Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Almost 900 million people in the world live without access to safe drinking water--the kind of water that is safe enough to flow straight from the tap into your mouth (with maybe a Brita filter in between). For these people, walking hours each day to faraway and potentially contaminated streams and wells is a way of life, and not one that is particularly conducive to getting much done

New technology could make smartphones the norm in the developing world, and might have a host of other applications yet to be imagined. A Cambridge University Ph.D. student, Jens Christensen, has developed a novel way to make touchscreens cheaper

01 / SolarCity > > For being the nation's leading installer of rooftop solar panels. In sum, SolarCity has placed more than 10,000 solar rooftops--10% of the total in the U.S.

Carbon and water footprint measurements have become almost commonplace among large corporations, at least in part because of prodding from organizations like the Carbon Disclosure Project . But these measurements only tell part of the story

The article " Food Fight " in the April issue details Roger Beachy's involvement in the birth of genetic engineering of food crops, how he went on to become an avid defender of the new technology and how these beliefs will shape his tenure at the agriculture department's newly formed National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Here he answers four more questions for readers about his own background and agriculture in the developing world. How did your Amish background shape your interest in agriculture

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many fastest-growing cities, especially those in the developing world, stand to suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change, a new study reported on Thursday. Few urban areas are taking the necessary steps to protect their residents -- billions of people around the globe -- from such likely events as heat waves and rising seas, according to research to appear in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability and European Planning Studies.

Infant mortality in developing countries is depressingly high, with 3.6 million children dying each year in the neonatal period. Unlike many other global health issues, this one is easily fixable--cutting down on deficiencies of micronutrients like folic acid in women of childbearing age could dramatically reduce infant deaths. So last fall, Scientists Without Borders, a platform that crowdsources solutions to scientific problems, set out to work on the issue with a $10,000 challenge that asked entrants to solve the problem of folic acid deficiency in women throughout the developing world with simple, low-cost solutions.

Paul Farmer, an iconic figure in publicizing public health problems in developing nations, has now joined a campaign to highlight the issue of cancer in Latin America, Africa and other areas where treatment of this chronic illness is often lacking. As he outlines in this interview with journalist Mary Carmichael, Farmer has devised an innovative approach to compensating for the lack of high-tech treatments in countries like Haiti

Last week, Fast Company had the chance to sit in on a venture-capital pitch session featuring a number of startups that have in the past participated in the Cleantech Open , a series of competitions that provides funding and advice to cleantech startups. Below, we look at three of the companies with the most compelling pitches. Fenix International This startup designs distributed, small-scale micro power generation and storage solutions in a box.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released its 2011 State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report this week, just in time for today's International Women's Day.