Word: waved
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...philosophy of life. Of course, there are still those who are nostalgic for the old days. In the end, they will be defeated because people realize that social justice is found only in a democracy. But it is also necessary to understand that while we are encouraging this new wave of democracy sweeping through Latin America, there is still great risk, which is caused by the heavy foreign debt burdening many of these countries. They are underdeveloped; they are poor. Thus the debt is not just a financial but a political problem. To enjoy liberty, you must have a minimal...
...human searching through a key ring for duplicate pairs of keys; by aligning two keys at a time, he can quickly locate any pairs that have identical sawtooth patterns. In the electronic equivalent, a spoken command is transformed into a varying electrical current that can be represented by a wave with a characteristic set of peaks and troughs. This wave form (see diagram) is converted into a template, a pattern of zeros and ones that the computer can digest and store. By prerecording a number of key words, a user can build up a library of digital templates, each corresponding...
...they might, computer scientists seemed unable to overcome these deficiencies--until Victor Zue came along. Zue is a Chinese-born M.I.T. scientist who decided to teach himself to read spectrograms (computer-enhanced versions of the electrical wave forms of speech) as if they were words. This was no easy task. While spectrograms made by one person repeating the same word look alike, those made by another differ considerably. Zue discovered, however, that no matter how unlike spectrograms appear, they all have certain features in common. For example, the s in stop will appear as a dark rectangular wedge, no matter...
...discovery showed researchers how they could dispense with prerecorded templates. Now they could program their computers to identify the shapes and patterns that Zue had recognized in the spectrograms. That immediately made the machines more versatile. Rather than trying to match every peak and trough in the wave forms of someone's voice, they could search for only those acoustic features that are universal in certain words, no matter who speaks them. Advanced word-recognition systems using this technique are already in the hands of the National Security Agency, the top-secret Government bureau that monitors global communications networks. Eavesdropping...
...movements, arresting black leaders, and so giving rise to a newly militant opposition. Today, after a quarter-century of struggle and despite recent promises of reform by President P.W. Botha, violence still holds sway in the divided land. The killings outside Uitenhage represented the bloodiest single episode since a wave of unrest began sweeping across the country last year. They also triggered more rioting at week's end in nearby townships, where angry mobs killed at least seven blacks they accused of being accomplices of the minority white government. In addition, they set fire to the homes of several black...