Features

In the healthcare domain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based systems are being increasingly adopted with applications ranging from surgical robots to automated medical diagnostics. While a Machine Learning (ML) engineer might be interested in the parameters related to the performance and accuracy of these AI-based systems, it is postulated that a medical practitioner would be more concerned with the applicability , and utility of these systems in the medical setting. However, medical practitioners are unlikely to have the prerequisite skills to enable reasonable interpretation of an AI-based system. This is a concern for two reasons. Firstly, it inhibits the adoption of systems capable of automating routine analysis work and prevents the associated productivity gains. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it reduces the scope of expertise available to assist in the validation, iteration, and improvement of AI-based systems in providing healthcare solutions. Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) is a domain focused on techniques and approaches that facilitate the understanding and interpretation of the operation of ML models. Research interest in the domain of XAI is becoming more widespread due to the increasing adoption of AI-based solutions and the associated regulatory requirements [1]. Providing an understanding of ML models is typically approached from a Computer Science (CS) perspective [2] with a limited research emphasis being placed on supporting alternate domains [3]. In this paper, a simple, yet powerful solution for increasing the explain-ability of AI-based solutions to individuals from non-CS domains (such as medical practitioners), is presented. The proposed solution enables the explainability of ML models and the underlying workflows to be readily integrated into a standard ML workflow. Central to this solution are feature importance techniques that measure the impact of individual features on the outcomes of AI-based systems. It is envisaged that feature importance can enable a high-level understanding of a ML model and the workflow used to train the model. This could aid medical practitioners in comprehending AI-based systems and enhance their understanding of ML models' applicability and utility.

Advances in technology have allowed computers and peripherals to become more affordable and useable. Technology is also trickling down and being integrated into other consumer products such as those found in the home, such as alarm clocks. Two studies examined the desirability of various features that have or could be incorporated into alarm clocks. In Study 1, 378 people evaluated the importance of various features that have or could be incorporated into alarm clocks. They were also asked to report other features not listed. Study 2 was similar except a larger list of potential features was included. Both studies indicated that there are several features considered more important (e.g., digital face, independent buttons to set hours and minutes, low price) than others (e.g., traditional analog clock face, cassette player). Also, feature importance differed depending on gender and undergraduatelnon-student groups. Factor analyses revealed that ergonomic aspects were being considered with respect to feature desirability. Implications for human factors/ergonomics issues are discussed including specific suggestions for alarm clock designs and other electronic consumer products.

The research is aimed at exploring the factors and attributes of a smartphone that influence consumers to opt fora particular brand from amongst a wide variety of smartphones along with the investigation of consumer behavior towards those factors and attributes. For this research two factors have been selected which include; the brand image and the brand features. The basic interest of the researcher in this study is to look into the significance of the factors and attributes that are perceived as important by the consumers when they think of purchasing a smartphone. A structured questionnaire was used for the data collection purpose. Data was collected from 300 respondents residing in various areas of Karachi. The research findings revealed that the consumers give preference to brand image over features of a smartphone. Consumers see a smartphone as a part of their personality that enhances their status and self-image in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of their peers. Keyword...

Laser communications offer a viable alternative to RF communications for intersatellite links and other applications where high-performance links are necessary. High data rate, small antenna size, narrow beam divergence, and a narrow field of view are characteristics of laser communication that offer a number of potential advantages for system design. The high data rate and large information throughput available with laser communications are many times greater than in radio frequency (RF) systems. The small antenna size requires only a small increase in the weight and volume of host vehicle. In addition, this feature substantially reduces blockage of fields of view of the most desirable areas on satellites. The smaller antennas, with diameters typically less than 30cm, create less momentum disturbance to any sensitive satellite sensors. The narrow beam divergence of affords interference-free and secure operation. Prof. Atul A. Padghan | Prof. Ankit P. Jaiswal"Study on Laser Com...

The present world is a result of advancement and continuous change in technology. The automobile industries are trying to improvise with dynamic features by accepting new technology. Nowadays, vehicle owners are more interested in the speed of the vehicle. But as speed increases, the same results in decrease in safety. But the advanced technology like Adaptive Cruise Control controls every section of the car and provides safety and comfort. Results from this report show a budget aftermarket adaptive cruise control system is feasible and should be continued with further research. A prototype demonstration unit is being implemented. Full testing of the system will be carried out using a model car to simulate traffic in front. This system will be able to adapt to the simulated changes in traffic, and react with according braking and accelerating levels.

