scholarly journals Middle Eastern and North African English Speech Corpus (MENAESC): Automatic Identification of MENA English Accents

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Gaussian Mixture ◽  
Automatic Identification ◽  
North African ◽  
Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients ◽  
Speech Corpus ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
System Effectiveness

This study aims to explore the English accents in the Arab world. Although there are limited resources for a speech corpus that attempts to automatically identify the degree of accent patterns of an Arabic speaker of English, there is no speech corpus specialized for Arabic speakers of English in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). To that end, different samples were collected in order to create the linguistic resource that we called Middle Eastern and North African English Speech Corpus (MENAESC). In addition to the “accent approach” applied in the field of automatic language/dialect recognition; we applied also the “macro-accent approach” -by employing Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Energy and Shifted Delta Cepstra (SDC) features and Gaussian Mixture Model-Universal Background Model (GMM-UBM) classifier- on four accents (Egyptian, Qatari, Syrian, and Tunisian accents) among the eleven accents that were selected based on their high population density in the location where the experiments were carried out. By using the Equal Error Rate percentage (EER%) for the assessment of our system effectiveness in the identification of MENA English accents using the two approaches mentioned above through the employ of the MENAESC, results showed we reached 1.5 to 2%, for “accent approach” and 2 to 3.5% for “macro-accents approach” for identification of MENA English. It also exhibited that the Qatari accent, of the 4 accents included, scored the lowest EER% for all tests performed. Taken together, the system effectiveness is not only affected by the approaches used, but also by the database size MENAESC and its characteristics. Moreover, it is impacted by the proficiency of the Arabic speakers of English and the influence of their mother tongue

SPEAKER IDENTIFICATION BY AGGREGATING GAUSSIAN MIXTURE MODELS (GMMs) BASED ON UNCORRELATED MFCC-DERIVED FEATURES

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (04) ◽  
pp. 1456006 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMITA PAL ◽  
SMARAJIT BOSE ◽  
GOPAL K. BASAK ◽  
AMITAVA MUKHOPADHYAY
Keyword(s):  
Mixture Models ◽  
Speaker Recognition ◽  
Speaker Identification ◽  
Gaussian Mixture Models ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Gaussian Mixture ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients ◽  
Speech Corpus ◽  
Signal Process

For solving speaker identification problems, the approach proposed by Reynolds [IEEE Signal Process. Lett.2 (1995) 46–48], using Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) based on Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) as features, is one of the most effective available in the literature. The use of GMMs for modeling speaker identity is motivated by the interpretation that the Gaussian components represent some general speaker-dependent spectral shapes, and also by the capability of Gaussian mixtures to model arbitrary densities. In this work, we have initially illustrated, with the help of a new bilingual speech corpus, how the well-known principal component transformation, in conjunction with the principle of classifier combination can be used to enhance the performance of the MFCC-GMM speaker recognition systems significantly. Subsequently, we have emphatically and rigorously established the same using the benchmark speech corpus NTIMIT. A significant outcome of this work is that the proposed approach has the potential to enhance the performance of any speaker recognition system based on correlated features.

scholarly journals SOME NEW RESULTS ON AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION OF VIETNAMESE FOLK SONGS CHEO AND QUANHO

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-345
Author(s):  
Chu Ba Thanh ◽  
Trinh Van Loan ◽  
Nguyen Hong Quang
Keyword(s):  
Gaussian Mixture ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Identification Accuracy ◽  
Automatic Identification ◽  
Gaussian Component ◽  
Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients ◽  
Identification Rate ◽  
First Derivative ◽  
Search For Information

  Vietnamese folk songs are very rich in genre and content. Identifying Vietnamese folk tunes will contribute to the storage and search for information about these tunes automatically. The paper will present an overview of the classification of music genres that have been performed in Vietnam and abroad. For two types of very popular folk songs of Vietnam such as Cheo and Quan ho, the paper describes the dataset and GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) to perform the experiments on identifying some of these folk songs. The GMM used for experiment with 4 sets of parameters containing MFCC (Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients), energy, first derivative and second derivative of MFCC and energy, tempo, intensity, and fundamental frequency. The results showed that the parameters added to the MFCCs contributed significantly to the improvement of the identification accuracy with the appropriate values of Gaussian component number M. Our experiments also showed that, on average, the length of the excerpts was only 29.63% of the whole song for Cheo and 38.1% of the whole song for Quan ho, the identification rate was only 3.1% and 2.33% less than the whole song for Cheo and Quan ho respectively.

