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

By Lucas Laursen of Nature magazine Nuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations that would be impossible to recreate in the lab. Tim Mousseau, who directs the Chernobyl Research Initiative at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, together with an international team, is studying the long-term ecological and health consequences of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. [More]

The humble vibrato of summer will crescendo a bit earlier this year in the U.S.

As many science fiction fans out there already know, today is known as Star Wars Day . May 4 is a date that makes a clever wordplay on the popular movie quote, so fans everywhere are telling their friends, "May the Fourth be with you." We at AccuWeather.com decided to take a look at the climates on the many different locations in the Star Wars Universe.

Parents wring their hands over infant sleep patterns.

WBy Nadia Drake of Nature magazine The sighting of a lone gray whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ) last year off the beaches of Israel, and then again near Spain, came as a surprise to many. [More]

The death of Osama bin Laden elicited many different types of responses and feelings--triumph, sorrow and anger among them. Each of us, as individuals, is capable of having conflicting feelings about the death of the al Qaeda leader, depending on how we happen to see ourselves at any given moment--as parents, spouses, workers, Americans, and so forth. The variety of our responses reveals the subtle and powerful forces surrounding social identity: how we relate to different groups and roles, which is changeable and influenced by circumstances

Photograph by Douglas Sonders Alec Ross Senior Adviser for Innovation, Office of the Secretary of State Washington, D.C. Ross, 39, heads the State Department’s initiative to work with technologists in the private sector. "WE HAVE TO LEVERAGE technology in service of our diplomatic and development goals.

NEW YORK -- Japanese automaker Nissan will replace Ford as supplier of New York City's iconic yellow taxicabs as this city abandons its earlier goal of having an all-hybrid cab fleet, after being twice thwarted by federal courts. But the deal with Nissan will allow the city to launch a pilot test next year to determine whether having all cabs as electric vehicles at some point in the future is an option it could pursue instead. [More]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The last symposium in MIT's 150-day celebration of its 150th anniversary (who ever said that geeks don't like ritual?) is devoted to the question: "Whatever happened to AI?" Of course, that is a particularly appropriate self-introspection for MIT because a lot of artificial intelligence action occurred there during the past 50 years.

An endangered New Zealand parrot known as the kaka ( Nestor meridionalis ) has had a much-needed population boost after poisons were used to kill introduced possums, stoats and rodents in Waitutu Forest Common brush-tailed possums ( Trichosurus vulpecula ) were introduced to New Zealand from Australia in 1870 for their fur and meat, but they overran the islands, threatening the country's native fauna, which evolved without any mammalian predators. A survey six years ago indicated that so many female kaka were being killed by possums that the birds were at risk of extinction in Waitutu Forest. [More]

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazine The International Space Station (ISS) is just one space-shuttle flight away from completion, but the construction boom in low-Earth orbit looks set to continue for at least another decade.

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazine The International Space Station (ISS) is just one space-shuttle flight away from completion, but the construction boom in low-Earth orbit looks set to continue for at least another decade. [More]

Scientific American examines cloud computing, a network-centric approach to delivering information and services [More]

Is "cloud computing" enabling the next generation of information accessibility or simply a marketing campaign devised by technology companies to peddle more of what they are already selling? The answer lies somewhere between those extremes.

This past December Jim Weatherall and I wrote " A Geometric Theory of Everything " for Scientific American , describing progress on unified geometric theories of gravitation and the Standard Model of particle physics. My personal contribution to this progress, a developing model called E8 Theory, was introduced three years ago in a paper titled " An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything ." Almost immediately after this paper appeared, physicists and the interested public began a lengthy process of considering and discussing this new theory's merits and faults. Not surprisingly, the initial response was largely critical, with most commenters encountering some unfamiliar mathematical structures in the paper and responding with appropriate skepticism