Fruit and vegetables have many similarities with respect to their compositions, methods of cultivation and harvesting, storage properties and processing.In reference to fruits and vegetables, the characteristics that impart distinctive quality may be described by four different attributes -1) color and appearance, 2) flavor (taste and aroma), 3) texture and 4) nutritional value.

Using action cable feature we can create any real-time functionality like live chatting, which updates chats, show new messages, notifications, etc without reloading of the page. Action cable basically keeps ruby on rails server data and client data updated using web sockets which make the application more feasible to use.

— Handwriting analysis also known as Graphology, which is a pseudo-scientific study of handwriting in relation to human psychology. Handwriting reveals true personality including fears, emotional outlay, defences, honesty and over many other individual personality traits. Handwriting is often called a reflection of a person " s brain. The fundamental aim of this research paper is to study and analysis various techniques used on basis of accuracy and number of features selected by researchers for human behavior prediction based on signature analysis.

The various linguistic and rhetorical characteristics of Arabic tourism discourse have been under investigation in this study. The research paper aims to study and analyse several tourist texts in Arabic to locate the most significant linguistic, as well as stylistic features of Arabic discourse for tourism. Arabic, which is a Semitic language, is one of the richest and most beautiful languages of the world. Therefore, this study highlights significant dominant features specific to Arabic tourism discourse as specialized discourse. Findings indicated that Arabic for tourism consists of various emphatic adjectival expressions, which are the most dominant features as compared to other tourism text characteristics. The content analysis included 333 items located in a number of Arabic tourist brochure extracts. The items were classified into 10 categories of linguistic and rhetorical techniques used in the Arabic tourism discourse and being analysed in terms of their frequency of usage. These techniques were further explained in detail within the context of Arabic for tourism. Various patterns of certain characteristics were also been linguistically and stylistically studied and explained. The data obtained from this research paper is significant in providing useful insights and guidelines for linguists of Arabic, as well as translators of tourism texts. Also, the linguistic and stylistic analysis on these items revealed that there are several features specific to the Arabic language of tourism as specialized discourse. The study concluded that Arabic for tourism possesses many positive stylistic and linguistic features, which add to its richness and beauty.

The aim of this thesis is to define a perceptual scale for the ‘Time-Frequency’ analysis of music signals. The equal tempered ‘Bach’ scale is a suitable scale, since it covers most of the genres of music and the error is equally distributed for each semi-tone. However, it may be necessary to allow a tolerance of around 50 cents or half the interval of the Bach scale, so that the interval can accommodate other common intonation schemes. The thesis covers the formulation of the Bach scale filter-bank as a time-varying model. It makes a comparative study with other commonly used perceptual scales. Two applications for the Bach scale filter-bank are also proposed, namely automated segmentation of speech signals and transcription of singing voice for query-by-humming applications.

Even though this filter-bank is suggested with a motivation from music, it could also be applied to speech. A method for automatically segmenting continuous speech into phonetic units is proposed. The results, obtained from the proposed method, show around 82% accuracy for the English and 85% accuracy for the Hindi databases. This is an improvement of around 2 - 3% when the performance is compared with other popular methods in the literature. Interestingly, the Bach scale filters perform better than the filters designed for other common perceptual scales, such as Mel and Bark scales.

‘Musical transcription’ refers to the process of converting a musical rendering or performance into a set of symbols or notations. A query in a ‘query-by-humming system’ can be made in several ways, some of which are singing with words, or with arbitrary syllables, or whistling. Two algorithms are suggested to annotate a query. The algorithms are designed to be fairly robust for these various forms of queries. The first algorithm is a frequency selection based method. It works on the basis of selecting the most likely frequency components at any given time instant. The second algorithm works on the basis of finding time-connected contours of high energy in the ‘Time-Frequency’ plane of the input signal. The time domain algorithm works better in terms of instantaneous pitch estimates. It results in an error of around 10 - 15%, while the frequency domain method results in an error of around 12 - 20%.

A song rendered by two different people will have quite a few different properties. Their absolute pitches, rates of rendering, timbres based on voice quality and inaccuracies, may be different. The thesis discusses a method to quantify the distance between two different renderings of musical pieces. The distance function has been evaluated by attempting a search for a particular song from a database of a size of 315, made up of songs sung by both male and female singers and whistled queries. Around 90 % of the time, the correct song is found among the top five best choices picked.

Thus, the Bach scale has been proposed as a suitable scale for representing the perception of music. It has been explored in two applications, namely automated segmentation of speech and transcription of singing voices. Using the transcription obtained, a measure of the distance between renderings of musical pieces has also been suggested.

