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

Enantiornithine nesting colony, reconstruction by Julio Lacerda. [More]

Over the past few months, we have been flooded with emails from distressed parents asking whether their deaf child will be able to hear one day. With each new email comes a poignant story about a child whose world is silent. It is estimated that hearing loss affects 11% of school age children and even mild loss may adversely influence school performance, cognitive development and language acquisition

Before stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall began their rise to popularity in the 1970s, treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focused on behavioral therapy. But as concerns build over the mounting dosages and extended treatment periods that come with stimulant drugs, clinical researchers are revisiting behavioral therapy techniques. Whereas stimulant medications may help young patients focus and behave in the classroom, research now suggests that behaviorally based changes make more of a difference in the long-term.

LONDON (Reuters) - France's Total started pumping heavy mud down its leaking well in the North Sea on Tuesday to try to stop an escape of gas that has lasted nearly eight weeks and could deprive Britain of nearly 6 percent of its supply this summer. "The well intervention operation got underway at 4.20 a.m. [More]

Scientists are looking for Earth-like planets around other stars. But one way to limit the search can be to figure out where an Earth-like planet cannot exist and eliminate those types of systems. [More]

Map of current land and ice separating the Weddell and Ross seas, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Wutsje/CIA Octopuses have made themselves at home in most of the world’s oceans from the warmest of tropical seas to the deep, dark reaches around hydrothermal vents. Antarctic species , such as Turquet’s octopuses ( Pareledone turqueti ), even live slow, quiet lives near the South Pole . But these retiring creatures offer a rare opportunity to help understand how this extreme part of the Earth has changed in recent geologic times and what climate change might bring there in the near future.

Apollo Robbins (right) in action removing the wristwatch of Mariette DiChristina. (Credit: Flip Phillips.) I see you have a watch with a buckle. Standing at my side, Apollo Robbins held my wrist lightly as he turned my hand over and back.

By Joan Gralla (Reuters) - While Pennsylvania, northwestern Louisiana and gas-rich areas around the Gulf of Mexico are losing jobs and revenue as the fracking industry shrinks after a price collapse, oil-rich North Dakota and Texas are in the midst of a boom. Other winners in the fracking lottery include central and southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio and Wyoming, where the economy is expanding and revenues are climbing.

By Mo Costandi of Nature magazine European researchers have identified a gene that is linked to improved memory, but also to increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dominique de Quervain of the University of Basel in Switzerland and his colleagues recruited around 700 healthy young volunteers, obtaining DNA samples from them to analyze the sequence of their PRKCA gene.

When I teach history of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, I devote plenty of time to science’s glories, the kinds of achievements that my buddy George Johnson wrote about in The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008)

Here’s a hot topic: astronomers have detected infrared radiation from a faraway planet not much bigger than our own. [More]

(Reuters) - A planned $5 billion transmission line to send power from wind farms off the East Coast cleared a hurdle, allowing the Google Inc-backed project to move to the next step in the approval process, officials said. The Department of the Interior declared on Monday there was "no overlapping competitive interest" in proposed areas for building the line off the mid-Altantic coast. [More]

Different Types of Neurons (click to enlarge). A. Purkinje cell B

It's common for us to address our computers using hand gestures, although many convey frustration and may involve a single finger. In the future, however, sign language could become an effective way of surfing the Web, managing files or manipulating virtual objects on screen. [More]

China will widen its gap with the United States as the world's largest coal-producing country by the end of the decade, riding continued strong demand from its electric power and steel-making sectors, according to a new analysis from New York-based GBI Research. [More]