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

By Michael Kohn ULAN BATOR (Reuters) - Inside a stove showroom deep in the suburbs of this sprawling smoke-filled city, Mam Ivermint, 80, is shopping for a new coal-fired stove -- her unlikely contribution to the cause of cleaner air. [More]

When oil started spewing from BP's Macondo well in April 2010, there weren't too many options for cleaning it up.

Distinguishing between male and female human remains can be tricky, especially in cases where only partial skeletons are found.

These plague victims were excavated from the East Smithfield burial grounds between 1986 and 1988. The plague bacteria that swept through medieval Europe had been declared extinct just over a month ago. A quick google search reveals articles with headlines such as ‘Medieval plague bacteria strain probably extinct’ and ‘Black death strain extinct’ .

Apparently yesterday was Global Handwashing Day ! This is a day designed to encourage awareness of proper handwashing procedures and in the spirit of this I thought I’d take a look at a paper that came out recently about the amount of

On August 13, 1415, the 27-year-old English king Henry V led his army into France. Within two months dysentery had killed perhaps a quarter of his men, while a French army four times its size blocked escape to Calais and across the English Channel. Winter approached; food grew scarce

How did I miss this until now? This clip has apparently been making the rounds of the Interwebs for years, but I couldn’t resist posting it after I saw it on Facebook this morning. [More]

This year has had its share of cybersecurity bombshells. Cybersecurity vendor McAfee revealed widespread theft of government data over the past five years . Now the hacker group Anonymous has threatened to take down the New York Stock Exchange's computers .

By Ron Cowen of Nature magazine The European Space Agency (ESA) will forge ahead with ExoMars, an ambitious two-part robotic mission that would look for signs of life on the Red Planet, even though NASA has reneged on its promise to provide a launch rocket for the first stage of the mission. During a 12-13 October ESA council meeting in Paris, the agency decided to begin negotiations with Russia for a rocket that would launch the first stage of ExoMars, in 2016, in exchange for Russian participation in the mission

Friday’s release of the new iPhone 4S , with its more sophisticated phone camera, faster processor and iCloud access, has Apple fans licking their chops in anticipation of the boosted services. This latest addition to the iPhone family is likely, however, to have the service providers that support the new handset holding their collective breath with its promise of even more traffic to their already groaning wireless networks.

By Lance Whitney The iOS 5 update initially bricked my iPod Touch. [More]

AP Photo/Andrew Burton In the staring contest between the Occupy Wall Street protesters and New York City, Mayor Bloomberg blinked first , deciding that the occupiers didn’t represent the kind of safety crisis Brookfield Office Properties, the owners of

Plants mastered chemistry a long time before humans, billions of years actually . In fact, we humans and most of the rest of the life on Earth can thank tiny cyanobacteria for mastering/evolving the molecule known as chlorophyll. Chlorophyll--a pigment that absorbs blue light--is the key to photosynthesis, and photosynthesis is the key to turning sunlight into food.

CHENGDU, China -- A convoy of white vans barreled down a dusty road three hours south of this provincial capital in late September. Lush valleys were drying out after another long and turbulent rainy season. U.S.

By Jo Marchant of Nature magazine A DNA analysis of ancient storage jars suggests that Greek sailors traded a wide range of foods--not just wine, as many historians have assumed. [More]