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Submission + - Nine words from Science which originated in SciFi (oup.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is a blog post on Oxford University Press USA, listing nine words used in science and technology which were actually dreamed up by fiction writers. Perhaps Slashdot readers can come up with a few more?
Education

Submission + - Human Eyes Speak Volumes to Birds (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by
GrrlScientist
GrrlScientist writes: "Those of you who go birding will know what I am talking about when I say that birds are so capable of reading human body language that they know when we are looking at them, which frequently causes them to hide from our gaze. However, this capacity has never before been scientifically studied in birds, until now, that is. A newly published paper has found that Eurasian jackdaws, a member of the crow family, are so socially sophisticated that they are better at interpreting human eye gaze and body language than are dogs or even our closest relatives, chimpanzees."
Space

Submission + - View From Inside a Black Hole Calculated (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Physicists have calculated what the universe would look like from inside a black hole. Contrary to popular belief, an individual falling into a black hole would not be engulfed in darkness. Instead, the view in the horizontal plane would become highly blue-shifted, but all directions other than horizontal would appear highly redshifted. The exercise is important, they say, because it allows them to study how the laws of physics might break down in the extreme conditions inside a black hole. For example, the principle of locality would be severely tested inside a black hole. One of the foundations of relativity, this is the idea that a point in space can only be influenced by its immediate surroundings. But when space is infinitely stretched, as physicists think it is at the heart of a black hole, the concept of "immediate surroundings" doesn't make sense and the concept of locality begins to lose its meaning too. To illustrate these ideas, the team has produced a set of impressive videos showing what it would look like when were you unlucky enough to fall into a black hole."
Idle

Submission + - Did You See That Woman...Wait...She's A Robot! (singularityhub.com) 4

Submitted by
Singularity Hub
Singularity Hub writes: "Check out the HRP-4C robot, one of the first humanoid robots to boldly sidestep the typical transformer look, instead posing as an attractive manga style woman. Is anyone else having flashbacks of the movie Blade Runner where robots are indistinguishable from humans? The HRP-4c robot is slated to strut down the catwalk March 23 (tomorrow) as a model in a Tokyo fashion show."

GCC 4.2.1 Released 449

Posted by Zonk from the licensing-with-drama dept.
larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"

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