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 using of waste products as a recycled material was one of the most important studies for saving money and reduces the pollution. Mortar and concrete mixes with (10, 20 and 30)% of brick, glass and tile powder as replacement by weight of cement was investigated. The concrete mixes using brick or glass as 10%replacement of cement exhibited enhancement in compressive strength about (6, 4.7 and 2.0)% and (7.2, 5.6 and 2)% at age 7, 28 and 90 days respectively compared to reference mix. The 20% replacement of glass powder also showed an increase in the compressive strength up to (8, 6.3 and 4) %at age 7,28 and 90 days respectively compared to reference mix. Finally concrete mix using (10, 20 and 30) % tile powder as replacement of cement sho
... Show MoreWeibull distribution is considered as one of the most widely distribution applied in real life, Its similar to normal distribution in the way of applications, it's also considered as one of the distributions that can applied in many fields such as industrial engineering to represent replaced and manufacturing time ,weather forecasting, and other scientific uses in reliability studies and survival function in medical and communication engineering fields.
In this paper, The scale parameter has been estimated for weibull distribution using Bayesian method based on Jeffery prior information as a first method , then enhanced by improving Jeffery prior information and then used as a se
... Show MoreA newly developed analytical method was conducted for the determination of Ketotifen fumarate (KTF) in pharmaceuticals drugs via quenching of continuous fluorescence of 9(10H)-Acridone (ACD). The method was applied using flow injection system of a new homemade ISNAG fluorimeter with fluorescence measurements at ± 90◦ via 2×4 solar cell. The calibration graph was linear in the range of 1-45 mmol/L, with correlation coefficient r = 0.9762 and the limit of detection 29.785 µg/sample from the stepwise dilution for the minimum concentration in the linear dynamic ranged of the calibration graph. The method was successfully applied to the determination of Ketotifen fumarate in two different pharma
... Show MoreAbstract: Background: Optical biosensors offer excellent properties and methods for detecting bacteria when compared to traditional analytical techniques. It allows direct detection of many biological and chemical materials. Bacteria are found in the human body naturally non-pathogenic and pathologically, as they are found in other living organisms. One of these bacteria is Escherichia coli (E. coli) which are found in the human body in its natural and pathogenic form. E.coli bacteria cause many diseases, including Stomach, intestines, urinary system infections, and others. The aim of this study: is sensing and differentiation between normal flora and pathogenic E.coli. Material and method:
... Show MoreGypseous soil covers approximately 30% of Iraqi lands and is widely used in geotechnical and construction engineering as it is. The demand for residential complexes has increased, so one of the significant challenges in studying gypsum soil due to its unique behavior is understanding its interaction with foundations, such as strip and square footing. This is because there is a lack of experiments that provide total displacement diagrams or failure envelopes, which are well-considered for non-problematic soil. The aim is to address a comprehensive understanding of the micromechanical properties of dry, saturated, and treated gypseous sandy soils and to analyze the interaction of strip base with this type of soil using particle image
... Show MoreIn this study, pebble bed as an absorber and storage material was placed in a south facing, flat plate air-type solar collector at fixed tilt angle of (45°). The effect of this material and differ- ent parameters on collector efficiency has been investigated experimentally and
theoretically. Two operation modes were employed to study the performance of the solar air heater. An inte- grated mode of continuous operation of the system during the period of (11:00 am – 3:00 pm) and non-integrated mode in which the system stored the solar energy through the day then used the stored energy during the period of (3:00 pm – 8:00 pm). The results of parametric study in case of continuous operating showed that the maximum average temperatur
Many researchers have tackled the shear behavior of Reinforced Concrete (RC) beams by using different kinds of strengthening in the shear regions and steel fibers. In the current paper, the effect of multiple parameters, such as using one percentage of Steel Fibers (SF) with and without stirrups, without stirrups and steel fibers, on the shear behavior of RC beams, has been studied and compared by using Finite Element analysis (FE). Three-dimensional (3D) models of (RC) beams are developed and analyzed using ABAQUS commercial software. The models were validated by comparing their results with the experimental test. The total number of beams that were modeled for validation purposes was four. Extensive pa
... Show MoreMultilateral wells require a sophisticated type of well model to be applied in reservoir simulators to represent them. The model must be able to determine the flow rate of each fluid and the pressure throughout the well. The production rate calculations are very important because they give an indication about some main issues associated with multi-lateral wells such as one branch may produce water or gas before others, no production rate from one branch, and selecting the best location of a new branch for development process easily.  
... Show More