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

Almost 900 million people in the world live without access to safe drinking water--the kind of water that is safe enough to flow straight from the tap into your mouth (with maybe a Brita filter in between). For these people, walking hours each day to faraway and potentially contaminated streams and wells is a way of life, and not one that is particularly conducive to getting much done

It's ubiquitous. It's universal. And it's understood—not! Water's choices in a given situation often defy scientific predictions.

Switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) is easy, affordable, and can cut costs right off the bat. CFLs use 75 percent less energy, saving up to $200 for every five bulbs replaced, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Plus, lighting expenses make up as much as 50 percent of the average commercial building's energy bill

COCODRIE, La.--Eating at North America's southern rim, where the land fades into the water, demands a stomach for seafood particularly shrimp, crab and fish, such as sea bass.

Fact: The United States uses more water in a day than it uses oil in a year. In four days, the United States uses more water than the world uses oil in a year.

I've tried it all: caulking cracks, blowing in insulation, replacing drafty windows and--I'm especially proud of this one--installing a mail-slot cover so airtight it could be used in a space shuttle docking module . Yet my home heating bill remains an object of fear and loathing

Illustration by Brock Davis Water is becoming a high-stakes business where there's money to be made everywhere you look -- from greasy wool to microchips. In the rangeland of Australia, sheep get frightfully dirty

India is running out of water for crops. Most of the water-intensive agriculture in the nation takes place in Punjab, a state in the northwest that makes up 2 percent of the country’s territory but provides more than 50 percent of its grain reserves. Farmers there currently pump out 45 percent more groundwater than is replenished by monsoon rains

Richard Miller has had one of the toughest jobs in higher education. The Olin Foundation tapped him a dozen years ago to create an engineering college on a hilltop in the Boston suburb of Needham.

Imagine if, after the next Deepwater-esque oil spill, we simply deployed a fleet of inflatable sailboats, equipped with oil-sucking booms, that would autonomously sail to the spill and soak up the oil. Or, if we need accurate data about radiation in the water outside another power plant approaching meltdown, we just sent in our fleet of boats, because we don't feel bad about submitting our robot slaves to radiation.

Three weeks after the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant workers have made some headway in cooling the facility's overheated fuel rods. But overall, the situation remains "very serious," according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) . Despite the ongoing work to stabilize the plant and fears that radioactive materials had contaminated tap water as far away as Tokyo, 240 kilometers to the south, most of the recommended restrictions on drinking water have been lifted.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, may not be panicking quite yet about its ever-declining oil supply--but the country is certainly concerned. Consider: in February, a Wikileaks document revealed that Saudi Arabia might be overstating its oil reserves by 300 billion barrels, and the country recently asked for a slice of the UN's $100 billion climate change fund to help diversify to other energy sources (a galling request from such a wealthy country so dependent on other people not diversifying to other energy sources). And now the kingdom has announced that it plans to spend $100 billion on solar, nuclear, and other renewable energy sources.

We continue our examination of the business book The Innovator's Dilemma with an interview of author Clayton Christensen. Why was the book successful, and what technologies will be disruptive this decade

There are some 700 million people in Africa without access to electricity. As the continent modernizes, those people will need power.

Living and working in the high Arctic at this time of year is full of challenges. From the small everyday stuff like sleeping, washing and using the toilet, to the bigger issues that affect our science such as icing up of instruments, freezing of your water samples and keeping a hole in the ice open when the air temperature is -37 o C.