Sentiment Analysis is a natural language processing task that extracts sentiment from various text forms
and classifies them according to positive, negative or neutral polarity. It analyzes emotions, feelings, and
the attitude of a speaker or a writer towards a context. This paper gives comparative study of various
sentiment classification techniques and also discusses in detail two main categories of sentiment
classification techniques these are machine based and lexicon based. The paper also presents challenges
associated with sentiment analysis along with lexical resources available.

“Resistance literature” is a new term in Iranian literature with subject of their Islamic Revolution and their Sacred Defense (related to the war Iraq imposed Iran from 1980 up to 1988). There are many poets who have being worked in this field and their names are listed in relevant books and encyclopedias. This article is to prove that the late Farshidvard was one of the pioneer activists against Shah’s ruthless regime, the one who was incarcerated in 1960s and added one of the most eloquent prison-writings (Habsiyyas) to contemporary Persian literature (such as his sonnet with the opening-verse: O Friends, I’m the oppressed of Shah’s prison,  O Friends! patriotism and piety, as my crime).  He has a history of poetry in fight against Shah’s evil regime that dates back to 1960s. He published them underground on September 1978, and publicly on September 1979. His book of poems with the subject of war shows his leadership in such field.

The research is aimed at exploring the factors and attributes of a smartphone that influence consumers to opt for a particular brand from amongst a wide variety of smartphones along with the investigation of consumer behavior towards those factors and attributes. For this research two factors have been selected which include; the brand image and the brand features. The basic interest of the researcher in this study is to look into the significance of the factors and attributes that are perceived as important by the consumers when they think of purchasing a smartphone. A structured questionnaire was used for the data collection purpose. Data was collected from 300 respondents residing in various areas of Karachi. The research findings revealed that the consumers give preference to brand image over features of a smartphone. Consumers see a smartphone as a part of their personality that enhances their status and self-image in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of their peers.

In the source-filter model of speech production, physiologically, the source corresponds to the vocal fold vibrations and the filter corresponds to the spectrum-shaping vocal tract. Vocal tract-based features like the mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) have been shown to contain speaker information. However, voice source (VS)-based features have also been shown to perform well in speaker recognition tasks, thereby revealing that the VS does contain speaker information. Moreover, a combination of the vocal tract and VS-based features has been shown to give an improved performance, showing that the latter contains supplementary speaker information.
In this study, the existing techniques for extracting speaker information from the VS are reviewed, and it is observed that parametric features perform poorly than non-parametric features. Here, an attempt is made to propose an alternate way of characterizing the VS to extract speaker information, and to study the merits and shortcomings of the proposed speaker-specific features.
The integrated linear prediction residual (ILPR) is used as the VS estimate. It is hypothesized here that a speaker’s voice may be characterized by the relative proportions of the harmonics present in the VS. The pitch synchronous discrete cosine transform (DCT) is shown to capture these, and the gross shape of the ILPR in a few coefficients. The ILPR and hence its DCT coefficients are visually observed to have both inter and intra-speaker variability, and thus it is hypothesized that the distribution of the DCT coefficients may capture speaker information, and this distribution is modeled by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM).
The DCT coefficients of the ILPR (termed the DCTILPR) are directly used as a feature vector in speaker identification (SID) tasks. By conducting SID experiments on three standard databases, it is found that the proposed DCTILPR features fare comparably with the existing VS-based features. It is also found that the gross shape of the VS contains most of the speaker information, and the very fine structure of the VS does not help in distinguishing speakers, and instead leads to more confusion between speakers. The major drawbacks of the DCTILPR are the session and handset variability, but they are also present in the existing state-of-the-art speaker-specific VS-based features and the MFCCs, and hence seem to be common problems. There are techniques to compensate these variabilities, which need to be used when the systems using these features are deployed in an actual application.
The DCTILPR is found to improve the SID accuracy of a system trained with MFCC features by 12%, indicating that the DCTILPR features capture speaker information which is missed by the MFCCs. It is also found that a combination of MFCC and DCTILPR features on a speaker verification task gives significant performance improvement in the case of short test utterances. Thus, on the whole, this study proposes an alternate way of extracting speaker information from the VS, and adds to the evidence for speaker information present in the VS.