Sesame allergy is more prevalent among Middle Eastern/North African patients in an urban healthcare system

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine LM. Joseph ◽  
Alexandra R. Sitarik ◽  
Rachel Kado ◽  
Gillian Bassirpour ◽  
Cheryl A. Miree ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare System ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
North African ◽  
African Patients

The Ideological Dimensionality in the Middle Eastern and North African Constitutions: A New Era in the Evolution of Islamic Constitutionalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992091294
Author(s):  
Berna Öney
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
North African ◽  
New Era ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Popular Movements ◽  
Ideological Dimension

The popular movements in 2011 led to many regime changes that resulted in amended or new constitutions in the Middle East and North Africa region. The constitutional debates concentrated mainly on the functions of the constitutions in authoritarian regimes, constitution-making processes, and the role of Islam during and after the uprisings. However, no research has analyzed the ideological dimensionality of the Middle Eastern and North African constitutions. By analyzing 19 newly enacted, drafted, and amended constitutions before and after the popular movements in the region, this article shows that the single ideological dimension in the constitutions can be defined by the openness of a state for liberal and modern values. This ideological dimension encompasses all the regional political debates on the political regime dynamics, the inclusion of rights and liberties, and the role of Islam. Besides offering an alternative typology for the constitutions in the region, this article also provides evidence for the beginning of the fourth phase of Islamic constitutionalism that merges the ideas of rule of law, which originates from democratic notions, and Islamic norms.

Diversified Diasporas

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-122
Author(s):  
Sarah Abrevaya Stein
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
North African ◽  
Joint Work ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Many

The many contributors to this volume disagree on who, precisely, are the subjects of their joint work. Or rather, they diverge in their understanding of how their subjects should be defined, remembered, portrayed. Some of the contributors to Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries imagine their subjects regionally (as Middle Eastern, North African, or Balkan); others refer to them as linguistic entities (speakers of Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Spanish, or Judeo-Arabic). Others describe them as transnational or diasporic populations (Sephardi, Hispano-Jewish, or simply Jewish), while still others divide them along the borders of empires or nation-states (Ottoman, Iraqi, Moroccan, Israeli).

Clinical Profile and Health Disparities in a Multiethnic Cohort of Patients With Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Butters ◽  
Caitlin R. Semsarian ◽  
Richard D. Bagnall ◽  
Laura Yeates ◽  
Fergus Stafford ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Disparities ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
South Asians ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
East Asian ◽  
North African ◽  
East Asians ◽  
Cardioverter Defibrillator

Background: Clinical studies of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy are over-represented by individuals of European ethnicity, with less known about other ethnic groups. We investigated differences between patients in a multiethnic Australian hypertrophic cardiomyopathy population. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study of 836 unrelated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy probands attending a specialized clinic between 2002 and 2020. Major ethnic groups were European (n=611), East Asian (n=75), South Asian (n=58), and Middle Eastern and North African (n=68). The minor ethnicity groups were Oceanian (n=9), People of the Americas (n=7), and African (n=8). One-way ANOVA with Dunnett post hoc test and Bonferroni adjustment were performed. Results: Mean age of the major ethnic groups was 54.9±16.9 years, and 527 (65%) were male. Using the European group as the control, East Asian patients had a lower body mass index (29 versus 25 kg/m 2 , P <0.0001). South Asians had a lower prevalence of atrial fibrillation (10% versus 31%, P =0.024). East Asians were more likely to have apical hypertrophy (23% versus 6%, P <0.0001) and Middle Eastern and North African patients more likely to present with left ventricular outflow tract obstruction (46% versus 34%, P =0.0003). East Asians were less likely to undergo genetic testing (55% versus 85%, P <0.0001) or have an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator implanted (19% versus 36%, P =0.037). East Asians were more likely to have a causative variant in a gene other than MYBPC3 or MYH7 , whereas Middle Eastern and North African and South Asians had the highest rates of variants of uncertain significance (27% and 21%, P <0.0001). Conclusions: There are few clinical differences based on ethnicity, but importantly, we identify health disparities relating to access to genetic testing and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator use. Unless addressed, these gaps will likely widen as we move towards precision-medicine–based care of individuals with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

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