate the usefulness of this enzyme in the diagnosis of celiac disease and its relationship with anti gliadin IgA and IgG and serum glucose . Thirty one patients with celiac disease were studied and compared with twenty four healthy individuals . Significant elevation of α-amylase activity , glucose and anti gliadin IgA and IgG were observed in the sera of patients with celiac diseas
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