Search results for: children speech

Authors: Kashif Bilal, Uzair Muhammad, Atif Khan, M. Nasir Khan

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Machine Translation, (hereafter in this document referred to as the "MT") faces a lot of complex problems from its origination. Extracting multiword expressions is also one of the complex problems in MT. Finding multiword expressions during translating a sentence from English into Urdu, through existing solutions, takes a lot of time and occupies system resources. We have designed a simple relational data approach, in which we simply set a bit in dictionary (database) for multiword, to find and handle multiword expression. This approach handles multiword efficiently.

Keywords: Machine Translation, Multiword Expressions, Urdulanguage processing, POS (stands for Parts of Speech) Tagging forUrdu, Expert Systems.

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Authors: Oktia Woro Kasmini Handayani, Bambang Budi Raharjo, Efa Nugroho, Bertakalswa Hermawati

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Obesity prevalence and severe malnutrition in Indonesia has increased from 2007 to 2013. The utilization of local resources in nutritional program planning can be used to program efficiency and to reach the goal. The aim of this research is to plan a nutrition program based on local resources for urban fringe areas in a developing country. This research used a qualitative approach, with a focus on local resources including social capital, social system, cultural system. The study was conducted in Mijen, Central Java, as one of the urban fringe areas in Indonesia. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques are used to determine participants. A total of 16 participants took part in the study. Observation, interviews, focus group discussion, SWOT analysis, brainstorming and Miles and Huberman models were used to analyze the data. We have identified several local resources, such as the contributions from nutrition cadres, social organizations, social financial resources, as well as the cultural system and social system. The outstanding contribution of nutrition cadres is the participation and creativity to improve nutritional status. In addition, social organizations, like the role of the integrated health center for children (Pos Pelayanan Terpadu), can be engaged in the nutrition program planning. This center is supported by House of Nutrition to assist in nutrition program planning, and provide social support to families, neighbors and communities as social capitals. The study also reported that cultural systems that show appreciation for well-nourished children are a better way to improve the problem of balanced nutrition. Social systems such as teamwork and mutual cooperation can also be a potential resource to support nutritional programs and overcome associated problems. The impact of development in urban areas such as the introduction of more green areas which improve the perceived status of local people, as well as new health services facilitated by people and companies, can also be resources to support nutrition programs. Local resources in urban fringe areas can be used in the planning of nutrition programs. The expansion of partnership with all stakeholders, empowering the community through optimizing the roles of nutrition care centers for children as our recommendation with regard to nutrition program planning.

Keywords: Developing country, local resources, nutrition program, urban fringe.

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Authors: Junseok Ham, Chansun Jung, Junhyung Park, Jihye Ryeo, Ilju Ko

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It is hard to express emotion through only speech when we watch a character in a movie or a play because we cannot estimate the size, kind, and quantity of emotion. So this paper proposes an artificial emotion model for visualizing current emotion with color and location in emotion model. The artificial emotion model is designed considering causality of generated emotion, difference of personality, difference of continual emotional stimulus, and co-relation of various emotions. This paper supposed the Emotion Field for visualizing current emotion with location, and current emotion is expressed by location and color in the Emotion Field. For visualizing changes within current emotion, the artificial emotion model is adjusted to characters in Hamlet.

Keywords: Emotion, Artificial Emotion, Visualizing, EmotionModel.

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Authors: Negar Riazifar, Nigel G. Stocks

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This paper proposes strategies in level crossing (LC) sampling and reconstruction that provide alias-free high-fidelity signal reconstruction for speech signals without exponentially increasing sample number with increasing bit-depth. We introduce methods in LC sampling that reduce the sampling rate close to the Nyquist frequency even for large bit-depth. The results indicate that larger variation in the sampling intervals leads to alias-free sampling scheme; this is achieved by either reducing the bit-depth or adding a jitter to the system for high bit-depths. In conjunction with windowing, the signal is reconstructed from the LC samples using an efficient Toeplitz reconstruction algorithm.

Keywords: Alias-free, level crossing sampling, spectrum, trigonometric polynomial.

