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

They say there's no place like home. Well, we may get to test the idea. Because astronomers have located a world that could be a bit like Earth some 36 light-years away.

U.S. and Chinese officials heading up a series of joint advanced coal projects Friday signed an intellectual property agreement meant to ease the sharing of innovative technology while protecting patents and licensing agreements. Companies collaborating on research and development projects tied to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), a program started in 2009, can enter into regular commercial contracts.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Hurricane Irene buffeted Puerto Rico with winds and torrential rain on Monday, knocking out power and downing trees as it churned westward on a track that will threaten Florida by the end of the week. Local media in the U.S. Caribbean territory reported that about 600 people took refuge in shelters, and electricity was knocked out across half of the island, including the capital, San Juan, affecting some 800,000 people.

My wife and I go to spinning class a couple of mornings a week. It is something we like to do together, and I feel that I benefit from having a regular workout partner.

It was to be the ultimate urban paradise. Hundreds of pages of plans, maps and charts detailed the construction of a state-of-the-art eco-city called Dongtan on China’s Chongming Island, at the mouth of the Yangtze River.

In August 2005 the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corp. hired global engineering firm Arup to design a city for the booming commercial capital of China. Dubbed Dongtan --or "East Beach"--the new satellite city would sit on the edge of the alluvial island of Chongming in the mouth of the Yangtze River.

By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN (Reuters) - It won't be easy to run a national railway on renewable energy like wind, hydro and solar power but that is what Germany's Deutsche Bahn aims to do for one simple reason: it's what consumers want. [More]

LONDON (Reuters) - Volkswagen will within two weeks unveil one of the first single-seater cars, with the potential for zero emissions, the Financial Times reported on Monday. VW's one-seat concept car will illustrate the carmaker's ambitions to build electric vehicles that generate no carbon dioxide, the FT said, citing the company's head of research, Jurgen Leohold. [More]

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's parliament endorsed the world's first national scheme that regulates the creation and trade of carbon credits from farming and forestry on Monday, to complement government plans to put a price on carbon emissions from mid-2012. The laws, the first major bills passed by the government with Greens support in the Senate since the Greens took the balance of power on July 1, are a precursor to the carbon price legislation to be put before parliament later this year. [More]

“Desserts” spelled backward is “stressed.”Isn’t life like that? Even the good things in life--fine wine, rich food, sex--can stress you out

As children settle into their classrooms for the beginning of a new school year, parents steel themselves for the pending battle. Mothers and fathers know well that their youngsters would rather pay attention to one another than to the blackboard. But parents may not realize that the reasons children struggle with education lie deep in our evolutionary past

Hayley has finished making a beautiful butterfly with a cookie cutter, which she pressed into the lump of Play-Doh that she just took from Pat. [More]

By Virginia Gewin of Nature magazine Climate change represents a threat not only to the existence of individual species, but also to the genetic diversity hidden within them, researchers say. [More]

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered deep, cold current flowing off Iceland's coast may reveal that the North Atlantic is less sensitive to climate change than previously thought, researchers reported Sunday. [More]

Some politicians seem to have it in for the environment these days. Whether its presidential hopeful Rick Perry denouncing climate science as a quote " cult " or his more moderate peer Jon Huntsman calling for environmental regulations to be put on hold until the economy improves, it's clear that protecting our air, water and other natural resources is no longer fashionable. [More]