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

I used to be tough on Stephen Jay Gould, the great evolutionary biologist, who died in 2002. I found him self-righteous and pompous, in person and on the page. In an August 1995 profile of him for Scientific American I summed up his worldview, which emphasizes the role of randomness, or "contingency," in shaping life, as "shit happens." [More]

Facebook VP David Fischer explicitly downplayed the social network's role in Middle Eastern revolutions to an Israeli conference which included a tech industry who's-who. One of Facebook's highest-ranking international executives told a dignitary-packed Israeli conference that the website played a minimal role in the Arab Spring .

Simply forcing the U.S. automotive industry to comply with tougher fuel economy standards won't be enough to create substantial cuts in either greenhouse gas emissions or oil use, says a new report from the National Research Council

The Inamori Foundation announced this year's Kyoto Prizes on June 24. It awarded the Basic Sciences prize to astrophysicist Rashid Sunyaev of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the Advanced Technology prize to materials scientist John W. Cahn of the U.S.

I don’t believe you can put a price on inspiration. It is invaluable for the hundreds of medical and physiology researchers from around the world that are swooping into town for the 61st Lindau meetings in Germany. How can being surrounded by 23 Nobel Laureates not be inspiring

By Sylvia Westall and Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. atomic agency chief said on Friday he had broad support for his plan to strengthen international safety checks on nuclear power plants to help avoid any repeat of Japan's Fukushima crisis

By Philip Ball of Nature magazine Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction is packed with memorable dialogue--"Le Big Mac," say, or Samuel L.

By Philip Ball of Nature magazine Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction is packed with memorable dialogue--"Le Big Mac," say, or Samuel L. [More]

The Advances section of Scientific American 's July issue chronicles tree-saving tortoises, the largest spider fossil ever discovered, an update on the hunt for dark matter, and many other developments. For those interested in learning more about the news described in the section, a list of selected further reading follows below. "Tortoises to the Rescue," page 16 [More]

Dear EarthTalk: Radioactive rain recently fell in Massachusetts, likely due to Japan’s nuclear mess. Given the threats of radiation, wouldn’t it be madness now to continue with nuclear power

By Kevin Krolicki and Chisa Fujioka FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - A decade and a half before it blew apart in a hydrogen blast that punctuated the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was the scene of an earlier safety crisis. [More]

Counting on food with fake fats to help you slip into last year’s bathing suit?

Such work could solve the nature versus nurture debate, but is morally, ethically impossible

Although the stories told by Pixar Animation Studios take place in richly realized fantasy realms, the science and technology required to create those worlds have distinctly real-world origins. For Cars 2 , set for release in late June, the minds behind such films as Toy Story , Up and WALL-E had to study the complex ways in which light reflects off cars. The movie leaves behind the sleepy desert town setting of the original and takes place in the world of in

More than three months after a powerful earthquake and 14-meter-tall tsunami struck Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains flooded with a salty mix of fresh and sea water--saltwater contaminated with the radioactive residue of three reactors and four spent fuel pools' worth of nuclear fuel. Every day an additional 500 metric tons of seawater is poured onto the still hot nuclear fuel in the stricken reactors and fuel pools.