PESQ and its implementation in Octave/Matlab

PESQ stands for ‘Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality’ and is an enhanced perceptual measurement for voice quality in telecommunications. If you want a Mean Opinion Score value (or MOS), then PESQ will give it to you. The new PESQ option will be especially relevant for engineers working in telecom, handsets, and handsfree accessories.

Because it becomes standard in telecommunication industry, it is very important to measure of speech processing output with this standar. A figure of overview of PESQ system can be seen in Fig.1

Fig. 1 : Overview of PESQ System

Perceptual audio tests measure how people perceive sound quality. While useful for evaluating both small differences in high-quality music, and larger differences in lower-quality voice material, this article focuses on doing the latter using PESQ (Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality).

DSEE Sony Vs DNSe Samsung

DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) by Sony : Restore sounds back to original

Listen to the music like it was meant to be. Degraded sounds of compressed audio is now improved and the high frequency range restored, reproducing natural, high quality sounds as close to the original source as can be.  

Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE) is Sony’s originally developed audio bandwidth enhancement technology. DSEE is a technology to enhance the sound quality of compressed audio files by restoring high-range sound removed by the compression process.When original music source is compressed with MP3 (or AAC/WMA), high frequency part of music source will be lost. The technology of DSEE enables to restore high frequency part and reproduces high quality sound which is close to the original CD sound source. By activating the [DSEE(Sound Enhance)]feature, you can hear a rich and natural sound almost exactly like the original source. 

DSEE Technology

DNSe (Digital Natural Sound engine) by Samsung

DNSe or the Digital Natural Sound engine is a DSP audio enhancement technology developed by Samsung in 2003 and further on implemented throughout many of their product lineups - from TVs and DVD players to portable music players and lately - mobile phones.

Hujan itu Rahmat

Step-by-step:

1. Buka link berikut, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdpx7rvv3dw, atau buka video dibawah ini,
2. Kemudian buka link berikut, www.rainymood.com, bila tidak "hujan" klik gambar speaker di bawah agar "hujan" di layar laptop / PC anda. 
3. Feel the effect, nikmati sensasinya... :) 

 Rain makes everything better (rainymood.com)

"Dialah yang meniupkan angin (sebagai) pembawa kabar gembira dekat sebelum kedatangan rahmat-nya (berupa hujan); dan Kami turunkan dari langit air yang amat bersih, (Al-Furqaan: 48)"

p.s: jadi jangan pernah menghujat hujan lagi, karena sama halnya anda dengan menghujan yang menciptakan hujan itu sendiri. Selamat mencoba!!

-adopted from youtube

Active Thermography and its Application

Active thermography is imaging techniques based on the evaluation of a previously excited heat flow in the tested component and its disturbance by hidden defects. The heat flow is generated with a heat pulse or through sinusoidal modulation. Testing is carried out with an IR-camera, followed by a mathematical analysis of the measured sequence to extract the information necessary for reliable defect detection. The applications of thermographic methods to measure defects (or porosity) quantitatively and to assess parts with a complex 3D-structure still hold unsolved problems. Induction thermography is a special kind of active thermography for the characterisation of metals. In induction thermography the excitation is done by means of a HF-field and eddy currents are subsequently induced. Since eddy currents are influenced by the presence of cracks, the latter can in principle be detected thermographically. 

Example of application: Active Thermography for Quantitative NDT of CFRP Components 

This application presents a calibration-free approach to determine thicknesses and interface parameters out of at least two lock-in measurements at different modulation frequencies. The separation between properties of the layer and the interface beneath is particularly important for the characterization of adhesive joints CRFP (Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics) components.

General setup of active thermography

PhotoAcoustic Imaging and its Application

Photoacoustic imaging is a method combines the advantages of optical imaging (high contrast) and ultrasonic imaging (high spatial resolution). This results in various new applications in the field of biology, medicine, industry and material science.

Principle

To generate photoacoustic signals short laser pulses (in the range of nanoseconds) are used. The electromagnetic energy (laser) is absorbed in the sample. Due to the thermoelastic expansion in the region of absorption – the so called photoacoustic effect – a broadband ultrasonic signal is launched. The photoacoustic signal is recorded at different positions at the surface of the sample by a special transducer. Taking such a set of data it is possible to calculate either slices of the objects or the whole volume using reconstruction algorithms such as Time Reversal, Back Projection, or other methods. In Fig. 1 a scheme of the principle of photoacoustic tomography can be seen. 

Fig 1. PhotoAcoustic Effect

Agama Orang Jepang: Agama Main-main

source: Heriyanto Nurcahyo (http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2012/01/20/agama-main-main/Ini)

 

Di Starbucks coffe shop itulah kami janji bertemu. Inilah kali pertama bagiku “ngopi” di jaringan kedai kopi terkenal dunia itu.Letaknya di Sotenggai pusat perbelanjaan termasyur di Kumamoto-Shi.Tempat ini terkenal dengan nama Shimatori dan Kamitori. Pusat perbelanjaan terbesar yang memanjang dengan jalan utama ditengah-tengahnya. Ribuan orang tiap hari hilir mudik di Archade ini. Ratusan outlet dan butik tersebar bak bulir-bulir salju yang terjatuh dari langit.Kemeriahannya semakin menjadi hidup tatkala mata kita memandang ribuan orang silih berganti keluar masuk pusat perbelanjaan dengan dandanan yang sangat stylish dan modis sekali. Namun yang hendak saya ceritakan bukanlah tentang para shopaholic itu,atau orang-orang yang sekedar windows shopping,bukan itu tapi tentang seseorang yang aku temui di Starbucks.

