Scientists Create Decoder That Decodes Brain Signals Into Speech

Scientists have developed a decoder that can translate brain activity directly into speech. Technology could in effect give voice back to people with conditions such as Parkinson’s.

The technology promises to transform the lives of people who rely on painfully slow communication methods that make a casual conversation impossible.

In future the brain-machine interface could restore speech to people who have lost their voice through paralysis and conditions such as throat cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The researchers used a flexible pad of electrodes called an electrocorticography array, or ECoG, that rests on the brain's surface to tap on the signals.

The researchers then fed the signals to a computer model of the human vocal system, to generate synthesized speech. The system was able to generate speech with 50-70 percent of comprehensible words. When further accuracy is achieved, it could potentially allow people to send texts straight from their brain.

Earth Day 2019- Google Doodle Celebrates A Day

Earth Day is an annual event celebrated on April 22. Worldwide, various events are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day now includes events in more than 193 countries, which are now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network.

In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations.

A month later a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work.

Google Doodle also celebrates Earth Day,

The Doodle showing six stunning organisms are Wandering Albatross, Coastal Redwood, Paedophryne Amauensis, Amazon Water Lily, Coelacanth and Deep Cave Springtail.

It also highlights through a brief description about these organisms. The creator of 2019 Earth Day doodle Kevin Laughlin describing how he chose which organisms to feature said that it was the most difficult task in making this doodle.

Source- Wikipedia, TOI

Black Hole Picture Revealed First Ever

A team of 200 scientist were working on the project. Image was captured by Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), it is a network of eight linked Telescopes.

The supermassive black hole in the core of supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, with a mass ~7 billion times the Sun's, as depicted in the first image released by the Event Horizon Telescope.

What is Black Hole?

A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole.

Visible are the crescent-shaped emission ring and central shadow, which are gravitationally magnified views of the black hole's photon ring and the photon capture zone of its event horizon. The crescent shape arises from the black hole's rotation; the shadow is about 2.6 times the diameter of the event horizon .

The information they gathered was too much to be sent across the internet. Instead, the data was stored on hundreds of hard drives that were flown to a central processing centres in Boston, US, and Bonn, Germany, to assemble the information. Prof Doeleman described the achievement as "an extraordinary scientific feat".

"We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago," he said.

"Breakthroughs in technology, connections between the world's best radio observatories, and innovative algorithms all came together to open an entirely new window on black holes."

Image by EHT