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

By Ivan Semeniuk of Nature magazine The most fractious and combative US Congress in recent memory is getting on with approving a 2012 budget--although perhaps only so that it can move more swiftly to the next battlefield. [More]

* Amount of CO2 rose by 2.3 ppm to 389 ppm in 2010 * Fossil fuel use, agriculture main drivers [More]

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist and astronaut who fixed the Hubble Space Telescope, has been chosen to lead NASA's science mission directorate, according to several sources with knowledge of the selection.

courtesy of iStockphoto/zanskar Weakening eyesight can be sharpened with lenses, and impaired hearing can be improved with aids. What about a failing sense of smell ? [More]

Naomi Oreskes is a science historian, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Erik Conway) of "Merchants of Doubt," a book that examined how a handful of scientists obscure the facts on a range of issues, including tobacco use and climate change.

One hundred years ago, an American pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville developed a scale to measure the intensity of a pepper s burn. The scale as you can see on the widely used chart to the left puts sweet bell peppers at the zero mark and the blistering habanero at up to 350,000 Scoville Units

Are we biologically inclined to couple for life?

Strong interpersonal relationships have been shown to ward off drug addiction, and new clues as to why come from prairie voles--rodents that form long-term, monogamous bonds with their mates. [More]

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine It is sometimes said that Mike Malin knows Mars better than anyone else on Earth. [More]

It's easy to knock electric vehicles (EVs) : It takes too long to recharge the batteries and there are too few places to do it. And besides, who will pay for all the new recharging stations that would be needed if the cars catch on? The International Energy Agency’s most optimistic scenario puts (pdf) plug-in hybrids or EVs at 15 percent of all cars on the road by 2020; other projections predict a mere 3 percent

By Katy Migiro NAIROBI (Reuters) - Africa is leading the push for clean energy policy-making as climate change turns millions of its people into "food refugees," the head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) Achim Steiner said. [More]

By David Fogarty SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Soaring use of man-made gases used in refrigerators, airconditioners and fire extinguishers risks speeding up global warming and industry should adopt alternatives, a U.N. report said on Monday

Swirls of trashed plastic litter the seven seas. But it's not the enormous plastic patches that pose the biggest pollution problem

The other afternoon I hit a classic mid-afternoon slump. Sleepy and sluggish, I grabbed for a bit of chocolate. But I probably should have had egg whites or maybe a piece of steak

People with diabetes may have to endure multiple, painful finger sticks every day to get blood samples for testing.