http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London have discovered our motor system activates automatically when we hear speech. These findings could, in the future, play a central role in helping to unravel various language difficulties seen in adults and children. http://www.physorg.com/news180724460.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:16:14 EST news180724460 (PhysOrg.com) -- By implanting an electrode into the brain of a person with locked-in syndrome, scientists have demonstrated how to wirelessly transmit neural signals to a speech synthesizer. The "thought-to-speech" process takes about 50 milliseconds - the same amount of time for a non-paralyzed, neurologically intact person to speak their thoughts. The study marks the first successful demonstration of a permanently installed, wireless implant for real-time control of an external device. http://www.physorg.com/news180620740.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:26:19 EST news180620740 Although politicians are often criticized for making empty promises, when it comes to their voting records, their words may carry more weight than previously thought, according to findings by two Penn State information technology scientists. http://www.physorg.com/news179500357.html Other Sciences Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:30:20 EST news179500357 (PhysOrg.com) -- A pair of studies by Duke University neuroscientists shows powerful new evidence of a deep biological link between human music and speech. http://www.physorg.com/news179045347.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:25:11 EST news179045347 Humans use their whole bodies, not just their ears, to understand speech, according to University of British Columbia linguistics research. http://www.physorg.com/news178803034.html Medicine & Health Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:31:11 EST news178803034 (PhysOrg.com) -- The time it takes for our brains to search for and retrieve the word we want to say has been measured for the first time. The discovery is reported in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA today. http://www.physorg.com/news178216686.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:38:53 EST news178216686 Google, in a significant development for the deaf, announced on Thursday it was adding automatic caption capability to videos on YouTube. http://www.physorg.com/news177868630.html Technology Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:57:51 EST news177868630 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Journal of Neuroscience reports this week that musicians are better than non-musicians at recognizing speech in noisy environments.  The finding from a study conducted by neurobiologists at Northwestern University in Chicago is the first biological evidence that musicians' have a perceptual advantage for "speech-in-noise." http://www.physorg.com/news177683204.html Medicine & Health Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:28:17 EST news177683204 (AP) -- United Nations officials forced free-speech advocates to take down a poster over its reference to China's Web restrictions at an Internet conference focused on freedom, saying Monday that it violated a ban on posters at events organized by the world body. http://www.physorg.com/news177603562.html Technology Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:40:03 EST news177603562 Do you speak English as a second language well, but still have trouble understanding movies with unfamiliar accents, such as Brad Pitt's southern accent in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds? In a new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, Holger Mitterer (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and James McQueen (MPI and Radboud University Nijmegen) show how you can improve your second-language listening ability by watching the movie with subtitles -as long as these subtitles are in the same language as the film. Subtitles in one's native language, the default in some European countries, may actually be counter-productive to learning to understand foreign speech. http://www.physorg.com/news177139830.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:40:02 EST news177139830 Learning to talk also changes the way speech sounds are heard, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at Haskins Laboratories, a Yale-affiliated research laboratory. The findings could have a major impact on improving speech disorders. http://www.physorg.com/news176404265.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:50:06 EST news176404265 Google's voice search tool now understands Chinese. The Internet giant announced on Monday that users of Nokia S60 series mobile phones could now search the Internet using voice commands in Mandarin Chinese. http://www.physorg.com/news176401966.html Technology Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:34:19 EST news176401966 Try to pronounce the words "caught" and "cot." If you're a New Yorker by birth, the two words will sound as different as their spellings. But if you grew up in California, you probably pronounce them identically. http://www.physorg.com/news175787445.html Other Sciences Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:53:19 EST news175787445 (PhysOrg.com) -- Linguistics scholar Amanda Miller is doing research with high-speed ultrasound technology to help her and fellow researchers successfully record and classify clicks in an endangered African language. http://www.physorg.com/news175418617.html Other Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:24:00 EST news175418617 (PhysOrg.com) -- Pacifier, baby bottle or finger sucking may hamper a child's speech development if the habit goes on too long. http://www.physorg.com/news175326557.html Medicine & Health Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:20:01 EST news175326557 Music serves as a natural and non-invasive intervention for patients with severe neurological disorders to promote long-term memory, social interaction and communication. However, there is currently no plausible explanation of its neural basis