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

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to lift a moratorium on the controversial natural gas extraction technique known as hydraulic fracturing, The New York Times reported on Thursday. Such a move could open the state to a gas drilling boom similar to what is happening in neighboring Pennsylvania, and it would certainly raise opposition from environmentalists who believe "fracking" or "hydrofracking" pollutes drinking water.

The tableau is common enough these days: after a miscalculated meal, snack or sip, a parent rummages frantically for an EpiPen or antihistamine as a swollen-mouthed child sits, frightened, possibly gasping for breath. [More]

SACRAMENTO -- California regulators are pushing back their first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas trading system by one year to insulate it from potential market manipulation, the head of the state's air agency said yesterday. What was originally intended to be a routine legislative hearing on the status of California's cap-and-trade system became instead a pivotal moment in the state's climate policy, with a standing-room crowd hanging on Air Resources Board (ARB) Chairwoman Mary Nichols' every word

The evidence is in: global warming has caused severe floods, droughts and storms. We present a three-part series by John Carey, who was funded by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and other selections from the editors [More]

My frail, 92-year-old mother was prescribed 80 mgs of the cholesterol-lowering drug, or statin, simvastatin for years. She fell four times in the last four years of her life: the last fall was the least forgiving.

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By Kate Kelland and Eric Kelsey LONDON/BERLIN (Reuters) - Imported fenugreek seeds from Egypt may be the source of highly toxic E. coli outbreaks in Germany and France that have killed at least 48 people, according to initial investigations by European scientists. [More]

LINDAU, Germany--A vaccine to prevent infections of cancer-causing human papilloma virus (HPV) is currently approved for use in the U.S. in boys and girls and in the UK in girls.

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Sir Harry Kroto gave a talk yesterday that was unlike any other lecture at the Lindau Meetings so far. Kroto didn’t talk about the work he had done, or about his life as a scientist

Editor's Note: William Gilly , a professor of biology at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, embarked on new expedition this month to study jumbo squid in the Gulf of California on the National Science Foundation–funded research vessel New Horizon . This is his fifth blog post about the trip. [More]

I fear I have already offended

By Daniel Cressey of Nature magazine Scientists are increasingly turning to non-invasive imaging to further the '3Rs' of work in animals--replacement, refinement and reduction. [More]

Peering far across space and time, astronomers have located a luminous beacon aglow when the universe was still in its infancy. That beacon, a bright astrophysical object known as a quasar, shines with the luminosity of 63 trillion suns as gas falling into a supermassive black holes compresses, heats up and radiates brightly. It is farther from Earth than any other known quasar--so distant that its light, emitted 13 billion years ago, is only now reaching Earth

A new app for Android phones blurs faces, strips metadata, integrates easily into Facebook, and is open source. It's great news for activists and protesters--and also for keg-standing partiers who want to make their photo albums safe for work.