Braille Live

Nevada Community Expresses

Asbestos Concerns
Winnemucca, Nevada – September 16, 2009

A proposal to dump San Francisco’s garbage in a landfill outside of Las Vegas has divided the local community. The town of Winnemucca, Nevada is home to the Jungo Road landfill, a dumping ground that may soon be used to dispose of 4,000 tons of garbage, hauled five days a week into Humboldt County for nearly a century to come.
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Robots to revolutionize surgery
BBC NEWS Robots to revolutionize surgery
By Jane Elliott BBC News health reporter

Within ten years some doctors and scientists are predicting that all surgery could be scarless. They say by using the natural orifices of the body and the body’s own natural scar the belly-button (or umbilicus), it will be possible to insert robots into the body which can help perform every surgical procedure.
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BlindAid: Virtual Maps For The Blind
BlindAid: Virtual Maps For The Blind
Article Date: 11 Sep 2009 – 5:00 PDT
The blind and visually impaired often rely on others to provide cues and information on navigating through their environments. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t give them the tools to venture out on their own, says Dr. Orly Lahav of Tel Aviv University’s School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies.

To give navigational “sight” to the blind, Dr. Lahav has invented a new software tool to help the blind navigate through unfamiliar places. It is connected to an existing joystick, a 3-D haptic device, that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch. People can feel tension beneath their fingertips as a physical sensation through the joystick as they navigate around a virtual environment which they cannot see, only feel: the joystick stiffens when the user meets a virtual wall or barrier.
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Code Factory and Vodafone at Techshare, London 2009
Introducing Mobile Speak Touch
Terrassa (Barcelona), Spain, September 10, 2009
Code Factory and Vodafone Spain are proud to be exhibitors, in booth 6, at the 2009 Techshare exhibition, taking place from September 17th to 18th at the ExCeL London conference and exhibition centre, located on the waterfront in east London’s Royal Victoria Dock. This conference and exhibition is an international event for professionals interested in technology and the role it plays in the education, work and daily life of people with disabilities.
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Wiretapping Skype Calls, Virus Eavesdrops On VOIP Calls
SAN FRANCISCO
Some computer viruses have a crude but scary ability to spy on people by logging every keystroke they type. Now hackers and potentially law enforcement have another weapon: a virus that can eavesdrop on voice conversations that go over computers instead of a regular phone line.

The capability has been shown in a new “Trojan horse” virus that records Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls through the popular Skype service. Skype calls are free or low cost and can work between two computers or between one computer and a phone.
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40 Years Of The Internet, A Timeline
Key milestones in the development and growth of the Internet:
1969
On Sept. 2, two computers at University of California, Los Angeles, exchange meaningless data in first test of Arpanet, an experimental military network. The first connection between two sites — UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. — takes place on Oct. 29, though the network crashes after the first two letters of the word “logon.” UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah later join.
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Good News on the Home Front: An Update on the Accessibility of Appliances
Good News on the Home Front: An Update on the Accessibility of Appliances Bradley Hodges
Reading the newspaper and listening to the radio in these difficult economic times have convinced me that there is an index to measure almost every imaginable business trend and consumer behavior. Whether it is housing starts, existing home sales, consumer confidence, or anything else to be measured, surveyed, or analyzed, there is a regular report to be found. Despite the vastly different things under consideration, one thing appears to be common for all: Most of the indices appear to be trending down.
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Enmanuel Chacin

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by Jim Price

He’s had a dream since he was 11 years old. It began with an international tragedy of violence and death thousands of miles away, and it changed his life.

Enmanuel Chacin, 18, spent most of his life in Caracas, Venezuela, an American citizen stuck in a communist country that has little regard for people who are blind. “My mom wanted me to have a future so two years ago we moved to Orlando, Florida. In that time the US has given me twice as much help as Venezuela did in 16 years,” he said. “I love it here.”
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As Internet Turns 40 Barriers Threaten Its Growth
NEW YORK
Goofy videos weren’t on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the Internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online.

Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web.
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A Hand Sanitizer That Doesn’t Dry Out Your Skin
A Springfield, Missouri company has developed a hand sanitizer that doesn’t dry out your hands. Quite a few local dermatologists have been indicating that they’re impressed with the product. Since this is a problem for many of us we’re passing this on. The company has recently developed a website. . Here’s some information about the product and the URL for the site. I’ve just ordered some and it prices out ataround $2.33 a bottle plus shipping.
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