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

Dear EarthTalk : I understand a recent government report concluded that our global food system is in deep trouble, that roughly two billion people are hungry or undernourished while another billion are overconsuming to the point of obesity. What’s going on?

AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center meteorologists, led by Meteorologist and Hurricane Forecaster Paul Pastelok, are predicting an active season for 2011 with more impact on the U.S. coastline than last year. The team is forecasting a total of 15 named tropical storms, eight of which will attain hurricane status and three of which will attain major hurricane status (Category 3 or higher).

If you type "Japanese barberry" into a search engine, the first result will likely be a National Park Service web page designed to look like a "Wanted" poster. "LEAST WANTED" is written across the top. It’s a fact sheet about the ecological threat posed by this invasive shrub.

In April 2010, amid mounting criticism that his space plan lacked direction, President Barack Obama gave a speech in Florida to lay out a few ambitious goals he had in mind for NASA. The details of how those targets would be met remain somewhat sketchy even today, but the goals themselves were clear--sometime around 2025, the U.S. would perform an unprecedented feat.

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazine TOKYO Japan has the world's densest seismometer network, the biggest tsunami barriers and the most extensive earthquake early-warning system. [More]

Human illnesses are being transmitted to critically endangered mountain gorillas, putting these rare animals further at risk, new research shows. Centuries ago, mountain gorillas ( Gorilla beringei beringei ) lived in relative isolation and were rarely seen by people

"When will we know when we can declare victory?

The Scientific American supplement from December 4th, 1886 featured a drawn reproduction of a photograph taken of Amanab, the “Greek Giant.” Amanab was born in 1868 near Kerassond in Trebizonde--a successor state of the Byzantine Empire located on the Southern shore of the Black Sea. At the time of the article, he was 18 years old and measured 7 feet 9 inches in height, had a head circumference of 26

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Aircraft condensation trails criss-crossing the sky may be warming the planet on a normal day more than the carbon dioxide emitted by all planes since the Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903, a study said on Tuesday.

An artificial "leaf" that collects energy in much the same way as a natural one could provide a day's worth of power for homes without access to an electricity grid. The leaf, a silicon-based square the size of a playing card, closely mimics the way plants use the process of photosynthesis to create energy. The device is dropped into a bucket of water, or even a muddy puddle, and placed in direct sunlight

Spring has sprung, the sun is shining, flowers are beginning to bloom, and pollen is in the air. Often thought of as a bright and cheerful season, for many people spring is a season where their heads feel like over-ripe melons, their eyes water, and the tissue industry is kept in business. Many people feel that they may have a perpetual cold that never seems to dissipate that only gets worse in the spring.

The tentacled snake may be the strangest serpent you've never heard of. [More]

By Yoko Nishikawa [More]

Natural disasters always seem to strike in the worst places. The Sendai earthquake has caused over 8,000 deaths, destroyed 450,000 people’s homes, crippled four nuclear reactors and wreaked over $300 billion in damage. And it’s only the latest disaster.

NEW YORK CITY--Who brewed--and then enjoyed--the first beer? The civilization responsible for the widely beloved beverage must have been a very old one, but we don't yet know who first brewed up a batch of beer, Christine Hastorf explained in a March 10 lecture at New York University on the archaeology of beer