Abstract: A set of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based methods
for the design of an effective system of speech recognition of
numerals of Assamese language captured under varied recording
conditions and moods is presented here. The work is related to
the formulation of several ANN models configured to use Linear
Predictive Code (LPC), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
other features to tackle mood and gender variations uttering numbers
as part of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system in
Assamese. The ANN models are designed using a combination of
Self Organizing Map (SOM) and Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP)
constituting a Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) block trained in a
cooperative environment to handle male and female speech samples
of numerals of Assamese- a language spoken by a sizable population
in the North-Eastern part of India. The work provides a comparative
evaluation of several such combinations while subjected to handle
speech samples with gender based differences captured by a microphone
in four different conditions viz. noiseless, noise mixed, stressed
and stress-free.
Abstract: There is a variety of inconsistencies in the differences
in alcohol use and related problems between male and female
genders. This study was aimed at analyzing the gender differences in
alcohol use and related problems among university students in
Minsk, Belarus. A total of 465 male (average age of 21) and 1030
female (average age of 20.5) students from four major universities in
Minsk, Belarus were administered WHO recommended standardized
screening instruments – AUDIT, MAST, CAGE questionnaire, as
well as other alcohol related questions. The male to female ratio for
the prevalence of alcohol problems according to the AUDIT was
3.34, while the ratio for alcohol users was 0.97. There are a wide
gender differences in the pattern of alcohol use and preference for
different alcoholic beverages, cause for drinking, and other alcohol
related problems like injuries and blackouts.
Abstract: This study explored the relationship between
occupational stress and the perceived effectiveness of men and
women managers in Ghanaian organizations. The exploration is
underlined by attempt to understand the degree to which male and
female managers in Ghanaian organizations experience occupational
stress at the workplace. The purpose is to examine the sources and
extents of occupational stress experienced by male and female
managers in Ghana. Data was collected using questionnaires and
analyzed using both descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.
The results showed that female managers in Ghana are more likely to
report of more stress experiences in the workplace than their male
counterparts. The female managers are more likely to perceive role
conflict and alienation as job stressors while the male managers
perceived blocked career as a major source of workplace stress. It is
concluded that despite the female managers experiencing enormous
level of occupational stress, there was no significant differences
between their managerial effectiveness and that of the male.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects
of modality principles in instructional software among first grade
pupils- achievements in the learning of Arabic Language. Two modes
of instructional software were systematically designed and
developed, audio with images (AI), and text with images (TI). The
quasi-experimental design was used in the study. The sample
consisted of 123 male and female pupils from IRBED Education
Directorate, Jordan. The pupils were randomly assigned to any one of
the two modes. The independent variable comprised the two modes
of the instructional software, the students- achievement levels in the
Arabic Language class and gender. The dependent variable was the
achievements of the pupils in the Arabic Language test. The
theoretical framework of this study was based on Mayer-s Cognitive
Theory of Multimedia Learning. Four hypotheses were postulated
and tested. Analyses of Variance (ANOVA) showed that pupils using
the (AI) mode performed significantly better than those using (TI)
mode. This study concluded that the audio with images mode was an
important aid to learning as compared to text with images mode.
Abstract: As the Social network game(SNG) is rising
dramatically worldwide, an interesting aspect has appeared in the
demographic analysis. That is the ratio of the game users by gender.
Although the ratio of male and female users in online game was
60:40% previously, the ratio of male and female users in SNG stood at
47:53% which shows that the ratio of female users is higher than that
of male users. Here, it should be noted that 35% in those 53% female
users are the first-time users of game. This fact suggests that women
who were not interested in game previously has taken an interest in
SNG. Notwithstanding this issue, there have been little studies on the
female users of SNG although there are many studies that analyzed the
tendency of female users- online game play. This study conducted the
analyzed how the game-playing tendency of SNG gamers was
manifested in the game by gender. For that, this study will identify the
tendency of SNG users by gender based on the preceding studies that
analyzed the online game users by gender. The subject of this study
was confined to the farm and urban construction simulation games
which were offered based on the mobile application platform.
Regarding the methodology of study, the first focus group
interview(FGI) was conducted with the male and female users who
had played games on Social network service(SNS) until recently. Later,
the second one-on-one in-depth interview was conducted to gain an
insight into the psychological state of the subjects.
Abstract: An emotional speech recognition system for the
applications on smart phones was proposed in this study to combine
with 3G mobile communications and social networks to provide users
and their groups with more interaction and care. This study developed
a mechanism using the support vector machines (SVM) to recognize
the emotions of speech such as happiness, anger, sadness and normal.
The mechanism uses a hierarchical classifier to adjust the weights of
acoustic features and divides various parameters into the categories of
energy and frequency for training. In this study, 28 commonly used
acoustic features including pitch and volume were proposed for
training. In addition, a time-frequency parameter obtained by
continuous wavelet transforms was also used to identify the accent and
intonation in a sentence during the recognition process. The Berlin
Database of Emotional Speech was used by dividing the speech into
male and female data sets for training. According to the experimental
results, the accuracies of male and female test sets were increased by
4.6% and 5.2% respectively after using the time-frequency parameter
for classifying happy and angry emotions. For the classification of all
emotions, the average accuracy, including male and female data, was
63.5% for the test set and 90.9% for the whole data set.
Abstract: Age at first marriage is a basic temporal term that is
culturally constructed for marriage relationship between an adult
male and an adult female intended to have sex, to reproduce and to
adapt to environment from one generation to another around the
world. Cross-cultural evidences suggest that age at first marriage for
both male and female not only varies across the cultures, but also
varies among the subcultures of the same society. The purpose of the
study was to compare age at first marriage for husband and wife
including age differences between them between Muslim and Santal
communities in rural Bangladesh. For this we hypothesized that (1)
there were significant differences in age at first marriage and age
interval between husband and wife between Muslim and Santal
communities in rural Bangladesh. In so doing, 288 couples (145 pairs
of couples for Muslim and 143 pairs of couples for Santal) were
selected by cluster random sampling from the Kalna village situated
in the Tanore Upazila of Rajshahi district, Bangladesh, whose
current mean age range was 36.59 years for husband and 28.85 years
for wife for the Muslim and 31.74 years for husband and 25.21 years
for wife for the Santal respectively. The results of Independent
Sample t test showed that mean age at first marriage for the Muslim
samples was 23.05 years for husbands and 15.11 years for wives,
while mean age at first marriage for the Santal samples was 20.71
years for husbands and 14.34 years for wives respectively that were
significantly different at p0.05) among the selected husbands
and wives between the two communities. This study recommends
that further cross-cultural researches should be done on the causeeffect
relationships between socio-cultural factors and age at
marriage between the two communities in Bangladesh.
Abstract: The objective of the research was to study of foot
anthropometry of children aged 7-12 years in the South of Thailand Thirty-three dimensions were measured on 305 male and 295 female
subjects with 3 age ranges (7-12 years old). The instrumentation consists of four types of anthropometer, digital vernier caliper, digital
height gauge and measuring tape. The mean values and standard
deviations of average age, height, and weight of the male subjects were 9.52(±1.70) years, 137.80(±11.55) cm, and 37.57(±11.65) kg.