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Authors: Nevine M. Labib, Michael N. Malek

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Data Mining aims at discovering knowledge out of data and presenting it in a form that is easily comprehensible to humans. One of the useful applications in Egypt is the Cancer management, especially the management of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia or ALL, which is the most common type of cancer in children. This paper discusses the process of designing a prototype that can help in the management of childhood ALL, which has a great significance in the health care field. Besides, it has a social impact on decreasing the rate of infection in children in Egypt. It also provides valubale information about the distribution and segmentation of ALL in Egypt, which may be linked to the possible risk factors. Undirected Knowledge Discovery is used since, in the case of this research project, there is no target field as the data provided is mainly subjective. This is done in order to quantify the subjective variables. Therefore, the computer will be asked to identify significant patterns in the provided medical data about ALL. This may be achieved through collecting the data necessary for the system, determimng the data mining technique to be used for the system, and choosing the most suitable implementation tool for the domain. The research makes use of a data mining tool, Clementine, so as to apply Decision Trees technique. We feed it with data extracted from real-life cases taken from specialized Cancer Institutes. Relevant medical cases details such as patient medical history and diagnosis are analyzed, classified, and clustered in order to improve the disease management.

Keywords: Data Mining, Decision Trees, Knowledge Discovery, Leukemia.

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Authors: S. A. Nta

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Application of health risk assessment methods is important in order to comprehend the risk of human exposure to heavy metals and other dangerous pollutants. Four soil samples were collected at distances of 10, 20, 30 m and the control 100 m away from the dump site at depths of 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 m. The collected soil samples were examined for Zn, Cu, Pb, Cd and Ni using standard methods. The health risks via the main pathways of human exposure to heavy metal were detected using relevant standard equations. Hazard quotient was calculated to determine non-carcinogenic health risk for each individual heavy metal. Life time cancer risk was calculated to determine the cumulative life cancer rating for each exposure pathway. The estimated health risk values for adults and children were generally lower than the reference dose. The calculated hazard quotient for the ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact pathways were less than unity. This means that there is no detrimental concern to the health on human exposure to heavy metals in contaminated soil. The life time cancer risk 5.4 × 10^-2 was higher than the acceptable threshold value of 1 × 10^-4 which is reflected to have significant health effects on human exposure to heavy metals in contaminated soil. Good hygienic practices are recommended to ease the potential risk to children and adult who are exposed to contaminated soils. Also, the local authorities should be made aware of such health risks for the purpose of planning the management strategy accordingly.

Keywords: Health risk assessment, pollution, heavy metals, soil.

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Authors: P. Maheshwari, M. Shapurkar

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The present research aimed at studying the awareness and attitudes of teachers towards inclusive education. The sample consisted of 60 teachers, teaching in the primary section (1st – 4th) of regular schools affiliated to the SSC board in Mumbai. Sample was selected by Multi-stage cluster sampling technique. A semi-structured self-constructed interview schedule and a self-constructed attitude scale was used to study the awareness of teachers about disability and Inclusive education, and their attitudes towards inclusive education respectively. Themes were extracted from the interview data and quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS package. Results revealed that teachers had some amount of awareness but an inadequate amount of information on disabilities and inclusive education. Disability to most (37) teachers meant “an inability to do something”. The difference between disability and handicap was stated by most as former being cognitive while handicap being physical in nature. With regard to Inclusive education, a large number (46) stated that they were unaware of the term and did not know what it meant. Majority (52) of them perceived maximum challenges for themselves in an inclusive set up, and emphasized on the role of teacher training courses in the area of providing knowledge (49) and training in teaching methodology (53). Although, 83.3% of teachers held a moderately positive attitude towards inclusive education, a large percentage (61.6%) of participants felt that being in inclusive set up would be very challenging for both children with special needs and without special needs. Though, most (49) of the teachers stated that children with special needs should be educated in regular classroom but they further clarified that only those should be in a regular classroom who have physical impairments of mild or moderate degree.

Keywords: Attitudes, awareness, inclusive education, teachers.

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Authors: Roya Maqami, Kaveh Qaderi Bagajan, Mohammad Mahdi Yousefi, Saeed Moradi

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of solution-focused group therapy on improving the depressed mothers of child abuser families. This study was carried out in the form of a semi-pilot, pre-test and post-test on two groups (experimental and control). Subjects include all mothers and their children that are the members of Shush and Naser Khosro child home. Beck Depression Inventory and Child Trauma Questionnaire were used to collect data. First, child abuse questionnaire was completed by children, Then Beck Depression Inventory was completed by their mothers that 22 of them were recognized as depressed and randomly divided in two groups of experimental and control. After applying pre-test for both of these groups, the intervention of solution- focused group therapy was performed in five sessions on experimental group. Finally, post-test was applied on both groups and subsequently in a month, follow-up test was performed. T-test, multivariate variance, and repeated measurement analysis of variance were used to analyze the data. According to the findings, it can be concluded that this therapy leads to the improvement of depressed mother's mood. As a result, the intervention of solution-focused group therapy is useful in order to improve the depressing mood of mothers of child abuser families.

