Biometrics provide an alternative to passwords and pins for authentication. The emergence of machine learning algorithms provides an easy and economical solution to authentication problems. The phases of speaker verification protocol are training, enrollment of speakers and evaluation of unknown voice. In this paper, we addressed text independent speaker verification using Siamese convolutional network. Siamese networks are twin networks with shared weights. Feature space can be learnt easily by training these networks even if similar observations are placed in proximity. Extracted features from Siamese then can be classified using difference or correlation measures. We have implemented a customized scoring scheme that utilizes Siamese’ capability of applying distance measures with the convolutional learning. Experiments made on cross language audios of multi-lingual speakers confirm the capability of our architecture to handle gender, age and language independent speaker verification. Moreover, our designed Siamese network, SpeakerNet, provided better results than the existing speaker verification approaches by decreasing the equal error rate to 0.02.

The knowledge about membrane contactors is growing rapidly but is still insufficient for a reliable designing. This paper presents a new type of membrane contactors that are integrated with one of the following ways of separation by using absorbents, micelles, flocculants, functionalized polymers, molecular imprints, or other methods that are based on aggregation. The article discusses methods for designing multi-stage cascade, usually counter-current. At every stage of this cascade, relevant aggregates are retained by the membrane, while the permeate passes freely through membrane. The process takes place in the membrane boundary layer with a local cross-flow of the permeate and the retentate. So the whole system can be called a cross-counter-current. The process kinetics, k, must be coordinated with the permeate flux, J, and the rate of surface renewal of the sorbent on the membrane surface, s. This can be done by using ordinary back-flushing or relevant hydrodynamic method of sweeping, such as: turbulences, shear stresses or lifting forces. A surface renewal model has been applied to adjust the optimal process conditions to sorbent kinetics. The experimental results confirmed the correctness of the model and its suitability for design of the new type of contactors.