Development of a Biometric Personal Authentication System Based on Fingerprint and Speech

Biometrics deals with the physiological and behavioral characteristics of an individual to establish identity. Fingerprint based authentication is the most advanced biometric authentication technology. The minutiae based fingerprint identification method offer reasonable identification rate. The feature minutiae map consists of about 70-100 minutia points and matching accuracy is dropping down while the size of database is growing up. Hence it is inevitable to make the size of the fingerprint feature code to be as smaller as possible so that identification may be much easier. In this research, a novel global singularity based fingerprint representation is proposed. Fingerprint baseline, which is the line between distal and intermediate phalangeal joint line in the fingerprint, is taken as the reference line. A polygon is formed with the singularities and the fingerprint baseline. The feature vectors are the polygonal angle, sides, area, type and the ridge counts in between the singularities. 100% recognition rate is achieved in this method. The method is compared with the conventional minutiae based recognition method in terms of computation time, receiver operator characteristics (ROC) and the feature vector length. Speech is a behavioural biometric modality and can be used for identification of a speaker. In this work, MFCC of text dependant speeches are computed and clustered using k-means algorithm. A backpropagation based Artificial Neural Network is trained to identify the clustered speech code. The performance of the neural network classifier is compared with the VQ based Euclidean minimum classifier. Biometric systems that use a single modality are usually affected by problems like noisy sensor data, non-universality and/or lack of distinctiveness of the biometric trait, unacceptable error rates, and spoof attacks. Multifinger feature level fusion based fingerprint recognition is developed and the performances are measured in terms of the ROC curve. Score level fusion of fingerprint and speech based recognition system is done and 100% accuracy is achieved for a considerable range of matching threshold

English to Malayalam Translation: A Statistical Approach

This paper underlines a methodology for translating text from English into the Dravidian language, Malayalam using statistical models. By using a monolingual Malayalam corpus and a bilingual English/Malayalam corpus in the training phase, the machine automatically generates Malayalam translations of English sentences. This paper also discusses a technique to improve the alignment model by incorporating the parts of speech information into the bilingual corpus. Removing the insignificant alignments from the sentence pairs by this approach has ensured better training results. Pre-processing techniques like suffix separation from the Malayalam corpus and stop word elimination from the bilingual corpus also proved to be effective in training. Various handcrafted rules designed for the suffix separation process which can be used as a guideline in implementing suffix separation in Malayalam language are also presented in this paper. The structural difference between the English Malayalam pair is resolved in the decoder by applying the order conversion rules. Experiments conducted on a sample corpus have generated reasonably good Malayalam translations and the results are verified with F measure, BLEU and WER evaluation metrics

A socio friendly approach to the analysis of emotive speech

This paper describes certain findings of intonation and intensity study of emotive speech with the minimal use of signal processing algorithms. This study was based on six basic emotions and the neutral, elicited from 1660 English utterances obtained from the speech recordings of six Indian women. The correctness of the emotional content was verified through perceptual listening tests. Marked similarity was noted among pitch contours of like-worded, positive valence emotions, though no such similarity was observed among the four negative valence emotional expressions. The intensity patterns were also studied. The results of the study were validated using arbitrary television recordings for four emotions. The findings are useful to technical researchers, social psychologists and to the common man interested in the dynamics of vocal expression of emotions

The Unsupervised Acquisition of a Lexicon from Continuous Speech

We present an unsupervised learning algorithm that acquires a natural-language lexicon from raw speech. The algorithm is based on the optimal encoding of symbol sequences in an MDL framework, and uses a hierarchical representation of language that overcomes many of the problems that have stymied previous grammar-induction procedures. The forward mapping from symbol sequences to the speech stream is modeled using features based on articulatory gestures. We present results on the acquisition of lexicons and language models from raw speech, text, and phonetic transcripts, and demonstrate that our algorithm compares very favorably to other reported results with respect to segmentation performance and statistical efficiency.

How to highlight selected text on a PowerPoint slide

This short 7-minute video shows two methods which can be used to highlight selected words or phrases on a PowerPoint slide.

Adaptive computer assisted assessment of free-text students answers : an approach to automatically generate students' conceptual models.

