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

I am dreaming of a white Christmas. Certainly, they were rare in St.

A cringe-worthy chorus of “Happy Birthday” is usually all it takes to earn the label of “tone-deaf.” Yet fewer than 1 percent of the population is truly amusical, that is, lacking the ability to distinguish different pitches. [More]

When I’m talking I can hear my own voice. And with that feedback I can tell almost immediately when I’ve made an error. Like I just did

Before video games and robotics competitions, toys were much simpler: girls got dolls; boys got model trains and bicycles. Toys that promoted learning and experimentation were rare until one inventor, Alfred Carlton (“A

Four years ago Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow turned to her husband after looking up some movie trivia online and asked, “What did we do before the Internet?” Thus, Sparrow set out to investigate how Google, and all the information it proffers, has changed how people think.

Most photovoltaic solar cells have an inherent efficiency cap, limiting how much useful energy they can extract from the sun. But scientists are finding ways around this obstacle with new research that could make solar energy more efficient and more cost-effective

Ad on a London Bus. Courtesy of Annie Wade via Flickr. People have long tried tricks to aid their memories

Although most people think of memory as a vault for storing information, it is more like a seamstress who stitches together logical threads into scenes that make sense.

You’ve found that perfect, pricey gift for your significant other. Now, you decide to pick up a little something else. But wait! The second smaller gift can actually take away from the powerful impression of gift number 1.

WHY CITIES SUCCEED [More]

For a long time the smallest motor in the world was 200 nanometers across. That’s really small, about one-fortieth the size of a red blood cell. Charles Sykes and his team at Tufts University have now crushed that rec

I’ve mentioned magnetic bacteria a couple of times now, so I got quite excited when Lucas Brouwers alerted me to a recent paper in Science (ref below) that explored a whole new group of magnetic bacteria.

The mystery of why Mercury 's magnetic field is so weak may just have been solved: It is being stifled by the solar wind, researchers think. [More]

No single event is more important in broadcasting each year than the National Football League's Super Bowl.

As the recent flurry of articles about why portable electronic devices are restricted during air travel makes clear, the conclusion to be drawn from the information available is a very complicated: “We just don’t know.” For this reason alone airlines err on the side of caution, asking people nicely (and sometimes not so nicely) to turn off their gadgets during takeoff and landing.