Sonoda Mariko namanya. Saya memanggilnya Mariko san. Seorang perempuan paruh bayah. Dia menemuiku setelah sebelumnya menghubungiku untuk sekedar memberitahukan bahwa dia kini telah menjadi Host Family ku selama di Jepang.Mulailah dia bercerita tentang kehidupannya. Ia yang dulunya direktur perusahaan makanan terpaksa mengundurkan diri dan kosentrasi sepenuhnya pada keluarga. Setelah saya Tanya alasan dibalik keputusannya itu,ia mengatakan bahwa kerja di Jepang sangat memeras otak dan tenaga,bahkan tidak ada waktu luang untuk keluarga. Dia juga menceritakan bagaimana kakaknya yang sekarang memimpin perusahaan itu tidak punya begitu banyak waktu bahkan untuk sekedar istirahat diliburan musim dingin ini. Saya kemudian menjadi sangat mahfum atas penjelasan dan alasan dibalik mundurnya dia dari jabatan itu.Meski heran juga atas keputusannya,mengingat hampr semua warga Jepang workaholic,saya bisa memakluminya alas an dibalik keputusannya.

Image Compression in GNU Octave and Matlab

Suppose you have an image file namely "image.jpg". Due to the file size, you want to compress it to smaller size. In GNU Octave and Matlab, the following simple commands can be used,

image=imwrite('image.jpg');

imwrite(image,'image_new.jpg','quality',50);

Those commands will compress "image.jpg" to "image_new.jpg" with the quality of compressed image is 50% of the original image.

Al-Quran on Embryology

Dr. Moore was a former President of the Canadian Association of Anatomists, and of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists. He was honoured by the Canadian Association of Anatomists with the prestigious J.C.B. Grant Award and in 1994 he received the Honoured Member Award of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists "for outstanding contributions to the field of clinical anatomy."

 

"For the past three years, I have worked with the Embryology Committee of KingcAbdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, helping them to interpret the many statements in the Qur'an and Sunnah referring to human reproduction and prenatal development. At first I was astonished by the accuracy of the statements that were recorded in the 7th century AD, before the science of embryology was established. Although I was aware of the glorious history of Muslim scientists in the 10th century AD, and some of their contributions to Medicine, I knew nothing about the religious facts and beliefs contained in the Qur'an and Sunnah."

 

At a conference in Cairo he presented a research paper and stated:

 

Bulk Rename Files in Ubuntu / Linux

If you have a lot of files to be renamed, it will waste you time to rename files manually (for example, change file names from camera). If you want to change the capital or uppercase files name to lowercase, you can do the following command in your terminal in the current directory,

ls | while read upName; do loName=`echo "${upName}" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'`; mv "$upName" "$loName"; done

But, if you want to change file names, find and replace, or others, I suggest you to install thunar

sudo apt-get install thunar

And then use the bulk rename program from thunar as shown in the following screenshot. You can insert date / time, insert / overwrite, search and replace, numbering and also uppercase / lower case. Let's try!

Thunar bulk rename in Ubuntu / Linux

A Harmonizing Proposal For Islamic Science

Dari 2000-an universitas di berbagai negara Muslim hanya sedikit yang masuk dalam top 500 universities in the world. Itupun cuma nangkring di peringkat 400-500. Jumlah publikasi ilmiah yang berasal dari dunia Muslim hanya 1,1% dari total publikasi ilmiah yang dihasilkan para ilmuan dari seluruh dunia. Pada tahun 1999, hanya 134 paten yang terdaftar di seluruh negara-negara Muslim. Sangat jauh dibandingkan dengan 3.076 paten yang teregistrasi di Israel. Semakin lengkap dengan rendahnya frekuensi kutipan atas artikel-artikel ilmiah (per satu juta orang) yang cuma 0,02 di Mesir, 0,07 di Arab Saudi, 0,01 di Aljazair, dan 0,53 di Kuwait. Sementara Israel mampu meraih angka 38, Amerika Serikat menembus 43, dan Swiss melejit dengan capaian 80. 

Fakta di atas disampaikan oleh Prof. Nidhal Guessoum, seorang astrofisika muslim lulusan University of California San Diego USA dalam “The First International Conference on Knowledge and Values” yang diselenggarakan oleh CRCS UGM, ICRS bersama Panitia Dies Natalis UGM ke 62 di Auditorium Gedung Lengkung Sekolah Pascasarjana UGM pada hari Jum’at 16 Desember 2011. 

Bagi Prof. Nidhal, kondisi ini sungguh ironis jika kita sandingkan dengan seruan-seruan teologis Islam yang begitu bersemangat mengajak umatnya untuk menuntut ilmu, seperti: “Tinta seorang sarjana lebih suci daripada darah syuhada”, “Tuhan menaruh (di luar sana) obat untuk setiap penyakit yang Ia ciptakan”, “Kontemplasi satu jam (atau studi) tentang alam lebih baik daripada beribadah selama setahun, ”Carilah pengetahuan hingga ke negeri China!”. Semakin menyedihkan apabila kita memutar bandul sejarah ke belakang. “Al Biruni telah mengadopsi induksi sebagai pendekatan yang valid untuk sains 2-3 abad sebelum dipopulerkan oleh Francis Bacon. Isaac Newton yang digadang-gadang sebagai bapak optik modern pun berdiri di atas pundak seorang jenius yang hidup 7 abad sebelumnya, Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham,” ungkap professor of Physics di American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) ini. Belum lagi jika kita menyebut Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Battani, Ibn Sina, Al-Tusi, Ibn al-Shatir, Ibn Sahl, Omar Khayyam, Ibn al-Nafis, Ibn Yunus, Al-Zahrawi, Ibn al-Baytar, Ibn al-Banna, Al-Qushji, dan Al-Khafri.