Category Science

What is Google Look to Speak app?

Google’s experimental app, Look to Speak, helps people with speech and motor impairments communicate by using their eyes to select pre-written phrases and have them spoken aloud by their smartphones. After positioning the phone slightly below eye level, a user looks left, right or up to choose from a list of phrases, which the device then speaks aloud. Users can personalize words and phrases, so that they can share their authentic voice. The app is one of Google’s ‘Start with One, Invent for Many projects that all begin with one person trying to make something impactful for their community. “Now conversations can more easily happen where before there might have been silence,” says Richard Cave, speech and language therapist at Google.

Look to Speak is a ‘Start with One’ project on the “Experiments with Google” platform. It all started with an idea that could be impactful for one person and their community. Throughout the design process, we reached out to a small group of people who might benefit from a communication tool like this. What was amazing to see was how Look To Speak could work where other communication devices couldn’t easily go—for example, in outdoors, in transit, in the shower and in urgent situations. Now conversations can more easily happen where before there might have been silence, and I’m excited to hear some of them.

 

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Garbage Watch made from upcycled e-waste

The Garbage Watch is a functional watch made out of upcycled e-waste. “Today, most of the 50 million tonnes of electronic waste that’s generated every year is treated like garbage even though it isn’t. Instead it contains many of the world’s precious metals, like silver, platinum, copper, nickel, cobalt, aluminium and zinc. You’ll find 7% of the world’s gold in e-waste,” says Vollebak, the company behind the watch. “Everything you can see on the Garbage Watch used to be something else a motherboard from your computer, a microchip in your smartphone, or wiring from your TV.” Of the unique design, the company says, “We’ve taken an ‘inside- out design approach with the Garbage Watch, making the functional inner workings highly visible… Our aim was to reframe an often invisible and hazardous end of the supply chain, and make people think deeply about the impact of treating their wearables in a disposable manner.”

 

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How did Edmond Halley inspire Newton to publish Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica?

Astronomer Edmond Halley persuaded Newton to expand his studies. Halley was the driving force behind the publication. He acted as a critic as well as supporter for this work.

Edmond Halley even convinced Newton to allow him to edit the Principia. Halley covered the various expenses, corrected the proofs himself, and ultimately got Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica printed in 1687.

Newton was famously reluctant to publish his works. Without Edmond Halley’s compulsion to publish Principia, Newton may have never become an outstanding figure in the history of science.

Newton would probably be known only for his mathematics and optics, and remain a relatively obscure professor in Cambridge.

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What is the relevance of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Newton?

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) is often simply referred to as Principia. This work in three books, written by Isaac Newton in Latin was first published on 5 July 1687. In retrospect, its publication was a landmark event in the development of modern physics and astronomy.

Newton published two more editions in 1713 and 1726 after annotating and correcting his personal copy of the first edition. Principia contains the laws of motion, law of universal gravitation and a derivation of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion (Kepler originally obtained these empirically). The work also forms the foundation of classical mechanics. Principia is considered as one of the most important works in the history of science.

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Did the Newtonian reflector change astronomy?

The significance of the Newtonian reflector does not lie in the discovery of new celestial bodies or celestial phenomena. Newton neither discovered the moons around Jupiter like Galileo nor did he plot the return of a comet – like Halley. However, the Newtonian reflector and Newton’s theory of universal gravitation made an invaluable contribution: they tied together Mathematics, Astronomy, and our understanding of the universe.

He mathematically established that gravitation was a two-way operation. While the Earth pulled on a falling apple, the apple too pulled on Earth. This was seen, calculated and confirmed in the motions of heavenly bodies. It was made possible by the science of the reflector telescopes which can be credited to Newton. The work of Copernicus and Galileo were carried through by Newton and his telescope.

While it is commonly assumed that Newton invented the first reflector telescope, claims to the contrary are also there. The Italian monk Niccolo Zucchi claimed to have experimented with the idea as far back as 1616. It is possible that Newton read James Gregory’s 1663 book Optica Promota which contained designs for a reflecting telescope using mirrors. Gregory had been trying to build such a telescope, but he did not succeed. Ultimately, Newton’s telescope was the one that worked well and brought reflectors to the scientific world.

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What is a Newtonian reflector?

The first successful practical reflecting telescope was built by Newton. Until then telescopes were large unwieldy instruments. The design of the telescope was recast by Newton on the basis of his theory of optics. He used mirrors instead of lenses and the result was a new telescope 10 times smaller than the traditional ones.

Earlier also many efforts were made to make more powerful telescopes using larger lenses. They were unsuccessful as the lens kept producing coloured rainbows around bright objects like the Moon and the planets. The coloured fringes formed due to the unequal refraction of colours by the lens were unavoidable in simple telescopes.

Newton was under the assumption that no lens could rectify this issue. Though this was a mistaken assumption, it led him to use a mirror to form an image and thereby to build a reflecting telescope. This is now called the Newtonian reflector. A curved mirror brings rays of light to a focus and forms an image by reflection (whereas a lens does it by bending or refraction). Some of the largest telescopes used today are based on the telescope made by Newton in 1668.

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