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

The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati.

By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazine US researchers are concerned that revised guidelines that recommend a minimum size for breeding lab rodents' cages will substantially increase the cost of animal work. The eighth edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, published last year by the US National Academies in Washington DC, is the first to recommend minimum cage sizes for female rats and mice and their litters. [More]

As a dung beetle rolls its planet of poop along the ground it periodically stops, climbs onto the ball and does a little dance. Why? It's probably getting its bearings

[More]

True to their name, boa constrictors squeeze the life out of their prey. But how does a boa know it's snuffed out a rat? The snake listens for a heartbeat.

The Amazon rainforest is in flux, thanks to agricultural expansion and climate change. In other words, humans have "become important agents of disturbance in the Amazon Basin," as an international consortium of scientists wrote in a review of the state of the science on the world's largest rainforest published in Nature on January 19.

Dung beetles dance to check their navigation.

As a tech columnist, I’m often asked to speak about the future of technology. Well, sure.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education , long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative for climate science education. [More]

The National Center for Science Education is a wonderful institution dedicated to fighting junk science from entering our Nation’s schools and media. This is a tireless and often thankless job, yet there are so few “think tank” type organizations to promote science standards out there that they really stand out. I had the fortune 2 years ago to visit their offices and was impressed by how passionate the staff were and what they could accomplish out of a tiny office and a garage to store their immense archives

The transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms was one of the most significant developments in the history of life on Earth. Without it, all living things would still be microscopic and simple; there would be no such thing as a plant or a brain or a human. How exactly multicellularity arose is still a mystery, but a new study, published January 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science s, found that it may have been quicker and easier than many scientists expected.

Let’s rewind time back about 3.5 billion years. Our beloved planet looks nothing like the lush home we know today – it is a turbulent place, still undergoing the process of formation. Land is a fluid concept, consisting of molten lava flows being created and destroyed by massive volcanoes.

By Philip Pullella ROME, Jan 16 (Reuters) - As the Costa Concordia shifted dangerously on Monday, Italy's environment minister raised the prospect of an environmental disaster if the 2,300 tonnes of fuel on the half-submerged cruise ship leaks. The ship's fuel tanks were full, having just left the port of Civitavecchia, north of Rome, for a week-long Mediterranean cruise, when it ran aground on Friday

* Operator said ship deviated from correct route * IMO may re-examine safety measures for liner industry [More]

The sinking Costa Concordia; courtsey of Wikimedia Commons/Rvongher Rescue efforts were called off earlier today in the aftermath of a Costa Concordia shipwreck on rocks off the coast of Italy three days ago. Six of the cruise liner’s 4,200 passengers and crewmembers have been reported dead, so far, and another 15 or more remain missing