I love you, mum: First words of brain-damaged girl, 6, given power of speech by laser which tracks her eye movements

By Daily Mail Reporter

Elke Wisbey has been able to tell her mother she loves her for the first time

A severely handicapped little girl who cannot walk or talk has used a machine to tell her mother for the first time: 'I love you.'

Six-year-old Elke Wisbey, who was born brain-damaged, has been able to communicate with her family by using a high-tech gadget which tracks her eye movements.

The £17,000 MyTobii Smartbox machine from Sweden detects which icons Elke is looking at by using tiny lasers.

When her eyes settle on an icon on the screen of the Smartbox, a pre-programmed voice speaks the word or phrase for her.

Just a few days after setting up the equipment, Elke's parents, Glynnis and Matt Wisbey, described how their daughter started using her eyes to repeat the words 'I love you' over and over again.

Mrs. Wisbey, 43, who also has a son, Galahad, aged nine, said: 'I thought it was stuck and then I realised what she was saying.

'She was looking at the "I love you" icon and I couldn't believe it, she kept doing it.

'I said to Elke "are you telling Daddy you love him?" and she pointed at the icon "yes".

'It really choked me up, made me really emotional. I'm still emotional when I think about it.

'It was quite emotional. It is mind-blowing really. We have gone from somebody not being able to communicate to this.

'We didn't think Elke would ever be able to tell us how she was feeling, and now she can. This will be amazing for us, absolutely phenomenal.'

Readers of a local newspaper raised money to buy the specially-adapted machine for the family from Bearsted, Kent.

The Wisbey family are all learning how to help Elke use the machine, but the little girl, who will never be able to walk or talk for herself or feed herself, has mastered it more quickly than any of them.

She has already got to grips with a number of words and phrases and can also play games and browse the internet with it.

Mrs Wisbey said: 'Elke is an absolute delight to know. She smiles when she recognises people and places and she showers hugs on those she likes best.

'It's going to change our lives completely. We've been overwhelmed by people's support, it takes some people years to raise this kind of money and we've done it in a summer.'

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99 Year Old Hydroelectric Plant Coming Back Online

Written by Ariel Schwartz

In our search for new clean technology, it’s important to pay attention to inventions of the past. A tiny hydroelectric plant in the Yorkshire Dales area of England is coming out of a 60 year retirement next summer to create renewable energy.

The Linton Falls hydroelectric plant will work with the use of two Archimedean screws. Originally designed to carry water up as they rotate, the screws will generate renewable energy by spinning at high speeds when river water flows through them.

The plant will generate a reasonable 510,000 kWh of energy each year— not bad considering the structure has been sitting dormant for decades. Eventually, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority wants to use up to 50 sites for similar schemes.

While hydroelectric dams may not be appropriate everywhere, the Linton Falls plant proves that we should pay attention to the tools we already have before building new ones.

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MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data

By Rick C. Hodgin

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's contributions.


Methane - powerful greenhouse gas

The two lead authors of a paper published in this week's Geophysical Review Letters, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, state that as a result of the increase, several million tons of new methane is present in the atmosphere.

Methane accounts for roughly one-fifth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, though its effect is 25x greater than that of carbon dioxide. Its impact on global warming comes from the reflection of the sun's light back to the Earth (like a greenhouse). Methane is typically broken down in the atmosphere by the free radical hydroxyl (OH), a naturally occuring process. This atmospheric cleanser has been shown to adjust itself up and down periodically, and is believed to account for the lack of increases in methane levels in Earth's atmosphere over the past ten years despite notable simultaneous increases by man.


More study

Prinn has said, "The next step will be to study [these changes] using a very high-resolution atmospheric circulation model and additional measurements from other networks. The key thing is to better determine the relative roles of increased methane emission versus [an increase] in the rate of removal. Apparently we have a mix of the two, but we want to know how much of each [is responsible for the overall increase]."

The primary concern now is that 2007 is long over. While the collected data from that time period reflects a simultaneous world-wide increase in emissions, observing atmospheric trends now is like observing the healthy horse running through the paddock a year after it overcame some mystery illness. Where does one even begin? And how relevant are any of the data findings at this late date? Looking back over 2007 data as it was captured may prove as ineffective if the data does not support the high resolution details such a study requires.

One thing does seem very clear, however; science is only beginning to get a handle on the big picture of global warming. Findings like these tell us it's too early to know for sure if man's impact is affecting things at the political cry of "alarming rates." We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times - one that's been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occurring for hundreds of thousands of years.


Project funding

Rigby and Prinn carried out this study with help from researchers at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Bristol and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Methane gas measurements came from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Australian CSIRO network.

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