Speech based automatic personality perception using spectral features

Automatic personality perception is the prediction of personality that others attribute to a person in a given situation. The aim of automatic personality perception is to forecast the behaviour of the speaker perceived by the listener from nonverbal behavior. Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness are the speaker traits used for personality assessment. In this work, a speaker trait prediction approach for automatic personality assessment is proposed. This approach is based on modeling the relationship between speech signal and personality traits using spectral features. The experiments are achieved over the SSPNet Personality Corpus. The Frequency Domain Linear Prediction and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient features are extracted for the prediction of speaker traits. The classification is done using Instance based k-Nearest neighbor and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. The experimental results show that k-Nearest Neighbor classifier outperforms SVM classifier. The classification accuracy is between 90 and 100%.     

Surface adsorption and anticorrosive behavior of benzimidazolium inhibitor in acid medium for carbon steel corrosion

Corrosion inhibition property of a newly synthesized 3-(4-chlorobenzoylmethyl) benzimidazolium bromide inhibitor against carbon steel corrosion in 1 N hydrochloric acid solution was studied and analyzed utilizing various electrochemical methods. Electrochemical impedance study inferred that the inhibition efficiency increased with increasing inhibitor concentration and give 93.5% at 250 ppm. Potentiodynamic polarization study emphasized that inhibitor acted as a mixed type inhibitor and the adsorption of inhibitor on the metal surface followed Langmuir adsorption isotherm. The noise results were in good correlation with other electrochemical results obtained. The increase of inhibition efficiency with concentrations of inhibitor is attributed to the blocking of the active area by the inhibitor adsorption on the metal surface. The thermodynamic parameter values were calculated and discussed to explain the adsorption mechanism of inhibitor in an acidic medium. The protective surface morphology governed by the inhibited medium was investigated using the scanning electron microscopic technique. The surface roughness of the sample in the absence and presence of inhibitor was obtained using atomic force microscopic study. The effect and reactivity of the inhibitor are further clarified with quantum chemical analysis. Finally, the corrosion protection mechanism is proposed on the ground of experimental and theoretical studies.

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Syllable based text to speech synthesis system using auto associative neural network prosody prediction

This paper presents the design and development of an Auto Associative Neural Network (AANN) based unrestricted prosodic information synthesizer. Unrestricted Text To Speech System (TTS) is capable of synthesize different domain speech with improved quality. This paper deals with a corpus-driven text-to speech system based on the concatenative synthesis approach. Concatenative speech synthesis involves the concatenation of the basic units to synthesize an intelligent, natural sounding speech. A corpus-based method (unit selection) uses a large inventory to select the units and concatenate. The prosody prediction is done with the help of five layer auto associative neural network which helps us to improve the quality of speech synthesis. Here syllables are used as basic unit of speech synthesis database. The database consisting of the units along with their annotated information is called annotated speech corpus. A clustering technique is used in annotated speech corpus that provides way to select the appropriate unit for concatenation, based on the lowest total join cost of the speech unit. Discontinuities present at the unit boundaries are lowered by using the mel-LPC smoothing technique. The experiment has been made for the Dravidian language Tamil and the results reveal to demonstrate the improved intelligibility and naturalness of the proposed method. The proposed system is applicable to all the languages if the syllabification rules has been changed.     

Interaction of nafion ionomers toward various solvents

Interactions of Nafion (Naf) ionomer with water, aqueous ethanol (EA), aqueous isopropyl alcohol (IPA), and aqueous ammonia were investigated by attenuated total reflectance (ATR)–infrared (IR) spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, and computational modeling studies. Microstructural features by ATR–IR revealed the existence of hydrophilic interaction of Naf with all solvents. The Naf membranes formed hydrogen bonds with water, aqueous EA, and IPA. The incorporation of solvents on the Naf matrix impaired the crystallinity, which was highest in the case of IPA. Of all the microsolvated structures of Naf investigated, the formation of H₃O⁺ ions was evident; in addition, H₅O₂⁺ ions appeared in the alcohol–water mixture, and NH₄⁺ ions were observed in the water–ammonia mixture along with a direct ion pair with the SO₃^? group in Naf. Theoretical studies based on computational modeling disclosed that the interchain distance increased with enhanced interactions (hydrophobic interactions in particular), and this was in good agreement with the highest swelling ratio of the Naf membrane in aqueous IPA and EA solvents. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Preparation of polyelectrolyte‐stabilized silver nanoparticles for catalytic applications

A facile and green method is developed for the preparation of polyelectrolyte‐stabilized silver nanoparticles (AgNPs ) using dopamine as a reducing agent. The AgNPs were prepared in the presence of the polyelectrolyte poly[acrylamide‐co ‐(diallyldimethylammonium chloride)] (PADA ) and amine‐functionalized silane matrices. Interestingly, only amine‐functionalized silanes led to AgNPs in the presence of PADA , whereas silane without amine functionalization failed to produce them. The catalytic ability of the AgNPs was investigated by adopting a benchmark reaction, i.e. reduction of 4‐nitrophenol in the presence of sodium borohydride. It was found that PADA ‐Ag(0.1)‐TPDT (TPDT = N ‐[3‐(trimethoxysilyl)propyl]diethylenetriamine) showed better catalytic activity when compared to other silver concentrations of 0.05, 0.5 and 1 mmol L^?1. Remarkably, a very high normalized rate constant, 20 374 s^?1 g^?1, was observed for PADA ‐Ag(0.1)‐TPDT . © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry     

Pt – g-C3N4 – (Au/TiO2): Electronically integrated nanocomposite for solar hydrogen generation

A potential nanocomposite photocatalyst was designed by integrating Pt nanoclusters (co-catalyst and electron sink) with graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄ (gcn)) (charge diffusion) and 0.5 wt % Au containing Au-TiO₂ (AuT) (plasmonic on semiconductor) for solar water splitting (SWS). Variety of Pt-gcn-AuTiO₂ compositions has been evaluated for SWS under one sun conditions. Complexity of the photocatalyst was increased systematically from Au-TiO₂, gcn-TiO₂ to Pt-gcn-Au-TiO₂ to explore the influence of different combinations. Electronic integration of charge separation/diffusion component (gcn) with light absorbing sensitizer components (Au and gcn), and co-catalyst (Pt) seems to be the critical factor to improve hydrogen yield (HY) or overall efficiency. Although addition of gcn increase the HY of composites, there is no SWS activity observed on bare TiO₂ or gcn. Au or Pt on gcn enhances the charge separation effectively and interface between Au and/or Pt with gcn works as the Schottky barrier. A monodispersion of Au over TiO₂ and Pt nanoclusters over gcn/AuTiO₂ composite lead to the maximum solar hydrogen yield (1.52 mmol/h g) with an apparent quantum yield (AQY) of 7.5%. Photoelectron and photoluminescence spectral studies confirm the electron transfer from Au to gcn, and Au and/or gcn to titania. A thorough physico-chemical investigation of various composites underscores the electronic integration aspects of the nanocomposite towards storage of electrons in the Pt co-catalyst and hence an effective charge separation and an increase in AQY.     

Internetworking framework in underwater wireless sensor network protocol to a certain connectivity using probabilistic approaches

Microsystem Technologies - Ocean acidification is one of the parameters that affect underwater wireless sensor network routing protocols. The underlying network-level metrics of sensor nodes...