New Video Game Helps Children Who Stutter

Stuttering

Fluency Friends is the first interactive video game that uses speech recognition to help children who stutter improve their speech at home Today, on International Stuttering Awareness Day (22 October), the Belgian – American startup Say It Labs officially launched its new video game ‘Fluency Friends’. The app helps children improve their stuttering in a fun way through…

Space Records Due To Be Broken Friday 22 October

Ariane 5

Ariane 5 is on the cusp of setting 3 new records when it carries the SES-17 and SYRACUSE 4A satellites for its second launch of the year, scheduled for Friday October 22. Arianespace will orbit two geostationary satellites: SES-17, a high throughput satellite operated by SES and SYRACUSE 4A, a satellite developed for the French…

Arianespace Deploys 36 OneWeb Satellites with Successful Soyuz Flight

Soyuz Launch Vehicle

Arianespace has successfully performed Soyuz Flight ST36. This latest launch for OneWeb placed 36 more satellites into orbit. ST36 represents an important step in OneWeb and Arianespace’s partnership: the operator now has more than half, 358 satellites, of its constellation in orbit. ST36 is the 10th launch of Arianespace in 2021. Performed on Thursday, October…

Giorgi Parisi Awarded Nobel Prize for Physics

Giorgio Parisi

Giorgio Parisi, grantee of the European Research Council (ERC), has been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics.  The other half of this year’s award is shared by Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann. The three laureates received the prize “for ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.” For almost a decade, Professor Parisi…

EUMETSAT Helps Weather Forecasts In Africa

The weather in Africa

African nations’ capacity to significantly improve weather and climate forecasting through access to data from Europe’s next-generation meteorological satellites will be the key focus of a two-week online forum this week. Covid travel restrictions have forced Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, to move its two-yearly Africa User Forum online, but also have made it possible…

Commission Initiative Against e-Waste

e-waste

The European Commission says it has taken an important step against e-waste and consumer inconvenience, caused by the prevalence of different, incompatible chargers for electronic devices.  Years of working with industry on a voluntary approach already brought down the number of mobile phone chargers from 30 to 3 within the last decade, but could not…

Space Traffic Becoming Dangerously Congested: Call for EU Action

Space satellite traffic congestion

The world’s leading satellite launch company has called for new rules to combat dangers posed by an “ever congested” space.” The Ariane Group says a “rules book” is needed to tackle the issue to stop space becoming “dangerously congested.” It is estimated that the average individual uses 47 satellites every day and that, by 2025, the…

Danish Coronavirus Related R&D Approved by Commission

Margrethe Vestager approves aid for R&D

The European Commission has approved a €108 million Danish aid measure to support coronavirus-related research and development (R&D) activities of Bavarian Nordic, a company active in the vaccine development and manufacturing industry. The scheme was approved under the State aid framework. Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said: “This €108 million Danish aid measure…

Successful Ariane 5 launch places 2 Telecoms Satellites in Orbit

Ariane 5 Blasting off from Kourou

Late on Friday night, the first Ariane 5 flight of 2021 operated by Arianespace successfully placed two satellites in orbit after launching from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou with the support of teams from the French space agency CNES: Star One D2, built by Maxar Technologies for Brazilian operator Embratel, and EUTELSAT QUANTUM for…