How to improve TTS systems for emotional expressivity

Several experiments have been carried out that revealed weaknesses of the current Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems in their emotional expressivity. Although some TTS systems allow XML-based representations of prosodic and/or phonetic variables, few publications considered, as a pre-processing stage, the use of intelligent text processing to detect affective information that can be used to tailor the parameters needed for emotional expressivity. This paper describes a technique for an automatic prosodic parameterization based on affective clues. This technique recognizes the affective information conveyed in a text and, accordingly to its emotional connotation, assigns appropriate pitch accents and other prosodic parameters by XML-tagging. This pre-processing assists the TTS system to generate synthesized speech that contains emotional clues. The experimental results are encouraging and suggest the possibility of suitable emotional expressivity in speech synthesis

Simulation and Economic Study of the MED-TVC Units at Umm Al Nar Desalination Plant

A rigorous mathematical model has been used to develop a steady state simulation program MEDNAR to analyze the multi-effect thermal vapor compression desalination (MED-TVC) plant at Umm Al-Nar power and desalination plant. The effect of thermodynamic losses on the thermal performance ratio, the specific heat transfer area and the specific flow rate of the cooling water are taken into account. The losses contemplated are the boiling point elevation and the temperature depression corresponding to the pressure drop during the vapor condensation process. The MEDNAR also takes into consideration the variation in the physical properties of the seawater with temperature and salt concentration, and the effect of the presence of non-condensable gases on the heat transfer coefficients in the evaporators. Sensitivity analyses, using this software, were conducted to study the effect of a number of process variables on the plant performance. As a part of this thesis, an economic study has been carried out to determine the total water unit cost. This includes a cost break down in details for capital investment and production costs. Also an economic sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the relationships between the fuel cost, plant production rate, operation and maintenance cost and plant running factor, and the total water unit cost

Video Forgery Detection: A Comprehensive Study of Inter and Intra Frame Forgery With Comparison of State-Of-Art

Availability of sophisticated and low-cost smart phones, digital cameras, camcorders, surveillance CCTV cameras are extensively used to create videos in our daily life. The prevalence of video sharing techniques presently available in the market are: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, snapchat and many more are in utilization to share the information related to videos. Besides this, there are many software which can edit the content of video: Window Movie Maker, Video Editor, Adobe Photoshop etc., with this available software anyone can edit the video content which is called as “Forgery” if edited content is harmful. Usually, videos play a vital role in terms of proof in crime scene. The Victim is judged by the proof submitted by the lawyer to the court. Many such cases have evidenced that the video being submitted as proof is been forged. Checking the authentication of the video is most important before submitting as proof. There has been a rapid development in deep learning techniques which have created deepfake videos where faces are replaced with other faces which strongly made a belief of saying “Seeing is no longer believing”. The available software which can morph the faces are FakeApp, FaceSwap etc., the increased technology really made the Authentication of proofs very doubtful and un-trusty which are not accepted as proof without proper validation of the video. The survey gives the methods that are capable of accurately computing the videos and analyses to detect different kinds of forgeries. It has revealed that most of the existing methods are relying on number of tampered frames. The proposed techniques are with compression, double compression codec videos where research is being carried out from 2016 to present. This paper gives the comprehensive study of techniques, algorithms and applications designed and developed to detect forgery in videos

The Hedgehog Goddess Abaset

The egyptian goddess abaset was a minor hedgehog-deity. her presence was attested only in the 26th dynasty (656-525 bc). She was solely venerated on the eastern fringe of el-bawiti, the capital of bahariyya oasis, which is situated far from the nile Valley. This paper aims at presenting a reliable interpretation for the name of the goddess abaset. It focuses on the history and the development of her cult. The ancient egyptian depicted abaset in an anthropomorphic form. The crown of hedgehog was specific to abaset; it is a key element in the identification of the goddess, especially if the scene was not labelled with her name. The exact reason for this iconography is unclear. The occurrence of the images of abaset and the use of her legends was restricted to specific location, i. e. el-bawiti

The god Shepsy "jmy Hmnw"

The Egyptian god Shepsy was a minor deity whose evidence mainly survived in the period following the Second Intermediate Period (1800 BC-1570 BC). Indeed, the apex of his popularity lay in the 19th Dynasty, during which the god is overwhelmingly present in a vast body of sources. He is best known as a solar, lunar, and funerary deity, but was also a cosmic god. The current study aims to examine the emic understanding of the Egyptian god Shepsy by providing a detailed analysis of his iconography. This identifies who the god Shepsy was, what he did, when he performed his functions, where he performed them, and most importantly, why

ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF INTERNAL BRANDING: THE CASE OF ABU DHABI DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Internal branding is a new marketing paradigm to gain effective brand strategy that has recently emerged in the academic literature of marketing. It is a brand spirit that brings together brand loyalty, management and employees to their mutual benefit to create and deliver a value-added product or service to employees, customers and stakeholders (Keller, 1993). {Keller, 1993 #59}Generally, studies on the role of internal branding in creating a competitive organisational culture by considering antecedents that enable internal branding and its consequences do not exist within the UAE context. This study aims to show the importance of internal branding, and to develop and test a conceptual model that integrates specific constructs as antecedents and consequences of internal branding, these are external customer orientation, internal customer orientation, interdepartmental connectedness, quality of internal services, external customer satisfaction, and job satisfaction. The study takes on a quantitative approach a positivist enquiry, i.e., the primary research is in the form of a survey questionnaire and the secondary research is drawn from the literature. The questionnaire was designed and distributed amongst a selected sample of 300 employees from cross-functional sections in Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development, where they were asked to test the suggested model. The findings identified four factors as the antecedents plus two factors as the consequences of internal branding. The study proposes an empirically tested integrated model of the antecedents and consequences of internal branding that will enable organisations to implement internal branding leading to business success. The developed conceptual model could contribute superior value to the Departments of the Abu Dhabi Government in general, and to the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development to contributing a practical business solution, particularly to its success. This study is the first to propose a model that integrates the antecedents and consequence of internal branding in a government setting in the UAE. The outcomes and findings of this study will, as it is hoped, to enrich the internal branding concept and literature, along with extensively extending insightful knowledge beyond the Western schools of thought to the UAE

Effects of vitamin A overdose on rat’s organs involved in immunity and vitamin A storage

Vitamin A overdose is a common occurrence due to food fortification and ingestion of vitamin A supplements. Vitamin A is a nutrient that possesses known and potential effects on general health and the immune response. This research work is an in vivo investigation of the effects of administration of vitamin A above dietary requirements on some organs involved in immunity, vitamin A storage, and metabolism in healthy male rats. A total of 60 young adult male Wistar rats were equally divided into three groups. Rats in the two test groups were orally administered with vitamin A at different concentrations (8000 and 15 000 IU kg−1 body weight) for 21 days, while the control rats did not receive any supplementation. Weekly body weights and weights of the liver, kidney, spleen, and thymus were measured. Histological evaluations were carried out on the liver, kidney, thymus, and Peyer’s patches. Findings show that vitamin A did not significantly affect body and organs’ weights, except for a significant decrease of spleen weights for both experimental groups. Vitamin A was found to lead to some changes in the histology of the tested organs. This is the first study of its kind and sets a base for future studies

Primary Colors Red, Yellow, and Blue Use as Self-Cleaning Paints with Layer of Titanium Dioxide

حُضر طلاء نانوي  شفاف بطريقة السول جل من ثنائي اوكسيد التيتانيوم (TiO2)  له القابيلية على التنظيف الذاتي يستعمل كطلاء للمستشفيات والمختبرات والاماكن التي تتطلب التعقيم.  اختيرت  الالوان الاساسية الثلاثة (الاحمر, الازرق, الاصفر) كدراسة اولية لتأثير اللون على هذا الطلاء النانوي. استعملت ثلاث الوان من الاصباغ الدهنية كاساس ثم تم طلائها بطبقة من ثنائي اوكسيد التيتانيوم (TiO2) السول –جل و رسبت على الاصباغ. الخصائص البصرية لثنائي اوكسيد التيتانيوم-السول TiO2-Sol قيست, فكانت قمة الامتصاص تقع عند الطول الموجي (λmax=387 nm) ومعامل الانكسار (n=1.4423) وفجوة الطاقة (Eg=3.2 eV) . الخصائص التركيبية وجدت باستعمال جهاز حيود الاشعة السينية (XRD) واظهرت ان TiO2-Sol هو متعدد التبلور بجسيمات نانوية في طور الاناتايز وايضا الخصائص الشكلية قيست بواسطة المجهر الاكتروني الماسح SEM وبينت ان معدل الحجم الحبيبي الى TiO2-Sol هو (50.427 nm). خصائص التنظيف الذاتي قيست بجهاز الشد السطحي (tensiometer). افضل لون اعطى اعلى استجابة للتنظيف الذاتي هو الالون الاصفر حيث كانت زاوية الاتصال له قبل التعريض للاشعة القوق البنفسجية عند زمن يساوي  صفر ( = 101.47º ,at t = 0 min) وبعد التعريض بمرور الزمن يساوي ( = 1.75º ,at t = 50 min) , وهكذا الماء يزاح من سطح و يزيل كل الاوساخ.  Transparent nano- coating was prepared by Sol-Gel method from titanium dioxide TiO2 which has the ability to self-cleaning coating used for hospitals, laboratories, and places requiring permanent sterilization. Three primary colors are selected (red, blue, and yellow) as preliminary study to the effect of these colors on the nano-coating. Three traditional oil paints color were used as base, then coated by a layer of TiO2-Sol and deposited on the paints. The optical properties of TiO2-Sol were measured; the maximum absorption wavelength at (λmax=387 nm), the refractive index (n=1.4423) and the energy band gap (Eg=3.2 eV). The structure properties found by X-ray diffraction of TiO2-Sol illustrated that TiO2-Sol is polycrystalline nanoparticle have anatase phase also the morphological properties measured by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) obetained the average grain size of TiO2-Sol was (50.427 nm). Self-cleaning properties measured by tensiometer dives. The best color gave the highest response to self-cleaning is the yellow color where the contact angle before exposure to UV ( = 101.47º ,at t = 0 min) and after exposure over time ( = 1.75º ,at t = 50 min), thus the water sheet of the surface and remove all contaminants