Effectiveness in the Realisation of Speaker Authentication

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.An important consideration for the deployment of speaker recognition in authentication applications is the approach to the formation of training and testing utterances . Whilst defining this for a specific scenario is influenced by the associated requirements and conditions, the process can be further guided through the establishment of the relative usefulness of alternative frameworks for composing the training and testing material. In this regard, the present paper provides an analysis of the effects, on the speaker recognition accuracy, of various bases for the formation of the training and testing data. The experimental investigations are conducted based on the use of digit utterances taken from the XM2VTS database. The paper presents a detailed description of the individual approaches considered and discusses the experimental results obtained in different cases

Shape and Texture Combined Face Recognition for Detection of Forged ID Documents

This paper proposes a face recognition system that can be used to effectively match a face image scanned from an identity (ID) doc-ument against the face image stored in the biometric chip of such a document. The purpose of this specific face recognition algorithm is to aid the automatic detection of forged ID documents where the photography printed on the document’s surface has been altered or replaced. The proposed algorithm uses a novel combination of texture and shape features together with sub-space representation techniques. In addition, the robustness of the proposed algorithm when dealing with more general face recognition tasks has been proven with the Good, the Bad & the Ugly (GBU) dataset, one of the most challenging datasets containing frontal faces. The proposed algorithm has been complement-ed with a novel method that adopts two operating points to enhance the reliability of the algorithm’s final verification decision.Final Accepted Versio

Advantages and Disadvantages of Technology in Relationships: Findings from an Open-Ended Survey

The technology world has been growing and flourishing the interest in designing technologies that mediate and create a feeling of relatedness within interpersonal relationships beyond the explicit verbal communication. The purpose of this article is to present a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of technology in couple relationships. To accomplish this, we conducted a recursive open-coding analysis on an already existing data set. Findings indicated the advantages of technology in relationships include the contribution to the development of relationships, relationship management, and relationship enhancement. Challenges introduce by technology into relationships include distancing, lack of clarity, and impaired trust. Implications and areas for future research are discussed

Contextual Factors Surrounding Extradyadic High-Risk Sexual Decision-Making in Men: A Case-Oriented Perspective

Many models have been developed to explain the decision-making process of high-risk sexual behavior (HRSB). Juhasz and Sonnenshein-Schneider (1980) proposed a model for sexual decision-making with three distinct factors (socialization influences, factors germane to the situation, and cognitive factors). While this model makes sense from a theoretical standpoint, it has not been empirically validated and they have focused exclusively on adolescent sexual decision-making processes. The purpose of this study was to identify the key points in decision-making toward engagement in extradyadic high-risk sexual behavior. Using qualitative interviews in a case-oriented study, key components surrounding the context, decision-making, and management processes of engagement in high-risk sexual behavior were analyzed. We found that chemical impairment, sensation-seeking and impulsivity, quality of the relationship, and self-esteem were all key contributors to the context of engaging in HRSB. On the other hand, the decision-making process of HRSB contained compartmentalization, rationalization, and experiencing a point of no return. Finally, the management process of engaging in HRSB included dissociation, self-esteem, and contro

Online Gaming Issues in Offline Couple Relationships: A Primer for Marriage and Family Therapists (MFTs)

Although the challenges around participation in online gaming grow, gamers and their partners who experience online relationship issues related to gaming, present a new set of treatment challenges for therapists. In this article, we report on the findings of a hermeneutic research study aimed at evaluating the scholarly literature related to online gaming and interpret these texts to determine the effect such online activity has on the couple relationship. We reviewed 18 articles published between 1998 and 2010 related to online gaming and interpersonal relationships, focusing solely on empirical articles related to the search criteria. Our interpretation of the text concluded that online gaming might add to and/or interfere with a couple’s life. Based on these potential problem areas, practical considerations for treatment are also outlined

Critical Casimir forces in colloidal suspensions on chemically patterned surfaces

We investigate the behavior of colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine in the presence of a chemically patterned substrate. Close to the critical point of the mixture, the particles are subjected to critical Casimir interactions with force components normal and parallel to the surface. Because the strength and sign of these interactions can be tuned by variations in the surface properties and the mixtures temperature, critical Casimir forces allow the formation of highly ordered monolayers but also extend the use of colloids as model systems.Comment: 4 papges, 4 figures, accepted at Phys. Rev. Let

Spinal stabilization for patients with metastatic lesions of the spine using a titanium spacer

Anterior decompression in spinal metastases of the corporal type with impending (n=5) or present (n=36) neurological complications was performed in 41 patients. For reconstruction, a titanium cylinder was inserted after spondylectomy and augmented with an anterior plate. The titanium implant can easily be adjusted to the length needed without necessitating expensive additional equipment. Outside the patient the implant is filled with polymethylmetacrylate, facilitating plate transfixation for rotational locking. There was a 30-day mortality of 9.7%. Pain relief was apparent in 38 of 41 patients (92.7%), and motor improvement was manifest in 31 of 35 cases (88.6%). Six patients did not present with any neurological symptoms pre- or postoperatively. Neurological deterioration was registered in only 1 case (2.4%). Surgical efficacy was maintained until the death of the patients. Though tumor recurrence at a different spinal level led to consecutive surgery in 5 patients, no implant dislocation occurred during the observation period (maximum 44 months), characterizing the procedure as a mechanically reliable and safe technique