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

Even with a healthy lifestyle, genes are the deciding factor in whether someone gets a chronic illness, such as heart disease. Right?

LaunchRock helps startups lure thousands of users--before they even debut. How do you sell something that doesn't exist?

By Sid Perkins of Nature magazine An explanation presented this week for a famed and enigmatic jumble of marine reptile fossils has blurred the lines between science and science fiction. [More]

By Mark Schrope of Nature magazine The X Prize Foundation today announced the winners of its year-long, US$1.4-million challenge to spur development of improved oil-collection systems for use during spills.

Fingerprints are so familiar that they are mostly taken for granted. Except, however, for people who don't have any at all.

It sounds either really crazy, or kind of obvious. But according to new research, pick-up soccer could help homeless men avert the risk of an early death. Homeless people are known to have poor health and life expectancy.

LONG BEACH, Calif.

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine Close and bright though it is, the Sun still defies a thorough understanding. [More]

Recent reports of a mountain lion or cougar stalking the campus of the University of Iowa prompted campus jokesters to tweet their surprise that Michelle Bachman was in town. A cougar, colloquially, is an attractive older woman who seeks out trysts with younger men, and to some, it seems that Bachmann fits the bill.

By Kylie Stott PUERTO IGUAZU, Argentina - The musty jaguar pelts on display at a government office in Buenos Aires are a grim reminder of the big cat's precarious existence in Argentina's northern forests. [More]

Credit: IStockphoto I knew I wasn’t like the other kids. Oh sure, I collected baseball cards and model airplanes, but not with the passion that I saved for my real obsession--collecting each and every element of the periodic table .

Susan starts her day by jogging to the edge of town, cutting back through a cornfield for an herbal tea at the downtown Starbucks and heading home for a shower. It sounds like a healthy morning routine, but Susan is in fact exposing herself to a rogue’s gallery of chemicals: pesticides and herbicides on the corn, plasticizers in her tea cup, and the wide array of ingredients used to perfume her soap and enhance the performance of her shampoo and moisturizer. Most of these exposures are so low as to be considered trivial, but they are not trivial at all--especially considering that Susan is six weeks pregnant.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from a chapter in Nathan Wolfe's new book: The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age (published October 11 by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright

In high school, my mother occasionally found babysitting jobs for me. Parents, desperate for a trustworthy kid to watch their own, would entrust their offspring to Katie the honors student while they went to a meeting, or to work, or perhaps on a date. If any of those parents are reading, I have a confession for you: I didn't like watching your kids

Friend of the blog Cackle of Rad was the first person to send me this paper, and when I first tried to read it, I got…pretty angry.