Classification of Malaysian vowels using formant based features

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has made great strides with the development of digital signal processing hardware and software, especially using English as the language of choice. Despite of all these advances, machines cannot match the performance of their human counterparts in terms of accuracy and speed, especially in case of speaker independent speech recognition. In this paper, a new feature based on formant is presented and evaluated on Malaysian spoken vowels. These features were classified and used to identify vowels recorded from 80 Malaysian speakers. A back propagation neural network (BPNN) model was developed to classify the vowels. Six formant features were evaluated, which were the first three formant frequencies and the distances between each of them. Results, showed that overall vowel classification rate of these three formant combinations are comparatively the same but differs in terms of individual vowel classification

A Comparative Study of Redundant Constraints Identification Methods in Linear Programming Problems

The objective function and the constraints can be formulated as linear functions of independent variables in most of the real-world optimization problems. Linear Programming (LP) is the process of optimizing a linear function subject to a finite number of linear equality and inequality constraints. Solving linear programming problems efficiently has always been a fascinating pursuit for computer scientists and mathematicians. The computational complexity of any linear programming problem depends on the number of constraints and variables of the LP problem. Quite often large-scale LP problems may contain many constraints which are redundant or cause infeasibility on account of inefficient formulation or some errors in data input. The presence of redundant constraints does not alter the optimal solutions(s). Nevertheless, they may consume extra computational effort. Many researchers have proposed different approaches for identifying the redundant constraints in linear programming problems. This paper compares five of such methods and discusses the efficiency of each method by solving various size LP problems and netlib problems. The algorithms of each method are coded by using a computer programming language C. The computational results are presented and analyzed in this paper

Determination of growth inhibitors and toxins

Certain feedstuffs contain natural toxins that; at high enough levels, are growth inhibitors and sometimes fatal to the animal consuming them. Principal among these are: (a) Urease-an enzyme found in raw soybean which produces toxicity through the hydrolysis of urea to ammonia; (b) gosaypol-an endogenous toxin present in the gland of cottonseed which persists during production of the meal unless removed by a special process, or, unless, the cotton seed is a glandless variety; (c) Isothiocyanatescyanogenic glycosides are found in linseed and cassava; (d) aflatoxin is a class of extremely potent toxins produced by the mould Aspergillus flavus. Aflatoxin may be present in any materials produced and stored under hot and humid conditions and is usually found in groundnut cake, palm cake, copra cake and maize

Determination of minerals

Mineral elements have a great diversity of uses within the animal body. The prominence of each mineral element in body tissues is closely related to its functional role. Calcium and phosphorus are too major mineral elements that must be present in adequate amounts in the feeds supplied. The amount of sodium chloride and potassium in certain feeds should also be ascertained to screen out feeds for feeding fish and shellfish

Cholesterol requirements of juvenile Indian white prawn Penaeus indicus H. Milne Edwards

Cholesterol is an essential nutrient in the diet of juvenile P. indicus. Survival, growth FeR (Feed conversion ratio), PER (Protein efficiency ratio) and protein retention of juveniles were greally affected by cholesterol deficiency. The growth, FCR, PER and protein retention in the body were significantly improved on inclusion 01 0.5% cholesterol in the diet of prawn which resulted in more protein deposition in the body. Cholesterol requirement tor juvenile prawn seems to be 0.5% of the diet. No harmful effect was observed in the prawn on addi.tion of higher level (4%) cholesterol in its diet

Requirements of linoleic and linolenic acid in the diet of Indian white prawn Penaeus indicus, (H Milne Edwards)

Feeding trials using purified diets were carried out for determining the requirements of linoleic and lenolenic acid in the diet of In.dian white prawn Penaeus indicus. Nine isonitrogenous and isocaloric diets were formulated containing palmitic acid as basal lipid source. Various levels of ither individual or in mixture of linoleic and linolenic acid were used in these diets. When fed on diet without linoleic or linolenic acid (diet 1) the prawns exhibited poor growth, food conversion ratio, protein efficiency ratio and protein utilisation thus indicating that these fatty acids are essential for the growth of P. indicus

Effect of pH on growth and nitrogen fixation of Azotobacter Spp.

Three species o f Azotobacter were isolated from prawn-cum-paddy fields o f Kerala. These strains were found to have the optimum pH for growth and nitrogen fixation near or slightly above neutrality, i.e., in the pH range o f 7.0 to 8.

Dietary lipid requirements of the juveniles of Indian white prawn Penaeus indicus H. Milne Edwards

Lipids are indispensable nutrients for growth and survival of shrimps and prawns (Kanazawa, 1985). However, information regarding quantitative lipid requirement of prawns is limited, though most researchers included lipid in th eir dietary formulations for prawns. Lipids derived from plant products, animal products and mixture of plant and animal products have been used in the diets of prawns according to their availability (Kanazawa, 1985). The level of lipid used in the diets also varied according to their convenience, without considering the dietary requirement of the animal concerned

Proximate composition analysis of feeds

The chemical composition of the feed gives its potential nutritive value and hence, in the assessment of quality of a feed the proximate principles are first determined. The Weende proximate analysis system for analyzing animal feed includes the determination of moisture (dry matter) ether extract (crude fat) crude protein, ash, crude fibre and nitrogen free extract (NFE)

Nutritive value of natural lipid sources for Indian white prawn, Penaeus indicus H. Milne Edwards

Experiments were conducted to ascertain the nutritive value of natural lipid sources for juveniles of P. indicu.~, Sixlccn isonitrogenous and isocaloric diets were prepared using twelve naturally available oils, either individually or in combinl1tion" The diets containing marine animal lipid sources produced significantly better grwoth. FeR, PER and protein rctcn(iull in prawns than the diets containing only plant oils. Among the individual marine animal lipids, prawn head oil appeared to be a suitable lipid source. The diets containing a mixture of plant and animal lipids produced superior growth 'than individual plant or animal lipids (except prawn head oil), Among the rruxtures of lipid sources, a combination of cod liver oil, soybean oil and lecithia proved to be superior