This Week I Learned - Week #8 2023

This Week I Learned - 

* Helidon is a Java microservice framework that is open sourced by Oracle. 

* Microsoft Azure AI provides more than 449 prebuilt neural voices across 147 languages. Custom Neural Voice (CNV) is a feature offered by Azure AI that enables users to create a unique, customized, synthetic voice for their applications. This feature uses human speech samples as training data to generate a highly natural-sounding voice for a brand or characters. CNV which is based on neural text-to-speech technology allows creation of synthetic, realistic and natural-sounding voiced for representing brands and personifying machines for conversational interactions with users. Duolingo, the language learning company is using Custom Neural Voice to personalize language learning by introducing a cast of characters within the platform.

* Azure Speech to text supports real-time language identification for multilingual language learning scenarios, and helps human-human interaction with better understanding and readable context. The latest multilingual modeling technology and transfer learning techniques were used to develop new speech-to-text (STT) languages based on vast amounts of data. These models have been trained in acoustics and language knowledge across different languages, and can handle both dictation and conversation in a variety of language domains. 

* CopyCat improves children's short-term memory skills through ASL games. 

* PopSign is a smartphone game app that makes learning American Sign Language fun, interactive, and accessible. It is developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology.  

* PopSign is building its recognition pipeline on top of TensorFlow Lite, which runs on both Android and iOS.

* Every day, 33 babies are born with permanent hearing loss in the U.S. Without sign language, deaf babies are at risk of Language Deprivation Syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by a lack of access to naturally occurring language acquisition during their critical language-learning years. It can cause serious impacts on different aspects of their lives, such as relationships, education, and employment.   

* Learning American Sign Language is as difficult for English speakers as learning Japanese. ASL is a complete and complex language, with all the nuances and subtleties of a spoken language. One major misconception is that it is an easily learned, picture-like language. This understanding is due partly to the fact that some of the first basic signs learned may be thought of as iconic (e.g., signs for eat, sleep, and drink). learning ASL should be approached with respect and with the knowledge that mastery only occurs over a substantial period of time.

* National Institute of Speech and Hearing (NISH) offers a free 6-week online introductory course on Indian Sign Language (ISL) to familiarize ISL to special educators and parents who are dealing with the deaf and hard of hearing. The course is comprised of 10-15 minutes videos each week that would be delivered through Moodle platform. 

* “Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.” ― Oscar Wilde.

* Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion. Religion's eleventh commandment is: "Thou shalt not question" — Sigmund Freud, Austrian Neurologist (1856-1939)