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'Retweet,' 'sexting' added to Oxford English Dictionary, alongside words that are actually words
Every so often, Chuzzlewitt, Figglesworth and the rest of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary's Council of Elders gather around a stone in Puddingshire, where they come up with ways to modernize the English language. New words are added, archaic ones are cut, goats are sacrificed. It's all very messy -- especially when internet lingo gets involved, as is so often the case. It's no different this year, with the latest class of inductees including words like "retweet," "sexting," and "cyberbullying." Also making the cut is "woot" (which is apparently spelled without zeroes) and "surveil," which was added primarily as a reflection of today's privacy-conscious society. In fact, the dictionary's purveyors say they make their decisions based not on intuition or cage match results, but on cultural ubiquity, which they gauge using a database of more than two billion words culled from contemporary sites. So if you're wondering why words like "jeggings" and "mankini" are now part of the English tome, you have only the internet to blame.
Prototype glasses use video cameras, face recognition to help people with limited vision
We won't lie: we love us a heartwarming story about scientists using run-of-the-mill tech to help people with disabilities, especially when the results are decidedly bionic. Today's tale centers on a team of Oxford researchers developing sensor-laden glasses capable of displaying key information to people with poor (read: nearly eroded) vision. The frames, on display at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, have cameras mounted on the edges, while the lenses are studded with lights -- a setup that allows people suffering from macular degeneration and other conditions to see a simplified version of their surroundings, up close. And the best part, really, is that the glasses cull that data using garden-variety technology such as face detection, tracking software, position detectors, and depth sensors -- precisely the kind of tech you'd expect to find in handsets and gaming systems. Meanwhile, all of the processing required to recognize objects happens in a smartphone-esque computer that could easily fit inside a pocket. And while those frames won't exactly look like normal glasses, they'd still be see-through, allowing for eye contact. Team leader Stephen Hicks admits that vision-impaired people will have to get used to receiving all these flashes of information, but when they do, they might be able to assign different colors to people and objects, and read barcodes and newspaper headlines. It'll be awhile before scientists cross that bridge, though -- while the researchers estimate the glasses could one day cost £500 ($800), they're only beginning to build prototypes.
OMG, FYI, and LOL enter Oxford English Dictionary, foreshadow the apocalypse
In an acknowledgement of the internet's overwhelming influence on the triviality we sometimes refer to as "real life," the Oxford English Dictionary doyens have decided to add a few of the web's favorite pronouncements to their lexicon. Among them are the standouts OMG, LOL and FYI, joining their compatriots IMHO and BFF among the proud number of officially sanctioned initialisms (abbreviations contracted to the initials of their words) used in the English language. Shockingly enough, the expression OMG has had its history tracked all the way back to 1917, while LOL used to mean "little old lady" back in the '60s, and FYI first showed up in corporate lingo in 1941. Not only that, but the heart symbol -- not the <3 emoticon, the actual ♥ graphic -- has also made it in. Just so long as Beliebers and fanpires are kept out, there's still hope for the future. A tiny, twinkling ember of a hope.
Oxford neuroscientists shock the parietal lobe, improve math scores
We always knew that the willy-nilly application of electricity (or, for that matter, radiation) endowed the person on the receiving end with super powers, but neuroscientists at Oxford have taken our misguided notion one step further. The researchers were looking into dyscalculia, a rare impairment related to dyslexia that creates an innate difficulty in understanding mathematics, when they came up with an idea that, to us, seems totally obvious: a very low level (one thousandth of an amp) electrical stimulus across the parietal lobe. So far, the study has been limited to fifteen right-handed students but the results have been pretty interesting. When the current flowed from the right to the left, subjects' ability to solve various mathematical puzzles were improved -- for up to six months after the treatment. However, if the electricity was sent the other way, the effect was reversed and the volunteers' scores were on par with a six year old. "Much more research is needed before we can even start thinking of this kind of electrical stimulation as a treatment," said Oxford's Dr. Cohen Kadosh. "However, we are extremely excited by the potential of our findings and are now looking into the underlying brain changes."
BlackBerry Style (or Oxford?) launching on Sprint October 31?
The so-called BlackBerry Style got kind of lost in all the recent PlayBook noise, but fear not, clamshell lovers -- it seems the phone is still very much on track. Some literature leaked this week by way of BGR suggests that it'll be called "Oxford" at retail, and that a gray version will be launching at the tail end of this month -- October 31, to be exact -- for $99.99 on contract after rebates and discounts, while a purple version will follow on soon thereafter. For what it's worth, we've been hearing from other sources recently that the name of this thing is still Style, not Oxford, but it's more than possible that they've made a last-minute branding decision internally. We prefer Style, we think... but regardless of what it's called, we'd wager the wild QWERTY clam format is going to make for some pretty polarizing water cooler chat. [Thanks, Delon]
Next edition of Oxford English Dictionary may be online-only
Video killed the radio star and the internet, it seems, is about to obviate printed reference tomes. Oxford University Press, the publisher of the 20-volume authoritative text on the English language, has said it might not publish a printed version of the next edition. The OUP cites 2 million monthly hits on its subscription-based ($295 per annum) web lookup service, which compares rather favorably to the 30,000 total print sales since the current (Second) edition's publication back in 1989. The complete Oxford English Dictionary hardback set costs $1,165 and weighs in at a whopping 130 pounds altogether, so perhaps Oxford would be doing Ma Earth a favor as well by going paperless. Of course, we're talking about the somewhat distant future here; the next OED isn't expected to be completed for another decade, by which time we could have all sorts of magical devices, maybe even a color Kindle!
