The Ancient Egyptian Pyramids The Seven Wonders Of The...

The Egyptian Pyramids The seven wonders of the world: the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and of course, the Great Pyramids of Giza. (telegraph.co.uk) The Great Pyramids of Giza, built between 2584 and 2561 B.C, are located twelve miles from the capital of egypt, Cairo. (ancient.eu) They were the tallest man made structures in the world for 3800 years, until the completion of the Lincoln Cathedral in England. Measuring at 230 meters wide and 146 meters tall, the Great Pyramid at Giza took over 100,000 workers and over 20 years to complete. (Ancientegypt.co.uk) Why did the the Egyptians go†¦show more content†¦(Biography.com) The pyramids explain an abundance of information on about how the people of ancient egypt saw their pharaohs and queens. Inducing years and years of back-breaking labor to build structures that have people today still in awe. Historians still argue about who actually built the pyramids; due to the fact that they are so gigantic, some believe that the ancient egyptians could not have possibly built the pyramids by themselves based on the size of the pyramids and the lack of technology they were using. However, Mark Lehner, archeologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and Harvard Semitic Museum, thinks that the people of ancient egypt built the pyramids to show their respect to the pharaohs and queens who ruled over them. â€Å"Every time I go back to Giza my respect increases for those people and that society, that they could do it. You see, to me it s even more fascinating that they did this. And that by doing this they contributed something to the human caree r and its overall development.† Mark Lehner s statement shows that the ancient Egyptian culture admired their leaders more than any other culture did at the time. (pbs.org) The cultureShow MoreRelatedThe Great Pyramid Of Giza1138 Words   |  5 Pagesof the seven wonders of the world. For almost four millennias they were the tallest structures of the entire world. And yet we are still baffled as to how they were built. The Pyramids! We find these mysterious, immense, and fascinating structures throughout the world. We gaze at them in wonder and ask ourselves: who built them? How were they built? what were they used for? and, when were they built? The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza pyramid complexRead MoreSeven Wonders of the Ancient World1404 Words   |  6 PagesSeven Wonders of the Ancient World Seven Wonders of the Ancient World The Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were some of the greatest civilizations in human history. The Greeks and the Romans had many interests and pursuits. These are cultures that placed a great deal of value in aesthetics and architecture. There are in fact many structures and artifacts that have survived from those civilizations. The Greek and Romans pursued and appreciation what they believed to be aesthetic and mathematicalRead More The Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Khafre at Giza Essay967 Words   |  4 Pagesto its base, a thirty story replica of the Egyptian pyramid of Khafre at Giza. Khafres Pyramid, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, gives an understanding of the Egyptian culture over 4000 years age. Located within the spectacular city of Las Vegas, Nevada, the Luxor Hotel and Casino creates a bridge between ancient Egyptian architecture with futuristic technology. Completed on October 15, 1993, the Luxor Hotel gives its patrons a taste of ancient Egypt. With 600 feet on each side at the baseRead MoreEgyptian, Islamic and Roman Architecture Essay1539 Words   |  7 PagesEgyptian Civilization: I chose Egyptian civilization because it’s known as the birthplace of modern civilization. Another reason I chose Egyptian civilization is because its contributions to the world still seen, studied and absorbers. Egypt contribution has come along way and has mad an impact in on thousands of cultures worldwide. Some of Egypt’s contributions I will address are arts, literature and architecture. The Egyptians had little wood to build their buildings and monuments. The EgyptiansRead MoreEssay on Ancient Egypt1122 Words   |  5 PagesAncient Egypt One of the greatest and most enduring human civilizations established itself in the Nile Valley. Over thousands of years the Egyptians shaped their civilization and have portrayed their canonical nature within their art, literature, and architecture. The Egyptians adhered to their rules and their standards of belief and behavior in their daily lives. The artistic canon is well represented in Egyptian tomb paintings. For the Egyptians, art was made to serve a particularRead MoreEgypt And Mesopotamia917 Words   |  4 PagesArchitecture in Egypt and Mesopotamia When you think about ancient architecture, what questions arise? Do you ask yourself about its history, durability, and structure? For example, Egypt is known for its pyramids, while Mesopotamia is known for its temple. Both are influential and recognizable after so many years and will continue to be for years to come, those questions come without a doubt to mind. In the following paragraphs, these questions will be answered and explainedRead More pyramids and ziggurats Essays880 Words   |  4 Pagesdifferences) between Ancient Egyptian Pyramids, Mesopotamian ziggurats, and the pyramids of Pre-Columbian South America. All of them had major significance for their peoples cultures and religious beliefs, as well as having historic significance today. The greatest parallel between all of these ancient skyscrapers is that they were made for the upper echelons of these now defunct civilizations. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The Egyptians built the most of these cultures. Over 90 royal pyramids were producedRead MoreThe Great Pyramid Of Giza Essay1147 Words   |  5 PagesThe â€Å"Great Pyramid of Giza† is situated in the Giza Necropolis which borders the largest city in Egypt – Giza. It is also identified by two other names; the Pyramid of â€Å"Cheops† or â€Å"Khufu†. The Great Pyramid stands as the largest and oldest among the Giza Necropolis pyramids. Furthermore, it is listed among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, holding the record of being the oldest in that list. The magnificence of the pyramid’s structure is an attraction that has grabbed the attention of severalRead MoreThe Massive Mystery Essay1687 Words   |  7 Pagescollection of theories as to how the ancient pyramids were constructed. The Great Pyramid of Giza is truly an incredible architectural accomplishment. This pyramid in particular is commonly referred to as the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Some believe that the Egyptians had developed technology that has simply been lost in time. Others think they had help from extraterrestrial beings. The reality of the construction relied on human labor. The egyptians must have developed an intelligentRead MoreWhat ´s Webiography?946 Words   |  4 Pagesassignment. Ancient history is something I never taught I will be interested in until I started watching the history channel, although it is a prerequisite for a degree course I have always had interest in knowing more about this course and one thing I noticed from watching the history channel is, it has connection with the bible. For this assignment, am going to be writing about; the Egyptian pyramid, the Greece gods and the River Nile. I picked these three topics because it goes back to ancient history

Psychology for Psychological Factors- https//myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about thePsychologyfor Social and Psychological Factors. Answer: Biopsychosocial model asserts that health and illness are determined by a dynamic interaction between biological, social and psychological factors (Kevin, 2011). Based on this model, it is the interaction of these factors which lead to a particular health or illness outcome. For pain to occur in ones body, it means that a damage has occurred somewhere in his body and this damage can be influenced by different factors. From this model, it is clear that the difference in level of pain which people experience is influenced by different factors which impact it. This model can be used to help human beings understand that the happiness they have is not from pleasure, but from rest from pain. Task 2 Findings From various studies conducted in the past have shown close relationship between stress and pain. Stress is defined as a sense of uncontrollability and unpredictability which arise as a result of several factors which human beings undergo in their day to day activities (Carri-Ann, 2012). While stress can be helpful in some occasions, like for example in challenging work environment, it can also be detrimental on other factors like for example in dealing with pain. Recent research indicates that stress dramatically decreases the ability of the body to control pain. When one is stressed, the muscles tense up. When this happens, the ability of the body to respond to pain is usually impacted (Alan Richard, 2011). When the body muscles are taut and tense for a long period of time, other reactions are triggered. Sometimes these reactions lead to illnesses which may increase the pain. Because pain is usually regulated by the nervous system, the brain becomes the key player on how people perceive what they experience in their bodies. This means when one is stressed, the ability of the brain to filter pain signals is usually negatively influenced and this may lead to increase in pain. In some cases, Stress in the body lead to raise in blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate and muscle tension. Abnormalities in these activities reduce the ability to modulate pain and this is the reason why pain increases with increase with the level of stress (Minakshi, 2015). Increase in Stress also worsen pain through impacting sleep, mood and pain threshold. Because stress triggers pain, one of the strategies which can be used to attain pain relief is coming up with strategies of how to manage stress effectively. Task 3 Telling someone that your pain is in his head can make the person enter in a situation which can significantly increase the level of the pain. This phrase can only be understood by people who knows the relationship between the function of the brain and pain, and if used for people who do not understand this, it can make them develop stress which can in turn lead to an increase on the level of pain. Although the brain, which is in the head is the one which give perception towards pain, this can be hardly understood by someone who is in pain (Peter, 2013). In most cases, people in chronic pain views this as a hurtful and biting phrase which should not be applied on situations of pain because it worsens the condition in some people especially those who do not understand what it means. Some of them find the phrase not realistic because they feel that they only experience the pain where there is a problem. Task 1 This article explains the relationship between the psychological wellbeing of university students and coping with stress. The article also considers other factors in stress management like gender, age and degree in ones ability to cope with stress. The authors also tried to explain different profiles of university students according to their level of psychological well-being and also provided an analysis of the difference between these profiles in the use of three coping strategies namely; support seeking, positive reappraisal and planning. There are various ways which university students can use to cope with stress which arise from their day to day activities. The effectiveness of each strategy is influenced by several factors including the cause of the stress (Freire, Del Mar Ferradas, Valle, al., 2016). The article explains the importance of these coping strategies and how they can be applied by students on coping with stress. Generally, this article explains how various aspects influence the ability of university student to cope with academic stress. It also explains the relationship between stress and well-being and how the ability to cope with stress influence various things like academic performance, physical health among others. Task 2 If I received lower mark than I expected on a university assignment, I would use support-seeking. This strategy can be of benefit to me in the fact that getting low grade can lead to increased stress because one of the major goals of every student is to attain the best grades. Support seeking can act as a buffer against the physiological and psychological effects of stress which can result from thinking about the reasons which led to the failed grade (Carr, 2011). Support seeking can play a significant role in managing stress in such situation because it can prevent me from isolating and internalizing the impact of stress. One of the ways which I could apply this mechanism is trying to talk with a supportive person. This can be my subject teacher, other student, family member or any other person who I feel can give me an information which can assist in managing the stress. In this case, informational support can be prioritized because the aim of seeking for support will be to obtain information which can guide and advise me on coming up with a solution, and also assist me on how understand and cope better with the situation. Task 3 According to this article, coping strategies utilized by students plays a significant role in their psychological well-being. The journal used the theory of stress coping to explain the relationship among various factors like the causes of stress among the university students, coping strategies and the psychological well-being. From the article, the use of effective coping strategies among the students makes them maintain higher level of psychological well-being (Subhi Al-Gamal, 2013). Apart from psychological well-being, the author also relates stress among university students with various other factors like academic performance and physical health. This explains the reasons why the students who find challenges in coping with stress fail to indicate good academic performance as compared to those who use best strategies to manage stress. Being unable to cope with stress also impacts the physical health of students by making them look sick even when they are healthy. References Alan, D. K., Richard, D. U. (2011). Understanding Pain: What You Need to Know to Take Control. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Carr, D. (2011). Worried Sick: How Stress Hurts Us and How to Bounce Back. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Carri-Ann, G. (2012). Review of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Chronic Pain: The Path to Integrated Care. Journal of Rehabilitation Research Development, 49(12), 78-90. Freire, C., Del Mar Ferradas, M., Valle, A., al., e. (2016). Profiles of Psychological Well-being and Coping Strategies among University Students. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 20-56. Kevin, F. (2011). The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model: Reconciling Art Science in Psychiatry. American Journal of Psychotherapy,, 65(1), 54-69. Minakshi, R. (2015). Positive Psychology and Its Importance at Workplace. Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(2), 98-102. Peter, S. (2013). Defining Counselling Psychology: What Do All the Words Mean? New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 42(3), 56-78. Subhi, A., Al-Gamal, E. (2013). Perceived stress and coping strategies among Jordanian nursing students during clinical practice in psychiatric/mental health courses. international Journal of health nursing, 23(4), 326335.

USERS STORY Essays - Neurochemistry, Entheogens,

USERS STORY I had a really bad experience....I ate two hits of orange sunshine. I was off in my own world. Among the highlights of my fourteen hours in hell was watching the flesh burn off my hand (it didn't really..it just seemed like it was), being strangled by the seatbelt which was now a snake, being convinced that a white schoolbus from Charlotte Latin was stalking me in an attempt to kill me and watching myself burn in hell for all eternity several times. Needless to say, I eased up on dosing for awhile, actually a year and a half, during which time I awoke regularly from horrific nightmares during the night, but now it's all good.....viva la LSD!!!! KNOWN AS LSD, Acid, trips, T's, tabs, blotters, dots, micro dots, mind expansion kits WHAT IS IT? LSD can also be known by their printed design name - eg strawberries or purple ohms. LSD is very much a mind drug. It is a hallucinogen which means it distorts the users perception of themselves and the world around them. Some people find the LSD experience profoundly enjoyable, whilst others find the effects terrify them. The LSD experience is described as a 'trip' because it is like a journey to another place. Trips work directly on the psychological and chemical functions of your brain. WHERE IS IT FROM AND WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? LSD usually comes in small squares of blotting paper with a cartoon picture or motif printed on one side. LSD can also come in the form of tablets, capsules or pills. These can be many different colours. HOW MUCH IS IT? The cost of one tab of LSD ranges between $20.00 and $25.00. The cost can reduce to as low as $8.00 per tab if a bulk purchase is made. HOW IT'S TAKEN LSD is usually swallowed, and you will begin to feel the effects within 30 - 60 minutes, with it lasting for up to 12 hours. Some trips have been reported to last as long as 24 hours. EFFECTS The effects can vary widely from person to person and be unpredictable depending on your mood at the time of taking the drug, self-confidence, the environment you are taking LSD in, company and general 'mind space' at the time. The physical effects are minimal on acid, but the mental effects are enormous. As the trip hits you, colours appear more brilliant, sound is sharper, moving objects leave a trail behind them and repeated patterns are sometimes seen with eyes closed. Your body may feel hot and sweaty, sometimes alternating with chills and shivering. Over the second hour the effects become more intense, whimsical visions can appear from nowhere - from shapes in smoke, to the effect of buildings and walls looking like they are breathing. Acid tends to alter what is already there, rather than to create hallucinations out of nothing. True vivid hallucinations seem to only occur with large or pure doses of acid. At the peak of the trip, time is slowed almost to a standstill and trippers may feel that they are in a different world. 6-8 hours after taking LSD the sensations begin to subside. After 12 hours, the trip is usually over, although some trips can last up to 24 hours. You will probably still experience some residual effects until you've had some decent sleep. Flashbacks, a spontaneous recurrence of the original experience, can happen years later without any warning. Tolerance and dependance does not develop with acid. SAFE USE If you use LSD, you should consider the following:- It is safer not to use LSD at all; If you use LSD, make sure you are not alone. If something goes wrong call for help straight away; Don't wander off into potentially dangerous situations such as busy roads or crowded public places; If you are feeling tired or anxious, it's probably best not to take acid, as it will make you feel worse rather than shift your mood; If somebody has a bad trip, calm them down, talk to them and if this doesn't seem to help be sure to call for assistance straight away; Don't be afraid to call an ambulance if something goes wrong. The ambulance officers are not obliged to alert the police unless the situation becomes violent.

Microsoft and Outsourcing to Flextronics essays

Microsoft and Outsourcing to Flextronics essays (1) Microsoft's decision to outsource their Xbox production to Flextronics, a Singapore based company, was based on several variables. Microsoft is primarily a software company and had a small hand in producing hardware, such as joysticks, computer mice, keyboards, etc. When Microsoft came into the video game industry, they decided that they lacked the manufacturing and logistics capabilities to make the Xbox and manage a global supply chain [1]. Microsoft had chosen to outsource to Flextronics for several reasons. Flextronics could lower costs in production for Microsoft because they were able to tightly manage its supply chain, therefore reducing the chances of supply chain disruption, which can be costly [1]. Not only was Flextronics efficient in supply chain management they had an "industrial park" strategy that Microsoft and many other electronic manufacturers didn't have. Flextronics required that key suppliers locate their factories next to Flextronics assembly plants in lo w-cost areas. Flextronics had industrial parks in Brazil, China, Hungary, Mexico, and Poland. This global presence that Flextronics had is exactly what Microsoft was looking for. With these "industrial parks" located throughout various locations in the world, Flextronics would be able to shift production from one plant to another as demand conditions warranted [1]. Additionally, Flextronics and Microsoft used an advanced Web-based information system that it used to communicate with each other on a real time basis. This was pertinent to reducing errors and relaying information quickly to one another to ensure and facilitate expedient production of Xbox consoles where inventory is low, to avoid any shortages. Finally, Microsoft had a long standing relationship with Flextronics. Microsoft had used Flextronics for years to produce their small hardware (computer mice, joysticks, etc.) and trusted them. Microsoft trusted that Flextronics would be able to bu...

