Due-East.org

If you’ve seen Star Trek, you know what the universal translator is. If you haven’t, basically it’s a device that allows people to hear whatever language is actually being spoken in their own language. It appears that U.S. scientists are developing something similar, and they’re calling a “Tower of Babel” translator. It’s not quite like Star Trek, though. Here’s a description of it from the article:

Electrodes are attached to the neck and face to detect the movements that occur as the person silently mouths words and phrases. Using this data, a computer can work out the sounds being formed and then build these sounds up into words. The system is then able to translate the words into another language which is read out by a synthetic voice. The team currently has two prototypes: one that can translate Chinese into English and another that can translate English into Spanish or German. If the prototypes used a small vocabulary of about 100-200 words they worked with about 80% accuracy, researcher Tanja Schultz said. But, she added, a full vocabulary had a much lower level of accuracy. Professor Schultz said: “The idea is that you can mouth words in English and they will come out in Chinese or another language.” The ultimate goal, the researchers said, was to be in a position where you can just have a conversation. Chuck Jorgensen, a researcher at Nasa’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told New Scientist: “This is showing the technology is really within reach.” Phil Woodland, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge, said: “This work sounds interesting. Most groups are working on translating audio data into different languages, but this is different to work I have come across before because they are not working from a real acoustic signal.”

Pretty interesting, huh? I personally would much rather LEARN a new language than rely on something like this, but even I have some languages I have absolutely NO desire to ever learn (Arabic or Hebrew, anyone?). This kind of thing could really come in handy in situations where someone needs to communicate with someone in a language they either don’t want to learn or don’t have time to learn. It’s pretty cool.

Article here.

Well, it looks like those cooky North Koreans are at it again. A senior Japanese diplomat says that they may be performing an underground nuclear test as early as this weekend. No doubt it’ll be quite a tense weekend for everybody in the area, as well as the U.S. government, who said on Wednesday that they detected some unusual activity near some possible test sites. Everybody seems to think that the nuclear test is an attempt to “blackmail America into dropping economic sanctions.” It wouldn’t be remotely surprising if that were the case, being that Kim Jong Il acts like a bully on a playground. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what happens and when.

article here

Update: It went basically nowhere, as usual.

A Chinese man in Fuzhou has given himself up to police after 8 years of hiding in a cave he dug behind his house.  The reason he was hiding?  Gun-related charges.  The CNN article that I pulled this from says that he was accused of “attacking people with guns” but that there weren’t any other details given.  The Chinese government is pretty good at avoiding details, so that’s not really surprising. 

Eight years is a really long time to live in a cave.   According to the article, he was only in the cave at night to sleep; he came out during the day to watch TV, eat, shower, and read.  That doesn’t sound too bad at first, but think about being stuck in your house for 8 years and not being able to leave.  I wolud go stir-crazy long before that.  This guy made it a long time.  Of course, when you’re practically guaranteed the death penalty if you give yourself up, 8 years really doesn’t seem all that long.    According to China’s Xinhua news agency, some of his accomplices have already been sentenced to death. 

Article here