Compounding as a Near Universal Phenomenon with Special Reference to Standard Arabic Nominal Compounding



Abdul-Hafeed Ali Fakih
Department of English, University of Ibb, Republic of Yemen
&
Department of English, University of Najran, Saudi Arabia (KSA)

Nadia Ali A-Shawafi
Department of English, University of Ibb, Republic of Yemen




Abstract
Compounding has received little attention in linguistic typology and, in particular, in studies on linguistic  universals. This paper seeks to study compounding as a universal process with special reference to Arabic nominal compounding. It aims to point out whether compounding is a universal process in light of Standard Arabic nominal compounding. It attempts to extrapolate universal tendencies in compounding with respect to the following features of compounding: the identity of compounding, classification of compounds, headedness of the compounds in the world's languages, relationships between the constituents of compounds, and universality of compounding. It proposes lines of empirical research and methodological suggestions towards the study of universals in compounding. The focus of the study is on nominal compounds consisting of two lexemes.

Key words: classification, features, lexeme, nominal compounding, typology, universal

The key to the keys to immortality and eternal youth lies in the correct answer to the main question: How to naively discover new essential – but still hidden – features required for properly training novel adaptive supervised machine learning algorithms (SMLA)

A strategy for adaptive control and energetic optimization of aerobic fermentors was implemented, with both air flow and agitation speed as manipulated variables. This strategy is separable in its components: control, optimization, estimation. We optimized parameter’s estimation (from the usual KLa correlation) using sinusoidal excitation of air flow and agitation speed. We have implemented parameter’s estimation trough recursive least squares algorithm with forgetting factor. We carried separate essays on control, optimization and estimation algorithms. We carried our essays using an original computational simulation environment, with noise and delay generating facilities for data sampling and filtering.

Our results show the convergence and robustness of the estimation algorithm used, improved with use of both forgetting factor and KLa dead-band facilities. Control algorithm used in our work compares favorably with PID using the integrated area criteria for deviation between oxygen molarity and critical molarity (set point). Optimization algorithm clearly reduces energetic consumption, respecting critical molarity. Integration of control, optimization and adaptive algorithms was implemented, but future work is needed for stability. Methods were defined and implemented for stability improvement. We have implemented data acquisition and computer manipulation of air flow and agitation speed for actual fermentors.

The derivation of common clause-type constructions like negation, interrogation (involving wh-elements) and declarativity (including sentences that involve topics) is a universal of sentence structure that involves a number of functional elements/items for the expression of negation, interrogation, or declarativity, cross-linguistically. However, as the present study on the derivation of syntactic word order (including subject-verb agreement configurations) in Arabic varieties shows, such functional elements/items can take a particular functional dimension within the functional domain they are part of. This study relies on sample examples from the literature on Arabic (the standard variety in particular, but also other varieties such as Tunisian Arabic and Moroccan Arabic – see Jouini, (2014) for typical sentences from these varieties) to demonstrate how functional elements can project as functional nodes or be merged as head or specifier (Spec) elements in the structure of sentences. In the inflectional domain of sentences – or Inflectional Phrase (IP) –, variation in subject-verb agreement configurations in Arabic rests on the premise that a Subject node variably projects giving rise to differing subject-verb agreement configurations. The same is true of the projection of the complementizer domain of sentences – or Complementizer Phrase (CP) – in Arabic, which splits into dedicated functional nodes in the standard variety of Arabic, but not in the modern spoken dialects. These differences in the projection of the IP-CP continuum establish functional relations upon which agreement and movement operations are derived and such notions as 'topic', 'subject' and 'focus' can be represented at the interface.

Development of Text to Speech (TTS) systems in Indian languages has been difficult owing to the non availability of sizable segmented speech database of good quality. Further, no prosody models exist of most of the Indian languages. We have created comprehensive databases in Hindi, Kannada and Tamil by recording utterances covering various acoustic and phonetic contexts at the paragraph level and monologues to also facilitate super-sentential prosodic modeling of those languages.
The challenge of automating segmentation of such long sentences has been addressed in this thesis. We propose two explicit methods of segmentation and also try to accomplish language independence.
To overcome the major disadvantage of boundary error accumulation due to forcing boundary alignments on the entire (continuous) speech waveform, we propose to segment speech between two successive stop consonants. The stop consonants are detected based on the Euclidean distance between the MFCCs of any frame and MFCC of the first frame. These thus detected stop consonants acts as anchor points for the second stage of the segmentation algorithms proposed.
Both the algorithms make use of the distance function obtained from the output of the Bach scale filter bank (formulated by ‘music’ related criteria). The first explicit method proposed is a 3-stage algorithm, which uses Quatieri's sinusoidal model for speech in conjunction with a distance function obtained from Bach scale filter bank, to force align the boundaries of phonemes between 2 stop consonants. The second method proposed makes use of the distance function obtained from the output of the Bach scale filter bank and the statistical knowledge of the lengths of the phonemes for the explicit alignment. The results for both the methods in terms of frame error rate are encouraging and have been tested on Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and TIMIT (English) databases.