Keywords: Child Abuse, Depressed Mothers, Child Abuser Families, Solution-focused Group Therapy.

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Authors: Bohsiu Wu

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Among serious crimes, child homicide is a rather rare event. However, the killing of children stirs up a special type of emotion in society that pales other criminal acts. This study examines the relevancy of three possible community-level explanations for child homicide: social deprivation, female empowerment, and social isolation. The social deprivation hypothesis posits that child homicide results from lack of resources in communities. The female empowerment hypothesis argues that a higher female status translates into a higher level of capability to prevent child homicide. Finally, the social isolation hypothesis regards child homicide as a result of lack of social connectivity. Child homicide data, aggregated by US postal ZIP codes in California from 1990 to 1999, were analyzed with a negative binomial regression. The results of the negative binomial analysis demonstrate that social deprivation is the most salient and consistent predictor among all other factors in explaining child homicide victimization at the ZIP-code level. Both social isolation and female labor force participation are weak predictors of child homicide victimization across communities. Further, results from the negative binomial regression show that it is the communities with a higher, not lower, degree of female labor force participation that are associated with a higher count of child homicide. It is possible that poor communities with a higher level of female employment have a lesser capacity to provide the necessary care and protection for the children. Policies aiming at reducing social deprivation and strengthening female empowerment possess the potential to reduce child homicide in the community.

Keywords: Child homicide, deprivation, empowerment, isolation.

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Authors: Mehran Yazdi, Mehdi Seyfi, Amirhossein Rafati, Meghdad Asadi

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Detection and tracking of the lip contour is an important issue in speechreading. While there are solutions for lip tracking once a good contour initialization in the first frame is available, the problem of finding such a good initialization is not yet solved automatically, but done manually. We have developed a new tracking solution for lip contour detection using only few landmarks (15 to 25) and applying the well known Active Shape Models (ASM). The proposed method is a new LMS-like adaptive scheme based on an Auto regressive (AR) model that has been fit on the landmark variations in successive video frames. Moreover, we propose an extra motion compensation model to address more general cases in lip tracking. Computer simulations demonstrate a fair match between the true and the estimated spatial pixels. Significant improvements related to the well known LMS approach has been obtained via a defined Frobenius norm index.

Keywords: Lip contour, Tracking, LMS-Like

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Authors: Said Boularouk, Didier Josselin, Eitan Altman

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In this paper, we present a vocal ontology of OpenStreetMap data for the apprehension of space by visually impaired people. Indeed, the platform based on produsage gives a freedom to data producers to choose the descriptors of geocoded locations. Unfortunately, this freedom, called also folksonomy leads to complicate subsequent searches of data. We try to solve this issue in a simple but usable method to extract data from OSM databases in order to send them to visually impaired people using Text To Speech technology. We focus on how to help people suffering from visual disability to plan their itinerary, to comprehend a map by querying computer and getting information about surrounding environment in a mono-modal human-computer dialogue.

Keywords: Ontology, OpenStreetMap, visually impaired people, TTS, taxonomy.

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Authors: Masaru Fujieda, Takahiro Murakami, Yoshihisa Ishida

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Independent component analysis (ICA) in the frequency domain is used for solving the problem of blind source separation (BSS). However, this method has some problems. For example, a general ICA algorithm cannot determine the permutation of signals which is important in the frequency domain ICA. In this paper, we propose an approach to the solution for a permutation problem. The idea is to effectively combine two conventional approaches. This approach improves the signal separation performance by exploiting features of the conventional approaches. We show the simulation results using artificial data.

Keywords: Blind source separation, Independent componentanalysis, Frequency domain, Permutation ambiguity.