The Value of Jackson Pollock's Painting Assignment

The Value of Jackson Pollock's Painting - Assignment Example The paper "The Value of Jackson Pollock's Painting" concerns the paintings of Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock’s painting can be sold for millions dollars because the artist is generally identified as a self created legend, is related to the innovative painting technique of drip painting within Abstract Expressionism genre, his artworks are renowned for spontaneity, his artistic career is interconnected with the development of mass media, and his artworks are symbolic of Americanism with immense artistic and economic value. One can see that fame and success within the scenario of art cannot be attained without any individual effort. Harold Rosenberg stated that, â€Å"The act on the canvas springs from an attempt to resurrect the saving moment in his â€Å"story† when the painter first felt himself released from Value-myth of past self-recognition†. For instance, the popularity of the artworks by Jackson Pollock is interconnected with the artist’s effort t o go beyond the limits of traditional mode of painting. To be specific, the artist did not try to follow the painters who adopted traditional methods in painting. Instead, he chose his own way and method within art. Besides, he knew that traditionalistic approach towards art, especially in painting, cannot help him to attain the status of a legend. But one must not misunderstand that his aim was to acclaim fame because he believed in individual freedom of artists. Similarly, Jackson Pollock was deeply interested in experimenting with different types of paints.

Estimation of gravitational acceleration due to pendulim Assignment

Estimation of gravitational acceleration due to pendulim - Assignment Example The use of a simple pendulum experiment in the study of motion helps to provide valuable insights into the acceleration of objects due to the gravitational force. In this experiment, a mass is set to swing to determine the number of oscillations in a particular period. Such an oscillatory motion is referred to as simple harmonic motion (JHA & JHA, 2009 pg. 275). This experiment was conducted to facilitate the understanding of the relationship between various parameters in an oscillatory system. As such, the main objective of this experiment is to estimate the value of gravitational force acting on the pendulum and compare this value with the widely accepted value of 9.81m/s2, mathematically. The period is the time a simple pendulum takes to complete a single oscillation. This physical quantity does not depend on the mass and the amplitude of the swing. However, it is dependent on factors such as the pendulum’s length and the acceleration due to the gravitation. A shorter pendulum has a shorter period than a longer pendulum (Matthews 2005, p.133). In small swings (swings with small angles), the period, T, of a pendulum with a certain length, L, is given by; There exists only one true value of the period of a swinging pendulum; no matter the measurement method and how precise the instrumentation used can be applied. As such, a measurement of the period is a true value approximation and gives either the true value or a value close to the true value. From the above, acceleration due to gravitational force can be determined by making g the subject of the formula, that is, g = 4π2L / T2. The apparatus used in the experiment included the pendulum bob, string, split cork, and timer. The thread of the pendulum was placed between two halves of a split cork and clamped to a firm support. Additionally, the length of the thread was set at a

Speaker Independent Speech Recognizer Development

Speaker Independent Speech Recognizer Development Chapter 4 Methodology and Implementation This chapter describes the methodology and implementation of the speaker independent speech recognizer for the Sinhala language and the Android mobile application for voice dialing. Mainly there are two phases of the research. First one is to build the speaker independent Sinhala speech recognizer to recognize the digits spoken in Sinhala language. The second phase is to build an android application by integrating the trained speech recognizer. This chapter covers the tools, algorithms, theoretical aspects, the models and the file structures used for the entire research process. 4.1Research phase 1: Build the speaker independent Sinhala speech recognizer for recognizing the digits. In this section the development of the speaker independent Sinhala speech recognizer is described, step by step. It includes the phonetic dictionary, language model, grammar file, acoustic speech database and the trained acoustic model creation. 