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.
Lactiplantibacillus plantarum, one of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), is found in various foods, including dairy products, meat, and vegetables, and most of these bacteria offer beneficial effects to humans and animals as potential probiotics with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities. The aim of this study was evaluating the antibacterial efficacy of L. plantarum against some foodborne bacteria isolated from dairy products. This research involved 34 dairy products, including local and imported milk, cheese, and yogurt sold locally in Baghdad province, Iraq, during May 2022. For the isolation of L. plantarum, a special medium called MRS (de Man Rogosa and Sharpe) was applied. Colonie
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A new series of bases of Schiff (H2-H4) derived from phthalic anhydrideweresynthesized. These Schiff bases were prepared by the reaction of different amines (tyrosine methyl ester, phenylalanine methyl ester, and isoniazid) with the phthalimide derived aldehyde with the aid of glacial acetic acid or triethylamine ascatalysts. All the synthesized compounds were characterized by (FT-IR and 1HNMR) analyses and were in vitro evaluated for their antimicrobial activity against six various kinds of microorganisms. All the synthesized compounds had been screened for their antimicrobial activity against two Gram-positive bacteria “Staph. Aureus, and Bacillus subtilis
... Show MoreThe inhibitory effect of acetone, ethanol, and aqueous extracts of ten medicinal plants on β-lactamase from Staphylococcus sciuri and Klebsiella pneumoniae was investigated in vitro by starch-iodine agar plate method. The results revealed the success of starch-iodine method for the detection of the inhibition of β-lactamase activity by the various extracts of each individual plant. The acetone extracts of Catharanthus roseus, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, and Schinus terebinthifolius induced an inhibitory effect on β-lactamase from Staphylococcus sciuri. On the other hand, acetone extracts from only Eucalyptus camaldulensis, and Schinus
... Show MoreThe platelet activity and some immunological aspects of
coronary heart disease CIID were investigated by employing platelet count and serum levels of IgG,IgM and lgA,C3 and C4.Three groups of patients were investigated : patients with ischemic heart disease IHD, patients with lliD+hypcrtension and patients with IHD+unstable angina.The results revealed that the mean of platelets (mm') was significantly reduced in IHD+unstable angina group
2.72.L I.l2 compared with conrol b'TOUp 8.13±2.72.
With respect to the immunological study, the re;;ults revea
... Show MoreThe medicinal plants (Astragalus species) have been used traditionally as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and Anti-diabetics. The current research investigates the phytochemistry and some biological activity of methanol extract of different parts of Astragalus bruguieri Bioss., a wild medicinal plant grows on Safeen mountain, Erbil, Iraq. The methanol extracts of A. bruguieri were analyzed for total phenolic, flavonoid, and saponin contents. In-vitro antioxidant activity was analyzed by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) assays. Furthermore, the plant extracts were examined for in-vitro enzyme inhibitory activity and in-v
... Show MoreHydatidosis is a sickness that affects human and farm animals. This disease is deemed as a public health problem in different regions of the world until nowadays. Surgical overlaps is the best way to treat the disease, while the risk of surgery lies in the possibility of cyst rupture and leakage of protoscolices and the recurrence of infection again, this prompted researchers to use scolicidal agents before surgery such as ethanol, plant extracts, to reduce parasite spread and recurrence of infection, recently researchers have been using nanoparticles as a scolicidal agent, like gold nanoparticles, silver nanoparticles, selenium nanoparticles, and others. This research aims to evaluate the fatal effect of zirconium oxide (ZrO2) nanoparticle
... Show MoreObjective: Zerumbone (ZER) is a well-known natural compound that has been reported to have anti-cancer effect. Thus, this study investigated the ZER potential to inhibit Thymidine Phosphorylase (TP) and the ability to trigger Reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated cytotoxicity in non-small cell lung cancer, NCI-H460, cell line. Material and Method: The antiangiogenic activity for ZER was evaluated by using the thymidine phosphorylase inhibitory test. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) production was determined via DCFDA dye by using flow cytometry. Result and Discussion: ZER was found to be potent TP inhibitory with the IC50 value of 50.3± 0.31 μg/ml or 230±1.42 µM. NCI-H460 cells upon treatment with ZER produced sign
... Show MoreThe objective of this study was to evaluate a natural bio-insecticide manufacturing from Eucalyptus sp. volatile oil. The use of Eucalyptus sp. against the Backswimmer insect Anisops sardea Herrich-Schaeffer, 1849 predatory of larvae of common carp fish, Cyprinus carpio L., in artificial closed ponds in Babylon province represented a new idea in Iraq. The volatile oil of the Eucalyptus sp. was extracted by hot water method using the Clevenger, three concentrations of 250000, 450000 and 650000 ppm with benzyl benzoate as a stabilizer were used, which has a boiling point of 324OC (slow evaporation) at field experiment.The results of field and laboratory experiments of the extracted volatile oil in different concentrations, showed that
... Show MoreThe aim of study to evaluated cinnamic acid and its activity on complete blood count(RBC,WBC,HG,HCV,MCH,MCHC and Plat.)and removed the cytoxan damage which caused bone marrow failure and leukemia and other that due to linked the cytoxan in 7- nitrogen of guanine based of DNA that lead to dead cells. Two concentration from pure cinnamic acid (5.6, 2.8 mg ? mice weight) in first step to choice the perfect concentration in comparison with each negative control ,positive control of cytoxan and the comparison group represent vitamin C. The second step to understand cinnamic acid mechanism activity towards cytoxan by used pre- cytoxan and post – cytoxan in interaction with perfect concentration of cinnamic acid dose (2.8 mg ? mice we
... Show MoreThe present study was designed in the aquaculture and fish nutrition research aquarium in the College of Veterinary Medicine/Baghdad University from a period 1/3 to 1/6/2013 to investigate the toxicity of the herbicide glyphosate aqua on Barbus sharpeyi fish. Fish fingerlings were used with average weight between 10 – 15 gm to measure the (LC50), and 200 fingerlings were used to know the acute and chronic toxic effect for the herbicide. The fingerlings were randomly distributed as 10 fish for each aquarium. Fish were divided into four treatments and control group (without addition of herbicide). The first processing with a concentration of 0.415 mg/L for a duration of exposure 90 days, the second processing group with a concentration 0.
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