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

Regular readers will know that I often avoid discussing new palaeontological discoveries at Tet Zoo, the exceptions being those where I was personally involved (hmm). [More]

Brain: The Inside Story Through August 14, 2011 [More]

Red Planet Mars Life Lawrence M. Krauss’s “ Rethinking the Dream ” [Forum] rightly points out that the benefits of flying humans in space have not been commensurate with the cost, especially when human flight is compared with advanced robotic or automatic systems that can do many of the same tasks at one tenth of the cost and with no risk to humans.

BEIJING (Reuters) - ConocoPhillips China, a subsidiary of the Houston-based oil company ConocoPhillips, said on Friday that as much as 2,500 barrels of oil and mud leaked from an oilfield in China's northern Bohai Bay. A recent survey at the C platform of Penglai 19-3 oil field identified more oil-based drilling mud on the sea floor than originally estimated, the company said on its website (www.conocophillips.com.cn), adding that it expected to complete a cleanup by the end of this month.

What's the best way to find out if an unknown mixture contains a specific substance, like an environmental contaminant? You could use an expensive, bulky gas chromatograph--but Harvard researchers have developed an instrument you can carry in your pocket. They describe the device, called an inverse opal, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society .

This is not a climate science blog, nor is it a political or media critique blog.

When I was getting my solar panels installed, I couldn’t wait to see my electric meter literally spin backwards. [More]

By Zo

You might think that temporary tattoos look cool, but what if they could also collect and transmit information about your heart rate , temperature, muscle contractions or brain waves? [More]

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazine On 11 March, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) warned that a 3-metre-plus tsunami would hit northeastern Japan.

Welcome to the huge and wonderful day here at the Scientific American blog network, where we are having great fun discussing food and trends in modern agriculture and why people are so passionate about these topics. [More]

The federal government should begin a major effort to measure greenhouse gas emissions tied to the nation's booming natural gas industry , a Department of Energy advisory panel said today in a series of proposals on air and water quality issues.

Join a global effort to document all 1.9 million named species of animals, plants and other forms of life on Earth [More]

By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters Life!) - Scientists from the Geological Survey will embark next week on an expedition to monitor acidification trends in the Arctic Ocean linked to carbon emissions, the agency said.

As Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Although some of us are clearly better than others at dodging the