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

Different foods require different amounts of energy to produce.

Different foods require different amounts of energy to produce. Meat is four times as demanding as grains are.

For more than 50 years fossil fuels and fertilizers have been the key ingredients in much greater global food production and distribution. The food-energy relationship has been a good one, but it is now entering a new era. Food production is rising sharply, requiring more carbon-based fuels and nitrogen-based fertilizers, both of which exacerbate global warming, river and ocean pollution, and a host of other ills

For more than 50 years fossil fuels and fertilizers have been the key ingredients in much greater global food production and distribution.

Business owners sound off about determining customer value.

Forget leap years, months with 28 days and your birthday falling on a different day of the week each year. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland say they have a better way to mark time : a new calendar in which every year is identical to the one before. [More]

By

For shift workers, odd hours usually mean strange sleeping habits and unhealthy meals. And now an editorial in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine takes the position that unhealthy eating associated with unusual working hours could be considered a new form of occupational hazard. Because such eating is a risk factor for obesity and diabetes.

Since physical abilities decline as people age, many people think the elderly are also less able to perform mental jumping jacks as they age. New research indicates this might not be true with all brain-powered tasks: In some ways the elderly are fit to compete with their younger counterparts. [More]

Dear EarthTalk : I heard that the less meat one eats, the better it is for the environment. How so? [More]

Joplin, Mo., after a severe May 22 tornado Many of us may remember the jaw-dropping images of the May 22, 2011, tornado that tore through Joplin, Mo. , killing 158 people and leaving an incredible 14-mile path of destruction

NASA has posted a series of satellite photos documenting the expansion of the Athabasca tar sands. The Athabasca pits cover over 54,000 square miles in Alberta with an estimated reserve of 1.75 trillion barrels of oil – good enough for third in the world behind Saudi Arabia (1) and Venezuela (2).

By Nicola Jones of Nature magazine Two scientists from New Zealand will travel to Antarctica on December 28 in a quest to continue a 100-year-long record of Earth's magnetic field: a record begun by British explorer Robert Scott at the start of his ill-fated expedition to the geographic south pole (see "Turning the world upside down "). Record-keeping is necessary because the magnetic poles move about, thanks to the complex circulation of Earth's fluid outer core

While some schoolchildren daydream about crushes during class, delicately inscribing their names in paper margins, others instead yearn to one day discover and name their own species for the cute boy at the corner desk. But they know little about the excess work involved in plant discovery

While some schoolchildren daydream about crushes during class, delicately inscribing their names in paper margins, others instead yearn to one day discover and name their own species for the cute boy at the corner desk.