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

The Advances section of Scientific American 's March issue discusses how reducing soot emissions could be a quick, if temporary, fix for global warming; explains why cramming for tests doesn't work; and examines physicists' latest efforts to make an object disappear. To learn more about these, and all our other stories, click on the links below

[More]

By Susan Guyett and John D. [More]

Is it possible to use more of our brain? [More]

In 1912 airships and balloons, powered and unpowered, were being developed to explore, to entertain, to travel, and to wage war. Aerostats (any lighter-than-air craft) remained highly sensitive to weather and many were floated by flammable hydrogen (at least until the destruction of the Hindenburg in May 1937) but despite the limitations, great hopes were placed on these frail craft. [More]

March 1962 [More]

Ponytails in motion. Credit: Mike Adams/Flickr via Creative Commons BOSTON At long last, one of the hairiest problems in modern physics has been solved. Researchers have devised a theoretical model to describe the shape of a ponytail.

Storms are pushing into the southern Appalachians, bringing the potential for

UPDATE: See our latest skywatching tips to see Mars at opposition here: Mars Visible in Night Sky, But Its 2 Moons Are Hard to Spot [More]

Now's a great time to break out that backyard telescope. Because Saturday, March 3, is the Mars Opposition . It's one of the times that the Earth and Mars pass the closest to one another

By Edwin Cartlidge of Nature magazine The research on which this story is based has now been published in the New Journal of Physics . [More]

After the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, worry about the unfolding nuclear accident quickly commandeered international headlines.

Check out this video, where nine palm-sized

By Ed Yong of Nature magazine Two teams of scientists, led by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have created mutant strains of H5N1 avian influenza. [More]

The world's largest oil sands producers signed an agreement yesterday to waive their intellectual property and patent rights in order to reduce the industry's impact on greenhouse gases, agriculture and waterways. [More]