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

It’s tough to be a machine in the desert: particles of dirt and sand work their way into moving parts, where they abrade turbines, motors, pipes and other equipment. To avoid this costly wear and tear, researchers are taking lessons from a desert native: the yellow fat-tail scorpion. [More]

Image by Keiko Sekiguchi, from Abe et al. (2012). [More]

Image by Keiko Sekiguchi, from Abe et al.

When I was a kid, I used to spend hours listening to Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky on their Sunday night call-in radio show Loveline .

How state science standards stack up, according to a new report from The Fordham Institute A new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute paints a grim picture of state science standards across the United States.

Journalist and author Maryn McKenna talks about fecal transplants, which have proven to be exceptionally effective at remodeling the intestinal microbiome and curing C. diff infections, but which remain in regulatory limbo. Website related to this episode include www.marynmckenna.com , Swapping Germs: Should Fecal Transplants Become Routine for Debilitating Diarrhea?

To a female orb web spider, a suitable male can look like a mate--and a meal. For these spiders, the dating game has turned into a deadly dance of evolutionary one-upsmanship. [More]

Honey soothes a sore throat.

In the absence of NASA's Space Shuttle Program, private companies are left to fill the black hole of space exploration. Now, 50 years after John Glenn orbited the Earth, some very different kinds of explorers are leading the way. 1.

Oh, to be a fly on the auditory cortex! [More]

KWADUKUZA, South Africa--A Zulu crowd's ululations welcomed Jacob Zuma, president of the Republic of South Africa, back to KwaZulu–Natal, his home province. He had come to tell them of his commitment to bring them, and the rest of the nation, better access to energy--as well as to announce the distribution of solar-powered hot water heaters and LED lighting systems as well as clean-burning cookstoves. [More]

A mysterious, centuries-long cool spell, dubbed the Little Ice Age, appears to have been caused by a series of volcanic eruptions and sustained by sea ice, a new study indicates. [More]

Correction appended. [More]

More than 20,000 radio antennas will soon connect over the Internet to scan largely unexplored radio frequencies, hunting for the first stars and galaxies and potentially signals of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Earlier this month, the scientists who altered the H5N1 virus to create a more contagious strain that's transmissible between ferrets, agreed to a temporary moratorium, due to safety concerns. The NewsHour reported the story here and here . [More]