Las formas de evaluación basadas en el uso de tests no pueden identificar muchos errores conceptuales de los estudiantes. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo facilitar un nuevo procedimiento capaz de generar los modelos conceptuales de los estudiantes de forma automática a partir de respuestas en texto libre.. Este trabajo se organiza en tres apartados. En primer lugar, se procede a la revisión del estado de la cuestión. A continuación se describen el procedimiento para generar automáticamente los modelos conceptuales de los estudiantes y los sistemas que implementan dicho procedimiento. Por último se ofrecen: una explicación de los experimentos realizados y sus resultados, las conclusiones obtenidas y las líneas de trabajo futuro. Además se proporciona información para aplicar el procedimiento en otro idioma y/o área de conocimiento.. Se propone un procedimiento para generar automáticamente modelos conceptuales de cada estudiante y de una clase a partir de las respuestas facilitadas al sistema de evaluación automático y adaptativo. Estos sistemas son la evolución de los actuales de evaluación de respuestas en texto libre, que evalúan respuestas en texto libre automáticamente y de forma adaptada al modelo de cada estudiante..

Beginning to read : the new phonics in context : a precis of the classic text.

Trata de conciliar el debate que ha dividido durante décadas a los teóricos sobre el 'correcto' modo de ayudar a los niños a aprender a leer, y pone de manifiesto que los educadores no deben verse atrapados en el dilema de fonética versus lectura con significado. Se propone un tratamiento integral, incluida la fonética, de los conocimientos y los procesos involucrados en el desarrollo de la habilidad para la lectura.

Text generation : writing 11 to 14. Book 1.

Recurso para ayudar a los estudiantes de primero de secundaria a mejorar el nivel en la escritura. Cubre todas las etapas del proceso de escritura y los objetivos señalados para la enseñanza del inglés e incluye, entre otros, la creación de personajes, la escritura de relatos cortos, la escritura de reseñas y el lenguaje del marketing.

Text generation : writing 11 to 14. Book 2.

Recurso para ayudar a los estudiantes de segundo de secundaria a aumentar el nivel en la escritura. Cubre todas las etapas del proceso de escritura y los objetivos señalados para la enseñanza del inglés e incluye, entre otros, el lenguaje figurado, la forma poética, narración de cuentos, información, descripción y análisis, la retórica persuasiva y la lógica persuasiva.

Text generation : writing 11 to 14. Book 3.

Recurso para ayudar a los estudiantes de secundaria a aumentar el nivel en la escritura. Cubre todas las etapas del proceso de escritura y los objetivos señalados para la enseñanza del inglés e incluye, entre otros, la narrativa, formas poéticas, literatura de viajes, argumento persuasivo, análisis literario y tipos de texto y parodia.

El gènere del text de divulgació científica: una proposta d’aplicació a l’aula

L’objectiu d’aquest estudi és presentar una proposta de lectura i producció textual, el Text de Divulgació Científica, tot fent servir una seqüència didàctica, per tal de preparar l’alumne per a la lectura i anàlisi de l’estructura textual que presenta aquest gènere discursiu, així com despertar-li l’interès per la recerca. D’aquesta manera, l’alumne comptarà amb instruments per a la producció escrita del gènere discursiu del text de divulgació científica. La proposta es basa en els treballs d’autors de lingüística textual i anàlisi del discurs.

Efficacy of the Speech Intelligibility Index as an intervention tool with pediatric cancer patients

This study evaluates the Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) as a tool to describe hearing loss and predict when hearing aids would be appropriate for pediatric oncology patients who have received or are currently receiving cisplatin. The efficacy of the SII is compared to the Brock grade which is commonly used for patients with ototoxic hearing loss secondary to cisplatin treatment. The SII is a discrete measure that precisely reflects the patient’s functional hearing status and is highly correlated with the need for audiologic intervention.

The effect of nonlinear frequency compression and linear frequency transposition on speech perception in school-aged children

The primary objective of this study is to determine whether nonlinear frequency compression and linear transposition algorithms provide speech perception benefit in school-aged children.

Auditory speech-discrimination as a function of age and type of audiogram

This paper reviews a study to determine if loss of speech discrimination is related to age and patients with audiograms showing steep high-frequency losses.

Speech perception through profoundly deaf ears

This paper is a review of a study done with an Oscillascope to determine if the sensory input would be of benefit to a profoundly deaf child.