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Authors: E. S. Gower, M. O. J. Hawksford

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An algorithm for learning an overcomplete dictionary using a Cauchy mixture model for sparse decomposition of an underdetermined mixing system is introduced. The mixture density function is derived from a ratio sample of the observed mixture signals where 1) there are at least two but not necessarily more mixture signals observed, 2) the source signals are statistically independent and 3) the sources are sparse. The basis vectors of the dictionary are learned via the optimization of the location parameters of the Cauchy mixture components, which is shown to be more accurate and robust than the conventional data mining methods usually employed for this task. Using a well known sparse decomposition algorithm, we extract three speech signals from two mixtures based on the estimated dictionary. Further tests with additive Gaussian noise are used to demonstrate the proposed algorithm-s robustness to outliers.

Keywords: expectation-maximization, Pitman estimator, sparsedecomposition

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Authors: Jaehwan Kang, Haejung Lee

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This paper introduces an automatic voice classification system for the diagnosis of individual constitution based on Sasang Constitutional Medicine (SCM) in Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM). For the developing of this algorithm, we used the voices of 309 female speakers and extracted a total of 134 speech features from the voice data consisting of 5 sustained vowels and one sentence. The classification system, based on a rule-based algorithm that is derived from a non parametric statistical method, presents 3 types of decisions: reserved, positive and negative decisions. In conclusion, 71.5% of the voice data were diagnosed by this system, of which 47.7% were correct positive decisions and 69.7% were correct negative decisions.

Keywords: Voice Classifier, Sasang Constitution Medicine, Traditional Korean Medicine, SCM, TKM.

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Authors: Yasuhiko Okuma, Yuichi Suzuki, Takahiro Murakami, Yoshihisa Ishida

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In this paper, an extended method of the directionally constrained minimization of power (DCMP) algorithm for broadband signals is proposed. The DCMP algorithm is one of the useful techniques of extracting a target signal from observed signals of a microphone array system. In the DCMP algorithm, output power of the microphone array is minimized under a constraint of constant responses to directions of arrival (DOAs) of specific signals. In our algorithm, by limiting the directional constraint to the perpendicular direction to the sensor array system, the calculating time is reduced.

Keywords: Beamformer, directionally constrained minimizationof power, direction of arrival, microphone array.

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Authors: So-Jeong Youn, Kyung-Whan Oh

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The human friendly interaction is the key function of a human-centered system. Over the years, it has received much attention to develop the convenient interaction through intention recognition. Intention recognition processes multimodal inputs including speech, face images, and body gestures. In this paper, we suggest a novel approach of intention recognition using a graph representation called Intention Graph. A concept of valid intention is proposed, as a target of intention recognition. Our approach has two phases: goal recognition phase and intention recognition phase. In the goal recognition phase, we generate an action graph based on the observed actions, and then the candidate goals and their plans are recognized. In the intention recognition phase, the intention is recognized with relevant goals and user profile. We show that the algorithm has polynomial time complexity. The intention graph is applied to a simple briefcase domain to test our model.

Keywords: Intention recognition, intention, graph, HCI.

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Authors: Robert Krause

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Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disease similar to frontotemporal and semantic dementia, while having a different clinical image and anatomic pathology topography. Nonetheless, they are often included under an umbrella term: frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). In the study, examples of diagnosing PPA are presented through the multidisciplinary lens of specialists from different fields (neurologists, psychiatrists, clinical speech therapists, clinical neuropsychologists and others) using a variety of diagnostic tools such as MR, PET/CT, genetic screening and neuropsychological and logopedic methods. Thanks to that, specialists can get a better and clearer understanding of PPA diagnosis. The study summarizes the concrete procedures and results of different specialists while diagnosing PPA in a patient of younger middle age and illustrates the importance of multidisciplinary approach to differential diagnosis of PPA.

Keywords: Primary progressive aphasia, etiology, diagnosis, younger middle age.

