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

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking to monitor the levels of radiation that its employees are exposed to from X-ray technology, including airport body scanners, a document from the agency says.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gamow-gravity There's nothing like a nasty cold to make you appreciate good health. The same goes for the state of the universe: Tweaking just one of the fundamental physical laws or constants, normally perfectly "fine-tuned" at the right values to allow stars, planets, atoms and life as we know it to flourish, could turn things very different -- quite unpleasantly so. Imagining such a "bizarro" universe may heighten your appreciation for the norm.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The hidden side of the universe is now a bit more illuminated thanks to the largest map yet of dark matter , the strange substance thought to inhabit much of space. [More]

Fair warning: the following is more than 60 seconds, and it’s about climate change. [More]

Apple, Nokia and Research In Motion (RIM) gave Indian intelligence agencies secret access to encrypted smartphone communications as the price of doing business in the country, according to what appear to be leaked Indian government documents. [More]

Learn about city pigeons, watch pigeons for science, learn cool facts, and increase your awareness of nature in your neighborhood [More]

Our brains are exquisitely tuned to perceive, recognize and remember faces. We can easily find a friend’s face among dozens or hundreds of unfamiliar faces in a busy street. We look at each other’s facial expressions for signs of appreciation and disapproval, love and contempt

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By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise.

After 30 years in Fairbanks, Alaska, we finally wimped-out and went to Hawaii at Christmas instead of our cabin. The cabin is in a remote mountain valley and gets no direct sun this time of year, and the temperature hovers around -20 F. Truth be told, on most mid-winter trips to the cabin we sleep a lot

Boosting voter turnout could be as simple as making individuals see voting as part of who they are rather than as something they do. [More]

Voters in the recent Iowa caucuses and Tuesday's New Hampshire primary will rely on paper ballots as they have for generations. In the very next primary on January 21, South Carolinians will vote with backlit touch-screen computers. [More]

Did Earth once have two moons? It may take two lunar spacecraft to find out.

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine Protective caps known as telomeres that help to preserve the integrity of chromosomes can also predict lifespan in young zebra finches ( Taeniopygia guttata ), researchers have found. Telomeres are stretches of repetitive DNA sequence that are found at the ends of chromosomes, where they help to maintain cell viability by preventing the fraying of DNA and the fusion of one chromosome to another

By Katherine Rowland of Nature magazine Carnivorous plants catch their prey in pools, glue and snap traps. [More]