Search Results (5)

‘Frame blocking’ or ‘Framing’ is a technique that divides a time-sampled speech or audio signal into consecutive and equi-sized short-time frames, either overlapped or non-overlapped, for analysis. The framing hardware architectures (FHA) in the literature support framing speech or audio samples of specific word size with specific frame size and frame overlap size. However, speech and audio applications often require framing signal samples of varied word sizes with varied frame sizes and frame overlap sizes. Therefore, the existing FHAs must be redesigned appropriately to keep up with the variability in word size, frame size and frame overlap size, as demanded across multiple applications. Redesigning the existing FHAs for each specific application is laborious, prompting the need for a configurable intellectual property (IP) core. The existing FHAs are inappropriate for creating configurable IP cores as they lack adaptability to accommodate variability in frame size and frame overlap size. Therefore, to address these issues, a novel FHA, adaptable to accommodate the desired variability, is proposed. Furthermore, the proposed FHA is transformed into a field-programmable gate array-based soft, ready-to-use and configurable frame blocking IP core using the Xilinx^® Vivado^™ tool. The resulting IP core is versatile, offering configurability for framing in numerous applications incorporating real-time digital speech and audio systems. This research article discusses the proposed FHA and frame blocking IP core in detail. Full article

Children and young people constitute a structurally vulnerable group who often experience specific barriers when trying to exercise their rights, including the right to health. The aim of this study was to examine core concepts of human rights and inclusion of vulnerable groups in a sample of national health and well-being policy documents relevant to children and young people in Ireland. Using EquiFrame, a validated policy content analysis tool, 3 policy documents were analysed in relation to their commitment to 21 core concepts of human rights and inclusion of 13 vulnerable groups. The Overall Summary Ranking of each policy varied: ‘Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures’–Moderate, ‘Sláintecare’–Moderate, and the ‘Wellbeing Policy Statement’–Low. Across all three documents, Core Concept Coverage was high while Core Concept Quality was low. The findings demonstrate that these documents cover a wide range of human rights but fail to provide specific policy actions to address human rights or an intention to monitor human rights. Full article

Equine piroplasmosis (EP) is a parasitic disease caused by Theileria equi (T. equi), Babesia caballi (B. caballi) and Theileria haneyi (T. haneyi). This disease is considered to be reportable by the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH). Real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) is regarded as a straightforward, rapid and sensitive diagnostic method to detect pathogens. However, qPCR has not been employed in the various epidemiological investigations of T. haneyi. In this study, we developed a new qPCR method to detect T. haneyi based on the chr1sco (chromosome 1 single-copy open reading frame (ORF)) gene, which has no detectable orthologs in T. equi or B. caballi. A TaqMan MGB probe was used in the development of the qPCR assay. A plasmid containing the chr1sco gene was constructed and used to establish the standard curves. The novel qPCR technique demonstrated great specificity for detecting additional frequent equine infectious pathogens and sensitivity for detecting diluted standard plasmids. This qPCR was further validated by comparison with an optimized nested PCR (nPCR) assay in the analysis of 96 clinical samples. The agreement between the nPCR assay and the established qPCR assay was 85.42%. The newly established method could contribute to the accurate diagnosis of T. haneyi infections in horses. Full article

People with disabilities and as women and girls face barriers to accessing water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services and facilities that fully meet their needs, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Women and girls with disabilities experience double discrimination. WASH policies should support and uphold the concepts of disability and gender inclusion, and they should also act as a guide to inform WASH programs and service delivery. Using a modified version of the EquiFrame content analysis tool, this study investigated the inclusion of 21 core concepts of human rights of people with disabilities and women and girls in 16 WASH policy documents and seven end-line program reports from Bangladesh and Cambodia. Included documents typically focused on issues of accessibility and neglected wider issues, including empowerment and support for caregivers. The rights of children and women with disabilities were scarcely focused on specifically, despite their individual needs, and there was a disconnect in the translation of certain rights from policy to practice. Qualitative research is needed with stakeholders in Bangladesh and Cambodia to investigate the inclusion and omission of core rights of people with disabilities, and women and girls, as well as the factors contributing to the translation of rights from policy to practice. Full article

Rich information is provided by 360-degree videos. However, non-uniform geometric deformation caused by sphere-to-plane projection significantly decreases tracking accuracy of existing trackers, and the huge amount of data makes it difficult to achieve real-time tracking. Thus, this paper proposes a Siamese networks-based people tracker using template update for 360-degree equi-angular cubemap (EAC) format videos. Face stitching overcomes the problem of content discontinuity of the EAC format and avoids raising new geometric deformation in stitched images. Fully convolutional Siamese networks enable tracking at high speed. Mostly important, to be robust against combination of non-uniform geometric deformation of the EAC format and partial occlusions caused by zero padding in stitched images, this paper proposes a novel Bayes classifier-based timing detector of template update by referring to the linear discriminant feature and statistics of a score map generated by Siamese networks. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves tracking accuracy of the fully convolutional Siamese networks SiamFC on the EAC format with operation beyond the frame acquisition rate. Moreover, the proposed score map-based timing detector of template update outperforms state-of-the-art score map-based timing detectors. Full article