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Authors: Samwel Boaz Otieno, Fred Were, Ephantus Kabiru, Kaunda Waza

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A study was done to establish determinants of selenium intake in a high HIV prevalence fishing community in the Pala Bondo district, Kenya. It was established that most of the respondents (61%) were small holder Farmers and Fishermen {χ² (1, N=386) p<0.000}, and that most of them (91.2%) had up to college level education {χ².(1, N=386) p<0.000}, while the number of males and females were not significantly different {χ (1, N=386) p=0.263} and 83.5% of respondents were married {χ² (1, N=386) p=0.000}. The study showed that adults take on average 2.68 meals a day (N=382, SD=0.603), while children take 3.02 meals (N=386, SD=1.031) a day, and that in most households (82.6%) food is prepared by the women {χ² (1, N=386) p=0.000} and further that 50% of foods eaten in that community are purchased {χ² (1, N=386)=0.1818, p=0.6698}. The foods eaten by 75.2% of the respondents were Oreochromis niloticus, Lates niloticus, and Sorghum bicolour, 64.1% vegetables and that both children and adults eat same types of food, and further that traditional foods which have become extinct are mainly vegetables (46%). The study established that selenium levels in foods eaten in Pala sub-locations varies with traditional vegetables having higher levels of selenium; for example, Laurnea cornuta (148.5 mg/kg), Cleome gynandra (121.5 mg/kg), Vignia ungulata (21.97 mg/kg), while Rastrineobola argentea (51 mg/kg), Lates niloticus (0), Oreochromis niloticus (0) Sorgum bicolour (19.97 mg/kg), and Sorgum bicolour (0). The study showed that there is an inverse relationship between foods eaten and selenium levels {RR=1.21, p=0.000}, with foods eaten by 75.2% of respondents (Oreochromis niloticus/Lates niloticus) having no detectable selenium. The four soil types identified in the study area had varying selenium levels with pleat loam (13.3 mg/kg), sandy loam (10.7 mg/kg), clay (2.8 mg/kg) and loam (4.8 mg/kg). It was concluded from this study that for the foods eaten by most of the respondents the selenium levels were below Daily Reference Intake.

Keywords: Determinants, HIV, food, fishing, selenium.

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Authors: Sang-Wan Kim, Hoon Lee, Kyung-Ho Choi, Soon-Young Park

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A talking head system (THS) is presented to animate the face of a speaking 3D avatar in such a way that it realistically pronounces the given Korean text. The proposed system consists of SAPI compliant text-to-speech (TTS) engine and MPEG-4 compliant face animation generator. The input to the THS is a unicode text that is to be spoken with synchronized lip shape. The TTS engine generates a phoneme sequence with their duration and audio data. The TTS applies the coarticulation rules to the phoneme sequence and sends a mouth animation sequence to the face modeler. The proposed THS can make more natural lip sync and facial expression by using the face animation generator than those using the conventional visemes only. The experimental results show that our system has great potential for the implementation of talking head for Korean text.

Keywords: Talking head, Lip sync, TTS, MPEG4.

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Authors: Carmiña L. Vargas-Zapata, María A. Conde-Sarmiento, Maria Consuelo Maestre-Vargas

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Calcium is an essential element for good growth and development of the organism, and its requirement is increased at school age. Low socio-economic populations of developing countries such as Colombia may have food deficiency of this mineral in schoolchildren that could be reflected in calcium biochemical indicators, bone alterations and anthropometric indicators. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate some calcium biochemical indicators in a group of schoolchildren of low socioeconomic level from Barranquilla city and to correlate with body mass index. 60 schoolchildren aged 7 to 15 years were selected from Jesus’s Heart Educational Institution in Barranquilla-Atlántico, apparently healthy, without suffering from infectious or gastrointestinal diseases, without habits of drinking alcohol or smoking another hallucinogenic substance and without taking supplementation with calcium in the last six months or another substance that compromises bone metabolism. The research was approved by the ethics committee at Universidad del Atlántico. The selected children were invited to donate a blood and urine sample in a fasting time of 12 hours, the serum was separated by centrifugation and frozen at ˗20 ℃ until analyzed and the same was done with the urine sample. On the day of the biological collections, the weight and height of the students were measured to determine the nutritional status by BMI using the WHO tables. Calcium concentrations in serum and urine (SCa, UCa), alkaline phosphatase activity total and of bone origin (SAPT, SBAP) and urinary creatinine (UCr) were determined by spectrophotometric methods using commercial kits. Osteocalcin and Cross-linked N-telopeptides of type I collagen (NTx-1) in serum were measured with an enzyme-linked inmunosorbent assay. For statistical analysis the Statgraphics software Centurium XVII was used. 63% (n = 38) and 37% (n = 22) of the participants were male and female, respectively. 78% (n = 47), 5% (n = 3) and 17% (n = 10) had a normal, malnutrition and high nutritional status, respectively. The averages of evaluated indicators levels were (mean ± SD): 9.50 ± 1.06 mg/dL for SCa; 181.3 ± 64.3 U/L for SAPT, 143.8 ± 73.9 U/L for SBAP; 9.0 ± 3.48 ng/mL for osteocalcin and 101.3 ± 12.8 ng/mL for NTx-1. UCa level was 12.8 ± 7.7 mg/dL that adjusted with creatinine ranged from 0.005 to 0.395 mg/mg. Considering serum calcium values, approximately 7% of school children were hypocalcemic, 16% hypercalcemic and 77% normocalcemic. The indicators evaluated did not correlate with the BMI. Low values ​​were observed in calcium urinary excretion and high in NTx-1, suggesting that mechanisms such as increase in renal retention of calcium and in bone remodeling may be contributing to calcium homeostasis.

