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

Get your delicious, piping hot robo-cookies here! A robot: Your plastic pal who's fun to be with! Okay, so the future that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy predicted is still far off, but it's coming closer every week: HRP-4C gynoid sings on camera We've seen HPR-4C several times already, but she's always worth revisiting as her skills advance--if only because she's one of the few android (technically a gynoid) that's really venturing into Uncanny Valley, with movements and other attributes that seem human. HRP-4C is the best preview out there of the kind of realistic robots we're likely to encounter fairly soon. Here she is singing as part of this year's Japan Robot Association Jisso Protec 2011 show

Spain has pulled off a Net security coup and arrested three men suspected of the attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network among others. Those arrested are local Anonymous hacktivists. So cops have essentially whacked a hornet's nest

The irradiation of a metal surface with light or electrons can result in the formation of coherent electronic oscillations called surface plasmons, an effect ideal for applications such as optical communications on optoelectronic chips. Unfortunately, however, surface plasmons quickly lose their energy during transit, limiting their on-chip propagation distance. Jing Hua Teng at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and co-workers from Nankai University and Nanyang Technological University under the Singapore-China Joint Research Program have now developed nanoscale structures that are able to replenish as well as guide surface plasmons on chips

One of the few exceptions to the old saying “everybody is afraid of something” is a 44-year-old woman known to psychologists as patient SM.

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine Can the time-warping ways of Einstein's theory of general relativity be measured by the quantum 'ticking' of an atom? In 2010, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, claimed in Nature that they had used an inexpensive table-top apparatus to show how gravity had altered a fundamental oscillation of two atoms.

Mark Twain called the cherimoya and its cousin the sugar apple “the most delicious fruit known to men.” Though little more than exotic edibles to most Americans, such fruits of the Annona family have been cultivated by people in Central and South America for generations. Even in pre-Columbian times, Annona fruits were enjoyed for their sherbetlike texture and a flavor that resembles a mixture of banana and pineapple

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU, Germany) have built what is currently the strongest source of ultracold neutrons. Ultracold neutrons (UCNs) were first generated here five years ago.

In the latest installment of Butterfly Effect, we examine Google's autonomous vehicles, seemingly a vision of the future--they'll potentially make commuting a dream and maybe even help kill the Big Three. But for those same reasons, it has the potential set us back by revitalizing suburbs and damaging the economy

A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of 'superatoms' – a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table – with unusual magnetic characteristics.

Clean power from the Earth used to use a lot of water. But a new discovery means that water can be replaced with CO2, which gets left in the ground and doesn't alter the climate

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stony Brook University graduate student Qiang Zhu, together with Professor of Geosciences and Physics, Artem R. Oganov, postdoc Andriy O.

In today's why-the-bees-are-dying news: Giving hives checkups throughout the year yields a lot of things that kill bees, but do any of them cause colony collapse disorder? It's the billion-dollar question: why did colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon characterized by honeybees disappearing for no apparent reason, appear from nowhere in 2006

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from Columbia Engineering, the Italian National Research Council, Princeton University, University of Missouri, and University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) has developed an artificial semiconductor structure that has superimposed a pattern created by advanced fabrication methods that are precise at the nanometer scale.

When you measure BPA levels based on a lifetime of daily exposure, it turns out our bodies are full of the poisonous stuff. BPA is practically inescapable--it's found in soup cans, water bottles, store receipts, dental linings, plastic-packaged foods, and any number of other products. Canada has already declared that BPA is a toxic substance, and the stuff has been banned in baby bottles in Europe, China, and Canada, but we're still exposed to BPA constantly.

We tend to regard pain as an unfortunate by-product of physical harm. Sensations of crushing, burning and piercing are the language of alert, used by our bodies to communicate tissue damage, whether imminent or real