Deep features-based speech emotion recognition for smart affective services

Emotion recognition from speech signals is an interesting research with several applications like smart healthcare, autonomous voice response systems, assessing situational seriousness by caller affective state analysis in emergency centers, and other smart affective services. In this paper, we present a study of speech emotion recognition based on the features extracted from spectrograms using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) with rectangular kernels. Typically, CNNs have square shaped kernels and pooling operators at various layers, which are suited for 2D image data. However, in case of spectrograms, the information is encoded in a slightly different manner. Time is represented along the x-axis and y-axis shows frequency of the speech signal, whereas, the amplitude is indicated by the intensity value in the spectrogram at a particular position. To analyze speech through spectrograms, we propose rectangular kernels of varying shapes and sizes, along with max pooling in rectangular neighborhoods, to extract discriminative features. The proposed scheme effectively learns discriminative features from speech spectrograms and performs better than many state-of-the-art techniques when evaluated its performance on Emo-DB and Korean speech dataset.

     

Micromorphology,pharmacognosy, and bio‐elemental analysis of an important medicinal herb: Verbascum thapsus L.

The present study was conducted on characterization of morpho‐anatomical, phytochemical, and bio‐elemental analysis of root, stem, and leaf of Verbascum thapsus. Morphologically Verbascum is a biennial plant that flowers for a month and a half in mid‐ to late summer. Various organoleptic features of root, leaf, and stem were recorded. Anatomically the T. S of the root, stem, and leaf showed a typical dicot histological differentiation. Leaf possessed anomocytic stomata, crescent shape vascular bundles, and covered with long and stellate type trichomes while, stem contained collateral type of vascular bundles and a well‐developed pith to store phytochemicals responsible for various pharmacological activities. The powder drug study through scanning electron microscopy revealed the presence of various types of tissues. Branched, tree like and stellate trichomes in root and leaf help in absorption and reduce loss of water. These anatomical features are responsible for the survival of the plant as biennial. Four macro elements (Na, K, Ca, and Mg) and seven microelements (Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Zn, and Cd) and their concentrations in ppm were also studied using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy. Phytochemical screening of methanolic extract showed existence of various secondary metabolites, while mucilage and anthraquinones was not detected. The present study helps to understand the taxonomic identification of the plant based on morpho‐anatomical features and throws the attention of the researchers to carry out the work for developing its various formulations, which can ultimately be beneficial for the human beings as well as animals.     

Evaluating the lucrative role of probiotics in the aquaculture using microscopic and biochemical techniques

The present study focused to elucidate the promising role of probiotics in the fish culture, by employing microscopic and biochemical parameters to rationalize the possible outcomes. After preliminary feeding trial histopathological analysis revealed clear and visible changes in the intestinal and liver cells of CTRL (control group) compared to probiotics supplemented group, the bacterial inoculations resulted in shorten and swelled villi, while liver kupffer cells increased many folds in the CTRL. Moreover, there was clear hypertrophy and lamellar fusion in the gills tissues examined under microscope. Furthermore, intriguing results were obtained, such as a substantial increase in the weight gain, specific growth rate (%BW/day), FCE%, survival%, and improved secretions of amylase, cellulase, and protease activities. Likewise, high crude protein, fats content, while low moisture and total Ash was noticed in EXP I (Probiotics supplemented) compared to CTRL. The microscopic and biochemical analysis disclosed the positive role of probiotics on the fish health, thus we suggest its supplementations in the fish diet.     

基于空间谱的多天线盲频谱感知算法

现有的频谱感知算法主要在时间、频率以及地理空间维度进行检测,对角度维的利用尚不成熟。将多天线技术中的到达角（AOA, angle of arrival）估计算法应用到频谱感知领域,提出了2种基于空间谱的盲频谱感知算法,分别为最大—最小延迟相加谱值比检测和平均—最小延迟相加谱值比检测。利用空域匹配滤波的优势,新算法在低信噪比下得到了较高的检测概率,同时为角度维的频谱接入提供了AOA信息,从而提高了频谱利用率。此外,运用随机矩阵理论,推导了检测阈值和检测概率的理论值。仿真结果表明,在Nakagami-m信道下,提出的算法具有比现有盲感知算法更优的检测性能。     

Coherent control of symmetric and asymmetric diffraction grating via relative phase

ABSTRACT

We present a theoretical model to realize the symmetric and asymmetric diffraction grating in a four-level atomic medium. The proposed atomic medium follows a double lambda configuration where four fields interact with it. We get control over symmetric and asymmetric behavior of the diffraction grating by manipulating the relative phase of the fields. Interestingly, the symmetric and asymmetric diffraction grating become prominent when the vortex beam is used instead of the plane wave. Enhanced first, second, and third-order diffraction gratings are achieved via the vortex beam. Further, we find control over asymmetric diffraction gratings by the relative phase of the fields. Coherent control of asymmetric diffraction grating in negative and positive diffracted angles is also achieved via the relative phase.     

Alternative Hotelling's T2 Charts using Winsorized Modified One‐Step M‐estimator

Hotelling's T² chart is a popular tool for monitoring statistical process control. However, this chart is sensitive in the presence of outliers. To alleviate the problem, this paper proposed alternative Hotelling's T² charts for individual observations using robust location and scale matrix instead of the usual mean vector and the covariance matrix, respectively. The usual mean vector in the Hotelling T² chart is replaced by the winsorized modified one‐step M‐estimator (MOM) whereas the usual covariance matrix is replaced by the winsorized covariance matrix. MOM empirically trims the data based on the shape of the data distribution. This study also investigated on the different trimming criteria used in MOM. Two robust scale estimators with highest breakdown point, namely S_n and T_n were selected to suit the criteria. The upper control limits for the proposed robust charts were calculated based on simulated data. The performance of each control chart is based on the false alarm and the probability of outlier's detection. In general, the performance of an alternative robust Hotelling's T² charts is better than the performance of the traditional Hotelling's T² chart. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparative study of rate monotonic schedulability tests

With the increased penetration of real-time systems into our surroundings, the selection of an efficient schedulability test under fixed priority system from a plethora of existing results, has become a matter of primary interest to real-time system designers. The need for a faster schedulability tests becomes more prominent when it applies to online systems, where processor time is a sacred resource and it is of central importance to assign processor to execute tasks instead of determining system schedulability. Under fixed priority nonpreemptive real-time systems, current schedulability tests (in exact form) can be divided into: response time based tests, and scheduling points tests. To the best of our knowledge, no comparative study of these test to date has ever been presented. The aim of this work is to assist the system designers in the process of selecting a suitable technique from the existing literature after knowing the pros and cons associated with these tests. We highlight the mechanism behind the feasibility tests, theoretically and experimentally. Our experimental results show that response time based tests are faster than scheduling points tests, which make the response time based tests an excellent choice for online systems.