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

Just how extraordinary has this winter been in Europe? The Danube river has frozen, for one. [More]

Tuur van Balen gives a provocative how-to presentation at the Next Nature Power Show, showing how to use the Synthetic Biology Parts Registry to engineer yogurt bacteria to produce prozac: [More]

By Ivan Semeniuk, Meredith Wadman, Susan Young, Eric Hand, Eugenie Samuel Reich & Richard Monastersky of Nature magazine "It's not every day you have robots running through your house," Barack Obama quipped last week at the White House science fair, a showcase for student exhibitors that also gave the US president a chance to reiterate a favourite theme. [More]

Organize and publish nature sightings for enjoyment, education and to aid conservation efforts [More]

Your brain is special.

Stretches of DNA that move around the brain, colloquially known as jumping genes, may play a role in fostering one pernicious form of autism. It has long been known that a a mutation that switches off a gene called MECP2 is involved in Rett syndrome, the most physically disabling form of autism. Rett, which mostly affects girls, results in speech and motor defects that appear just after children learn to speak their first words and start walking.

A simple math problem lies at the heart of a heated debate over whether scientists should be allowed to publish provocative research into the transmissibility of H5N1 flu . Assuming the avian virus could spread easily among people, just how deadly would an H5N1 pandemic be for humans?

When a couple plays online games together, they say they are happier in their marriage than couples in which only one spouse games (Credit: Elvis untot, Wikimedia Commons) If someone asked you to sketch a portrait of a gamer who spends countless hours each week inhabiting an avatar say, an elf or a warlock in a virtual fantasy world, what kind of person would you draw? A teenage boy whose pimply forehead hovers mere centimeters from the computer screen? [More]

Today, President Obama unveiled his $3.8 trillion 2013 budget proposal for the federal government.

PET image of an Alzheimer's brain [More]

Sex, speed dating, monogamy--for Valentine's Day, we look at the science behind the mating game [More]

This Valentine's Day, Scientific American traces the flow of chemicals in the brain during different phases of romance and describes surprising insights from the science of attraction.

As a psychologist, I have always found the concept of speed dating fascinating.

Love might be in the air on Valentine's Day, metaphorically speaking.

The cloud forests of the Andes mountains, bound between the Amazonian lowlands to the west and the peaks of the Andean uplift to the east, harbor worlds upon worlds. Within the mountains' mosaic of high plateaus, deep-cut valleys and steeply climbing slopes, unique ecosystems have flourished side by side for centuries, their equilibrium protected by the rugged terrain and 12,000 years of relatively stable climate. Home to nearly one-sixth of the world's plant species, as well as hundreds of kinds of mammals, birds and amphibians, the Andean cloud forests are one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth