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

Wanna get out of the hospital alive? Well, the nursing staff has a lot to do with it. Now a study finds that a patient’s risk of dying goes up along with the number of work shifts that a hospital is understaffed in nurses

By Philip Ball A pianist plays a series of notes, and the woman echoes them on a computerized music system. [More]

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine--The disaster at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, is currently ranked as the worst nuclear accident in history.

As the condition of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan continues to deteriorate, nuclear safety experts, government regulators and health physicists are keeping close watch on the situation to determine the danger--both real and hypothetical--that the incident poses to people near the plant. [More]

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona. It was a major part of the Salt River project, which aimed to create hydroelectric power from the Salt River and make its surrounding lands cultivable. The dam was an engineering marvel and was built as part of the Reclamation Act passed in 1902, which sought to irrigate arid lands in the United States--about one-third of the country’s land at the time

Editor's note: Below is an excerpt from QUANTUM MAN: Richard Feynman's Life in Science (W. W

1. BirdsEye Developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BirdsEye has entries on hundreds of the most frequently seen North American bird species and includes images and bird sounds

By Ewen Callaway An experimental gene-therapy treatment for Parkinson's disease has eased the movement problems of a small number of patients and raised no major safety concerns.

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The hydrogen explosions, melting fuel rods and radiation leaks at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are having an immediate impact on perceptions of nuclear power worldwide, at a time when many countries are earnestly searching for alternatives to fossil fuels. Safety will be a major concern, particularly as emergency workers in Japan continue to battle to keep spent fuel rods stored on site at Fukushima Daiichi from melting down. [More]

Once in Resolute Bay you feel like you are at the edge of the world, your view is of nothing but snow covered hills and sea ice.

Los Angeles is known for many things – Hollywood, of course, and glitz. A history of smog and choking traffic. Now comes another distinction

Burncoat Street is a wide, suburban avenue above the industrial center of Worcester, Massachusetts. Lined with single-family clapboard and brick houses, churches, an elementary and a high school, Burncoat Street is a typical New England neighborhood

If you had four pictures of a person at different ages, how would you lay them out in chronological order? As an English speaker, you would almost certainly put childhood scenes on the left and pictures from old age on the right. But if you spoke another language, you might arrange the photos in a column or even from east to west

Serious nuclear incidents that followed Friday's catastrophic Japan earthquake has raised fears of radiation leakage, a weather-dependent matter that could have a far-reaching impact. [More]