Program offers voice choice

Cepstral has developed technology that translates written text to speech, but unlike existing software, it created a method that allows customers to choose a voice, reports Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

It could be one's own voice or a voice of a certain age and gender or preferred geographical accent. Cepstral employees build voices by recording people speaking up to 4 000 words, phrases and passages.

Another approach is to extract voices from the public domain on the Internet, said Patrick Dexter, Cepstral's director of business development.

Lithium battery technology has been evolving quickly and promises to become the de facto means for storing energy in everything from consumer electronics to plug-in cars and even solar and wind power plants, according to Mother Nature Network.

But lithium batteries have some serious drawbacks - both environmental and economic. Current lithium batteries are expensive to produce, requiring high temperatures and toxic organic solvents.

To address these problems, MIT biology researcher Angela Belcher and team developed a non-toxic water-based battery, by replacing common electrode elements with something more organic - a virus.

Engineers at Warwick Audio Technologies in the UK have developed a loudspeaker that's so flat and flexible it can be tacked to a wall just like a picture, writes Gizmag.

The speaker, dubbed the Flat Flexible Loudspeaker (FFL), is less than 0.25mm and thin enough to be concealed inside office ceiling tiles, cars or printed with a design and attached to any flat surface, like a wall.

What the super-slim FFL lacks in girth is compensated by a method of sound generation that can project a clearer, crisper sound further than conventional speakers. Audio is heard at close to the same level whether one's standing a meter or 10 meters away, making the FFL ideal anywhere public address systems are used, such as airports, train stations and shopping centres.