4.1.1 Data preparation This system is a Sinhala speech recognition voice dial and since there is no such speech database which is done earlier was available, the speech has to be taken from the scratch to develop the system. Data collection The first stage of any speech recognizer is the collection of sound signals. Database should contain a variety of enough speakers recording. The size of the database is compared to the task we handle. For this application only little number of words was considered. This research aims only the written Sinhala vocabulary that can be applied for voice dialing. Altogether twelve words were considered with the ten numbers including two initial calling words â€Å"amatanna† and â€Å"katakaranna†. Here the Database has two parts, the training part and the testing part. Usually about 1/10th of the full speech data is used to the testing part. In this research 3000 speech samples were used for training and 150 speech samples were used for testing. Speech database Before collecting data, a speech database was created. The database was included with the Sinhala speech samples taken from variety of people who were in different age levels. Since there was no such database published anywhere for Sinhala language relevant for voice dialing, speech had to be collected from Sinhala native speakers. Prompt sheet To create the speech database, the first step was to prepare the prompt sheet having a list of sentences for all the recordings. Here it used 100 sentences that are different from each other by generating the numbers randomly. 50 sentences are starting with the word â€Å"amatanna† while the other half is starting with the word â€Å"katakaranna†. The prompt sheet used for this research is given in the Appendix A. Recording The prepared sentences in the prompt sheet were recorded by using thirty (30) native speakers since this is speaker independent application. The speakers were selected according to the age limits and divided them into eight age groups. Four people were selected from each group except one age group. Two females and two males were included into each age group. One group only contained two people with one female and one male. Each speaker was given 100 sentences to speak and altogether 3000 speech samples were recorded for training. The description of speakers such as gender and age can be found in Appendix A. If there was an error in the recording due to the background noise and filler sounds, the speaker was asked to repeat it and got the correct sound signal. Since the proposed system is a discrete system, the speakers have to make a short pause at the start and end of the recording and also between the words when they were uttered. Speech was recorded in a quiet room and the recordi ngs were done at nights by using a condenser recorder microphone. The sounds were recorded under the sampling rate of 44.1 kHz using mono channel and they were saved under *.wav format. Sampling frequency and format of speech audio files Speech recording files were saved in the file format of MS WAV. The â€Å"Praatâ€Å" software was used to convert the 44.1 kHz sampling frequency signals to 16 kHz frequency signals since the frequency should be 16kHz of the training samples. Audio files were recorded in a medium length of 11 seconds. Since there should be a silence in the beginning and the end of the utterance and it should not be exceeded 0.2 seconds, the â€Å"Praat† software was used to edit all 3000 sound signals. 4.1.2 Pronunciation dictionary The pronunciation dictionary was implemented by hand since the number of words used for the voice dialing system is very few. It is used only 12 words from the Sinhala vocabulary. To create the dictionary, the International Phonetic Alphabet for Sinhala Language and the previously created dictionaries by CMU Sphinx were used. But the acoustic phones were taken mostly by studying the different types of databases given by the Carnegie Mellon University’s Sphinx Forum (CMU Sphinx Forum). Two dictionaries were implemented for this system. One is for the speech utterances and the other one is for filler sounds. The filler sounds contain the silences in the beginning, middle and at the end of the speech utterances. The attachment of the two types of dictionaries can be found on the Appendix A. They are referred to as the languagedictionaryand thefiller dictionary. 4.1.3 Creating the grammar file The grammar file also created by hand since the number of words used for the system is very few. The JSGF (JSpeech Grammar Format) format was used to implement the grammar file. The grammar file can be found in Appendix A. 4.1.4 Building the language model Word search is restricted by a language model. It identifies the matching words by comparing the previously recognized words by the model and restricts the matching process by taking off the words that are not possible to be. N-gram language model is the most common language models used nowadays. It is a finite state language model and it contains statistics of word sequences. In search space where restriction is applied, a good accuracy rate can be obtained if the language model is a very successful one. The result is the language model can predict the next word properly. It usually restricts the word search which are included the vocabulary. The