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Matt's Favorites: A Samsung Smartwatch, And Much More

So what's the latest from the ever-wonderful world of science and technology on this Friday Eve? Well, check out this wonderfulness...

* First of all, here are the links to your Tech Report home page, the Tech Report Page Two(home of much fascinatin' news), as well as our latest award and certification notices. Cool!

* Samsung announced Wednesday at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) trade show in Berlin three additions to its product line: a brand new Galaxy Gear smartwatch, an update to its phone-tablet hybrid, the Galaxy Note III and Note 10.1 tablet.

* Birds are known to choose their mates via calls and oral communication. But scientists at Michigan State University say scent is just as important. In a study published in this month's edition of the journal Animal Behaviour, lead researcher Danielle Whittaker shows that birds communicate via scent, and odor tells them about the fertility of a potential mate.

* If a monster earthquake struck off Alaska's coast, tsunami waves would rush toward California, crippling the nation's busiest port complex and flooding coastal communities, a report released Wednesday suggests. The potential impacts, based on a hypothetical magnitude-9.1 jolt off the Alaskan peninsula, were detailed by a team led by the U.S. Geological Survey to help emergency responders prepare.

* In evolution, the biggest slut wins again: New research shows that when female birds mate with multiple partners, they produce genetically stronger offspring. Published Sep. 3 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study looked into the mating practices of red junglefowl, the wild ancestor of the domestic chicken. The University of East Anglia researchers found that promiscuity maximized the female junglefowls' chances of having offspring that are resistant to diseases.

* What if getting a flu vaccine no longer involved getting a shot? Researchers at Georgia State University have spent the past few years working on a microneedle patch that dissolves into the skin for patients to easily and painlessly self-administer vaccines. Now, they've developed a flu vaccine using the system that, when tested on mice, proved to be 100 percent effective more than a year after the mice were vaccinated.

* Following the great, if not successful, tech tradition of Mark Cuban and Steve Wozniak, Bill Nye the Science Guy will be joining Snooki on Dancing With The Stars this season to strut his stuff.

* Under that strait-laced British stiff upper lip apparently boils a roiling cauldron of lust, At least in the Houses of Parliament.

* More than 50 years into the age of nuclear energy, one of the biggest growth opportunities may be junking old reactors.

* As someone who just got a CPAP and is sleeping peacefully for the first time in years, NOW they tell me: sleep apparently boosts brain cell numbers.

* Astronomers have discovered something weird in the Milky Way's galactic bulge -- a population of planetary nebula are all mysteriously pointing in the same direction.

* Bats and dolphins may live in radically different worlds, but the fact they both evolved a type of sonar means they resemble each other genetically, researchers now find.

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