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

Ashley Park and Amber Watson, both juniors at Spanish Fort High School in Alabama, sent me an email after reading, "We discover what’s floating in the South Pacific." They wanted to know how trash travels in the ocean and if recycling is really the answer. Since I’m not a plastic pollution expert, I turned to Marcus Eriksen, the co-founder of 5 Gyres, a non-profit studying garbage in the ocean, to provide some answers.

Yep, they are 30-day hack-a-thons--and they are helping launch big products, including Facebook Deals. Welcome to what one Facebooker calls "a playground for engineers." Tech giants such as Google to Facebook are famous for hack-a-thons, all-night marathon coding sessions where eager employees build something unrelated to their current projects

A grapefruit-sized probe could help solve mysteries right beneath our feet

Key concepts Magnetism [More]

Love bites on the neck of the young female Tas

Long a staple of science fiction, self-driving vehicles that act as robot chauffeurs have been a cultural dream for decades.

Which way is north? Scientific American editor George Musser and his daughter Eliana help you find your way with a homemade water compass. For more fun activities to do with your kids visit scientificamerican.com/BringScienceHome

KANSAS CITY, May 22 (Reuters) - Tornadoes tore throughparts of the U.S.

By Omar Valdimarsson REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - An eruption by Iceland's most active volcano was set to keep the island's main airport shut on Monday, while other European nations watched for any impact on their air routes from a towering plume of smoke and ash. [More]

Today was my first scientific dive. There is no activity that I’ve done that requires more group work and collaboration than laying a transect tape and taking a species count.

Powerful people often bend the rules. But here’s a twist: If someone breaks rules, are they then perceived as powerful?

"Meltdown." It's one of the scarier words in the nuclear lexicon. When preceded by the word "partial," it's less frightening. And " partial meltdown " was the case for three Japan reactors following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March.

By Omar Valdimarsson [More]

ANDECHS, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday backed proposals to shut down all of the country's 17 nuclear power plants within about a decade. Speaking at a meeting of the Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavarian sister party to her conservatives, Merkel said a 2022 date proposed by the CSU was appropriate and that her government will eventually fix a date for Germany's nuclear exit. [More]

In the previous blog entry my colleague Jim Haw gave the rationale for our work on Guam. After a week on Guam we will make the two-hour flight to Palau. The highest level of species biodiversity occurs in the Indo-West Pacific region, with nearly 2 percent of the world’s reefs distributed throughout Micronesia