language model was built using the cmuclmtk software. First of all the reference text was created and that text (svd.text) can be found in Appendix A. It was written in a specific format. The speech sentences were delimited byandtags. Then the vocabulary file was generated by giving the following command. text2wfreq svd.vocab Then the generated vocabulary file was edited to remove words (numbers and misspellings). When finding misspellings, they were fixed in the input reference text. The generated vocabulary file (svd.vocab) can be found in the Appendix A. Then the ARPA format language model was generated using these commands. text2idngram -vocab svd.vocab -idngram svd.idngram idngram2lm -vocab_type 0 -idngram svd.idngram -vocab svd.vocab –arpa svd.arpa Finally the CMU binary of language model (DMP file) was generated using the command sphinx_lm_convert -i svd.arpa -o svd.lm.DMP The final output containing the language model needed for the training process is svd.lm.dmp file. This is a binary file. 4.1.5Acoustic model Before starting the acoustic model creation, the following file structure was arranged as described by the CMU Sphinx tool kit guide. The name of the speech database is â€Å"svd† (Sinhala Voice Dial). The content of these files is given in Appendix A. svd.dic -Phonetic dictionary svd.phone -Phoneset file svd.lm.DMP -Language model svd.filler -List of fillers svd _train.fileids -List of files for training svd _train.transcription -Transcription for training svd _test.fileids -List of files for testing svd _test.transcription -Transcription for testing All these files were included in to one directory and it was named as â€Å"etc†. The speech samples of wav files were included in to another directory and named it as â€Å"wav†. These two directories were included in to another directory and named it using the name of the database (svd). Before starting the training process, there should be another directory that contains the â€Å"svd† and the required compilation package â€Å"pocketsphinx†, â€Å"sphinxbase† and â€Å"sphinxtrain† directories. All the packages and the â€Å"svd† directory were put into another directory and started the training process. Setting up the training scripts The command prompt terminal is used to run the scripts of the training process. Before starting the process, terminal was changed to the database â€Å"svd† directory and then the following command was run. python ../sphinxtrain/scripts/sphinxtrain –t svd setup This command copied all the required configuration files into etc sub directory of the database directory and prepared the database for training. The two configuration files created were feat.params and sphinx_train.cfg. These two are given in Appendix A. Set up the database These values were filled in at configuration time. The Experiment name, will be used to name model files and log files in the database. $CFG_DB_NAME = svd; $CFG_EXPTNAME = $CFG_DB_NAME; Set up the format of database audio Since the database contains speech utterances with the ‘wav’ format and they were recorded using MSWav, the extension and the type were given accordingly as â€Å"wav† and â€Å"mswav†. $CFG_WAVFILES_DIR = $CFG_BASE_DIR/wav; $CFG_WAVFILE_EXTENSION = wav; $CFG_WAVFILE_TYPE = mswav; # one of nist, mswav, raw Configure Path to files This process was done automatically when having the right file structure in the running directory. The naming of the files must be very accurate. The paths were assigned to the variables used in main training of models. $CFG_DICTIONARY = $CFG_LIST_DIR/$CFG_DB_NAME.dic; $CFG_RAWPHONEFILE = $CFG_LIST_DIR/$CFG_DB_NAME.phone; $CFG_FILLERDICT = $CFG_LIST_DIR/$CFG_DB_NAME.filler; $CFG_LISTOFFILES = $CFG_LIST_DIR/${CFG_DB_NAME}_train.fileids; $CFG_TRANSCRIPTFILE = $CFG_LIST_DIR/${CFG_DB_NAME}_train.transcription; $CFG_FEATPARAMS = $CFG_LIST_DIR/feat.params; Configure model type and model parameters The model type continuous and semi continuous can be used in pocket sphinx. Continuous type is used for continuous speech recognition. Semi continuous is used for discrete speech recognition process. Since this application use discrete speech the semi continuous model training was used. #$CFG_HMM_TYPE = .cont.; # Sphinx 4, Pocketsphinx $CFG_HMM_TYPE = .semi.; # PocketSphinx $CFG_FINAL_NUM_DENSITIES = 8; # Number of tied states (senones) to create in decision-tree clustering $CFG_N_TIED_STATES = 1000; The number of senones used to train the model is indicated in this value. The sound can be chosen accurately if the number of senones is higher. But if we use too much senones, then it may not be able to recognize the unseen sounds. So the Word Error Rate can be very much higher on unseen sounds. The approximate number of senones and number of densities is provided in the table below. Configure sound feature parameters The default parameter used for sound files in Sphinx is a rate of 16 thousand samples per second (16KHz). If this is the case, then the etc/feat.params file will be automatically generated with the recommended