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, auto

The Normalization Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), for many years, was widely used in remote sensing for the detection of vegetation land cover. This index uses red channel radiances (i.e., 0.66 μm reflectance) and near-IR channel (i.e., 0.86 μm reflectance). In the heavy chlorophyll absorption area, the red channel is located, while in the high reflectance plateau of vegetation canopies, the Near-IR channel is situated. Senses of channels (Red & Near- IR) read variance depths over vegetation canopies. In the present study, a further index for vegetation identification is proposed. The normalized difference vegetation shortwave index (NDVSI) is defined as the difference between the cubic bands of Near- IR and Shortwave infrared

For several applications, it is very important to have an edge detection technique matching human visual contour perception and less sensitive to noise. The edge detection algorithm describes in this paper based on the results obtained by Maximum a posteriori (MAP) and Maximum Entropy (ME) deblurring algorithms. The technique makes a trade-off between sharpening and smoothing the noisy image. One of the advantages of the described algorithm is less sensitive to noise than that given by Marr and Geuen techniques that considered to be the best edge detection algorithms in terms of matching human visual contour perception.

Establishing coverage of the target sensing field and extending the network’s lifetime, together known as Coverage-lifetime is the key issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Recent studies realize the important role of nature-inspired algorithms in handling coverage-lifetime problem with different optimization aspects. One of the main formulations is to define coverage-lifetime problem as a disjoint set covers problem. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary algorithm for solving coverage-lifetime problem as a disjoint set covers function. The main interest in this paper is to reflect both models of sensing: Boolean and probabilistic. Moreover, a heuristic operator is proposed as a local refinement operator to improve the quality

A recently reported Nile red (NR) dye conjugated with benzothiadiazole species paves the way for the development of novel organic-based sensitizers used in solar cells whose structures are susceptible to modifications. Thus, six novel NR structures were derived from two previously developed structures in laboratories. In this study, density functional theory (DFT) calculations and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) were used to determine the optoelectronic properties of the NR-derived moieties such as absorption spectra. Various linkers were investigated in an attempt to understand the impact of π-linkers on the optoelectronic properties. According to the findings, the presence of furan species led to the planarity of the molecule and a reduction

In this study, a new, rapid and sensitive batch and flow injection-merging zones spectrophotometric methods for the determination of hydroquinone in a pure material and in pharmaceutical preparation were proposed. These methods were based on the oxidative-coupling reaction of HQ with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydazine (DNPH) in the presence of sodium periodate and sodium hydroxide to form a dark brown water slouble dye that is stable and has maximum absorption at 530 nm, graphs of absorbance versus concentration show that Beer's low is obeyed over the concentration rang of 1-40 and 3-300 μg.ml-1 of hydroquinone, with detection limits of 0.162 and 0.510 μg.ml-1 of hydroquinone for batch and FIA methods, respectively. The optimized FIA system is

      Cytokines and chemokines are small-secreted proteins involved in many aspects of cell development, differentiation, and activation functions. A prominent characteristic of these molecules is their effect on the immune system in relation to the development of cell trafficking and immune tissues and organs. Furthermore, they play an important role in initiating and coordinating the organized and sequential recruitment and activation of cells into Mycobacterium tuberculosis-infected lungs. We aimed to evaluate the levels of interleukin -17 (IL-17) and the chemotactic chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 5 (CCL5) in the sera of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients. About 90 subjects were included, involving 5