US chipmaker studies ways to help famous British physicist overcome his slowing speech, chipmaker is studying ways to help renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking overcome his slowing speech. Hawking has Lou Gehrig’s disease, an incurable degenerative neurone disorder that has left him almost completely paralysed. For several years the scientist has communicated using a tiny infrared sensor that translates small movements in his right cheek into words spoken by a voice synthesiser. But Hawking, 70, is losing the use of the nerves in his face and his rate of speech has slowed to one word per minute. Intel executive Justin Rattner said his company had a research team in Britain laying the groundwork for a potential new speech system. Hawking, the world’s best-known living scientist, was too ill to attend his 70th birthday celebrations in Cambridge, England, on Sunday but in a recorded speech urged people to "look up at the stars" and be curious about the universe. The author of the international bestseller A Brief History of Time has been hailed as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists since Albert Einstein. SAPA-AP and REUTERS, Source: BusinessDay, Image: https://www.flickr.com/
