Lifeboat Foundation

(TT) — Thanks to the ingenuity of a blind inventor, people who lack sight can more easily navigate the world.

Shouldn’t the title just be “Engineer”? What an amazing product!

Roy Allela, a 25-year old engineer and inventor from Kenya, has found the ultimate solution to bridging the communication barrier between deaf and hearing people. He has invented the Sign-IO gloves that can translate signed hand movements to audible speech so deaf people can “talk” even to those who don’t understand sign language.

The Sign-IO gloves feature sensors mounted on each of the five fingers to determine its movements, including how much a finger is bent. The gloves are connected via Bluetooth to an Android app that Allela also invented which uses a text-to-speech function to convert the gestures to vocal speech.

Continue reading “Black Engineer Invents Gloves That Turn Sign Language into Audible Speech” »

Of interest?

Contact lenses capable of recording video and taking pictures could one day become a reality after Samsung was granted a patent in the US to develop the technology.

The lenses feature motion sensors, which means that wearers could control devices with their eye movements and potentially give commands to their devices remotely when blinking or using their peripheral vision.

Continue reading “Samsung patents ‘smart’ contact lenses that record video and let you control your phone just by blinking” »

Apple’s update to macOS for 2019 will be known as Catalina and will bring many third-party iOS apps to the Mac, new Music and TV apps, as well as lots of other exciting features. Find out what else we expect from the new macOS Catalina update.

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the Rockefeller University say they have uncovered the basic mechanism of Piezo proteins, which function as sensors in the body for mechanical stimuli such as touch, bladder fullness, and blood pressure. The discovery opens up many new paths of investigation into the roles of Piezo proteins in human diseases and potential new therapeutic strategies, according to the scientists.

In the study (“Force-induced conformational changes in PIEZO1”), published in Nature, the team used advanced microscopy techniques to image the Piezo1 protein at rest and during the application of mechanical forces. They confirmed this complex protein’s structure and showed essentially how it can convert mechanical stimuli into an electrical signal.

“Piezo1 is a mechanosensitive channel that converts applied force into electrical signals. Partial molecular structures show that Piezo1 is a bowl-shaped trimer with extended arms. Here we use cryo-electron microscopy to show that Piezo1 adopts different degrees of curvature in lipid vesicles of different sizes. We also use high-speed atomic force microscopy to analyze the deformability of Piezo1 under force in membranes on a mica surface and show that Piezo1 can be flattened reversibly into the membrane plane,” the investigators wrote.

Mass produced sensors can almost instantly detect and analyse…

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With a focal length equivalent to 1000mm.