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

Handwashing is the best way to avoid spreading infection, according to the CDC. But doctors, nurses and hospital staff wash up less than half as often as they should. Some hospitals encourage handwashing by posting signs that tell docs a simple scrub will prevent them from getting sick.

Publication of the genome of the North American green anole lizard has filled a yawning genome-sequence gap in the animal lineage. The paper, which appears today in Nature , is the first to sequence the genome of a non-avian reptile. "This fills out a clade that has been completely ignored before," says lead author Jessica Alf

I recently had the privilege of being asked to participate in a project called “Story Collider.” The goal is to revive the art and joy of storytelling, but in this case the story tellers are scientists and the audience is the general public. [More]

The space shuttle era is finished, its vehicles museum-bound . The deep-space forays of Apollo astronauts are long gone, their final moon voyage nearly 40 years in the past

[More]

How do people value a better life? The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently released the Better Life Index, an interactive graphic that lets you rank 11 different dimensions (income, environment, life satisfaction, etc.) to see how different countries perform, and then “share” your ranking

Burning fossil fuels releases significant quantities of carbon dioxide, aggravating climate change. Although it gets less attention these days, combustion also emits volumes of pollutants, which can cause a variety of illnesses. The most extensive consequences across the U.S

Help track oil still coming ashore from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster [More]

Here’s something amazing: a new bird species has been discovered in the U.S. [More]

From Nature magazine Most everyone knows that stress can cause a clenched, gurgling, unhappy stomach. What's less well known is that the relationship goes both ways

The most precious fluid in the world isn’t black. [More]

Smart phones can provide music, movie times, bus schedules.

Cell-Phone Paradise Communication is at the heart of the future. A future city would need to respond to people on a personal level

[More]

As soon as our species abandoned the daily grind of Stone Age feast-or-famine, we went straight to town.