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

[More]

Box jellyfish have it over the rest of the jellyfish world--they have true eyes, featuring corneas, lenses and retinas. They have a more sophisticated nervous system too

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER--The shuttle Endeavour suffered a minor but potentially troublesome electrical failure that delayed its launch from Friday to Monday at the earliest. Technicians won't know for sure until they drain the external fuel tank and get access to the errant unit, a process that will take 24 hours

When the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge--better known as Prince William and Kate Middleton--married Friday, they sealed the deal with a ring made of gold mined in Wales. As an estimated two billion people worldwide watched the festivities, some viewers may have wondered, "When did gold form in Wales?" [More]

Chinese skylines are defined by construction cranes and the din of jackhammers. China produces 50 percent of the world's cement [ pdf ]--the next largest producer, India is responsible for just 6 percent--to build seemingly endless tracts of high rises, railroads, parking lots, highways, airports and shopping malls.

The casual games space is heating up--and two major acquisitions this week point the way forward. Zynga is poised to go global on a greater scale. This week it announced it had acquired Wonderland Software, a British studio behind a popular mobile game called GodFinger

A recent study published in Environmental Science & Technology shows the linkage between the illegal production of coca and the continuing destruction of Colombia's rainforest. New plots of coca between 2002 and 2007 accounted for the direct destruction of 890 square kilometers of rainforest. That's roughly 6 percent of total rainforest lost in that period, which totaled to 14,000 square kilometers, or an area slightly larger than Jamaica.

I recently visited Tucson, Arizona and was happy to see a fair amount of people riding bicycles rather than driving through the city’s downtown area. There are wide bike lanes and plenty of racks for parking, and even a monthly street fair where bikers can pick up new and used parts or equipment. All this plus a mostly sunny forecast made Tucson seem like an ideal biking locale, until a friend who lives in the area pointed to the numerous needles and burrs sticking out of his bike tires.

Dear EarthTalk : I read a heart-wrenching story of a polar bear that swam 400 miles with its cub on its back in search of an ice floe to rest on. It survived but its cub did not

If we cannot find aliens in the stars, we might create alien intelligences on Earth

By Suzanne Cosgrove [More]

The world’s most advanced cosmic-ray detector took 16 years and $2 billion to build, and not long ago it looked as though it would wind up mothballed in some warehouse.

Most dog and cat owners will happily describe their pet's disposition down to the smallest, human-like detail. But how much of that is over-reaching anthropomorphizing and how much is an individual animal's actual "personality" shining through?

The FDA approved biotech drug Benlysta to treat lupus, the first new treatment for the autoimmune disease in 50 years.

A 12-minute NASA video with scientist interviews gives an overview of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) project: [More]