values. The Recommended values are: # Feature extraction parameters $CFG_WAVFILE_SRATE = 16000.0; $CFG_NUM_FILT = 40; # For wideband speech its 40, for telephone 8khz reasonable value is 31 $CFG_LO_FILT = 133.3334; # For telephone 8kHz speech value is 200 $CFG_HI_FILT = 6855.4976; # For telephone 8kHz speech value is 3500 Configure decoding parameters The following were properly configured in theetc/sphinx_train.cfg. $DEC_CFG_DICTIONARY = $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR/etc/$DEC_CFG_DB_NAME.dic; $DEC_CFG_FILLERDICT = $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR/etc/$DEC_CFG_DB_NAME.filler; $DEC_CFG_LISTOFFILES = $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR/etc/${DEC_CFG_DB_NAME}_test.fileids; $DEC_CFG_TRANSCRIPTFILE = $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR/etc/${DEC_CFG_DB_NAME}_test.transcription; $DEC_CFG_RESULT_DIR = $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR/result; # These variables, used by the decoder, have to be user defined, and # may affect the decoder output $DEC_CFG_LANGUAGEMODEL_DIR = $DEC_CFG_BASE_DIR/etc; $DEC_CFG_LANGUAGEMODEL = $DEC_CFG_LANGUAGEMODEL_DIR/ ${CFG_DB_NAME}.lm.DMP; Training After setting all these paths and parameters in the configuration file as described above, the training was proceeded. To start the training process the following command was run. python ../sphinxtrain/scripts/sphinxtrain run Scripts launched jobs on the machine, and it took few minutes to run. Acoustic Model After the training process, the acoustic model was located in the following path in the directory. Only this folder is needed for the speech recognition tasks. model_parameters/svd.cd_semi_200 We need only that folder for the speech recognition tasks we have to perform. 4.1.6Testing Results 150 speech samples were used as testing data. The aligning results could be obtained after the training process. It was located in the following path in the database directory. results/svd.align 4.1.7Parameters to be optimized Word error rate WER was given as a percentage value. It was calculated according to the following equation Accuracy Accuracy was also given as a percentage. That is the opposite value of the WER. It was calculated using the following equation To obtain an optimal recognition system, the WER should be minimized and the accuracy should be maximized. The parameters of the configuration file were changed time to time and obtained an optimal recognition system where the WER was the minimum with a high accuracy rate. 4.2Research phase 2: Build the voice dialing mobile application. In this section, the implementation of voice dialer for android mobile application is described. The application was developed using the programming language JAVA and it was done using the Eclipse IDE. It was tested in both the emulator and the actual device. The application is able to recognize the spoken digits by any speaker and dial the recognized number. To do this process the trained acoustic model, the pronunciation dictionary, the language model and the grammar files were needed. The speech recognition was performed by using these models in the mobile device itself by using the pocketsphinx library. It is a library written in C language to use for embedded speech recognition devices in Android platform. The step by step implementation and integration of the necessary components were discussed in detail in this section. Resource Files When inputting the resource files to the Android application, they were added in to theassets/directory of the project. Then the physical path was given to make them available for pocketsphinx. After adding them, the Assets directory contained the following resource files. Dictionary svd.dic svd.dic.md5 Grammar digits.gram digits.gram.md5 menu.gram menu.gram.md5 Language model svd.lm.DMP svd.lm.DMP.md5 Acoustic Model feat.params feat.params.md5 mdef mdef.md5 means means.md5 mixture_weights mixture_weights.md5 noisedict noisedict.md5 transition_matrices transition_matrices.md5 variances variances.md5 Assets.lst models/dict/svd.dic models/grammar/digits.gram models/grammar/menu.gram models/hmm/en-us-semi/feat.params models/hmm/en-us-semi/mdef models/hmm/en-us-semi/means models/hmm/en-us-semi/mixture_weights models/hmm/en-us-semi/noisedict models/hmm/en-us-semi/sendump models/hmm/en-us-semi/transition_matrices models/hmm/en-us-semi/variances models/lm/svd.lm.DMP Setup the Recognizer First of all the recognizer should be set up by adding the resource files. The model parameters taken after the training process were added as the HMM in the application. The recognition process was depended mainly on this resource files. Since the grammar files and the language model were added as assets, these two can be used for the recognition process of the application as well as the HMM. The utterances can be recognized from either the grammar files or language model. The whole process is coded using the Java programing language. 4.3Architecture of the developed Speech Recognition System