Here First - Science and Technology Blog

With this new technology developed by Microsoft, you will be able to speak fluent Chinese or Japanese, without knowing any Chinese word. This translation technology was developed by Microsoft and probably will be the next big thing in the following years.During a demonstration in Tianjin, head of research at Microsoft, Rick Rashid , showed how the new technology works. He proved that the system recognizes spoken phrases in English, and displays them on the screen. Moreover, it instantly translates them into Mandarin, and it also speaks them with the original voice of the speaker. This technology has been shown before in Sci-Fi movies, but it seems that this time is very close to a real-world implementation. Early research began 60 years ago, and so far, the best systems systems had an error rate of 20-25%. It seems that system created by Microsoft is much better. To develop this technology, Microsoft has collaborated with the University of Toronto, Canada. All research...

Skin from a factory – this has long been the dream of pharmacologists, chemists and doctors. Research has an urgent need for large quantities of ‘skin models’, which can be used to determine if products such as creams and soaps, cleaning agents, medicines and adhesive bandages are compatible with skin, or if they instead will lead to irritation or allergic reactions for the consumer. Such test results are seen as more meaningful than those from animal experiments, and can even make such experiments largely superfluous. source: ScienceDaily