Archive: Science and technology | Science Science
Ivan Havel - science, hippies and growing up with Vaclav
This week Rob Cameron's guest is Ivan Havel, younger brother of the Czech
Republic's former president Vaclav. While no means as famous as his older
sibling, Ivan Havel is an important figure in the Czech academic
community, as well as the editor-in-chief of the prestigious science
magazine Vesmir. During communism Ivan invited dissidents and academics to
his apartment overlooking the River Vltava, meetings at which Vaclav Havel
was often present. But Ivan shied away from politics after 1989, choosing
instead to stay in the world of science and academia.
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The tree of knowledge: a tribute to Otto Wichterle /1913 -1998/
Millions of people around the world could not imagine their life without
modern contact lenses. But few of them know that the man who invented them
was professor Otto Wichterle, an outstanding Czech chemist who had many
notable achievements to his name, and died in 1998. This week academics
and scientists from around the Czech Republic gathered outside the Prague
Institute of Macro-Molecular Chemistry for the unveiling of a monument to
one of the great minds of the last century.
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Sleep medicine - ever more needed in the industrialised world
Last Friday was European Researchers' Night - an event involving a variety
of science-oriented programmes for the public which ran late into the
night. In Prague, one of the topics discussed was sleep.
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Multipurpose virtual robot helps in cancer research
A company based in the city of Brno recently announced the creation of what
they call the first Universal Information Robot. The company says that the
robot can help software firms to radically reduce costs for the creation
and maintenance of information systems. Also, at the moment, the robot is
helping to sort out 30 years' worth of data collected on cancer treatment. More
Typing without touching the keyboard
In previous editions of Czech Science we reported on a couple of computer
systems, specialising in speech recognition, developed by the Laboratory
of Computer Speech Processing or SpeechLab at the Technical University in
Liberec. In today's Czech Science we'll look at another voice recognition
programme devised by the SpeechLab team.
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SpeechLab develops system for automatic transcription of news broadcasts
In one previous edition of Czech Science we reported on a talking computer
image developed by the SpeechLab at the Technical University in Liberec.
As promised, we now bring you more news from the SpeechLab. The team
recently developed a computer programme that can automatically transcribe
news programmes on TV or radio. More
Controlling computers at the bat of an eyelid
Computers are an essential part of many people's lives these days but there
are many who are unable to use their hands to operate a computer mouse and
keyboard. People with disabilities improvise with various methods, such as
pressing the keys with a pencil held in their mouth. Scientists around the
world have been trying to develop instruments that could translate the
movements of one's eye to control a computer but the fruits of the
research have always been too big, clumsy and expensive. Now a team from
the Czech Technical University in Prague have come up with a solution that
is simple, lightweight and affordable.
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Czech scientists teach computers to "speak" Czech
Would you like your computer to understand you when you shout at it or when
you are begging it to unfreeze? Well, that might soon be possible thanks
to the work of Czech scientists from the Centre for Computational
Linguistics at the Faculty of Mathematics in Prague. Among the projects
they are currently working on is for example machine translation. But what
is much more exciting is the one in which they teach computers to
understand spoken language. In the case of Czech, it is especially
difficult, as the spoken and written forms of the language differ
significantly. I spoke to the head of the centre, Professor Eva Hajicova,
and asked her first whether that was a major challenge.
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