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

The government reported a new case of mad cow disease discovered in California - the first in the U.S. in six years. Wyatt Andrews reports on the findings and the threat to public health

(Phys.org) -- Can light self-bend into an arc? Can shape-preserving optical beams truly bend along a circular path? A confident answer emerged in this week’s Physical Review Letters.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Building on the work of a previous team that found filaments made from actin, when combined with so called motor proteins, moved themselves into distinct patterns, a new team in Japan has found that combining different proteins results in the formation of far more elaborate patterns such as individual whorls and over time whole lattices.

A new study says powerful people feel taller than they are. What does it mean for your company?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Matter in the subatomic realm is, well, a different matter. In the case of strongly correlated phases of matter, one of the most surprising findings has to do with a phenomenon known as the Hall response – an important theoretical and experimental tool for describing emergent charge carriers in strongly correlated systems, examples of which include high temperature superconductors and the quantum Hall effect.

Optical techniques enable us to examine single molecules, but do we really understand what we are seeing? After all, the fuzziness caused by effects such as light interference makes these images very difficult to interpret.

Aiming to take "clean" to a whole new level, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Maryland at College Park have teamed up to study how low-temperature plasmas can deactivate potentially dangerous biomolecules left behind by conventional sterilization methods.

Used to be if spies wanted to eavesdrop, they planted a bug. These days, it's much easier

Researchers at Yale University are studying how two types of nanoscale structures on the feathers of birds produce brilliant and distinctive colors. The researchers are hoping that by borrowing these nanoscale tricks from nature they will be able to produce new types of lasers—ones that can assemble themselves by natural processes.

In a feat of technology tweaking that would rival MacGyver, a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis has transformed everyday iPhones into medical-quality imaging and chemical detection devices. With materials that cost about as much as a typical app, the decked-out smartphones are able to use their heightened senses to perform detailed microscopy and spectroscopy.

German physicists led by Prof. Dr. Hartmut Zabel have demonstrated the spin pumping effect in magnetic layers for the first time experimentally.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sometimes the simplest of things become complicated and complex when looked at more closely.

To humans, ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a menace: we cannot see it, yet it is all around us, increasing our risks of melanoma, cataracts and other ills. It is especially harmful in the upper latitudes, where a thinning ozone layer has become less and less effective at blocking the sun’s UV rays, and ice and snow reflect them back up at us. All these facts have caused biologists to wonder: How have Arctic mammals adapted to handle acute UV exposure--not only tolerating the intense light conditions at the poles, but even using it as an evolutionary advantage

But they'd like to do it with as little risk as possible. A majority of female business owners expect their companies to grow over the next two years, but most don't want to raise prices—and they'd like to avoid risk, says a new report. Four in five women hope to grow their businesses "substantially" or "at least a moderate amount" by 2013, according to a survey of some 700 female business owners done by PNC Financial Services Group.

Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.