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

By David Brough LONDON (Reuters) - Food prices could double in the next 20 years and demand will soar as the world struggles to raise output via a failing system, international charity Oxfam said Tuesday, warning of worsening global hunger. [More]

The article, “Religious factors and hippocampal atrophy in late life,” by Amy Owen and colleagues at Duke University represents an important advance in our growing understanding of the relationship between the brain and religion. The study showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation. It is a surprising result, given that many prior studies have shown religion to have potentially beneficial effects on brain function, anxiety, and depression.

To predict the stock market, there’s no need to look into a crystal ball. [More]

Worrying about hackers breaking into your laptop and cell phone is bad enough, but soon your car may be vulnerable, too. With each new model year, the automobile becomes less a collection of mechanical devices and more a sophisticated network of computers linked to one another and to the Internet. Earlier this year a group of researchers proved that a hacker could conceivably use a cell phone to unlock a car’s doors and start its engine remotely, then get behind the wheel and drive away.

By Annika Breidthardt BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany plans to shut all nuclear reactors by 2022, Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition announced on Monday, in a policy reversal drawn up in a rush after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. [More]

This month Scientific American launched 20 free at-home science activities with our inaugural Bring Science Home series. We hope you've enjoyed trying some of them and that you will continue to visit our Education page for more ways to do a little more science every day--at any age.

Halfway into a recent performance at New York City's Bohemian National Hall violinist Mari Kimura had already performed "Preludio" from Bach's Partita No. 3 in E Major followed by several pieces in which she deftly demonstrated her innovative "subharmonics" techniques for extending the octave range of her instrument. Then things got really interesting.

By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said. [More]

The Norse came to a new land around the end of the first millennium, borne on the backs of their Viking long ships and lured away from Iceland by the promise of Erik the Red's Greenland. The land was indeed green when they landed--and stayed that way for several centuries until natural variations in the planet's climate cooled the world's largest island by 4 degrees Celsius

By Muriel Boselli PARIS (Reuters) - Global emissions of carbon dioxide hit their highest level ever in 2010, with the growth driven mainly by booming coal-reliant emerging economies, the International Energy Agency's Chief Economist said on Monday. [More]

Companies and individuals are often at odds, concerned either with collecting information or with preserving privacy. Online stores and services are always eager to know more about their customers--income, age, tastes--whereas most of us are not eager to reveal much.

The scientist: Klaus Zuberbuhler , professor of psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, scientific director of the Budongo Conservation Field Station in Uganda, co-director of the Ta

Now and then, scientists tout an idea so crushingly obvious that I assume I'm missing something. Case in point: the anthropic principle, which proclaims that reality has to be as we observe it to be because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it. I've always been baffled as to why smart people, like Stephen Hawking , take this tautology seriously

Anxiety, it seems, varies widely from one person to the next. What leaves you in a knot of angst may not even faze your friend. But two new studies show that during a crisis, anxiety seems to be contagious; you and your friends will probably ultimately arrive at the same anxiety level

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Self-esteem is something we all want, and, experts say, need for our mental health.