Female average age, height, and weight subjects were 9.53(±1.70) years, 137.88(±11.55) cm, and 34.90(±11.57) kg respectively. The
comparison of the 33 comparison measured anthropometric. Between
male and female subjects were sexual differences in size on women in almost all areas of significance (p
Abstract: This study aims to investigate how much both son and
daughter trust their father and what are the underlying reasons they
trust their father. The results revealed five main reasons why
Malaysian adolescents trust their father. Those reasons are related to
the role of father, father-child relationship, father-s characteristics,
father-s nurturing nature and father-s attitude and behavior. A total of
1022 students (males = 241, females = 781) from one of public
university in Sabah, Malaysia participated in the study. The
participants completed open-ended questionnaires developed by Kim
(2008), asking how much the adolescents trust their father, and the
reasons why they trust their father. The data was analysed by using
the indigenous psychology method proposed by [1] Findings of this
study revealed the pattern of trust towards father for both Malaysian
male and female adolescents. The results contributed new
information about Malaysian adolescents- trust towards their father
form the indigenous context. The implications of finding will be
discussed.
Abstract: Thousands of masters athletes participate
quadrennially in the World Masters Games (WMG), yet this cohort
of athletes remains proportionately under-investigated. Due to a
growing global obesity pandemic in context of benefits of physical
activity across the lifespan, the BMI trends for this unique population
was of particular interest. The nexus between health, physical
activity and aging is complex and has raised much interest in recent
times due to the realization that a multifaceted approach is necessary
in order to counteract the obesity pandemic. By investigating age
based trends within a population adhering to competitive sport at
older ages, further insight might be gleaned to assist in understanding
one of many factors influencing this relationship.BMI was derived
using data gathered on a total of 6,071 masters athletes (51.9% male,
48.1% female) aged 25 to 91 years ( =51.5, s =±9.7), competing at
the Sydney World Masters Games (2009). Using linear and loess
regression it was demonstrated that the usual tendency for prevalence
of higher BMI increasing with age was reversed in the sample. This
trend in reversal was repeated for both male and female only sub-sets
of the sample participants, indicating the possibility of improved
prevalence of BMI with increasing age for both the sample as a
whole and these individual sub-groups.This evidence of improved
classification in one index of health (reduced BMI) for masters
athletes (when compared to the general population) implies there are
either improved levels of this index of health with aging due to
adherence to sport or possibly the reduced BMI is advantageous and
contributes to this cohort adhering (or being attracted) to masters
sport at older ages.
Abstract: Emerging adulthood, the new period which is
especially prevalent in the developed or industrialized countries
during ages 18 to 29, is a new conceptualization proposed by Arnett.
Intimacy is a superordinate concept which includes intimate
interaction and intimate relationship. This study includes two
proceses which are scale development and conduction of gender
differences about markers of starting romantic intimacy among
Turkish emerging adults. In first process, Markers of Starting
Romantic Intimacy Scale, with 17 items and 5 factors, was developed
using by 220 participants. In the second step, the scale was
administered to 318 Turkish male and female emerging adults
between ages 22 and 25. Results show that there is no significant
difference between gender and total score of the scale. With respect
to gender, there are significant differences between gender and in
four subscales which are self perception, affective and cognitive
intimacy, self knowledge and romantic verbalizations. Moreover,
there is no significant relationship between gender and behavioral
intimacy subscale.
Abstract: This study attempted to compare the sexual perceptions and behaviors of male and female married Ilocanos. Data were gathered from 1,374 married Ilocanos (687 husbands and 687 wives) from nine municipalities and one city of the First District of Ilocos Sur. Findings showed that the male and female married Ilocanos differ in their psychological and physical sexual perceptions, but they had common social and spiritual sexual perceptions. Moreover, they were consistent in their behaviors towards sex, except for their behaviour after sex without reaching orgasm, wherein the males feel bad after having sex without reaching orgasm, while the females simply sleep it off.
