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

By Jon Cartwright of Nature magazine Sound, like light, can be tricky to manipulate on small scales.

Rob Mason was, until recently, a lowly designer of third-party Facebook apps. Now he's at Facebook, where he's designed the most exciting new feature in recent history. He gives us the scoop on how he made it do just one thing--well

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER-- Atlantis lifted off Friday at 11:29 A.M. Eastern time after a last-moment hold at 31 seconds on its 33rd and final mission--both for it and NASA's 30-year-old manned space shuttle program, putting on hiatus the era of human access to low Earth orbit on board U.S. spacecraft.

CAPE CANAVERAL -- I took this picture last night, and I don’t like it very much. [More]

TagSense, a prototype app designed by two Microsoft interns, can automatically tag a picture with a person's name, physical activities, facial expression, and exact physical location--all without human input. A new, creepily awesome Android application developed by two Microsoft interns turns Android smartphone cameras into full-on spy machines. The app, called TagSense, relies on smartphone sensors to automatically tag photographs with the identities and activities of whoever's in them

FOOD FOR THOUGHT In the article on physical ailments influencing the brain, “ Ruled by the Body ,” Erich Kasten listed a number of medical conditions that can masquerade as mental disorders. To that list, I would add celiac disease, in which an intolerance to the gluten found in wheat and other grains causes an autoimmune reaction in the gut that prevents the absorption of crucial vitamins and minerals. The resulting malnutrition can cause fatigue, muddled thinking, anxiety and depression, along with many digestive symptoms

It happens to the best of us. Sometimes we fail a customer

Research published in Nature Materials this month takes lessons from cooperation in nature, including that observed in insect swarms, to create better targeting methods for cancer therapeutics [1]. "Smart" anti-cancer drug systems can use mechanisms similar to swarm intelligence to locate sites of disease in the human body.

"Hey, I'm a Mac, I'm off to college!", new investment puts Twitter at $8 billion.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER--4:14 A.M.

Atlantis Launch Notes: July 7, 6:00 P.M.

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazine Ahead of a key international meeting on tuna catches, an assessment is painting a bleak picture of the conservation status of some of the world's most commercially valuable fish species. Bruce Collette, who studies ocean fish at the National Marine Fisheries Service Systematics Laboratory in Washington DC, and his colleagues conducted the first global assessment of the scrombids and billfish, groups of fish that include some of the species with the highest value as seafood, such as tuna and marlin, as well as staples such as mackerel.

Foursquare gets hundreds, if not thousands, of brand requests every week. Here's how to forge a partnership with the in-demand service, and to reach customers who might get lost in the shuffle on Facebook or Twitter

As NASA prepares to wrap up its shuttle program , leaving open questions about what comes next for U.S. human spaceflight, the next big thing in NASA's astronomy program has been dealt a blow

Editor's Note: William Gilly , a professor of biology at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, embarked on new expedition this month to study jumbo squid in the Gulf of California on the National Science Foundation–funded research vessel New Horizon . This is his seventh blog post about the trip. [More]