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

Dear EarthTalk : Were Japan to close all its nuclear plants following the recent damage and radiation leaks from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, what would its energy mix look like?

On April 8, 1911, at the Leiden Cryogenic Laboratory in the Netherlands, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his collaborators immersed a mercury capillary in liquid helium and saw the mercury's electrical resistance drop to nothing once the temperature reached about 3 kelvins, or 3 degrees above absolute zero (around –270 Celsius). This phenomenon of "superconductivity" was one of the first quantum phenomena to be discovered, although back then quantum theory did not exist. In subsequent decades theoreticians were able to put quantum physics on a solid foundation and explain superconductivity.

When you hear about asteroids close to the Earth, you probably have visions of collisions and extinctions and a postapocalyptic future. Or of brave space cowboys trying to knock them off course. You probably don’t picture a puppy that’s followed you home

Nobody goes to McDonald's in the U.S. expecting to buy chicken nuggets made out of healthy, fairly-treated chickens; they just want crunchy nuggets, no questions asked.

Rebecca Jarvis speaks with Dr. Jennifer Ashton about what to do to avoid hospital mishaps.

California is home to many natural wonders due to its varied climate and topography which includes both forest and costal lands. For the July 6, 1901 issue of Scientific American , author, big-game fisher, and former curator at the American Museum of Natural History Charles F. Holder wrote a piece on some of the interesting and beautiful results of erosion on California’s Southern coast

CDC investigating seven cases of "imported" measles, and urging parents to have children vaccinated

Intel's investing in the student tablet company, and will be taking over hardware operations. What's next?

Just after sunrise in early January, a delivery van trundled along a suburban street in Queensland, Australia.

Disagreeing On Everything As theoretical physicists, we deplore the publication of A. Garrett Lisi and James Owen Weatherall’s “ A Geometric Theory of Everything ,” as well as of Zeeya Merali’s “Rummaging for a Final Theory” [News Scan] in the September issue, which was PR-level praise of Lisi’s research that presented him as struggling against an entrenched establishment. [More]

1. Late yesterday Facebook revealed a surprisingly green core to its computer operation--efficient server and infrastructure designs that consume less energy than comparable data centers, and are 38% more energy efficient and 24% more cost effective than its previous configuration. Better yet, for the ecologically minded, Facebook is making the design of its infrastructure open source to encourage other folks to use it--it's called the Open Compute Project

Name: Hilary Mason Title: Chief scientist, bit.ly [More]

There’s been a lot of confusion and concern about radiation in the past few weeks. As part of the Building a Better Explainer project at NYU’s Studio 20 , we decided to create a visual explainer of radiation levels, inspired by some recent presentations over at XKCD and Information is Beautiful .

Americans looking to slim down for summer may soon be cheering "Vive la France" when “The Dukan Diet” makes its American debut on April 19th.  But nutrition experts are already saying "mon dieu" about yet another carb-hating, protein-loving, weight-loss plan.

By Gwyneth Dickey Zakaib of Nature magazine Cancer patients desperate to get into government run clinical trials will be sidelined.