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

A new statistical analysis indicates that the more Facebook fans an African politician has, the more likely they are to be forced from power.

The sex hormones that bathe a fetus in the womb are some of the earliest and most potent determinates of gender differences in brain structure and social behavior. But other chemicals produced by the human body more subtly tweak the neural pathways underlying these distinctions. Endocannabinoids, natural compounds in the brain that excite the same receptors as marijuana, influence gender-specific behaviors, according to a study published in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Most people know two things about helium. One is that it makes your voice comically high-pitched when you inhale it; the other is that it is extremely light, which is why balloons filled with the stuff float upward through the heavier air. But in particle physics terms--and especially when it comes to the nuclear physics of antimatter--helium is no lightweight.

As workers race to stave off further melting at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan , several robots there are waiting on the sidelines for an opportunity to help. Questions remain, however, regarding how these units might assist in an ongoing emergency at a site contaminated with radiation and deluged with tons of corrosive seawater . [More]

In December, rumors started floating that serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen, who last sold online music company Lala to Apple in 2009, had purchased the domain Color.com for $350,000. Many wondered: Could this mark Nguyen's next (and eighth) business venture? "I did buy it, and I also bought the English spelling, Colour.com," Nguyen tells Fast Company with a smile.

By Janelle Weaver Researchers in Japan have made fertile mammalian sperm in a culture dish, a feat long thought to be impossible. [More]

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HONOLULU (Reuters) - Specialized firefighting teams Wednesday battled a remote wildfire touched off by the eruption of the Kilauea volcano on Hawaii's Big Island, which has burned some 2,000 acres of national park land. The fire threatens a fragile, protected rain forest, officials said. [More]

If you take a small sample of animal tissue and encourage it to grow in vitro , separate from the original animal's body, it is possible to create an edible piece of meat.

A few years ago in central Florida, John Santarpia had an idea. He was the president and CEO of a credit union and felt he needed to do something to improve its image. "We're a medium-sized credit union and there's a lot of competition," Santarpia said

* Key differences between Fukushima and Chernobyl * Expert says some radioactive releases comparable [More]

1. Despite the fact that Verizon's CEO revealed his company wouldn't be appealing the union of AT&T and T-Mobile (and that he thought regulators would approve) Sprint has just revealed it will appeal to Congress to halt the telecoms deal.

By Daniel Cressey Massive Amazonian characid fish may carry seeds more than five kilometers across forest flood plains, researchers say. Although fish have long been suspected of having an important role in seed distribution, proof of their ability to carry fertile seeds such distances has been lacking. Jill Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist at Duke University in North Carolina, and her team had previously discovered thousands of seeds in the guts of Colossoma macropomum fish in Peru's Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve

Neuroscience gets invoked these days to explain virtually any behavior--from the actions of Wall Street traders to a "God gene" that makes us devout.

According to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly half of all 12-year-olds in the U.S. are using social network sites, despite not meeting the minimum age requirements for sites like Facebook