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

Compared to familiar climate-saving programs that aim to stuff greenhouse gases into the ground or harness the power of the wind, ideas like "cloud computing" are hard to penetrate. Still, the practice is gaining attention as the information technology (IT) industry promotes it as a tool to save both energy and money. [More]

Dear EarthTalk : I heard of a practice called cyanide fishing, which is used mostly to collect aquarium specimens, but I understand it is also used to catch fish we eat. Isn’t this very unhealthy? --Phil Seymour, Albany, N.Y.

By Adrian Croft and Michael Holden LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - From shopkeepers and middle-class [More]

Edmonton is Canada's chief oil city as well as the capital of Alberta, the province that hosts the bulk of the country's tar sands . Given the expense of converting this mix of dirt and heavy oils to more usable petroleum products, the province is not keen on alternative fuels.

Sunday's NASCAR race was bittersweet for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) .

In a geologic instant, the K-T extinction event about 65 million years ago left Earth's skies empty of pterosaurs , extirpated the mosasaurs and their ammonite prey from the seas, and, of course, denuded the land of non-avian dinosaurs. But what if, by some fluke of evolutionary history, this catastrophe never happened and the global summer of the dinosaurs was allowed to continue

There’s something about the idea of towing an iceberg from sea to sea that appeals to one’s inner mad scientist (or rather, mad engineer). [More]

Range fuels was a risky but tantalizing bet. The high-tech start-up, begun by former Apple executive Mitch Mandich, attracted millions of dollars in private money plus commitments for up to $156 million in grants and loans from the U.S. government.

Invasive species get a bad rap--but we humans are usually to blame for their spread. Take Japanese Stiltgrass, an invasive that arrived from Asia nearly 100 years ago as a packing material for porcelain. When it creeps into forests, it forms dense carpets that can choke out native tree seedlings

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NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is just days away from arriving at the edge of a huge crater after a years-long trek on the Red Planet. Opportunity has been driving for nearly three years toward the crater Endeavour , an immense scar in the Martian surface about 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide. Now the rover is less than 31 feet (50 meters) from the rim and is due to pull up to it later this week, mission scientists said Monday (Aug

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and other instant communication platforms have helped to fuel riots and find missing persons this week in some major UK cities. [More]

Citizen scientists have an opportunity to contribute to biological research and learn more about the impact of invasive species [More]

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine Scalpel or guillotine? Those are the possible fates in store for US science funding after Congress and the White House reached a deal to cut federal spending and raise the nation's self-imposed debt limit before a 2 August deadline. The product of tumultuous negotiations, the deal largely spares science in the short term but puts a day of reckoning on the horizon: 2 January 2013.

By Jeff Tollefson of Nature magazine Ready or not, the era of big data is coming to ecology. [More]