A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Programming that helps Prof Stephen Hawking to talk through a PC has been distributed online by Intel, the organization that made it. The project deciphers visual flags and makes an interpretation of them into words, which are then "talked" by a machine. Intel initially built up the innovation extraordinarily for Prof Hawking, yet it has been utilized by different sufferers of engine neurone malady (MND). Anybody is currently ready to download and explore different avenues regarding the framework. On account of Prof Hawking, the Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT) translates sensor information catching developments in his cheek muscles yet different parts of the body may be utilized.
Intel trusts that ACAT, which keeps running on Microsoft Windows 7 or higher, will be utilized by specialists growing new interfaces for sufferers of sicknesses like ALS. The project and full source code have been distributed on code-sharing site GitHub. Intel told that the software can carry out various functions besides sending text to a speech synthesizer. "We have contextual menus to access all different parts of your computer," said Lama Nachman, principal engineer. "If you want to use Word, surf the web or speak you can use ACAT for that." She added that the team had already experimented with a variety of different sensors, and they are hoping developers will try out other options appropriate to each patient's needs and abilities.
"We also have an accelerometer [motion] sensor for patients who can use a finger but not much more, and a button system for someone who can push a button," she said.The UK's MND Association has praised the move. "Helping maintain communication for someone with MND could be as simple as using a pen and paper. But as the disease progresses people often lose the use of their hands too," said Karen Pearce, Director of Care for the MND Association. "That's when cutting edge Augmentative and Alternative Communication, or AAC, aids can help but it's vital speech and language therapists look at the best options for families.
"It will be exciting to see how this open source approach works." Euan MacDonald, an MND sufferer who runs a disabled access reviews website called Euan's Guide , said, "AAC is an absolutely fundamental part of my life. Unlike medical research, technology is moving very quickly and it's exciting to see new things emerge every year.
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