Beyond the immediate content of speech, the voice can provide rich information about a speaker's demographics, including age and gender. Estimating a speaker's age and gender offers a wide range of applications, spanning from voice forensic analysis to personalized advertising, healthcare monitoring, and human-computer interaction. However, pinpointing precise age remains intricate due to age ambiguity. Specifically, utterances from individuals at adjacent ages are frequently indistinguishable. Addressing this, we propose a novel, end-to-end approach that deploys Mozilla's Common Voice dataset to transform raw audio into high-quality feature representations using Wav2Vec2.0 embeddings. These are then channeled into our self-attention-based convolutional neural network (CNN) model. To address age ambiguity, we evaluate the effects of different loss functions such as focal loss and Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence loss. Additionally, we evaluate the accuracy of the estimation at different durations of speech. Experimental results from the Common Voice dataset underscore the efficacy of our approach, showcasing an accuracy of 87% for male speakers, 91% for female speakers and 89% overall accuracy, and an accuracy of 99.1% for gender prediction.
Employing phase-change materials (PCM) is considered a very efficient and cost-effective option for addressing the mismatch between the energy supply and the demand. The high storage density, little temperature degradation, and ease of material processing register the PCM as a key candidate for the thermal energy storage system. However, the sluggish response rates during their melting and solidification processes limit their applications and consequently require the inclusion of heat transfer enhancers. This research aims to investigate the potential enhancement of circular fins on intensifying the PCM thermal response in a vertical triple-tube casing. Fin arrays of non-uniform dimensions and distinct distribution patterns were des
... Show MoreBackground: Staphylococcus spp. are widely distributed in nature and can cause nosocomial, skin infections, and foodborne illness, and it may lead to severe financial losses in birds by causing systemic infection in numerous organs. Aim: This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of Staphylococcus spp. in humans and birds in Baghdad city. Methods: Seventy-six oral cavity swabs were collected, including 41 from birds and 35 from breeders. All samples were examined by bacteriological methods and identified by using the VITEK technique, the samples were then further studied to test the ability of biofilm formation, and MDR factors and MAR index were tested with the use of seven antibiotics. Results: Among the 76 oral swa
... Show MoreChronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) is a myeloproliferative neoplasm arises from Bcr-Abl gene translocation (called Ph chromosome) in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). This genetic abnormality results in constitutive activation of tyrosine kinase and subsequent uncontrol growth and multiplication of granulocytes. The cornerstone in treatment of CML are tyrosine kinase inhibitors, of which imatinib is the most effectively used. JAK2V617F mutation is an acquired single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) occurs in JAK2 gene and is associated with many hematological malignancy other than CML. It was thought that the two genetic abnormalities (Bcr-Abl and JAK2V617F) occur mutually; however, growing body of evidences suggested the reverse. This study a
... Show MoreThis study examines postgraduate students’ awareness of pragmatic aspects, including Grice Maxims, Politeness, and Direct and Indirect forms of speech. According to Paul Grice’s theory of implicature, which is considered one of the most important contributions to pragmatics, this paper discusses how postgraduate students can meet the cooperative principle when communicating effectively. It also outlines how does politeness principles influence obeying or violating the maxims and how is the use of direct or indirect forms of utterances prompted by politeness. Sixteen master’s students of Linguistics and Literature were asked to take a multiple-choice test. The test will be represented along with the interpretation of each optio
... Show MoreRheumatoid arthritis and periodontitis use analogous effector destructive procedures, in that the inflammatory cells and pro-inflammatory cytokines that drive chronic bone erosion in RA and chronic periodontal destruction in Periodontitis are alike. Periodontitis (PD) has appeared as a hazard factor in a number of health situations as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). To determine the effect of anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha biological treatment (methotrexate and Enbrel or infliximab) on periodontal status of patients having rheumatoid arthritis with periodontitis in comparison to those having periodontitis without rheumatoid arthritis and control healthy subjects and to determine the serum levels of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (ACCP) in t
... Show MoreThis study was carried out for direct detection of typhi and some of its multidrug resistance genes(tem,capt,gyrA&sul2)which encode for resistance to (Ampicillin, Chloramphenicol,Ciprofioxacin,Co-trimoxazole)by using Polymerase Chain Reaction technique .(71)blood samples for people suffering from typhoid fever symptoms depending on the clinical examination and (25)for control were collected. The results investigation for flic gene which encode for flagellin protein indicated that only (19)with percentage of (26,76%)gave appositive results while all control had a negative ones. Investigation for antibiotic resistance drug in samples which show positive results for flic gene showed that there is a multidrug for all antibiotics with (94.7
... Show MoreThis study proposes a hybrid predictive maintenance framework that integrates the Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) with Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) for intelligent fault diagnosis in industrial rotating machinery. The method is designed to address challenges posed by non-linear and non-stationary vibration signals under varying operational conditions. Experimental validation using the FALEX multispecimen test bench demonstrated a high classification accuracy of 97.5%, outperforming traditional models such as SVM, Random Forest, and XGBoost. The approach maintained robust performance across dynamic load scenarios and noisy environments, with precision and recall exceeding 95%. Key contributions include a hardware-accelerated K
... Show MoreBackground: Hyperlipidemia is an elevated fat (lipids), mostly cholesterol and triglycerides, in the blood. These lipids usually bind to proteins to remain circulated so-called lipoprotein. Aims of the study: To determine taste detection threshold and estimate the trace elements (zinc) in serum and saliva of those patients and compare all of these with healthy control subjects. Methods: Eighty subjects were incorporated in this study, thy were divided into two groups: forty patients on simvastatin treatment age between (35-60) years, and forty healthy control of age range between (35-60) years. Saliva was collected by non-stimulated technique within 10 minutes. Serum was obtained from each subject. Zinc was estimated in serum and saliva
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