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Epoch extraction has become increasingly popular in recent years for speech analysis research because accurately detecting the location of the Epoch is crucial for analyzing speech signals. The Epoch, occurring at the instant of excitation in the vocal tract system, particularly during glottal closure, plays a significant role in differentiating speakers in multi-speaker conversations. However, the extraction of the Epoch poses a challenge due to the time-varying factors in the vocal tract system, which makes deconvolution for obtaining the original excitation location more complex. In this paper, various methods for Epoch extraction, including Zero Frequency Filtering (ZFF) and Zero Frequency Resonator (ZFR), will be discussed, and their pros and cons evaluated. In addition, the stability, accuracy, and feasibility of each method will be compared. The evaluation will involve a Matlab-based locking algorithm, and a proposed hardware implementation using Raspberry pi for speaker differentiation. The experiment includes six individuals uttering the phrase "The University of Mississippi," with one person acting as the reference or "lock" speaker. The number of epochs occurring at similar positions to the reference speaker will be counted as Delta, with larger Delta values indicating greater speaker similarity. Experimental results demonstrate that when the speaker remains the same, the average number of Delta is 7.5, while for different speakers, the average number of Delta decreases to 3, 2, 2, and 1, respectively, representing a decrease of approximately 73% in the number of epochs at similar positions compared to the reference speaker., Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, This paper is currently under review by the 9th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing (SEC 2024)

This paper presents the design and comprehensive measurements of a compact high-gain 32 element planar antenna array covering the n257 (26.5-29.5 GHz) millimeter wave (mmWave) band. First an 8-element quasi-uniform linear array is designed using a series-fed topology with fan shaped beams for point-to-multipoint connectivity followed by a compact corporate series feed network to design high-gain directive array for point-to-point connectivity. The radiation patterns of both antenna arrays in the azimuth and elevation planes are measured across a 180 degrees span using an over-the-air (OTA) compact antenna test range (CATR) system with a single rotary positioner. Moreover the procedure for quantifying and measuring the gain of mmWave antenna arrays is demonstrated in detail. The peak measured gain of the planar array is 18.45 dBi at 28.5 GHz while the half-power beamwidth of the planar array in the elevation and azimuth planes varies between 11 to 13 degrees, and 23-27 degrees respectively within the 26.5-29.5 GHz range. The measurement results match well with the simulations. The designed antenna array is suitable for various emerging 5G and beyond mmWave applications such as fixed wireless access, mmWave near-field focusing, high-resolution radar systems, and the characterization of mmWave path loss and channel sounding in diverse indoor environments and smart factories., Comment: 11 Pages, 15 Figues, Orignalsubmission

Through comprehensive data analysis, we demonstrate that a ${\chi}^{(2)}$-induced artifact, arising from imperfect balancing in the conventional electro-optic sampling (EOS) detection scheme, contributes significantly to the measured signal in 2D Raman-THz spectroscopy of non-centrosymmetric materials. The artifact is a product of two 1D responses, overwhelming the desired 2D response. We confirm that by analyzing the 2D Raman-THz response of a x-cut beta barium borate (BBO) crystal. We furthermore show that this artifact can be effectively suppressed by implementing a special detection scheme. We successfully isolate the desired third-order 2D Raman-THz response, revealing a distinct cross-peak feature, whose frequency position suggests the coupling between two crystal phonons.

This study evaluates the performance of 41 machine learning models, including 21 classifiers and 20 regressors, in predicting Bitcoin prices for algorithmic trading. By examining these models under various market conditions, we highlight their accuracy, robustness, and adaptability to the volatile cryptocurrency market. Our comprehensive analysis reveals the strengths and limitations of each model, providing critical insights for developing effective trading strategies. We employ both machine learning metrics (e.g., Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Squared Error) and trading metrics (e.g., Profit and Loss percentage, Sharpe Ratio) to assess model performance. Our evaluation includes backtesting on historical data, forward testing on recent unseen data, and real-world trading scenarios, ensuring the robustness and practical applicability of our models. Key findings demonstrate that certain models, such as Random Forest and Stochastic Gradient Descent, outperform others in terms of profit and risk management. These insights offer valuable guidance for traders and researchers aiming to leverage machine learning for cryptocurrency trading.

