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.
Due to its association with hepatocellular carcinoma and being one of the ten most common malignancies worldwide, hepatitis C viral infection has become a severe public health concern. Therefore, establishing an accurate, reliable and sensitive diagnostic test for this infection is strongly advised. Real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been created to achieve this purpose. The current study was established to investigate the hepatitis C virus among Iraqi patients with chronic renal failure and to detect the virus immunologically by the fourth generation enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique and molecularly by real-time PCR. As a result, out of 50 patients with chronic renal failure undergoing dialysis, 39 patients tes
... Show MoreGe-Au infrared photoconductive detection was prepared from germanium single crystal which were doped with different gold concentration using thermal evaporation. The spectral resonsivity (Rλ), spectral detectivity (D*) were determined as function of wavelength, also the resistance, conductivity in dark and with illumination to infrared radiation, the gain and relative photo response have been measured with different gold concentration. Remarkable improvements in the photoresponse gain were observed for the highest resistance specimen at the expense of spectral detectivity values.
Klebsiella pneumoniae is an adaptable pathogen that forms biofilms on a variety of surfaces. This study's objective was to identify the presence of fimbrial genes (types 1 and 3) in K. pneumoniae strains isolated from various clinical sources based on their antibiotic resistance and ability to form biofilms. According to identification utilizing the vitek 2 technology and confirmation by molecular identification targeting the 16S rRNA gene with a particular primer, forty isolates were identified from clinical specimens. The vitek 2 compact system was utilized to evaluate the antibiotic susceptibility of all the isolates. The findings revealed a range of resistance percentages, including 52.5% for Penicillin, 40.5% for Trimethoprim/S
... Show MoreThis study aimed to investigate the prevalence of intestinal helminth infections in humans and detect Toxocara spp. in cats, with a focus on assessing the impact of age and gender on infection rates. Traditional diagnostic methods have historically limited the accurate identification of helminth infections in humans. Analysis of 450 human stool samples revealed an overall helminth infection rate of 5.7% using conventional techniques. The specific infection rates were 0.4% for Strongyloides stercoralis, 0.6% for Schistosoma mansoni, 1.7% for Hymenolepis nana, and 2.8% for Ascaris lumbricoides. Notably, no infections were recorded in the 30–39 and ≥40-year age groups, while the highest infection rate (16.3%, P≤0.01) was observed in indi
... Show MoreIn order to scrutinize the impact of the decoration of Sc upon the sensing performance of an XN nanotube (X = Al or Ga, and XNNT) in detecting sarin (SN), the density functionals M06-2X, τ-HCTHhyb, and B3LYP were utilized. The interaction of the pristine XNNT with SN was a physical adsorption with the sensing response (SR) of approximately 5.4. Decoration of the Sc metal into the surface of the AlN and GaN led to an increase in the adsorption energy of SN from −3.4 to −18.9, and −3.8 to −20.1 kcal/mol, respectively. Also, there was a significant increase in the corresponding SR to 38.0 and 100.5, the sensitivity of metal decorated XNNT (metal@XNNT) is increased. So, we found that Sc-decorating more increases the sensitivity of GaNN
... Show MoreFinding communities of connected individuals in complex networks is challenging, yet crucial for understanding different real-world societies and their interactions. Recently attention has turned to discover the dynamics of such communities. However, detecting accurate community structures that evolve over time adds additional challenges. Almost all the state-of-the-art algorithms are designed based on seemingly the same principle while treating the problem as a coupled optimization model to simultaneously identify community structures and their evolution over time. Unlike all these studies, the current work aims to individually consider this three measures, i.e. intra-community score, inter-community score, and evolution of community over
... Show MoreProstate cancer is the commonest male cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in men. Over many decades, prostate cancer detection represented a continuous challenge to urologists. Although all urologists and pathologists agree that tissue diagnosis is essential especially before commencing active surgical or radiation treatment, the best way to obtain the biopsy was always the big hurdle. The heterogenicity of the tumor pathology is very well seen in its radiological appearance. Ultrasound has been proven to be of limited sensitivity and specificity in detecting prostate cancer. However, it was the only available targeting technique for years and was used to guide biopsy needle passed transrectally or transperineally
... Show MoreBackground: Candida tropicalis is one of the most causes of vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) in women. Systemic candidiasis and candidemia may also occur in pregnancies. Objective: This study was carried out to detect and isolate of this yeast from aborted placenta, which may cause severe complications such as spontaneous abortion. Materials and methods: Fresh aborted placenta were collected and washed by normal saline to remove the blood. Then, cut it into portions and place it in test tube containing 5 ml of normal saline. Finally, shake for 10 minutes, after that, cultured for microbial isolation. Isolation and detection were done by some conventional methods with Api candida and CHROMagar. Results: The results showed that four iso
... Show MoreVisceral leishmaniasis (VL) or kala-azar is one of the worlds most neglected tropical diseases in mortality and fourth in morbidity, rK39 dipstick was used to diagnose the suspected infected patients as cheapest simple technique which can differentiate recent from chronic infection, for disease out-coming, naïve T-lymphocyte cells should be differentiated into pathogen-specific immunity responses, such as T-helper 1(Th-1) or (Th-2). HLA-G is a special protein defined as nonclassical HLA class I molecule can suppress the immune system through prevention of T-cell function by foul all T-cell mechanisms. So, this study aimed to detect and evaluate the level of sHLA-G in the sera of patients infected with VL. The results showed that there was
... Show MoreBackground: Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is gram-negative bacterium, which causes Legionnaires’ disease as well as Pontiac fever. Objective: To determine the frequency of Legionella pneumophila in pneumonic patients, to determine the clinical utility of diagnosing Legionella pneumonia by urinary antigen testing (LPUAT) in terms of sensitivity and specificity, to compares the results obtained from patients by urinary antigen test with q Real Time PCR (RT PCR) using serum samples and to determine the frequency of serogroup 1 and other serogroups of L. pneumophila. Methods: A total of 100 pneumonic patients (community acquired pneumonia) were enrolled in this study during a period between October 2016 to April 2017; 92 sam
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