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.
A model using the artificial neural networks and genetic algorithm technique is developed for obtaining optimum dimensions of the foundation length and protections of small hydraulic structures. The procedure involves optimizing an objective function comprising a weighted summation of the state variables. The decision variables considered in the optimization are the upstream and downstream cutoffs lengths and their angles of inclination, the foundation length, and the length of the downstream soil protection. These were obtained for a given maximum difference in head, depth of impervious layer and degree of anisotropy. The optimization carried out is subjected to constraints that ensure a safe structure aga
... Show MoreThe nonlinear refractive index and the nonlinear absorption coefficient of unmodified and functional poly(methyl methacrylate) PMMA films were studied before and after the addition of the filler by the z-scan technique, using a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser at two wavelengths: 532 nm and 1064 nm, and at three input energies (13, 33 and 53) mJ. Both linear and nonlinear refractive indices and absorption coefficients of polymer films were studied by using UV-VIS spectrophotometer. The results show that the creation of functional PMMA from unmodified PMMA will increase the nonlinear optical properties in the functional PMMA/copper matrix more than in the unmodified PMMA/copper matrix. Hence, the functional PMMA appears promising as a useful third
... Show MoreIn the absence of environmental regulation, food stays to be contaminated with heavy metals, which is becoming a big worry for human health. The present research focusses on the environmental and health effects of irrigating a number of crops grown in the soils surrounding the Al-Rustamia old plant using treated wastewater generated by the plant. The physicochemical properties, alkalinity, and electrical conductivity of the samples were evaluated, and vegetable samples were tested for Cd, Pb, Ni, and Zn, levels, and even the transfer factor (TF) from soils to crops and crop and multi-targeted risk, daily intake (DIM) of metals, and health risk index (HRI) was calculated. The findings found that the average contents of Zn, Pb, Ni, and Cd in
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Buildings such as malls, offices, airports and hospitals nowadays have become very complicated which increases the need for a solution that helps people to find their locations in these buildings. GPS or cell signals are commonly used for positioning in an outdoor environment and are not accurate in indoor environment. Smartphones are becoming a common presence in our daily life, also the existing infrastructure, the Wi-Fi access points, which is commonly available in most buildings, has motivated this work to build hybrid mechanism that combines the APs fingerprint together with smartphone barometer sensor readings, to accurately determine the user position inside building floor relative to well-known lan
... Show MoreWe propose a new object tracking model for two degrees of freedom mechanism. Our model uses a reverse projection from a camera plane to a world plane. Here, the model takes advantage of optic flow technique by re-projecting the flow vectors from the image space into world space. A pan-tilt (PT) mounting system is used to verify the performance of our model and maintain the tracked object within a region of interest (ROI). This system contains two servo motors to enable a webcam rotating along PT axes. The PT rotation angles are estimated based on a rigid transformation of the the optic flow vectors in which an idealized translation matrix followed by two rotational matrices around PT axes are used. Our model was tested and evaluated
... Show MoreX-ray diffractometers deliver the best quality diffraction data while being easy to use and adaptable to various applications. When X-ray photons strike electrons in materials, the incident photons scatter in a direction different from the incident beam; if the scattered beams do not change in wavelength, this is known as elastic scattering, which causes amplitude and intensity diffraction, leading to constructive interference. When the incident beam gives some of its energy to the electrons, the scattered beam's wavelength differs from the incident beam's wavelength, causing inelastic scattering, which leads to destructive interference and zero-intensity diffraction. In this study, The modified size-strain plot method was used to examin
... Show MoreThis research is concerned with a new type of ferrocement characterized by its lower density and enhanced thermal insulation. Lightweight ferrocement plates have many advantages, low weight, low cost, thermal insulation, environmental conservation. This work contain two group experimental : first different of layer ferrocement, second different of ratio aggregate to cement. The experiments were made to determined the optimum proportion of cement and lightweight aggregate (recycle thermestone ). A low W/C ratio of 0.4 was used with super plasticizer conforming to ASTM 494 Type G. The compressive strength of the mortar mixes is 20-25 MPa. The work also involved the determination of thermal properties .Thermal conductivity value of thi
... Show Morethe research ptesents a proposed method to compare or determine the linear equivalence of the key-stream from linear or nonlinear key-stream