Markov Model Based Oriya Isolated Speech Recognizer-An Emerging Solution for Visually Impaired Students in School and Public Examination

In this paper we have tried to focus on problems faced by visually impaired students of Orissa in school and public examinations and discussed the emerging solutions to those problems at the end in order to minimize those problems. Assessment plays an important role in the education system for evaluating student’s skill in that area. Assessment can be carried out by allowing students to appear exam in terms objective or non-objective type questions but due to the advantages offered by objective type assessment like offer speedier marking, reduced need for cross marking, greater fairness (reliability), more coverage of the syllabus and finally automate the marking process which enforces examination system to be held as objective rather non-objective type. Therefore, it is mostly implemented in examination system conducted in public or school exams. But it is very regret to mention that this assessment procedure is not well suitable for students those are visually impaired as they are unable to read what they have written or it is not possible to know if the ribbon has run out or if the line spacing is faulty unless the supervisor tells them. These are the main obstacles faced by visually challenged people which lead to disqualification for higher studies that ultimately reason to failure of motto i.e. “Education for All”. In this research study we have considered close ended objective type question. All possible responses of the closed questions are designed such a way that they are mutually exclusive. The closed ended questions are of five types namely fill-in-the-blanks questions, dichotomous questions, ranking scale questions, multiple choice questions and rating scale questions. As all the answers to the above types of questions carry isolated answers, we have developed Oriya isolated speech recognition system which can easily convert isolated answers uttered by visually impaired students to isolated text(isolated speech to isolated text). Hence, visually impaired students can answer the question as normal student because they do not need at all their hand and eyes to respond the answer. As a result of which overcomes the problem faced by visually challenged people to answer the questions without help of keyboard. Oriya isolated recognition system is developed using hidden Markov Model by incorporating1800 isolated Oriya words collected from 30 speakers in training stage. Testing stage is carried out by considering 5 speakers which yields 76.23% word accuracy on seen data and 58.86% on unseen data

Emotion Recognition using Fuzzy K-Means from Oriya Speech

Communication will be intelligible when conveyed message is interpreted in right-minded. Unfortunately, the rightminded interpretation of communicated message is possible for human-human communication but it’s laborious for humanmachine communication. It is due to the inherently blending of non-verbal contents such as emotion in vocal communication which leads to difficulty in human-machine interaction. In this research paper we have performed experiment to recognize emotions like anger, sadness, astonish, fear, happiness and neutral using fuzzy K-Means algorithm from Oriya elicited speech collected from 35 Oriya speaking people aged between 22- 58 years belonging to different provinces of Orissa. We have achieved the accuracy of 65.16% in recognizing above six mentioned emotions by incorporating mean pitch, first two formants, jitter, shimmer and energy as feature vectors for this research work. Emotion recognition has many vivid applications in different domains like call centers, spoken tutoring systems, spoken dialogue research, human-robotic interfaces etc

A Study on Synthesis of Zeolite and Removal of Amido Black dye by adsorption with Zeolite

Investigations have been undertaken to determine whether cheap, commercially available materials (natural zeolite and bentonite) hold promise in the treatment of wastewaters from the textile industry. The initial findings indicate that zeolite synthesized from fly ash has high adsorptive capacity for dyes and it is relatively cheap. The adsorption of two basic dyes (Amido Black and Thionine) onto granular activated carbon as well as zeolite from fly ash and bentonite has to be studied as single equilibrium isotherms. The effectiveness of each adsorbent has to be measured in terms of its adsorption capacity towards individual constituents of the effluent. The adsorption isotherm would be described by the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm equations. The parameters in the adsorption isotherms will be estimated from the experimental equilibrium data using non-linear regression analysis. Using these data, the selection of the best adsorbent can be done for design purposes. Keywords: Natural Zeolite, bentonite, Amido Black, Thionine, Langmuir, Freundlich, granular activated carbo

An Approach to Extract Feature Using MFCC for Isolated Word in Speaker Identification System

The speech is the prominent and natural form of communication among human being. There are different aspects related to speech like speaker identification, speaker recognition, Automatic speech recognition(ASR), speech synthesis etc. The purpose of this work is to study speaker identification system using Hidden markov Model (HMM).The goal of Speaker Identification System (SIS) is to determine which speaker is speaking based on spoken information. The system uses Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients(MFCC) for feature extraction , HMM for pattern training and viterbi techniques. The success of MFCC combined with their robust and cost effective combination turned them into a standard choice in speaker identification system.HMM and viterbi decoding provide a highly reliable way of recognizing odia speech

A conceptual framework on health professionals' engagement towards pharmacovigilance: a qualitative exploration

Background: With the growing reliance on drug therapy in the recent era, the safety of medications is one of the vital parameters for the success of any medicine. Considering this, pharmacovigilance (PV) was developed to provide adequate identification, reporting, evaluation, and understanding of adverse drug reactions (ADR). The objective of this study was to understand the opinion of health care providers on PV, the current reporting mechanisms, identifying the causes for underreporting, and the existing process in clinical practice.Methods: A qualitative study using pretested interview guide was conducted among 20 different cadres of healthcare personnel (doctors, pharmacists, and staff nurses) from various hospitals such as government, private, corporate, and medical college of Odisha state. The data were analysed using a thematic analysis. The meaning units have been identified from the transcript and coded with MAXQDA software (MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2020, VERBI GmbH Berlin).Results: Participants showed a lack of awareness regarding the concept of PV. A cluster of challenges such as lack of ADR monitoring, non-conducive work atmosphere and lack of cooperation between staff, lack of knowledge among the health professionals, and fear of legal liability as major pitfalls causing poor ADR reporting. To enhance the pharmacovigilance practice, participants suggested context-specific strategies such as IEC activities, innovative ideas to improve ADR monitoring, regular monitoring.Conclusions: Capacity building through training, regular monitoring and supervision to strengthen the pharmacovigilance practices is the current need in India

A comparative evaluation of smear layer removal using apical negative pressure (EndoVac), sonic irrigation (EndoActivator) and Er:YAG laser - an in vitro SEM study

This study aimed to compare the smear layer removing efficacy of the EndoActivator, EndoVac and Er:YAG laser in extracted mandibular premolars, at the apical, middle and coronal third of root canal, through scanning electron microscopy. 40 extracted mandibular premolars were decoronated to a standardized length of 12 mm. Specimens were shaped to ProTaper F4 size and irrigated with 5.25% sodium hypochlorite at 370C between instrumentation. Teeth were divided into four groups (n=10), one control (needle irrigation) and three experimental, according to the irrigant activation technique used i.e. sonic irrigation (EndoActivator), apical negative pressure (EndoVac) or laser (Er:YAG). The final irrigants used were 10ml,17% ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and 10ml, 5.25% sodium hypochlorite. Root canals were then split longitudinally and observed under a scanning electron microscope. The presence of smear layer at the apical, middle and coronal third of root canal was evaluated. Scores were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. Intraexaminer and interexaminer reliability were determined by Kappa test. The EndoVac system was significantly more effective in removing debris from the apical third than all other groups. EndoActivator performed better than laser at the apical third. All three experimental groups (EndoVac, EndoActivator, and laser) were better than needle irrigation at the middle and apical third. At the coronal third, no significant difference was seen between the four groups. None of the activation systems completely removes the smear layer from the dentine walls; nevertheless, EndoVac is significantly better in removing debris from the apical third of canal