Abstract-Enhancing the performance of emotional speaker recognition process has witnessed an increasing interest in the last years. This paper highlights a methodology for speaker recognition under different emotional states based on the multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. We compare two feature extraction methods which are used to represent emotional speech utterances in order to obtain best accuracies. The first method known as traditional Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and the second one is MFCC combined with Shifted-Delta-Cepstra (MFCC-SDC). Experimentations are conducted on IEMOCAP database using two multiclass SVM approaches: One-Against-One (OAO) and One Against-All (OAA). Obtained results show that MFCC-SDC features outperform the conventional MFCC.

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Creatine plays a key role in muscle function and its evaluation is important in athletes. In this study, urinary creatine concentration was measured in order to highlight its possible significance in monitoring sprinters. The study included 51 sprinters and 25 age- and sex-matched untrained subjects as a control group. Body composition was measured and dietary intake estimated. Urine samples were collected before and after standardized physical exercise. Creatine was assessed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Basal urinary creatine (UC) was significantly lower in sprinters than controls (34±30 vs. 74±3 µmol/mmol creatinine, p < 0.05). UC was inversely correlated with body mass (r = −0.34, p < 0.01) and lean mass (r = −0.30, p < 0.05), and positively correlated with fat mass (r = 0.32, p < 0.05). After acute exercise, urinary creatine significantly decreased in both athletes and controls. UC is low in sprinters at rest and further decreases after exercise, most likely due to a high uptake and use of creatine by muscles, as muscle mass and physical activity are supposed to be greater in athletes than untrained subjects. Further studies are needed to test the value of urinary creatine as a non-invasive marker of physical condition and as a parameter for managing Cr supplementation in athletes.

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Aim: We aimed to validate the Arabic and Tunisian Arabic versions of diabetes- specific quality of life (QOL) instrument KINDL-R Diabetes Module for Tunisian children population with type 1 diabetes.Patients and methods: This a cross-sectional study to validate Arabic and Tunisian KINDL QOL instrument that we translate in literary and dialectal Arabic. Both forward and backward translations from the German version of KINDL QOL into Arabic version were performed. Our project received a GPED grant in August 2014. After the face validity of the Arabic version was established, it was then pilot-tested. Finally, the validity and reliability of the final version of the Arabic KINDL questionnaire were evaluated.Results: The KINDL-R Diabetes Module (DM) questionnaire of QOL was given to 212 persons : 108 children (aged 3–17 years) with T1DM and 104 parents. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the overall items and the main domains was about 0.7.The mean total score of the KINDL-R DM was 69,56  ± 14,01 in children aged 7–13 years, 59.93± 15.17 in children aged 13–17 years and 56.6± 9.9 in parents (higher scores indicate better QOL). The parents reported lower diabetes-specific HRQOL than the children themselves (p < 0.01).Emotional score was correlated to environment (p = 0,03). Self-esteem was reported to environment (p = 0,02) and mother’s instruction level’s (p = 0,014).Conclusions: The KINDL-R Diabetes Module (DM) of QOL in literary and dialectal Arabic have sufficient acceptability, reliability and validity so as to be used for the purposes of a comparative in Tunisian and Arabic populations.