BlackBerry Bold R020 and 9670 Oxford flip outed?
It's felt almost as if the BlackBerry smartphone rumor mill has been a little too quiet -- dare we say burnt out -- since the Torch hit the scene (BlackPad notwithstanding, of course). That's all changed with a pair of interesting leaks care of Boy Genius Report. Behold a successor to the Bold 9700, the R020. The tri-band UMTS / quad-band EDGE device is gonna disappoint some with the same 624MHz clockspeed and 2.44-inch 480 x 360 screen, but it does have twice the RAM (512MB), a 5 megapixel camera with AF and flash, and of course runs on BlackBerry 6. If the purported leaked slides are correct, a device of such magnitude should be launching in the October timeframe. Looking to the CDMA side of things -- which means likely both Verizon and Sprint -- we've got a 9670 "Oxford" (at least by codename) flip phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, 5 megapixel camera, 360 x 400 internal display (240 x 320 for the external), usual amenities like WiFi and GPS, and the hip new BB6. No touchscreen on either phones, as far as we can tell, but perhaps that's a blessing for those that fret smudged screens.
QderoPateo Ouidoo to pack 26-core chip, looks like Palm Pre and Windows Phone 7 love child
Really now? KIRFing a phone and a UI is one thing, but claiming to have a 26-core CPU (!) capable of 8-gigaflop (!) floating point operation -- or the "equivalent of four iPads combined," apparently -- is one helluva stretch for a smartphone. This is apparently how awesome the QderoPateo Ouidoo will be. According to the launch event at the Shanghai World Expo on Friday, the too-good-to-be-true Divinitus CPU will help power the Ouidoo OS's augmented reality articulated naturality apps and 3D social-networking virtual world. The rest of the specs include 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 28GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, built-in 3D map, accelerometer, digital compass, 5-megapixel camera with flash, 220 hours of standby battery life, and a sharp 3.5-inch 800 x 480 screen. No prices or even videos of the UI available yet, but our friends over at Engadget Chinese are promised a review unit in July or August -- around the time of the global launch (followed by an LTE revision in 2011), so it won't be long before we find out whether this is just some absurd vaporware. A couple of pictures of the prototype after the break. Update: Recombu has pinged us a link to Oxford University's PTAM (Parallel Tracking and Mapping) augmented reality software, which is licensed to QderoPateo. You can see it demoed on an iPhone 3G after the break. [Thanks, xleung]
Mad scientists figure out how to write memories to brains, take over Earth
Call us crazy, but we're guessing one Gero Miesenböck of the University of Oxford has been watching just a wee bit too much Fringe. Gero here, along with a few of his over-anxious colleagues, has seemingly figured out a way to actually write memories onto a fruit fly's brain using only a laser pen and three-fourths of a Ouija board. We know what you're thinking, and we're thinking the same. But all terrifying thoughts aside, what if boffins could burn memories of hard lessons learned into our minds without us having to suffer through them first? You know, like upgrading to Snow Leopard.
Transparent aluminum! Would that be worth somethin' to ya, eh?
It's hard to say if boffins at Oxford University got their inspiration from Nimoy and Co., but one thing's for sure: they aren't joking about the creation of transparent aluminum. In what can only be described as a breakthrough for the ages, a team of mad scientists across the way have created "a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before" by blasting aluminum walls (around one-inch thick) with brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is "more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city." For approximately 40 femtoseconds, an "invisible effect" is seen, giving the gurus hope that their experiment could lead to new studies in exotic states of matter. For a taste of exactly what we mean, feel free to voice command your PC to jump past the break. Or use the keyboard, if you're feeling quaint.
Mapping robots equipped with visual vocab filters for more accurate mapping
Mapping robots have been tooling around the earth for quite some time, but a new development in their tech seems to be leading them in the direction of far more accurate results. In general, these mapping bots scan the territory they are in, but often have trouble recognizing a location they have previously seen because of incidental changes, such as the addition of a car here and there. The research team, working in Oxford, England, has worked out a way to get the robot to "ignore" such negligible variables, by having it assign identifiers, in the form of words, as it trucks along the terrain. The robot can assign up to a thousand words every two seconds to a location as it moves, with related words linked together as a "bag of words" so that if it revisits a location and sees a bicycle seat and a bicycle wheel, it identifies this bag of word as one item, preventing the bot from attaching too much significance to several missing items. The robot is currently set to map a 1,000 km piece of land in Oxford, which would apparently be the largest stretch ever by a bot. Check the video after the break (warning: it autoplays!)
Einstein's eco-friendly refrigerator concept dusted off, put to good use
Given how large the green bandwagon has become, it's no real shock to see an energy-saving concept from the 1930s being exhumed and investigated further. Scientists at Oxford University have begun to take a closer look at an early invention from the great Albert Einstein in order to hopefully create refrigerators (and appliances in general) that could be used completely without electricity. Back in the day, Sir Albert created a mechanism that had no moving parts and used only pressurized gases to keep things chilly. Once compressors became more efficient in the 50s, however, the idea was tossed aside. Now, the idea obviously has greater appeal, and if things keep humming along nicely, a completed prototype should be erected by the year's end.[Via Physorg]
