Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
1. The supplementation or replacement of natural speech and/or writing using aided or unaided symbols. Blissymbols, pictographs, Sigsymbols, tangible symbols, and electronically produced speech are examples of aided symbols. Manual signs, gestures, and fingerspelling are examples of unaided symbols. The use of aided symbols requires a transmission device, whereas the use of unaided symbols requires only the body.
2. The field or area of clinical/educational practice to improve the communication skills of individuals with little or no functional speech. http://www.edst.purdue.edu/aac/

A soft keyboard (sometimes called an onscreen keyboard or software keyboard ) is a system that replaces the hardware keyboard on a computing device with an on-screen image map . Soft keyboards are typically used to enable input on a handheld device so that a keyboard doesn't have to be carried with it, and to allow people with disabilities or special needs to use computers. The displayed keyboard can usually be moved and resized, and generally can allow any input that the hardware version does. Other features, such as speech synthesis or word completion or prediction, may be included. A soft keyboard is perhaps the most common type of virtual keyboard (a term that encompasses all types of software keyboards). Some soft keyboards include programs that recognize the likelihood of certain keystrokes in context, so that they can choose the most likely choice when a keystroke is ambiguous. For people who are unable to use a regular keyboard, soft keyboards allow input through a variety of means, including mouse or trackball control, touch screen , and head-pointing devices.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci841791,00.html

ACM presented six Special Awards to finalists in the 2011 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) , the world's largest high school science research competition, held in May in Los Angeles, CA. More than 1,500 young entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists competed to reach the finals from the 443 affiliate fairs in 65 countries, regions and territories. ACM presents awards of $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $300 for third place, and $200 for honorable mention. All winners receive complimentary ACM Student Memberships for the duration of their undergraduate education. In addition, all Computer Science contestants are offered a complimentary one-year ACM Student Membership.
First Award of $1,000
"Optimizing Keyboards for People with Disabilities"
Natalie Janet Nash, 16, Vincentian Academy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
See all award winners at: http://librarians.acm.org/acm-presents-special-awards-2011-intel-science-fair-finalists

The Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to take up a grisly case that may be of interest to exurban land developers, hinterlands business owners and anyone else who dwells in what is known as the "wildland urban interface"; that is, the place where nature and development meet. In October 2007, 83-year-old Gwyneth Williams was house-sitting for her daughter and son-in-law in their Savannah-area suburb while the couple were in Europe. Neighbors found Williams floating dead in one of the many lagoons that dot the swampy coastal development, known as The Landings. A medical examiner determined that an alligator had bitten off Williams' forearms, her hands and her right foot. A trapper eventually found an 8-foot alligator, killed it and found Williams' body parts inside the creature's stomach. The family sued the subdivision's homeowners association, arguing that it should have done a better job ensuring the safety of visitors to a place where alligators are common. A key issue the Georgia court will address is whether the homeowners' association should be shielded from the lawsuit under a doctrine known as "animals ferae naturae." A ferae naturae animal is a wild one, as opposed to a domesticated one. Walter W. Ballew III, the attorney for the homeowners' association, cited a Texas appellate court decision in arguing that the doctrine means that a "landowner cannot be liable for the acts of animals ferae naturae, that is indigenous wild animals, occurring on his or her property unless the landowner has actually reduced the wild animals to possession or control, or introduced a non-indigenous animal to the area." There is no question that alligators are indigenous to coastal Georgia. Attorneys for Williams' family argue that the alligator had been in the lagoon for a long time and "could have, and should have, been easily discovered and removed by a responsible maintenance program," the Morris News Service's Walter C. Jones reported October 18. http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2011-10-18/supreme-court-hear-case-gator-ate-woman
The court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case in February. Its decision, of course, will only apply to Georgia.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/georgia_alligator_death.html

International textbooks controversy--one comment: My son purchased an international edition of a textbook that he needed for one of his college classes. He purchased it over the internet and it was considerably cheaper than the edition that the book store at the college carried. When he got the book, he found that it was not exactly identical to the book needed for his course. The pagination of the book did not match up with the required text and there were some other differences between the books that made it practically useless for the course that he was taking. So from his experience, I would have to conclude that even though the International editions of books may appear to be the same thing, they may in fact not always be identical to the US books. My son said that he has shifted away from buying his texts over the internet, which he did for a while to save on costs. He now gets most of his books from the college bookstore because he is assured of purchasing the right book that goes with his course.

About 200 National Lawyers Guild members are volunteering as legal observers on the scene at Occupy Wall Street. A national nonprofit composed of lawyers, legal workers, and law students, the guild is encouraging its members to monitor events at the Zuccotti Park encampment and to trail protesters when they march to locations elsewhere in the city. The guild's mission, says Gideon Oliver, a solo practitioner and member of the executive committee of the group's New York City chapter, is to ensure that demonstrators are able to exercise their First Amendment rights. Guild observers attempt to identify everyone who is arrested, record the arresting officer's badge number, and obtain contact information for potential witnesses. Following those steps makes it easier to coordinate jail support services and legal representation, says Jane Moison, a guild member and associate at criminal defense and civil rights firm Rankin & Taylor. http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2011/10/meet-occupy-wall-streets-legal-team.html

To maintain their youthful bright appearance, old stars called blue stragglers eat up the outer envelope of giant-star companions, stripping them down to their white dwarf core in a process called mass transfer. Several theories have attempted to explain why blue stragglers appear younger than they actually are, but, until now, scientists have lacked the crucial observations with which to test each hypothesis. Armed with such observational data, two astronomers report in the journal Nature that this mechanism of mass transfer explains the origins of blue stragglers. The majority of blue stragglers in the study are binaries—they have a companion star. “It’s really the companion star that helped us determine where the blue straggler comes from,” says Aaron M. Geller, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University and first author of a new study. “The companion stars orbit at periods of about 1,000 days, and we have evidence that the companions are white dwarfs. Both point directly to an origin from mass transfer.” For the study, Geller and Robert Mathieu, professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studied the NGC 188 open cluster, which is in the constellation Cepheus, situated in the sky near Polaris, the North Star. The cluster is one of the most ancient open star clusters, yet it features the mysterious young blue stragglers. The cluster has around 3,000 stars, all about the same age, and has 21 blue stragglers. You may link to the original study at:
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/how-blue-stragglers-stay-forever-young/