How to improve TTS systems for emotional expressivity

Several experiments have been carried out that revealed weaknesses of the current Text-To-Speech (TTS) systems in their emotional expressivity. Although some TTS systems allow XML-based representations of prosodic and/or phonetic variables, few publications considered, as a pre-processing stage, the use of intelligent text processing to detect affective information that can be used to tailor the parameters needed for emotional expressivity. This paper describes a technique for an automatic prosodic parameterization based on affective clues. This technique recognizes the affective information conveyed in a text and, accordingly to its emotional connotation, assigns appropriate pitch accents and other prosodic parameters by XML-tagging. This pre-processing assists the TTS system to generate synthesized speech that contains emotional clues. The experimental results are encouraging and suggest the possibility of suitable emotional expressivity in speech synthesis

Effects of vitamin A overdose on rat’s organs involved in immunity and vitamin A storage

Vitamin A overdose is a common occurrence due to food fortification and ingestion of vitamin A supplements. Vitamin A is a nutrient that possesses known and potential effects on general health and the immune response. This research work is an in vivo investigation of the effects of administration of vitamin A above dietary requirements on some organs involved in immunity, vitamin A storage, and metabolism in healthy male rats. A total of 60 young adult male Wistar rats were equally divided into three groups. Rats in the two test groups were orally administered with vitamin A at different concentrations (8000 and 15 000 IU kg−1 body weight) for 21 days, while the control rats did not receive any supplementation. Weekly body weights and weights of the liver, kidney, spleen, and thymus were measured. Histological evaluations were carried out on the liver, kidney, thymus, and Peyer’s patches. Findings show that vitamin A did not significantly affect body and organs’ weights, except for a significant decrease of spleen weights for both experimental groups. Vitamin A was found to lead to some changes in the histology of the tested organs. This is the first study of its kind and sets a base for future studies

Enhancing the quality of service for real time traffic over optical burst switching (OBS) networks with ensuring the fairness for other traffics

Optical burst switching (OBS) networks have been attracting much consideration as a promising approach to build the next generation optical Internet. A solution for enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) for high priority real time traffic over OBS with the fairness among the traffic types is absent in current OBS ’ QoS schemes. In this paper we present a novel Real Time Quality of Service with Fairness Ratio (RT-QoSFR) scheme that can adapt the burst assembly parameters according to the traffic QoS needs in order to enhance the real time traffic QoS requirements and to ensure the fairness for other traffic. The results show that RT-QoSFR scheme is able to fulfill the real time traffic requirements (end to end delay, and loss rate) ensuring the fairness for other traffics under various conditions such as the type of real time traffic and traffic load. RT-QoSFR can guarantee that the delay of the real time traffic packets does not exceed the maximum packets transfer delay value. Fur- thermore, it can reduce the real time traffic packets loss, at the same time guarantee the fair- ness for non real time traffic packets by determining the ratio of real time traffic inside the burst to be 50 – 60%, 30 – 40%, and 10 – 20% for high, normal, and low traffic loads respectively

Impact of vitamin D deficiency on maternal and birth outcomes in the Saudi population: a cross-sectional study

STROBE Statement. (DOC 92.5 kb

Heterogeneity in Phenotype of Usher-Congenital Hyperinsulinism Syndrome:Hearing Loss, Retinitis Pigmentosa, and Hyperinsulinemic Hypoglycemia Ranging from Severe to Mild with Conversion to Diabetes

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the phenotype of 15 children with congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI) and profound hearing loss, known as Homozygous 11p15-p14 Deletion syndrome (MIM #606528). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Prospective clinical follow-up and genetic analysis by direct sequencing, multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification, and microsatellite markers. RESULTS: Genetic testing identified the previous described homozygous deletion in 11p15, USH1C:c.(90+592)_ABCC8:c.(2694–528)del. Fourteen patients had severe CHI demanding near-total pancreatectomy. In one patient with mild, transient neonatal hypoglycemia and nonautoimmune diabetes at age 11 years, no additional mutations were found in HNF1A, HNF4A, GCK, INS, and INSR. Retinitis pigmentosa was found in two patients aged 9 and 13 years. No patients had enteropathy or renal tubular defects. Neuromotor development ranged from normal to severe delay with epilepsy. CONCLUSIONS: The phenotype of Homozygous 11p15-p14 Deletion syndrome, or Usher-CHI syndrome, includes any severity of neonatal-onset CHI and severe, sensorineural hearing loss. Retinitis pigmentosa and nonautoimmune diabetes may occur in adolescence

Access and utilisation of primary health care services comparing urban and rural areas of Riyadh Providence, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has seen an increase in chronic diseases. International evidence suggests that early intervention is the best approach to reduce the burden of chronic disease. However, the limited research available suggests that health care access remains unequal, with rural populations having the poorest access to and utilisation of primary health care centres and, consequently, the poorest health outcomes. This study aimed to examine the factors influencing the access to and utilisation of primary health care centres in urban and rural areas of Riyadh province of the KSA

The god Shepsy "jmy Hmnw"

The Egyptian god Shepsy was a minor deity whose evidence mainly survived in the period following the Second Intermediate Period (1800 BC-1570 BC). Indeed, the apex of his popularity lay in the 19th Dynasty, during which the god is overwhelmingly present in a vast body of sources. He is best known as a solar, lunar, and funerary deity, but was also a cosmic god. The current study aims to examine the emic understanding of the Egyptian god Shepsy by providing a detailed analysis of his iconography. This identifies who the god Shepsy was, what he did, when he performed his functions, where he performed them, and most importantly, why