Keywords: Calcium, calcium biochemical, indicators, school children, low socioeconomic status.

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Authors: Bruna Luisa Ramos Prado Vasques, Mariane Rembold Petraglia, Antonio Petraglia

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This paper investigates MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) adaptive filtering techniques for the application of supervised source separation in the context of convolutive mixtures. From the observation that there is correlation among the signals of the different mixtures, an improvement in the NSAF (Normalized Subband Adaptive Filter) algorithm is proposed in order to accelerate its convergence rate. Simulation results with mixtures of speech signals in reverberant environments show the superior performance of the proposed algorithm with respect to the performances of the NLMS (Normalized Least-Mean-Square) and conventional NSAF, considering both the convergence speed and SIR (Signal-to-Interference Ratio) after convergence.

Keywords: Adaptive filtering, multirate processing, normalized subband adaptive filter, source separation.

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Authors: Etim, Victoria Enefiok, Dada, Oluseyi Akintunde, Bassey Okon

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Phonological disorder is a serious and disturbing issue to many parents and teachers. Efforts towards resolving the problem have been undermined by other specific disabilities which were hidden to many regular and special education teachers. It is against this background that this study was motivated to provide data on the prevalence of phonological disorders in children with specific language impairment (CWSLI) as the first step towards critical intervention. The study was a survey of 15 CWSLI from St. Louise Inclusive schools, Ikot Ekpene in Akwa Ibom State of Nigeria. Phonological Processes Diagnostic Scale (PPDS) with 17 short sentences, which cut across the five phonological processes that were examined, were validated by experts in test measurement, phonology and special education. The respondents were made to read the sentences with emphasis on the targeted sounds. Their utterances were recorded and analyzed in the language laboratory using Praat Software. Data were also collected through friendly interactions at different times from the clients. The theory of generative phonology was adopted for the descriptive analysis of the phonological processes. Data collected were analyzed using simple percentage and composite bar chart for better understanding of the result. The study found out that CWSLI exhibited the five phonological processes under investigation. It was revealed that 66.7%, 80%, 73.3%, 80%, and 86.7% of the respondents have severe deficit in fricative stopping, velar fronting, liquid gliding, final consonant deletion and cluster reduction, respectively. It was therefore recommended that a nationwide survey should be carried out to have national statistics of CWSLI with phonological deficits and develop intervention strategies for effective therapy to remediate the disorder.

Keywords: Language disorders, phonology, phonological processes, specific language impairment.

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Authors: Rafik Djemili, Mouldi Bedda, Hocine Bourouba

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This paper proposes a novel approach that combines statistical models and support vector machines. A hybrid scheme which appropriately incorporates the advantages of both the generative and discriminant model paradigms is described and evaluated. Support vector machines (SVMs) are trained to divide the whole speakers' space into small subsets of speakers within a hierarchical tree structure. During testing a speech token is assigned to its corresponding group and evaluation using gaussian mixture models (GMMs) is then processed. Experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the performance of text independent speaker identification task. We report improvements of up to 50% reduction in identification error rate compared to the baseline statistical model.

Keywords: Speaker identification, Gaussian mixture model (GMM), support vector machine (SVM), hybrid GMM/SVM.

