Travel for the blind

By DAVID FAUCHEUX

Some of you may know travel is my bête noir.  Rather than give you a summary of 2007 (What's Hot, What's Not!) according to any number of bumptious  celeb journalists or much-visited in-your-face Web sites run by 20somethingbillionaires--neither group needs my humble plug--I'll end the year with the following I received today.  I was amazed at the brain power behind this science fair to end all science fairs!  It blows me away; would that they could bottle and sell the creativity and intelligence. 

"Prototype for Autonomy: Pathway for the Blind" project wins top honors at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

Each year, 1,400 high-school students from more than 40 countries are invited to compete in the prestigious Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF), the world's largest precollege science contest.  The select group of young scientists is chosen from the several million students who compete in local and regional science fairs throughout the year.

Participants compete for $3 million in scholarships and prizes, presenting projects in 15 categories including medicine, biochemistry, computer science and zoology.  Earning top honors isn't the only goal for contestants.  Nineteen percent (or 274) of the finalists at the 2005 competition held last month have already begun the process to patent their projects.

Ammem Abdulrasool, a senior at the Illinois Junior Academy of Science, won top honors at this year's Intel ISEF for his project, "Prototype for Autonomy: Pathway for the Blind." He walked away with $70,000 in prize money and a free trip to October's Nobel Prize ceremony.  Abdulrasool developed technology that allows visually impaired individuals to navigate themselves from one location to another by using the Global Positioning System.  Individuals wear a half-kilo Walkman-size device, a bracelet on each arm and a pair of earphones.  After entering a starting and ending location into a personal digital assistant (PDA), they are guided with verbal commands tha tell them when and in what direction to turn.  Simultaneously, a bracelet vibrates signaling the correct direction.  To test his device, Abdulrasool recruited 36 blind adults and asked them to visit five landmarks in his neighborhood.  The navigational tool saved people an average of 26 minutes in travel time and reduced the  number of errors (wrong turns and missed locations). 

"Looking at how hard it was for them to travel and how they were dependent on everyone else motivated me to do something," he said.  Abdulrasool hopes are applying for a patent and then plan to market the product commercially.

In the fair's 56-year history, a number of projects have been implemented for commercial use.  Michael Nyberg, a 2001 competitor, hoped to reduce the number of West Nile virus infections through acoustics.  With a bucket of mosquito larvae and a sound generator, Nyberg discovered that a 24 kHz frequency resonated with the natural frequency of mosquitoes' internal organs: larvae that absorbed the acoustic energy would explode.  His sound-emitting device, Larvasonic, is now sold online.  Tiffany Clark, a 1999 competitor, found evidence that bacteria produced the methane gas found inside coal seams in Wyoming's Powder River Basin.  This suggested that injecting nutrients into coal seams might provide an unlimited supply of natural gas.  A Denver-based technology firm is now continuing Clark's high-school research.  And someday soon, blind people around the world may be wearing bracelets that issue GPS commands.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2007-12/27/content_7323918.htm

and

www.vipconduit.com

IMAGINE That!

What happened to 'Broadband Changed My Life'?

By DAVID FAUCHEUX

Visitors to my blog may recall an item I ran several months ago, a contest that related to broadband.  Here is an e=mail I received from the contest organizer.

I want to thank you for helping to promote our public awareness campaign called "Broadband Changed My Life" on your blog.  In case you or your readers were wondering about the outcome, the winners have been selected and you can read their stories here. (The $1000 went to a single mother of four and Internet Trainer for Navajo Nation.)  Feel free to share the news!  

Keep up the great blogging and, of course, use of broadband!

Joy Howell

Director

Broadband Changed My Life Campaign

IMAGINE That!

Talking book archive

By DAVID FAUCHEUX

Visitors to my blog will have long realized my love of books and reading and the spoken word.  I was recently intrigued to learn that AFB has put together an online archive of its 75 year relationship to Talking Books.  I am familiar with the particular Scourby recording of the Bible and of Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."  Both are outstanding! 

It amused me back in the early 1990s to read of this great new development in commercial publishing--audio books.  Hello.  Yes, we, the blind, have long known of the joys of spoken-word-recordings and are glad that you, our sighted confreres, are also able to enjoy this aural experience, too!!

Details:

This month, AFB commemorated 75 years of involvement with Talking Books with the launch of a new, web-based
Talking Book Archives. The multimedia exhibit includes photographs, letters, press clippings, and audio clips from celebrated narrators and authors such as Alexander Scourby's recording of the Bible, Maya Angelou's recording of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Eva LeGallienne's reading of The Happy Prince.

Of Mysteriously Disappearing Fabric Softener Sheets

By DAVID FAUCHEUX

Recently, I was drying clothes.  Would that I had a valet.  I carefully made sure that I had all my socks and even my hand towels and dish rags all accounted for!  The hand towels and dish rags tend to hide, and the socks want to file for divorce whilst vacationing in the communal laundry room.  I have been known to use a small mesh zipper bag for white clothes, rings from bottles to hold socks in wedded bliss, or even safety pins to make sure no separations, legal or otherwise, will occur.  But this last time I laundered, I noticed upon taking my clothes from the dryer that my fabric sheet was gone.  I looked everywhere, did everything short of calling 911 and the National Guard, asked sighted neighbors, but, alas, that sheet had been kidnapped sans ransom note.  I seem to recall that popular humorist, Irma Bombeck, once did a shtick on disappearing clothes in the dryer.  Perchance, this might require academic study by a professional garbalogist.  Perhaps, the author of the following can help us out? 

Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage

Rogers, Heather. Read by Kerry Dukin. Reading time 8 hours 15 minutes.

IMAGINE That!