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Abstract-Hypernasality (HP) is observed across voiced phonemes uttered by Cleft-Palate (CP) speakers with defective velopharyngeal (VP) opening. HP assessment using signal processing technique is challenging due to the variability of acoustic features across various conditions such as speakers, speaking style, speaking rate, severity of HP etc. Most of the study for hypernasality (HP) assessment is based on isolated sustained vowels under laboratory conditions. We measure the variability of acoustic features and detect HP using vowel /i/, /a/ and /u/ in continuous read speech with gradually increasing severity of HP of CP speakers. Linear predictive coding (LPC) method is used for acoustic feature extraction. In first part of our study, we observe the variation in acoustic parameters within and across vowel category with gradually increasing HP. We observe that inter-speaker variability in spectral features among CP subjects for vowel /i/ is 0.96, /a/ has 1.13 and vowel /u/ has 2.05. The inter-speaker variability measurement suggests that high back vowel /u/ is mostly affected and has the highest variability. High front vowel /i/ is least affected and has the lowest variability with HP. In the second part, ratio of vowel space area (VSA) of hypernasal and normal speech is calculated and used as a measure for HP detection. We observe that VSA spanned by CP subjects is 0.65 times less than isolated uttered Bangla nasal VSA and 0.43 times less than read speech uttered English oral VSA.

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Diabetes mellitus the one of four priority non-communicable diseases is an important public health issue across the world. The disease is associated with abnormalities in Carbohydrate, Protein and Fat metabolism affecting 422 million adults globally (WHO). Though many antidiabetic agents have been introduced in the modern drug arsenal in the recent past, still diabetes and the related complications continue to be alarming health problem in developed as well as in developing countries. Hopefully, there are many plants has been reported to have potent antidiabetic activity and have been used for a long time in traditional medicine. However, the screening for potent antidiabetic molecule from natural sources is still going on. The antidiabetic activity was evaluated in normal and Streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic mice. Remarkable lowering of blood glucose levels (90.19% by leaf extract and 76.86% by bark extract compared to positive control)of the test animals depicts that the methanolic leaf and bark extract exhibited significant property (P<0.05) compared to diabetic control group. Dose dependent effect was also reflected in the test results. Control animals were found to be stable in their body weight while diabetic mice showed significant reduction in body weight during 7 days. The antidiabetic activity produced by a single mechanism or multiple glucose lowering mechanism may be involved. Extraction procedureThe coarse leaf and bark powder was macerated with methanol for 7 days with occasional shaking and stirring. The solvent was evaporated by using rotary evaporator under reduced pressure at 50°C temperature [9]. The crude extract such obtained was tested for its antidiabetic activity.