Software for the Survival of Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson and First Lady Eliza Reid attended the opening of the reading contest. mbl.is/Eggert Jóhannesson Vala Hafstað Voice samples from Icelandic youth will be collected during the annual Grade School Reading Contest, which opened yesterday at Fellaskóli grade school in Reykjavík, Morgunblaðið reports. The data collected will be used for developing software, already in the making, enabling the public to use voice communication with electrical devices. A total of 320,000 voice samples have been collected during a year and a half on the website samromur.is . “Computers and smart devices don’t understand Icelandic, and this is a threat to our language,” states Jóhanna Vigdís Guðmundsdóttir, managing director of Almannarómur, a language technology center in charge of creating a language technology plan for Icelandic.
Woman Dies After Car Lands in Ocean in West Fjords mbl.is/Sverrir A woman is dead after a car she was a passenger in skidded off the road and landed in the ocean in Skötufjörður – a small fjord in Ísafjarðardjúp fjord, the West Fjords, on Saturday, mbl.is reports. The deceased was in her 20s. She and her family – her husband and their young child - had just arrived from Poland and were on their way to their home in Flateyri when the accident occurred. The road was icy at the time. The accident was
Drones Made for Mars to Be Tested in Iceland The Holuhraun eruption lasted from August 31, 2014, till February 27, 2015. mbl.is/RAX Vala Hafstað Holuhraun lava field, north of Vatnajökull glacier, will soon be used by scientists as a testing field for drones developed for exploration on Mars, mbl.is reports. NASA, the US space agency, has awarded USD 3.1 million to a team of scientists, led by Christopher Hamilton, at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, to develop drones that could explore previously inaccessible regions on Mars, news.arizona.edu reports. Several drones have been designed for space exploration in recent years.