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Authors: D. Hilton

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The importance and significance of this research is based upon the fundamental knowledge reported in the scientific literature that physical activity is inversely associated with obesity. In addition, it is recognized there is a global epidemic of sedentariness while at the same time it is known that morbidity and mortality are associated with physical inactivity and as a result of overweight or obesity. Hence this small study in school students is an important area of research in our community. An application submitted in 2005 for the inaugural Public Health Education Research Trust [PHERT] Post Graduate Research Scholarship scheme organized by the Public Health Association of Australia [PHAA] was awarded 3rd place within Australia. The author and title was: D. Hilton, Methods to increase physical activity in school aged children [literature review, a trial using pedometers and a policy paper]. Third place is a good result, however this did not secure funding for the project, as only first place received $5000 funding. Some years later within Australia, a program commenced called the Global Children's Challenge [GCC]. Given details of the 2005 award above were included an application submission prepared for Parkhill Primary School [PPS] which is located in Victoria, Australia was successful. As a result, an excited combined grade 3/ 4 class at the school [27 students] in 2012 became recipients of these free pedometers. Ambassadors for the program were Mrs Catherine Freeman [OAM], Olympic Gold Medalist – Sydney 2000 [400 meters], while another ambassador was Mr Colin Jackson [CBE] who is a Welsh former sprint and hurdling athlete. In terms of PPS and other schools involved in 2012, website details show that the event started on 19th Sep 2012 and students were to wear the pedometer every day for 50 days [at home and at school] aiming for the recommended 15,000 steps/day recording steps taken in a booklet provided. After the finish, an analysis of the average step count for this school showed that the average steps taken / day was 14, 003 [however only a small percentage of students returned the booklets and units] as unfortunately the dates for the program coincided with school holidays so some students either forgot or misplaced the units / booklets. Unfortunately funding for this program ceased in 2013, however the lasting impact of the trial on student’s knowledge and awareness remains and in fact becomes a good grounding for students in how to monitor basic daily physical activity using a method that is easy, fun, low cost and readily accessible.

Keywords: Walking, exercise, physical activity [motor activity].

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Authors: Rustam Asnawi, Wan Fatimah Wan Ahmad

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Currently electronic slide (e-slide) is one of the most common styles in educational presentation. Unfortunately, the utilization of e-slide for the visually impaired is uncommon since they are unable to see the content of such e-slides which are usually composed of text, images and animation. This paper proposes a model for presenting e-slide in multimodal presentation i.e. using conventional slide concurrent with voicing, in both languages Malay and English. At the design level, live multimedia presentation concept is used, while at the implementation level several components are used. The text content of each slide is extracted using COM component, Microsoft Speech API for voicing the text in English language and the text in Malay language is voiced using dictionary approach. To support the accessibility, an auditory user interface is provided as an additional feature. A prototype of such model named as VSlide has been developed and introduced.

Keywords: presentation, self-learning, slide, visually impaired

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Authors: Somsri Binraman, Boonliang Kaewnapan, Krittika Tanprasert

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In the package design industry, there are a lot of tacit knowledge resided within each designer. The objectives are to capture them and compile it to be used as a teaching resource and to create a video clip of package design process as well as to evaluate its quality and learning effectiveness. Interview were used as a technique for capturing knowledge in brand design concept, differentiation, recognition, rank of recognition factor, consumer survey, knowledge about marketing, research, graphic design, the effect of color, and law and regulation. Video clip about package design were created. The clip consisted of both the speech and clip of actual process. The quality of the video in term of media was ranked as good while the content was ranked as excellent. The students- score on post-test was significantly greater than that of pretest (p>0.001).

Keywords: Tacit knowledge, interview, video, packaging, design.

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Authors: Tin Hninn Hninn Maung

Abstract:

This paper introduces a hand gesture recognition system to recognize real time gesture in unstrained environments. Efforts should be made to adapt computers to our natural means of communication: Speech and body language. A simple and fast algorithm using orientation histograms will be developed. It will recognize a subset of MAL static hand gestures. A pattern recognition system will be using a transforrn that converts an image into a feature vector, which will be compared with the feature vectors of a training set of gestures. The final system will be Perceptron implementation in MATLAB. This paper includes experiments of 33 hand postures and discusses the results. Experiments shows that the system can achieve a 90% recognition average rate and is suitable for real time applications.

Keywords: Hand gesture recognition, Orientation Histogram, Myanmar Alphabet Language, Perceptronnetwork, MATLAB.