Recently, outstanding identification rates in image classification tasks were achieved by convolutional neural networks (CNNs). to use such skills, selective CNNs trained on a dataset of well-known images of metal surface defects captured with an RGB camera. Defects must be detected early to take timely corrective action due to production concerns. For image classification up till now, a model-based method has been utilized, which indicated the predicted reflection characteristics of surface defects in comparison to flaw-free surfaces. The problem of detecting steel surface defects has grown in importance as a result of the vast range of steel applications in end-product sectors such as automobiles, households, construction, etc. The manual processes for detections are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive. Different strategies have been used to automate manual processes, but CNN models have proven to be the most effective rather than image processing and machine learning techniques. By using different CNN models with fine-tuning, easily compare their performance and select the best-performing model for the same kinds of tasks. However, it is important that using different CNN models either from fine tuning can be computationally expensive and time-consuming. Therefore, our study helps the upcoming researchers to choose the CNN without considering the issues of model complexity, performance, and computational resources. In this article, the performance of various CNN models with transfer learning techniques are evaluated. These models were chosen based on their popularity and impact in the field of computer vision research, as well as their performance on benchmark datasets. According to the outcomes, DenseNet201 outperformed the other CNN models and had the greatest detection rate on the NEU dataset, falling in at 98.37 percent.

Deepfake is a generative deep learning algorithm that creates or changes facial features in a very realistic way making it hard to differentiate the real from the fake features It can be used to make movies look better as well as to spread false information by imitating famous people In this paper many different ways to make a Deepfake are explained analyzed and separated categorically Using Deepfake datasets models are trained and tested for reliability through experiments Deepfakes are a type of facial manipulation that allow people to change their entire faces identities attributes and expressions The trends in the available Deepfake datasets are also discussed with a focus on how they have changed Using Deep learning a general Deepfake detection model is made Moreover the problems in making and detecting Deepfakes are also mentioned As a result of this survey it is expected that the development of new Deepfake based imaging tools will speed up in the future This survey gives indepth review of methods for manipulating images of face and various techniques to spot altered face images Four types of facial manipulation are specifically discussed which are attribute manipulation expression swap entire face synthesis and identity swap Across every manipulation category we yield information on manipulation techniques significant benchmarks for technical evaluation of counterfeit detection techniques available public databases and a summary of the outcomes of all such analyses From all of the topics in the survey we focus on the most recent development of Deepfake showing its advances and obstacles in detecting fake images, Comment: 46 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables

Brain tumor segmentation is a critical task in medical image analysis, aiding in the diagnosis and treatment planning of brain tumor patients. The importance of automated and accurate brain tumor segmentation cannot be overstated. It enables medical professionals to precisely delineate tumor regions, assess tumor growth or regression, and plan targeted treatments. Various deep learning-based techniques proposed in the literature have made significant progress in this field, however, they still face limitations in terms of accuracy due to the complex and variable nature of brain tumor morphology. In this research paper, we propose a novel Hybrid Multihead Attentive U-Net architecture, to address the challenges in accurate brain tumor segmentation, and to capture complex spatial relationships and subtle tumor boundaries. The U-Net architecture has proven effective in capturing contextual information and feature representations, while attention mechanisms enhance the model's ability to focus on informative regions and refine the segmentation boundaries. By integrating these two components, our proposed architecture improves accuracy in brain tumor segmentation. We test our proposed model on the BraTS 2020 benchmark dataset and compare its performance with the state-of-the-art well-known SegNet, FCN-8s, and Dense121 U-Net architectures. The results show that our proposed model outperforms the others in terms of the evaluated performance metrics.

In this digital era, our lives highly depend on the internet and worldwide technology. Wide usage of technology and platforms of communication makes our lives better and easier. But on the other side it carries out some security issues and cruel activities, phishing is one activity of these cruel activities. It is a type of cybercrime, which has the purpose of stealing the personal information of the computer user, and enterprises, which carry out fake websites that are the copy of the original websites. The attackers used personal information like account IDs, passwords, and usernames for the purpose of some fraudulent activities against the user of the computer. To overcome this problem researchers focused on the machine learning and deep learning approaches. In our study, we are going to use machine learning and deep learning models to identify the fake web pages on the secondary dataset., Comment: Pages 9, Figures 5

Background, For the purpose of determining the appropriate course of therapy to maintain fertility, a correct diagnosis of ovarian cysts is crucial. Objective, To contrast the results of magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasonography in individuals with ovarian cysts . Methods: research was carried out in the radiology division of Al-Hilla General Teaching hospital and Marjan Teaching Hospital in province Babil in the period of November 2023 and march 2024, Seventy-five Following a physical and ultrasonography examination, the female patient was assessed using magnetic resonance imaging. Women in the over-18 age group exhibit a range of symptoms, such as irregular menstruation, abdominal pain, sensoria, and menorrhagia. Results: Adnexal lesions on US imaging included chocolate cysts (14.6%), dermoid cysts (13.8%), hemorrhagic cysts (HC) (11.6%), simple cysts (32.4%), complicated cysts (21.2%), and multilocular cysts (MC) (6.4%).Simple cysts (SC) made up 29%, complex cysts (6.9%), dermoid cysts (10.9%), chocolate cysts (19.1%), hemorrhagic cysts (HC) 11.3%, multilocular cysts (6.8%), and malignant cysts (MC) 16% of the adnexal lesions on MRI. The USG results show 100% sensitivity, 78.3% specificity, and 89.3% accuracy when compared to the MRI results. Conclusions: Magnetic resonance imaging, which is quite accurate in determining the mass's origin and characterizing its tissue content, may be beneficial in further evaluating monographically vague ovarian cysts with solid or complicated content, Comment: accepted for publication in the Kuwait Journal of Science. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of AL-Ameen University, Iraq for their valuable support

