Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Review on Emotion Recognition Algorithms using Speech Analysis

In recent years, there is a growing interest in speech emotion recognition (SER) by analyzing input speech. SER can be considered as simply pattern recognition task which includes features extraction, classifier, and speech emotion database. The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review on various literature available on SER. Several audio features are available, including linear predictive coding coefficients (LPCC), Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC), and Teager energy based features. While for classifier, many algorithms are available including hidden Markov model (HMM), Gaussian mixture mdoel (GMM), vector quantization (VQ), artificial neural networks (ANN), and deep neural networks (DNN). In this paper, we also reviewed various speech emotion database. Finally, recent related works on SER using DNN will be discussed.
Status Preference and World Economic Dynamics

In our model we analyze the role of status preference in a decentralized, two-country world economy. We specify that status preference depends on average consumption and investigate the implications of allowing the two countries to have di®erent attitudes toward status. Among our results, we show that steady-state domestic consumption and the world speed of adjustment are solved for simultaneously if the two countries have di®erent attitudes toward status. An implication of this result is that a shift in status preference in the home country redistributes consumption globally. We show that the direction of the shift depends on how a change in home country status preference changes the domestic intertemporal elasticity of substitution relative to its foreign counterpart. JEL Codes: E21, F41
SOUND AND CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR: DO APPAREL RETAILERS TAKE NOTE OF THE EFFECT OF SOUND ON BUYING BEHAVIOUR

The main aim of this study was to investigate the influence of sound on consumers buying behaviour in apparel retail stores. The type of research design used in this study was exploratory in nature, making use of a qualitative approach and a communicative technique of focus group interviews and naïve sketches. The data gathered was analysed by means of Tesch’s inductive descriptive coding technique, better known as thematic analysis. It was found that sound has the ability to influence consumers in either a subconscious or a conscious way. This has a direct influence on the amount of time that consumers are willing to spend in-store and ultimately influencing their buying decisions and behaviour in either a positive or a negative way.
A survey of data mining algorithms used in cardiovascular disease diagnosis from multi-lead ECG data

Remote cardiovascular disease (CVD) diagnosis from ECG plays an important role in healthcare domain. Data mining, the major step in the process of the extraction of knowledge usingdescriptive and predictive algorithms that aid in making proactive decisions, has also been usedfor CVD diagnosis. Recently, diverse techniques have been developed for analyzing the ECGsignals. However, due to the diversity of techniques used, terminologies, performance measuresused in different techniques makes analysis and comparing of results thwarting. The aim of thiswork is to essentially explore and present the analysis of different data mining algorithmsproposed earlier in literature for CVD diagnosis, their advantages and limitations. This paperpresents various techniques for CVD diagnosis using data mining from an ECG signal underfour major phases â€“ ECG Acquisition, ECG Compression, ECG Feature Extraction and ECGdiagnosis. The primary aim of this paper is to categorize the various researches done in thisregard to provide a glossary for interested researchers and to aid in identifying their potentialresearch direction.
Anomalous magnetocaloric effect and magnetoresistance in Ho(Ni,Fe)2 compounds

Magnetic, magnetocaloric, and magnetoresistance studies have been carried out on polycrystalline samples of Laves phase compounds HoNi1�xFex2 x = 0, 0.05, and 0.1. The magnetocaloric effect in HoNi2 is found to be maximum near the ordering temperature with values of 7 J mol �1 K �1 and 10.1 K for the isothermal magnetic entropy change and the adiabatic temperature change, respectively, for a field of 50 kOe. With Fe substitution, the temperature variation of magnetocaloric effect shows an additional peak at low temperatures, which is much more pronounced than the peak at the ordering temperature. The origin of the low temperature peak is attributed to the field-induced metamagnetic transition. The magnetoresistance data also seem to support the occurrence of the metamagnetic transition.
Validation and identification of gradient-elasticity from full-field measurements

Gradient-elasticity and more generally gradient-enhanced continuum models have been extensively developed since the beginning of the twentieth century. These models have shown the ability to account for the effect of the underlying material heterogeneity at the macroscopic scale of the continuum. Despite of a great theoretical interest, gradient-enhanced models are usually difficult to interpret physically and even more to identify experimentally. This paper proposes an attempt to validate and identify a gradient-elasticity model for a material with a periodic micro-structure from experimental data. A set of dedicated experimental and numerical tools is developed for this purpose: first, the design of an experiment, then two-scale displacement field measurements by digital image correlation and dedicated pro-processing techniques and finally a model updating technique. This paper ends up with the full set of first and second-order elastic constants of a gradient-elasticity model which macroscopic kinematic has been validated by investigating the deformation of the unit cells at the microscopic scale.
The role and nature of scrm in Australian private sector: an exploratory study

Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) is an emerging concept that includes strategies, processes and technologies to link social media with the existing approach to traditional CRM. It is a corporate strategy for engagement with customers rather than simply a technology upgrade and not a replacement of traditional CRM. Even though the body of knowledge on the subject is vast, it is scatted due to the lack of research on this topic, especially in Australia. This paper reports a survey-based study conducted to investigate the current level of SCRM adoption by Australian companies, including the objectives for SCRM adoption, types of social media used with SCRM, SCRM implementation-related activities and barriers related to SCRM implementation at the early stage, using a sample of 1,060 Australian companies (comprising 597 SCRM adopters and 473 SCRM non-adopters). The findings highlight that SCRM adoption has been relatively superficial and usually not supported by a formal integrated strategy and policy framework. Even so, it appears that Australian companies are increasingly taking advantage of social media to manage customer relationships. This study serves as a starting point for research into SCRM implementation in the private sector to build up confidence among shareholders and investors for adopting such initiatives.
Maternal genetic effects on body weight and breast morphological traits in duck population under selection

Abstract. Direct and maternal additive genetic and mitochondrial variances of duck meat performance traits were estimated using AI-REML algorithm. Records of 3 099 (5 010 pedigreed birds) from six consecutive generations were included. The following four traits were investigated: body weight at 3rd week, body weight at 7th week, sternum crest length at 7th week (in cm), and breast muscles thickness at 7th week (in cm). The data were analysed via three single trait linear animal models: I – additive genetic model, II – model extended to additive maternal effects; III– as model II with mitochondrial effects as random. Adequacy of the models was examined by Akaike´s information criterion (AIC). Relatively high direct additive heritability estimates were obtained for body weight at 3rd week (0.4326–0.4546) and body weight at 7th week (0.5322–0.6088) whereas lower estimates were obtained for sternum crest length (0.1756–0.2744) and breast muscles thickness (0.1369–0.2932). The maternal heritabilities were moderate and also considerably depended on the model used. For all of the studied traits a negative covariance between direct and maternal genetic effects was found. Mitochondrial heritabilities were very low. Generally, on the basis of criteria employed, the model III can be suggested for analysis of body weight whereas for other traits model II seems to be suitable.
Cognitive Best Worst Method for Multiattribute Decision-Making

Pairwise comparison based multiattribute decision-making (MADM) methods are widely used and studied in recent years. However, the perception and cognition towards the semantic representation for the linguistic rating scale and the way in which the pairwise comparisons are executed are still open to discuss. The commonly used ratio scale is likely to produce misapplications and the matrix based comparison style needs too many comparisons and is not able to guarantee the consistency of the matrix when the number of objects involved is large. This research proposes a new MADM method CBWM (Cognitive Best Worst Method) which adopts interval scale to represent the pairwise difference and only compares each object to the best object and the worst object rather than all the other objects. CBWM is a vector based method which only needs pairwise comparisons and is more likely to generate consistent comparisons and reliable results. The theoretical analysis and a real world application demonstrate the effectiveness of CBWM.
Testing general relativity with the BepiColombo radio science experiment

The ESA mission BepiColombo will explore the planet Mercury with equipment allowing an extremely accurate tracking. While determining its orbit around Mercury, it will be possible to indirectly observe the motion of its center of mass, with an accuracy several orders of magnitude better than what is possible by radar ranging to the planet’s surface. This is an opportunity to conduct a relativity experiment which will be a modern version of the traditional tests of general relativity, based upon Mercury’s perihelion advance and the relativistic light propagation near the Sun. We define the mathematical methods to be used to extract from the data of the BepiColombo mission, as presently designed, the best constraints on the main post-Newtonian parameters, especially b,g and the Nordtvedt parameter h, but also the dynamic oblateness of the Sun J 2( and the preferred frame parameters a 1 ,a 2. We have performed a full cycle simulation of the BepiColombo radio science experiments, including this relativity experiment, with the purpose of assessing in a realistic ~as opposed to formal! way the accuracy achievable on each parameter of interest. For g the best constraint can be obtained by means of a dedicated superior conjunction experiment, with a realistic accuracy . 2310 26 . For b the main problem is the very strong correlation with J 2( ; if the Nordtvedt relationship h54b2g23 is used, as it is legitimate in the metric theories of gravitation, a realistic accuracy of . 2310 26 for b and . 2310 29 for J 2( can be achieved, while h itself is constrained within . 10 25 . If the preferred frame parameters a 1 ,a 2 are included in the analysis, they can be constrained within . 8310 26 and . 10 26 , respectively, at the price of some degradation in b, J 2( and h. It is also possible to test the change with time of the gravitational constant G, but the results are severely limited because of the problems of absolute calibration of the ranging transponder, to the point that the improvement as compared with other techniques ~such as lunar laser ranging! is not so important.
Biaxial Solar Tracking System Based on the MPPT Approach Integrating ICTs for Photovoltaic Applications