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Authors: Arsalan Jabbar, Wajiha Javed, Nelofer Mehboob, Zahid Memon

Abstract:

Introduction: There are multiple social, individual and cultural factors that influence an individual’s decision to adopt family planning methods especially among non-users in patriarchal societies like Pakistan. Non-users, if targeted efficiently, can contribute significantly to country’s CPR. A research study showed that nonusers if convinced to adopt lactational amenorrhea method can shift to long term methods in future. Research shows that if non users are targeted efficiently a 59% reduction in unintended pregnancies in Saharan Africa and South-Central and South-East Asia is anticipated. Methods: We did secondary data analysis on Pakistan Demographic Heath Survey (2012-13) dataset. Use of contraception (never-use/ever-use) was the outcome variable. At univariate level Chi-square/Fisher Exact test was used to assess relationship of baseline covariates with contraception use. Then variables to be incorporated in the model were checked for multicollinearity, confounding and interaction. Then binary logistic regression (with an urban-rural stratification) was done to find relationship between contraception use and baseline demographic and social variables. Results: The multivariate analyses of the study showed that younger women (≤ 29 years)were more prone to be never users as compared to those who were >30 years and this trend was seen in urban areas (AOR 1.92, CI 1.453-2.536) as well as rural areas (AOR 1.809, CI 1.421-2.303). While looking at regional variation, women from urban Sindh (AOR 1.548, CI 1.142-2.099) and urban Balochistan (AOR 2.403, CI 1.504-3.839) had more never users as compared to other urban regions. Women in the rich wealth quintile were more never users and this was seen both in urban and rural localities (urban (AOR 1.106 CI .753-1.624); rural areas (AOR 1.162, CI .887-1.524)) even though these were not statistically significant. Women idealizing more children (>4) are more never users as compared to those idealizing less children in both urban (AOR 1.854, CI 1.275-2.697) and rural areas (AOR 2.101, CI 1.514-2.916). Women who never lost a pregnancy were more inclined to be nonusers in rural areas (AOR 1.394, CI 1.127-1.723) .Women familiar with only traditional or no method had more never users in rural areas (AOR 1.717, CI 1.127-1.723) but in urban areas it wasn’t significant. Women unaware of Lady Health Worker’s presence in their area were more never users especially in rural areas (AOR 1.276, CI 1.014-1.607). Women who did not visit any care provider were more never users (urban (AOR 11.738, CI 9.112-15.121) rural areas (AOR 7.832, CI 6.243-9.826)). Discussion/Conclusion: This study concluded that government, policy makers and private sector family planning programs should focus on the untapped pool of never users (younger women from underserved provinces, in higher wealth quintiles, who desire more children.). We need to make sure to cover catchment areas where there are less LHWs and less providers as ignorance to modern methods and never been visited by an LHW are important determinants of never use. This all is in sync with previous literate from similar developing countries.

Keywords: Contraception, Demographic and Health Survey, Family Planning, Never users.

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Authors: Nermine Ahmed Hendy, Hania Farag

Abstract:

Emotion recognition is an important research field that finds lots of applications nowadays. This work emphasizes on recognizing different emotions from speech signal. The extracted features are related to statistics of pitch, formants, and energy contours, as well as spectral, perceptual and temporal features, jitter, and shimmer. The Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) was chosen as the classifier. Working on finding a robust and fast ANN classifier suitable for different real life application is our concern. Several experiments were carried out on different ANN to investigate the different factors that impact the classification success rate. Using a database containing 7 different emotions, it will be shown that with a proper and careful adjustment of features format, training data sorting, number of features selected and even the ANN type and architecture used, a success rate of 85% or even more can be achieved without increasing the system complicity and the computation time

Keywords: Classification, emotion recognition, features extraction, feature selection, neural network

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Authors: Abhijit Mitra

Abstract:

Different pseudo-random or pseudo-noise (PN) as well as orthogonal sequences that can be used as spreading codes for code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular networks or can be used for encrypting speech signals to reduce the residual intelligence are investigated. We briefly review the theoretical background for direct sequence CDMA systems and describe the main characteristics of the maximal length, Gold, Barker, and Kasami sequences. We also discuss about variable- and fixed-length orthogonal codes like Walsh- Hadamard codes. The equivalence of PN and orthogonal codes are also derived. Finally, a new PN sequence is proposed which is shown to have certain better properties than the existing codes.

Keywords: Code division multiple access, pseudo-noise codes, maximal length, Gold, Barker, Kasami, Walsh-Hadamard, autocorrelation, crosscorrelation, figure of merit.

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