Blind people may soon be using their tongues to ’see’

September 29th, 2009 LONDON - A study by an international team of researchers has shown that partially blind people can "unconsciously" sense the facial expressions of others. Led by Marco Tamietto and Beatrice de Gelder at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, the study involved two patients from the United Kingdom who have the very rare condition known as partial cortical blindness.

September 28th, 2009 LONDON - Scottish scientists have thrown light on what helps some magicians perform disappearing acts, revealing that illusions occur when blind spots prevent the eyes from seeing changes before them. Experts at Edinburgh University say that spectators lose their sight for just a few milliseconds when their eyes make tiny shifts in focus, which is too short for them to notice but long enough to miss changes in visual scenes.

September 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a retinal implant for people who have lost their vision from retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration- two of the leading causes of blindness. The retinal prosthesis would help restore some vision by electrically stimulating the nerve cells that normally carry visual input from the retina to the brain.

September 20th, 2009 LONDON - A revolutionary device, costing less than 60 pounds, has been launched which allows blind people to attach and read audio labels on everyday objects. Developed by a UK firm together with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), the PenFriend uses minute barcodes which - when scanned by a digital pen - trigger MP3 files recorded on the unit, reports The BBC.

September 9th, 2009 LONDON - Toddlers are able to learn a second language from the age of 20 months, just as they are still learning their own native tongue, says a new study. At that age the tots' minds are developed enough to learn basic language skills but are not sufficiently tuned in to one language ahead of another.

August 20th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Cigarette smokers have fewer and flatter taste buds, says a new study on Greek soldiers. The research on the tongues of 62 soldiers, published in the open access journal BMC Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders, has demonstrated how cigarettes deaden the ability to taste.

August 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have devised a small, cheap, lab-on-a-chip sensor that quickly and accurately identifies sweetness. It can accurately identify the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read colour markers.

August 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Engineering students at Central Michigan University have designed a device that provides navigation cues for the blind using innovative technology. The device, called The Smart Cane, detects obstacles and provides navigation cues by using Radio Frequency Identification technology - similar to what some major retailers use to tag merchandise to prevent theft.

August 13th, 2009 MELBOURNE - A Brit baby boy has defied all odds after he died 18 times and lived to celebrate his first birthday. Baby Warwick had been born with extreme complications, and his parents Leigh Dumighan, 36, and David Newcombe were told that he would have an appalling life ahead of him if he survived.

August 8th, 2009 LONDON - In a new technological breakthrough, a portable device has been developed to enable deaf-blind people to have face-to-face conversations. The DeafBlind Communicator (DBC) consists of a Braille note-taker linked by Bluetooth to a mobile phone, and it allows the user to make phone calls using a text relay service and to communicate by SMS.

July 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A student team in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering is providing the blind with an opportunity many never thought possible -- the opportunity to drive. A retrofitted four-wheel dirt buggy, designed by them, uses laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a host of other innovative, cutting-edge technology to guide blind drivers as they steer, brake, and accelerate.

July 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Instead of batteries, artificial muscles driving robots or prosthetic limbs might soon be powered by a kind of alcohol that can make people blind, say researchers. "You can imagine robotic soldiers fighting ahead of human soldiers and getting a drink of alcohol to fight on," Live Science quoted materials scientist, Ray Baughman director of the University of Texas at Dallas NanoTech Institute as saying.

July 8th, 2009 Malaysia drops English used to teach math, scienceKUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia announced Wednesday it will abandon the use of English to teach math and science, bowing to protesters who demanded more use of the national Malay language. Malay will be reinstated in state-funded schools starting in 2012 because teaching in English caused academic results in those subjects to slip, Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said.

July 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have developed a novel headset that makes it possible for a person suffering from spinal cord injury to precisely control a wheelchair or computer using the tongue. The "tongue drive", being trialled at Georgia Tech University, Atlanta, could also give astronauts a third hand in difficult situations like spacewalks.

June 9th, 2009 LONDON - Why is it that people, especially those bilinguals, often have tip-of-the-tongue experiences in which words suddenly and perplexingly go missing only to reappear seconds or minutes later? Well, new research has shed some light on why these momentary lapses in vocabulary occur. Jennie Pyers, a psychologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, says that one possible explanation is that similar-sounding words compete for the brain's attention.