The increasing variety and quantity of tagged multimedia content on a variety of online platforms offer a unique opportunity to advance the field of human action recognition. In this study, we utilize 283,582 unique, unlabeled TikTok video clips, categorized into 386 hashtags, to train a domain-specific foundation model for action recognition. We employ VideoMAE V2, an advanced model integrating Masked Autoencoders (MAE) with Vision Transformers (ViT), pre-trained on this diverse collection of unstructured videos. Our model, fine-tuned on established action recognition benchmarks such as UCF101 and HMDB51, achieves state-of-the-art results: 99.05% on UCF101, 86.08% on HMDB51, 85.51% on Kinetics-400, and 74.27% on Something-Something V2 using the ViT-giant backbone. These results highlight the potential of using unstructured and unlabeled videos as a valuable source of diverse and dynamic content for training foundation models. Our investigation confirms that while initial increases in pre-training data volume significantly enhance model performance, the gains diminish as the dataset size continues to expand. Our findings emphasize two critical axioms in self-supervised learning for computer vision: (1) additional pre-training data can yield diminishing benefits for some datasets and (2) quality is more important than quantity in self-supervised learning, especially when building foundation models., Comment: 10 pages

The future wireless communication applications demand seamless connectivity, higher throughput, and low latency, for which the millimeter-wave (mmWave) band is considered a potential technology. Nevertheless, line-of-sight (LoS) is often mandatory for mmWave band communication, and it renders these waves sensitive to sudden changes in the environment. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the LoS link for a reliable connection. One such technique to maintain LoS is using proactive handover (HO). However, proactive HO is challenging, requiring continuous information about the surrounding wireless network to anticipate potential blockage. This paper presents a proactive blockage prediction mechanism where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is used as the base station for HO. The proposed scheme uses computer vision (CV) to obtain potential blocking objects, user speed, and location. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, the system is evaluated using a publicly available dataset for blockage prediction. The study integrates scenarios from Vision-based Wireless (ViWi) and UAV channel modeling, generating wireless data samples relevant to UAVs. The antenna modeling on the UAV end incorporates a polarization-matched scenario to optimize signal reception. The results demonstrate that UAV-assisted Handover not only ensures seamless connectivity but also enhances overall network performance by 20%. This research contributes to the advancement of proactive blockage mitigation strategies in wireless networks, showcasing the potential of UAVs as dynamic and adaptable base stations.

In March 2020, the coronavirus shuttered schools across the United States and the world. In the first year of the pandemic, school systems faced difficult decisions about how to deliver instruction while maintaining the safety and wellbeing of students, families, faculty, and staff. As the months passed, the consequences from this public health crisis became even more apparent, as it disproportionately affected historically marginalized communities and further exacerbated existing educational inequities. Therefore, it is essential to understand how schools and systems respond to crises so we can design and implement changes in policy and practice that will better prepare us for the future. In this research, the authors sought to accomplish this goal by asking the following questions: (1) How did school systems respond to challenges in this early phase of the pandemic?; and (2) And did these responses differ by school sector (charter, private, or traditional public school) and by context? [For "A Year That Forced Change: Examining How Schools and School Systems Adapted to the Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Calls for Racial Justice in 2020. Policy Brief," see ED629490.]

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 virus shuttered schools across the country and world and calls for racial justice expanded into nearly every sphere of social and political life as the nation reeled at another life violently taken at the hands of a police officer. School system leaders faced difficult decisions about delivering instruction while maintaining the safety and well-being of students, families, faculty, and staff. Moreover, the spotlight on racial injustice also drew attention to the need for educational reform to better serve historically marginalized students with academic, social, emotional, and other special needs. This research explores how educational institutions and their systems responded to two sudden disruptions, the COVID-19 pandemic and increased awareness of racial inequity. This research compared responses from traditional, charter, voucher-receiving private schools and rural and urban districts. The findings were based on 68 interviews with district, school, and community leaders and 46 interviews with parents, plus website, social media, and document analysis across four states and Washington, DC. [For the "School System Responses to Racial Injustice. Technical Report," see ED629491. For the "System Responses to Crisis: Organizational Perspectives. Technical Report," see ED629492.]

