Automatic Home Appliance Switching Using Speech Recognition Software and Embedded System

In most homes, electrical appliances are controlled and operated manually, this could be difficult and challenging to do when tiredness, handicap, morphological variations (height, aging etc.) and inadequate skill stands in the way as impediment. This study aims to implement a better and more flexible means of controlling home appliances by means of an automated switching mechanism using speech recognition technique. Acoustic signals picked by a microphone controlled by a speech recognition application generate digital signals that are passed to a microcontroller, which in turn dispatches commands that operate the relays to which the appliances in the home are connected. The goal of using speech command to automate the switching of home appliances was achieved and proved to be a more convenient means of switching home appliances

Characteristics of the surface soil ecosystem: Linkage to understanding soil dynamic functions

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Development of a Facial Recognition System with Email Identification Message Relay Mechanism

Attendance records play a vital role in the educational sector. It is so vital that students are not allowed to sit for examinations if they do not meet the class attendance benchmark. But students, instead of making sure they attend classes regularly, devise cunny ways of committing attendance fraud. This unpleasant trend has made it necessary to develop systems that can take accurate class attendance records and minimize fraud. The use of biometrics to develop attendance taking systems is becoming quite popular. One of such biometrics is The Face. In this paper, a facial recognition algorithm known as Fisherfaces or Fisher Discriminant Analysis (FDA) which is not sensitive to substantial variation in facial look and illumination is used to develop the facial recognition attendance taking system. The system implemented has a training database of Ten (10) students. Ten (10) facial images of each student are taken with different composures, looks and under different levels of illumination. Tests on nine (9) students in the database yielded accuracies of as low as 70% and as high as 90%. This validates the proof that the more the number of training facial image in the database, the higher the accuracy of Fisherfaces approach. The simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) was interfaced with the database to send identification messages (name of student identified with time and date of identification) to the email address of the administrator (in this case the lecturer) in realtime to effectively monitor the attendance. The result was found capable of eliminating attendance fraud

An Improved Iris Segmentation Technique Using Circular Hough Transform

It is quite easy to spoof an automated iris recognition system using fake iris such as paper print and artificial lens. False Rejection Rate (FRR) and False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of a specific approach can be as a result of noise introduced in the segmentation process. Special attention has not been paid to a modified system in which a more accurate segmentation process is applied to an already existing efficient algorithm thereby increasing the overall reliability and accuracy of iris recognition. In this work an improvement of the already existing wavelet packet decomposition for iris recognition with a Correct Classification Rate (CCR) of 98.375% is proposed. It involves changing the segmentation technique used for this implementation from the integro-differential operator approach (John Daugman’s model) to the Hough transform (Wilde’s model). This research extensively compared the two segmentation techniques to show which is better in the implementation of the wavelet packet decomposition. Implementation of the integro-differential approach to segmentation showed an accuracy of 91.39% while the Hough Transform approach showed an accuracy of 93.06%. This result indicates that the integration of the Hough Transform into any open source iris recognition module can offer as much as a 1.67% improved accuracy due to improvement in its preprocessing stage. The improved iris segmentation technique using Hough Transform has an overall CCR of 100%

Problem Based Learning to Improve HOTS of High School Students

This research aimed to improve the high-order thinking ability of students by applying PBL model in Environment Pollution of 10th MIA 3 graders of SMA Negeri 2 Sukoharjo. This study was a classroom action research followed the Kemmis and Mc. Taggart's, and conducted in two cycles, from April to May 2016. Each cycle consisted of 4 stages: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The participants were 31 students (18 female and 13 male students) of 10th MIA 3 graders of SMA Negeri 2 Sukoharjo. Data was obtained using essay test on the high-order thinking ability, interview, observation sheet on the implementation of PBL syntax, observation sheet on affective and psychomotor aspects of students. Essay test of high-order thinking ability includes: analyzing (C4), evaluating (C5), and creating (C6) based on Bloom's revised taxonomy. Data analysis was descriptively. The target of research was the improvement of students' high-order thinking ability in every aspect more than 23% from based line to the end of research cycle. The result shows that the PBL model in environment pollution material is able to improve the high-order thinking ability of students by ≥23% from based line to the end of research cycle. The increase of percentage gain in each aspect of high-order thinking ability from pre-cycle to cycle II was as follows: 1) the analyzing aspect increased by 25.16%, 2) the evaluating aspect increased by 26.66%, and 3) the creating aspect increased by 23.95%

Baryonic Generating Functions

We show how it is possible to use the plethystic program in order to compute baryonic generating functions that count BPS operators in the chiral ring of quiver gauge theories living on the world volume of D branes probing a non compact CY manifold. Special attention is given to the conifold theory and the orbifold C^2/Z_2 times C, where exact expressions for generating functions are given in detail. This paper solves a long standing problem for the combinatorics of quiver gauge theories with baryonic moduli spaces. It opens the way to a statistical analysis of quiver theories on baryonic branches. Surprisingly, the baryonic charge turns out to be the quantized Kahler modulus of the geometry.Comment: 44 pages, 7 figures; fonts change

Counting Chiral Operators in Quiver Gauge Theories

We discuss in detail the problem of counting BPS gauge invariant operators in the chiral ring of quiver gauge theories living on D-branes probing generic toric CY singularities. The computation of generating functions that include counting of baryonic operators is based on a relation between the baryonic charges in field theory and the Kaehler moduli of the CY singularities. A study of the interplay between gauge theory and geometry shows that given geometrical sectors appear more than once in the field theory, leading to a notion of "multiplicities". We explain in detail how to decompose the generating function for one D-brane into different sectors and how to compute their relevant multiplicities by introducing geometric and anomalous baryonic charges. The Plethystic Exponential remains a major tool for passing from one D-brane to arbitrary number of D-branes. Explicit formulae are given for few examples, including C^3/Z_3, F_0, and dP_1.Comment: 75 pages, 22 figure

HL-1 cells express an inwardly rectifying K+ current activated via muscarinic receptors comparable to that in mouse atrial myocytes

An inwardly rectifying K^+ current is present in atrial cardiac myocytes that is activated by acetylcholine (I_{KACh}). Physiologically, activation of the current in the SA node is important in slowing the heart rate with increased parasympathetic tone. It is a paradigm for the direct regulation of signaling effectors by the Gβγ G-protein subunit. Many questions have been addressed in heterologous expression systems with less focus on the behaviour in native myocytes partly because of the technical difficulties in undertaking comparable studies in native cells. In this study, we characterise a potassium current in the atrial-derived cell line HL-1. Using an electrophysiological approach, we compare the characteristics of the potassium current with those in native atrial cells and in a HEK cell line expressing the cloned Kir3.1/3.4 channel. The potassium current recorded in HL-1 is inwardly rectifying and activated by the muscarinic agonist carbachol. Carbachol-activated currents were inhibited by pertussis toxin and tertiapin-Q. The basal current was time-dependently increased when GTP was substituted in the patch-clamp pipette by the non-hydrolysable analogue GTPγS. We compared the kinetics of current modulation in HL-1 with those of freshly isolated atrial mouse cardiomyocytes. The current activation and deactivation kinetics in HL-1 cells are comparable to those measured in atrial cardiomyocytes. Using immunofluorescence, we found GIRK4 at the membrane in HL-1 cells. Real-time RT-PCR confirms the presence of mRNA for the main G-protein subunits, as well as for M2 muscarinic and A1 adenosine receptors. The data suggest HL-1 cells are a good model to study IKAch