The smart grid and distributed generation based on renewable energy applications often involve the use of information and communication technology (ICT) coupled with advanced control and monitoring algorithms to improve the efficiency and reliability of the electrical grid and renewable generation systems. Photovoltaic (PV) systems have been recently applied with success in the fields of distributed generation due to their lower environmental impact where the electrical energy generation is related to the amount of solar irradiation and thus the angle of incident ray of the sun on the surface of the modules. This paper introduces an integration of ICTs in order to achieve the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) using a biaxial solar tracking system for PV power applications. To generate the references for the digital control of azimuth and elevation angles a Global Positioning System (GPS) by satellites is used which enables acquiring the geographic coordinates of the sun in real-time. As a total integration of the system a communication platform based on the 802.15. 4 protocol for the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is adopted for supervising and monitoring the PV plant. A 2.4 kW prototype system is implemented to validate the proposed control scheme performance.
Exchange Rate Effect on Stock Returns in the East European Emerging Markets – A Quantile Regression Approach

This paper investigates relationship between returns of stock prices and exchange rate changes in four East European emerging markets (Serbia, Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic) using weekly data from January 2003 to June 2013. Two theories explain the connection in the economic literature – flow-oriented and portfolio-balance models, without a finite and conclusive answer on which one is predominant. Considering our relatively large sample period which also includes world crisis outbreak, the used empirical data have been compromised by structural breaks and heterogeneous unconditional distribution. To avoid parameter bias and wrong conclusions, authors used four auto-regressive distributed lag ADL(2,2) models assessed with quantile regression method, robust to non-normality problems. The results indicate that relationship between these variables is in accordance with portfolio-balance models in three out of four analyzed countries.
A NOVEL APPROACH TO VETERINARY SPATIAL EPIDEMIOLOGY: DASYMETRIC REFINEMENT OF THE SWISS DOG TUMOR REGISTRY DATA

In spatial epidemiology, disease incidence and demographic data are commonly summarized within larger regions such as administrative units because of privacy concerns. As a consequence, analyses using these aggregated data are subject to the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) as the geographical manifestation of ecological fallacy. In this study, we create small area disease estimates through dasymetric refinement, and investigate the effects on predictive epidemiological models. We perform a binary dasymetric refinement of municipality-aggregated dog tumor incidence counts in Switzerland for the year 2008 using residential land as a limiting ancillary variable. This refinement is expected to improve the quality of spatial data originally aggregated within arbitrary administrative units by deconstructing them into discontinuous subregions that better reflect the underlying population distribution. To shed light on effects of this refinement, we compare a predictive statistical model that uses unrefined administrative units with one that uses dasymetrically refined spatial units. Model diagnostics and spatial distributions of model residuals are assessed to evaluate the model performances in different regions. In particular, we explore changes in the spatial autocorrelation of the model residuals due to spatial refinement of the enumeration units in a selected mountainous region, where the rugged topography induces great shifts of the analytical units i.e., residential land. Such spatial data quality refinement results in a more realistic estimation of the population distribution within administrative units, and thus, in a more accurate modeling of dog tumor incidence patterns. Our results emphasize the benefits of implementing a dasymetric modeling framework in veterinary spatial epidemiology.
A New MRP Optimization Algorithm Based on Multi-Objective Genetic Evolution

This paper takes integrated optimization of Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) as research intention, builds a novel multi-objective optimization algorithm of MRP and CRP based on genetic evolution, and designs the proper genetic operators which take the integrated configuration of productive requirement and resource requirement into account. Thereby, it is proved that the novel MRP algorithm based on genetic evolution is superior to the conventional MRP algorithm.
The Water Balance as Affected by Conservation and Conventional Tillage Practices on Slope Fields in the Drylands of North China

Soil erosion by water is a severe problem in the eastern loess belt of Northern China, particularly on agricultural land. The erosion problems are to a large extent associated with improper soil tillage practices. Changing the current tillage practices could therefore reduce soil loss. This will, however, also affect the water balance and hence the available water for crop growth, particularly in dryland farming systems. A field study was carried out on five plots on a slope field near Luoyang, Henan province, China, in order to compare the water balance under different soil tillage practices. The terms of the water balance were determined from August 1999 until April 2001. From October to June all plots were under winter wheat. After harvesting, four soil tillage practices were applied: conventional tillage, no tillage, subsoiling and reduced tillage. A two-crop rotation of winter wheat and summer corn or peanuts was applied as well. Analysis of the different components of the soil water balance enabled to determine the most suitable practice for crop growth. The results, though preliminary at this stage of the study, show that subsoiling resulted in the highest increase in moisture storage and lowest evaporation during the fallow period. The two-crop rotation with peanuts also showed promising results, mainly due to decreased evaporation of the soil surface. The no-tillage and conventional tillage gave intermediate results, whereas the reduced tillage was the worst alternative. Keyworks: dryland, loess soil, slope land, conservation tillage, water balance
THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH INTERVIEW: FASHIONING RESPONDENT AFFINITY

This article reports on the stages of developing respondent rapport and affinity during the qualitative research interview process. It advances knowledge in terms of respondent dialogue in the collection of data and its subsequent analysis. The article assesses how the researchers overcame a cautious and suspicious reception from interview respondents. The interviewees were trade union leaders who had been ‘requested’ by management to partake in a research. The paper will detail not only how the researchers had to overcome the union leaders’ suspicions but it will also explicate how the process of developing a good rapport can be beneficial to the collection of quality data. From this practical advice can be given about the essence of developing a good rapport with interviewees.
Reforming Investigative Interviewing in Canada

Les pratiques d'entrevues d'enquête au Canada devraient faire l'objet d'une réforme importante. La formation sur les entrevues avec des témoins et des victimes adultes, qui est offerte aux agents de police canadiens, est souvent superficielle et celle sur l'interrogation de suspects se limite à la controversée technique Reid. Cela pose problème parce que les enquêteurs risquent ainsi de ne pas maximiser la quantité ni la qualité des renseignements obtenus des personnes interrogées. Dans l'article, on décrit la méthode PEACE, un modèle d'interrogatoire inquisitorial jugé à la fois éthique et fondé sur la recherche scientifique. Pour réussir cette réforme des pratiques d'entrevues d'enquête, il faudrait mettre en place un modèle national standardisé qui serait basé sur le modèle PEACE et qui augmenterait les partenariats entre utilisateurs et théoriciens.
TRIANGULATION FIRST: TEACHING RESEARCH IN A MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN AND ENIGINEERING ENVIRONMENT

The absence of a shared language and set of values about research among teaching staff is a core difficulty in teaching (applied) research in a multidisciplinary design and engineering context. In this paper we argue for a ‘triangulation first approach’ in which the Development Oriented Triangulation (DOT) framework is introduced as a lingua franca for research education. We promote practical, mixed-methods research from the beginning of the curriculum and focus on stimulating and nurturing an open-minded research attitude, before actually teaching specific methods. In this paper we explain our approach and report on a first year course as a case study. We found, first, that students and teachers of diverse backgrounds understand and value the DOT-framework easily. Second, it is a helpful research planning tool. Third, the framework helps to highlight the connection between research and the practice of designing. Fourth, it broadens students’ and teachers’ views on research and it helps them appreciate approaches other than their own. In summary: to alleviate the linguistic and axiological confusions, inherent in teaching research in a multidisciplinary program, we need a different start of the curriculum first.
Innovative Processing for Power Factor and Efficiency Improvement of LSPM Considering Inductance of Rotor Structure

Recently Line Start Permanent Magnet Machine (LSPM) is a well-known motor due to its technical advantages in academic and industrial sector. The LSPM combines a permanent magnet rotor that allows higher motor efficiency during synchronous operation, and an induction motor squirrel cage rotor for starting the motor by connecting it directly to an A.C. Source. Such a construction generates important technical advantages like reduced manufacturing costs and better performances. In this paper, we will deal with the efficiency and Power factor improvement of a 3.4kW, 2-pole, three-phase LSPM using the difference in d-axis magnetic inductance (Ld) and q- axis magnetic inductance (Lq). d-axis and q-axis magnetic inductance are nonlinear problem which are varied with current level and current angle. Therefore, nonlinear finite element analysis is necessary to obtain the Ld and Lq. The efficiency improvement can be effectively achieved by designing optimization of the rotor structure using finite element method. The optimized slot shape of PM was selected for the prototype machine, which improves the efficiency and power factor of LSPM.