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Showing posts from August, 2017

PFIs bleeding NHS - time to buy them out

The independent Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) has today released a devastating analysis of accounts showing how PFIs are bleeding money from the NHS, and calls for public sector loans to be used to buy-out PFI contracts. Staggering pre-tax profits Over the past 6 years, companies which run PFI contracts to build and run NHS hospitals and other facilities have made staggering pre-tax profits of £831m – money which has thereby not been available for patient care over this period. The findings show that If the NHS had not been paying profits on PFI schemes, deficits in NHS hospitals would have been reduced by a quarter over this 6 year period. Over the next 5 years, almost £1bn of taxpayer funds (£973m) will go to PFI companies in the form of pre-tax profits – equivalent to a quarter (22%) of the additional amount of money (£4.5bn) that the government has promised the NHS over this period. A number of PFI schemes are generating particularly high pre-tax profi

A revolution in speech animation?

I have always been fascinated by animated characters.  We know there is more to speech than simply words.  Facial expression adds significantly to our understanding.  As a deaf person I also know too well how precise movement of the lips and face help in my understanding of the spoken word.  Forming speech is complex. About a hundred different muscles in the chest, neck, jaw, tongue, and lips must work together in forming speech. Every word or short phrase that is physically spoken is followed by its own unique arrangement of muscle movements.   No wonder then that animations can often appear flat and characterless.  New research from the University of East Anglia (UK) could revolutionise the way that animated characters deliver their lines. Animating the speech of characters such as Elsa and Mowgli has been both time-consuming and costly. But now computer programmers have identified a way of creating natural-looking animated speech that can be generated in real-time as voice acto

Could disability awareness end supernatural myth-making in Africa?

Many people in rural African communities still believe that disability is caused by supernatural forces, curses and as ‘punishment’ for wrongdoings – according to University of East Anglia research (UEA, UK).  The resultant stigma leaves disabled people vulnerable to neglect and abuse - with sexual abuse reported by 90 per cent of people with learning difficulties. Many disabled children are kept ‘locked up’ at home – often for their own safety. But the more that communities come into contact with disability, the more awareness and understanding grows. Meanwhile medical explanations for disability are beginning to emerge, with increasing numbers of families seeking medical advice for children with disabilities rather than consulting a witchdoctor. The ‘Preparation of Communities: Using personal narratives to affect attitudes to disability in Kilifi, Kenya (Pre-Call)’ project was set up to promote disability awareness in small communities in a rural part of Kenya, by encouraging a