for why and how music affects physical and psychosocial responses. http://www.physorg.com/news175257288.html Medicine & Health Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:00:01 EST news175257288 Infants as young as five months old are able to correctly identify humans as the source of speech and monkeys as the source of monkey calls, psychology researchers have found. Their finding, which appears in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides the first evidence that human infants are able to correctly match different kinds of vocalizations to different species. http://www.physorg.com/news175188811.html Medicine & Health Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:37:09 EST news175188811 Many of us learn a foreign language when we are young, but in some cases, exposure to that language is brief and we never get to hear or practice it subsequently. Our subjective impression is often that the neglected language completely fades away from our memory. But does "use it or lose it" apply to foreign languages? Although it may seem we have absolutely no memory of the neglected language, new research suggests this "forgotten" language may be more deeply engraved in our minds than we realize. http://www.physorg.com/news173009276.html Medicine & Health Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:09:21 EST news173009276 A new study by the University of East Anglia suggests computers are now better at lip-reading than humans. http://www.physorg.com/news171781818.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:11:19 EST news171781818 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new research laboratory at the UT Dallas Callier Center for Communication Disorders is for the first time investigating speech movements in children with cerebral palsy, and the researchers have created an out-of-this-world experience to reflect the lab`s name. http://www.physorg.com/news170953066.html Medicine & Health Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:10:02 EST news170953066 A new candidate gene for Specific Language Impairment has been identified by a research team directed by Mabel Rice at the University of Kansas, in collaboration with Shelley Smith, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Javier Gayán of Neocodex, Seville, Spain. The finding, reported in the current issue of the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, was discovered by examining genes previously identified as candidate genes for reading impairments or speech sound disorders. The results point toward the likelihood of multiple genes contributing to language impairment, some of which also contribute to reading or speech impairment. http://www.physorg.com/news170597022.html Medicine & Health Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:20:01 EST news170597022 Researchers have developed a new technology that helps Parkinson's patients overcome the tendency to speak too quietly by playing a recording of ambient sound, which resembles the noisy chatter of a restaurant full of patrons. http://www.physorg.com/news170435507.html Medicine & Health Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:30:01 EST news170435507 The Pirate Party, which first rose to prominence in Sweden during June's European elections, has now been officially launched in Finland, the group's leader said on Wednesday. http://www.physorg.com/news169911219.html Technology Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:34:15 EST news169911219 Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have succeeded for the first time in devising a model that describes and identifies a basic cellular mechanism that enables networks of neurons to efficiently decode speech in changing conditions. http://www.physorg.com/news169296966.html Medicine & Health Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:56:39 EST news169296966 Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal said Monday they were continuing to fend off cyber attacks that last week derailed the popular Internet services. http://www.physorg.com/news169133086.html Technology Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:40:01 EST news169133086 (PhysOrg.com) -- If you`ve ever wished you had an assistant to attend meetings with you, take notes and produce a concise summary, then you`ll be pleased to know that UT Dallas computer scientist Yang Liu hopes to one-up you: She`s working on software that would automatically do the job of that assistant. http://www.physorg.com/news168799616.html Technology Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:00:02 EST news168799616 Maybe I watched too much "Star Trek" when I was younger, but I love the idea of being able to command things in my house or in my car by talking to them. http://www.physorg.com/news167499933.html Technology Thu, 23 Jul 2009 04:50:01 EST news167499933 (AP) -- A trade group that represents software and video game publishers sued the Chicago Transit Authority on Wednesday, saying a rule barring ads on trains and buses for "mature" and "adults only" games violates the right to freedom of speech. http://www.physorg.com/news167507057.html Technology Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:44:47 EST news167507057 University of Utah School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center have found strong evidence that abnormal calcium signaling in neurons may play an important role in the development of spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2), a disorder causing progressive loss of coordination, speech difficulty, and abnormal eye movements. Their findings are published in the July 27, 2009 issue of Journal of Neuroscience. http://www.physorg.com/news167488840.html Medicine & Health Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:41:02 EST news167488840 A new way to classify sounds in some human languages may solve a problem that has plagued linguists for nearly 100 years--how to accurately describe click sounds distinct to certain African languages. http://www.physorg.com/news166882422.html Other Sciences Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:14:27 EST news166882422