We introduce WordScape, a novel pipeline for the creation of cross-disciplinary, multilingual corpora comprising millions of pages with annotations for document layout detection. Relating visual and textual items on document pages has gained further significance with the advent of multimodal models. Various approaches proved effective for visual question answering or layout segmentation. However, the interplay of text, tables, and visuals remains challenging for a variety of document understanding tasks. In particular, many models fail to generalize well to diverse domains and new languages due to insufficient availability of training data. WordScape addresses these limitations. Our automatic annotation pipeline parses the Open XML structure of Word documents obtained from the web, jointly providing layout-annotated document images and their textual representations. In turn, WordScape offers unique properties as it (1) leverages the ubiquity of the Word file format on the internet, (2) is readily accessible through the Common Crawl web corpus, (3) is adaptive to domain-specific documents, and (4) offers culturally and linguistically diverse document pages with natural semantic structure and high-quality text. Together with the pipeline, we will additionally release 9.5M urls to word documents which can be processed using WordScape to create a dataset of over 40M pages. Finally, we investigate the quality of text and layout annotations extracted by WordScape, assess the impact on document understanding benchmarks, and demonstrate that manual labeling costs can be substantially reduced., Comment: NeurIPS 2023 Datasets and Benchmarks

The burgeoning domain of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), a subset of the Internet of Things (IoT), promises to revolutionize transportation through enhanced safety, efficiency, and environmental sustainability. By amalgamating technologies like sensors and cloud computing, the IoV paves the way for optimized traffic management, heightened vehicle safety, and the birth of novel business paradigms. However, this growth is shadowed by significant security concerns, especially in the communication and payment sectors. Addressing the pressing need for secure Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communications and payments amidst rising cyber threats, this research introduces the Ethereum based Secure Payment and Communication Solution (ESP2CS). Utilizing Ethereum as a middleware, ESP2CS ensures robust and secure V2X interactions. The solution is complemented by an Android Auto application for vehicles, streamlining inter vehicle communication, parking space detection, and transaction management. Furthermore, dedicated Android applications are developed for parking space renters and the parking IoT system. Preliminary evaluations underscore ESP2CS's superior cost effectiveness, integrity and consistency over contemporary solutions, with Ethereum bolstering both security and efficiency., Comment: The first GCC Engineering Symposium, GCCENG23, 2023

Designing terahertz sensors with high sensitivity to detect nanoscale thin films and single biomolecule presents a significant challenge, and addressing these obstacles is crucial for unlocking their full potential in scientific research and advanced applications. This work presents a strategy for the design optimization of metamaterial sensors employed in the detection of small amounts of dielectric materials. The sensors usually utilize the shift of the resonance frequency as an indicator of the presence of the analyte. The amount of shifting depends on intrinsic properties (electric field distribution, quality factor, and mode volume) of the bare cavity, as well as the overlap volume of its high-electric-field zone(s) and the analyte. Guided by the simplified dielectric perturbation theory, interdigitated electric split-ring resonators (ID-eSRR) are devised to significantly enhance the detection sensitivity for thin-film analytes compared to eSRRs without interdigitated fingers in the SRR gap region. The fingers of the ID-eSRR metamaterial sensor redistribute the electric field, creating strongly localized field enhancements that substantially boost the interaction with the analyte. Additionally, the periodic change of the orientation of the inherent anti-phase electric field in the interdigitated structure reduces radiation loss, leading to a higher Q-factor. Experiments with e-beam-fabricated ID-eSRR sensors operating at around 300 GHz demonstrate a remarkable frequency shift of 33.5 GHz upon deposition of a SiO2 layer with a thickness of 150 nm as an analyte simulant. The figure of merit (FOM) improves by over 50 times compared to structures without interdigitated fingers. This rational design option opens a promising avenue for highly sensitive detection of thin films and trace biomolecules., Comment: 16pages, 6 figures

Existing fashion recommendation systems encounter difficulties in using visual data for accurate and personalized recommendations. This research describes an innovative end-to-end pipeline that uses artificial intelligence to provide fine-grained visual interpretation for fashion recommendations. When customers upload images of desired products or outfits, the system automatically generates meaningful descriptions emphasizing stylistic elements. These captions guide retrieval from a global fashion product catalogue to offer similar alternatives that fit the visual characteristics of the original image. On a dataset of over 100,000 categorized fashion photos, the pipeline was trained and evaluated. The F1-score for the object detection model was 0.97, exhibiting exact fashion object recognition capabilities optimized for recommendation. This visually aware system represents a key advancement in customer engagement through personalized fashion recommendations, Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures