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

1st place winner: Portrait of a green lacewing larva (20X) by the inimitable Igor Siwanowicz While science journalists’ attention remains focused on the Nobel prizes, another set of awards- rather diminutive in scope- were also released this morning. [More]

A few years ago, soon after moving to Los Angeles, an old grad school buddy of the Time Lord came to town, Brian Schmidt, and we took him to a nearby tapas eatery for nibbles and pisco sours. I remember they were shooting a scene from a Will Smith movie that night, so nearby storefronts were riddled with fake bullet holes, and the odd fake gunfire and explosion interrupted our conversation.

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazine When it comes to discovering nuclear isotopes, retired physicist Gottfried M

By Nicole Mordant (Reuters) - Nova Scotia is a small, picturesque province on Canada's Atlantic Coast but its appetite for green energy is big and aggressive as it moves to wean itself away from coal, and wins plaudits for its efforts.

* Says Canada wasting billions on climate change plan * Says Canada might not meet 2020 emissions cuts goal [More]

Saul Perlmutter is one of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics this morning . This news is exciting enough, but Perlmutter is no ordinary Nobel Laureate

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, is the author of the best-selling books, “How the Mind Works,” and “The Blank Slate.” But he is also a public intellectual, devoted to bringing the ideas of academia to questions of broad public interest. His latest work is an ambitious attempt to understand the origins, history--and perhaps the future--of human violence.

[More]

We are constantly warned to protect our passwords, Social Security numbers and other “personal identifying information” to thwart thieves who may steal laptops or perpetrate online fraud. Although such breaches have soared since 2005 ( right ) as criminals try to commit identity theft, the truly enormous breaches ( bottom ) have increasingly been carried out by “hacktivists”--individuals or groups who are angry about an organization’s actions. Hackers, for example, exposed data about 77 million Sony customers after the company pursued legal action against other hackers.

Despite our (usually modest) efforts to protect our personal information, thieves and hackers are constantly accessing our records. These data breaches have soared since 2005 . Although crooks still account for most invasions, many of the largest breaches are now made by "hacktivists"--individuals or groups who are angry about a company or organization's actions and expose its records as a way to protest or to strike back.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded today to Saul Perlmutter at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Brian Schmidt at the Australian National Lab and Adam Reiss at Johns Hopkins University for their discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. “In a universe which is dominated by matter, one would expect gravity eventually should make the expansion slow down, the Royal Swedish Academy’s Olga Botner said this morning at the announcement event in Stockholm

In the Showtime series United States of Tara , actress Toni Collette plays Tara Gregson, a Kansas mother who has dissociative identity disorder (DID), known formerly as multiple personality disorder.

People with depression encounter a lot of pharmaceutical frustration. For largely unknown reasons, roughly one in three patients receive no benefit from any antidepressant.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Saul Perlmutter at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Brian Schmidt at the Australian National Lab and Adam Reiss at Johns Hopkins. The Royal Swedish Academy’s Olga Botner: “In a universe which is dominated by matter, one would expect gravity eventually should make the expansion slow down.

* U.N. nuclear agency team to assist with clean-up planning * Large areas contaminated by Fukushima disaster [More]