Abstract: The main objective of our study is to collect data
about the profile of the asthmatic patients in Assam and thereby have
a comprehensive knowledge of the factors influencing the asthmatic
patients of the state and their medication pattern. We developed a
search strategy to find any publication about the community based
survey asthma related and used. These to search the MEDLINE
(1996 to current literature) CINAHL DOAJ pubmed databases using
the key phrases, Asthma, Respiratory disorders, Drug therapy of
Asthma, database decision support system and asthma. The
appropriate literature was printed out from the online source and
library (Journal) source. The study was conducted through a set of
structured and non-structured questionnaires targeted on the
asthmatic patients belonging to the rural and urban areas of Assam,
during the month of Dec 2006 to July 2007, 138 cases were studied
in Gauwathi Medical College & Hospital located in Bhangagarh,
Assam in India. The demographic characteristics a factor in 138
patients with asthma with allergic rhinitis (cases) gives the detail
profile of asthmatic patient-s distribution of Assam as classified on
the basis of age and sex. It is evident from the study that male
populations (66%) are more prone to asthma as compared to the
females (34%).Another striking features that emerged from this
survey is the maximum prevalence of asthma in the age group of 20-
30 years followed by infants belonging to the age group of 7 (0.05%)
0-10years among both male and female populations of Assam. The
high incidence of asthma in the age group of 20-30 years may
probably be due to the allergy arising out of sudden exposure to dust
and pollen which the children face while playing and going to the
school. The rural females in the age group of 30-40 years are more
prone to asthma than urban females in the same age group may be
due to sex differentiation among the tribal population of the state.
Pharmacists should educate the asthmatics how to use inhalers
considering growing menace of asthma in the state. Safer drugs
should be produced in the form of aerosol so that easy administration
by the asthmatic patients and physicians of the state is possible for
curing asthma. The health centers should be more equipped with the
medicines to cure asthma in the state like Assam.
Abstract: This study was conducted to determine the
objectivity, reliability and validity of the 90º push-ups test protocol
among male and female students of Sports Science Program, Faculty
of Sports Science and Coaching Sultan Idris University of Education.
Samples (n = 300), consisted of males (n = 168) and females (n =
132) students were randomly selected for this study. Researchers
tested the 90º push-ups on the sample twice in a single trial, test and
re-test protocol in the bench press test. Pearson-Product Moment
Correlation method's was used to determine the value of objectivity,
reliability and validity testing. The findings showed that the 900 pushups
test protocol showed high consistency between the two testers
with a value of r = .99. Likewise, The reliability value between test
and re-test for the 90º push-ups test for the male (r=.93) and female
(r=.93) students was also high. The results showed a correlation
between 90º push-ups test and bench press test for boys was r = .64
and girls was r = .28. This finding indicates that the use of the 90º
push-ups to test muscular strength and endurance in the upper body
of males has a higher validity values than female students.
Abstract: Whilst there is growing evidence that activity
across the lifespan is beneficial for improved health, there are
also many changes involved with the aging process and
subsequently the potential for reduced indices of health. The
nexus between health, physical activity and aging is complex
and has raised much interest in recent times due to the
realization that a multifaceted approached is necessary in
order to counteract a growing obesity epidemic. By
investigating age based trends within a population adhering to
competitive sport at older ages, further insight might be
gleaned to assist in understanding one of many factors
influencing this relationship.
BMI was derived using data gathered on a total of 6,071
masters athletes (51.9% male, 48.1% female) aged 25 to 91
years ( =51.5, s =±9.7), competing at the Sydney World
Masters Games (2009). Using linear and loess regression it
was demonstrated that the usual tendency for prevalence of
higher BMI increasing with age was reversed in the sample.
This trend in reversal was repeated for both male and female
only sub-sets of the sample participants, indicating the
possibility of improved prevalence of BMI with increasing
age for both the sample as a whole and these individual subgroups.
This evidence of improved classification in one index of
health (reduced BMI) for masters athletes (when compared to
the general population) implies there are either improved
levels of this index of health with aging due to adherence to
sport or possibly the reduced BMI is advantageous and
contributes to this cohort adhering (or being attracted) to
masters sport at older ages. Demonstration of this
proportionately under-investigated World Masters Games
population having an improved relationship between BMI and
increasing age over the general population is of particular
interest in the context of the measures being taken globally to
curb an obesity epidemic.