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

By Katharine Sanderson of Nature magazine Babies who were exposed to certain organic pollutants in the womb are at a highly increased risk of neural tube defects leading to conditions such as spina bifida, according to researchers in China. Neural tube defects, in which the spinal cord, the brain or their coverings fail to develop completely, arise very early in pregnancy and affect more than 320,000 infants worldwide every year.

Iceland is known as the "land of ice and fire," but new findings suggest that the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean could easily take over that title. In addition to the seven volcanic islands that make up this Antarctic archipelago, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) recently discovered that 12 volcanoes lurk below the water's surface. [More]

Bill Borucki is the principal investigator for NASA's planet-finding Kepler spacecraft. At a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Borucki explained how long it will be before Kepler can tell us whether habitable, Earth-like planets are common or rare: [More]

(especially if you are like a mouse, which you are)

The brain is an exceedingly complex machine that harbors about 100 trillion neural connections . So it comes as no surprise that neuroscientists make great efforts to reduce or represent that complexity in their research with innovative imaging techniques.

Is it really as simple at that? I got a tweet from a reader yesterday pointing me to an article in the LA Times. [More]

By James B. [More]

Look at yourself in your bathroom mirror. [More]

By Molly O'Toole WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - Fiery reds and oranges [More]

Everyone knows what narcolepsy looks like from movies like the ridiculous display in Deuce Bigalow (one of the `adorable misfit bunch of suitors') to other more subdued examples like Mike in My Own Private Idaho.

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By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine Cyclist Borut Bozic drew his hands to his chest with a look of joy, disbelief and exhaustion after defeating some of the world's best sprinters in the Swiss village of Tobel.

Most people know jellyfish and their ilk — the cnidarians, of sea pen, anemone, coral, and man’o'war fame — live in water and (happily for us) stay pretty well confined to it. [More]

It was summer of 2008 and the rhetoric was getting as hot as a globally warmed hood on a ’91 Chevy Camaro RS (my 2nd car, with t-tops of course). [More]