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

More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system. [More]

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland has generated a lot of news of late, e.g. the announcement that a team had found what it believes to be a particle that traveled faster than he speed of light, an actual new particle, and of course the seemingly never-ending storyline associated with the hopeful discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson, now a physicist not associated with the project, has built a scale model replica of the ATLAS experiment; a particle detector that will likely serve as ground zero should the so-called “god particle” ever be observed.

One of the seemingly ideal and direct solutions to climate change is to efficiently vacuum up greenhouse gases straight from the atmosphere. But a new study finds that such a proposal is very far-fetched and tremendously expensive.

A study finds that companies best positioned to benefit from ambitious goals rarely pursue them. The study: "The Paradox of Stretch Goals: Organizations in Pursuit of the Seemingly Impossible," by Sim B.

Instead of waiting around for organs to become available, have shelves of them instantly ready In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people. This feature aims to look at the impossible dreams, the seemingly intractable problems in science.

Domain name registries and marketers can rejoice now that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has given its blessing to a plan encouraging the use of much more creative Web addresses. On Monday ICANN's Board of Directors voted to increase the number of Internet domain-name endings--called generic top-level domains (gTLDs)--from the seemingly ubiquitous .com, .net, .org and 19 other suffixes that most Web users have come to know over the past two decades

Cosmic neutrinos could yield key insights, but detection devices would need to be the size of a star or galaxy In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people. This feature aims to look at the impossible dreams, the seemingly intractable problems in science

The mystery of human consciousness appears routinely as one of the greatest science problems of all time. One way to get a grip on this seemingly ineffable property would be to build a conscious machine.

Experiment Might Take Thousands of Volunteers and Decades of Effort In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people.

Attempting to fix our planet might be easier than adapting to an uncertain future In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated.

A week's warning could save an untold number of lives In ""Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people.

Red-eyed periodic cicadas emerge every 13 or 17 years, but finding out why could take millennia In ""Too Hard For Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people. This feature aims to look at the impossible dreams, the seemingly intractable problems in science

What does the scientist who talked about enclosing stars with globes think might be too hard for science? In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people.

Supercomputers may soon approach the brain's power, but much is unknown about how it works In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people

A silent jetpack would be like swimming in air, but it is likely beyond the physics of thrust In "Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don't think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big as the sun, or they might be completely unethical, such as lethal experiments involving people