Determination of Formant Features in Czech and Slovak for GMM Emotional Speech Classifier

The paper is aimed at determination of formant features (FF) which describe vocal tract characteristics. It comprises analysis of the first three formant positions together with their bandwidths and the formant tilts. Subsequently, the statistical evaluation and comparison of the FF was performed. This experiment was realized with the speech material in the form of sentences of male and female speakers expressing four emotional states (joy, sadness, anger, and a neutral state) in Czech and Slovak languages. The statistical distribution of the analyzed formant frequencies and formant tilts shows good differentiation between neutral and emotional styles for both voices. Contrary to it, the values of the formant 3-dB bandwidths have no correlation with the type of the speaking style or the type of the voice. These spectral parameters together with the values of the other speech characteristics were used in the feature vector for Gaussian mixture models (GMM) emotional speech style classifier that is currently developed. The overall mean classification error rate achieves about 18 %, and the best obtained error rate is 5 % for the sadness style of the female voice. These values are acceptable in this first stage of development of the GMM classifier that should be used for evaluation of the synthetic speech quality after applied voice conversion and emotional speech style transformation

Perils of the Fungal Kingdom: Mycotoxins in Food and Feed

Humans and fungi have a complex relationship, especially in regards to the many fungal secondary metabolites that can be produced. When secondary metabolites are toxic to animals and humans they are defined as mycotoxins. Fungi can grow on crops pre-harvest and post-harvest, and have the potential to produce mycotoxins which occur regularly in animal feed and food for human consumption. In high doses, mycotoxins cause variety of problems that result in economic losses and extreme health issues. However, multiple mycotoxins will co-occur in nature and commonly occur in low doses. Thus chronic low daily doses of multiple mycotoxins overtime may result in wear and tear on the body, as well as disease development later in life (for both animals and humans). The goal of this thesis is to provide a broad review of current literature on mycotoxins ranging in topics from their biochemical synthesis and control to their toxicity in various organisms. To accomplish this, in this thesis we look at mycotoxin contamination from a wide perspective and from different disciplines in order to understand how our agricultural practices, trade and economics, diet and health, and regulatory policies both affect and are effected by mycotoxin contamination

Two Synthesis Methods Based on Cepstral Parameterization

The paper deals with two implementations of the speech synthesis based on the cepstral representation of the human vocal tract model. Both the approaches to speech modeling are evaluated in the frequency domain. The paper also compares computational complexity of these two methods

Radionuclide Data Analysis of Marine Subsistence Food from Amchitka and Adjoining Areas

Derivation of dose estimates from subsistence food such as fish require that the concentrations of radionuclide are precisely known. The safety of subsistence food and the ecosystem in areas adjoining Amchitka requires that the radionuclide concentration of anthropogenic radionuclides, potentially released from the three nuclear tests between 1965 and 1971 at Amchitka Island in the central Aleutian Archipelago, in subsistence food. The total yield of these detonations (6.08 million tons) is estimated to be about 15% of the total yield of all US underground nuclear explosions {Long shot: 80 kton at 690 m below the island’s surface; Milrow: 1 million ton, 1969 at 1200 m below surface; and Cannikin: 5 million-ton, 1971 at 1763 m below surface (the world’s largest underground test). The Department of Energy has conducted monitoring of this site for a number of years and has found little evidence of radionuclide leakage (Sibley and Tornberg, 1982; Burger et al., 2006). We collected a suite of fish samples from areas adjoining Amchitka and tested it for natural and anthropogenic radionuclides. In this report, we report the concentration of gamma-emitting radionuclides (40K, 137Cs, 226Ra, and 226Ra) from a suite of fish samples that we obtained from our collaborators. This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at [email protected]://commons.clarku.edu/aleutian/1001/thumbnail.jp

Juvenile Homicide Perpetrators - Case Study

U ovome radu predstavit će se ubojstvo kao najteži oblik povrede ljudskih prava, osobito kada se radi o maloljetnim počiniteljima. Kada su u pitanju maloljetni počinitelji kaznenih djela, ponajprije ubojstava, valja naglasiti da je jako malo istraženih podataka s obzirom na to da su apsolutne brojke maloljetnih počinitelja ubojstava u europskim državama, a i u Hrvatskoj, izrazito niske. Cilj provedenoga istraživanja je utvrđivanje psihološke i sociološke karakteristike maloljetnih počinitelja ubojstava, okolnosti izvršenja kaznenog čina te posljedice istoga što je presudno u predviđanju i preveniraju istih. U te svrhe koristit će se metoda studije slučaja. Pozornost će se skrenuti na teoretski osvrt dosadašnjih poznatih teorija delinkvencije i na rezultate sekundarne analize dokumentacije sudskih spisa Županijskog suda Zagrebu. Nadalje, sam rad će se oslanjati na procjene ovlaštenih i nadležnih institucija na području Grada Zagreba

Antimicrobial solid media for screening non‐sterile Arabidopsis thaliana seeds

Stable genetic transformation of plants is a low-efficiency process, and identification of positive transformants usually relies on screening for expression of a co-transformed marker gene. Often this involves germinating seeds on solid media containing a selection reagent. Germination on solid media requires surface sterilization of seeds and careful aseptic technique to prevent microbial contamination, but surface sterilization techniques are time consuming and can cause seed mortality if not performed carefully. We developed an antimicrobial cocktail that can be added to solid media to inhibit bacterial and fungal growth without impairing germination, allowing us to bypass the surface sterilization step. Adding a combination of terbinafine (1 μM) and timentin (200 mg l−1) to Murashige and Skoog agar delayed the onset of observable microbial growth and did not affect germination of non-sterile seeds from 10 different wild-type and mutant Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. We named this antimicrobial solid medium “MSTT agar”. Seedlings sown in non-sterile conditions could be maintained on MSTT agar for up to a week without observable contamination. This medium was compatible with rapid screening methods for hygromycin B, phosphinothricin (BASTA) and nourseothricin resistance genes, meaning that positive transformants can be identified from non-sterile seeds in as little as 4 days after stratification, and transferred to soil before the onset of visible microbial contamination. By using MSTT agar we were able to select genetic transformants on solid media without seed surface sterilization, eliminating a tedious and time-consuming step.</p

Juvenile Homicide Perpetrators - Case Study

U ovome radu predstavit će se ubojstvo kao najteži oblik povrede ljudskih prava, osobito kada se radi o maloljetnim počiniteljima. Kada su u pitanju maloljetni počinitelji kaznenih djela, ponajprije ubojstava, valja naglasiti da je jako malo istraženih podataka s obzirom na to da su apsolutne brojke maloljetnih počinitelja ubojstava u europskim državama, a i u Hrvatskoj, izrazito niske. Cilj provedenoga istraživanja je utvrđivanje psihološke i sociološke karakteristike maloljetnih počinitelja ubojstava, okolnosti izvršenja kaznenog čina te posljedice istoga što je presudno u predviđanju i preveniraju istih. U te svrhe koristit će se metoda studije slučaja. Pozornost će se skrenuti na teoretski osvrt dosadašnjih poznatih teorija delinkvencije i na rezultate sekundarne analize dokumentacije sudskih spisa Županijskog suda Zagrebu. Nadalje, sam rad će se oslanjati na procjene ovlaštenih i nadležnih institucija na području Grada Zagreba

Detection of ultrathin biological films using vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry

Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) is a non-contact and a non-destructive optical technique used in characterization of thin films. It is widely used to determine optical constants, thickness in multilayer stacks and microstructure (voids, alloy fraction, or mixed phase composition). This paper reports on a systematic investigation of the optical properties of two different kinds of silane compounds: 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) and 3-glycidoxypropyltriethoxy-silane (GPS) as well as for immunoglobulin G (IgG) attached to these modified samples using vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopic ellipsometry (VUV-SE). VUV-SE is a newly developed technique and used to evaluate the strength and energy of the interband electronic excitations/transitions in these biofilms. The shorter wavelengths of VUV-SE increase sensitivity for detection of extremely thin adsorbed films at an interface (\u3c10 nm) and accurately determine optical properties of biological interactions/ moieties on the surface. A Cauchy dispersion model was used to determine layer thicknesses in multilayer stacks and adsorption was accounted by including Gaussian shaped oscillators in the optical model. No measurable optical anisotropy is found for these films. The dielectric properties of the adsorbed films are reported in the 0.73–9.43 eV optical range