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

It's certainly looking that way—and Apple's iPad is the victor. The latest casuality appears to be Research in Motion's Blackberry Playbook. It's still on the market, but sales have been lackluster to say the least

NASA’s plans for human spaceflight, the subject of much hand-wringing since the curtains closed on the agency’s space shuttle program in July, took a big step this week when the agency announced plans for a powerful new rocket to take astronauts into deep space. [More]

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann said that, after the debate this week, a woman approached her in tears and said her daughter was given the HPV vaccine and suffered "mental retardation" as a result.

By Gerard Wynn and Stuart McDill 500 MILES OFF THE NORTH POLE (Reuters) - As polar bears stalked their ship, scientists drilled into the Arctic sea ice this week to try and figure out why it's disappearing so fast. [More]

By Pascal Fletcher MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Katia may power up to a major Category 3 storm on Monday, but is expected to veer away from the East Coast later this week, avoiding a direct hit on a seaboard already battered by earlier Hurricane Irene. [More]

A new paradigm in quantum information processing has been demonstrated by physicists at UC Santa Barbara. Their results are published in this week's issue of Science Express online.

CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton answers health questions from viewers. This week: dementia, allergies and sleep issues.

Facebook jumps into and out of the news like a Jack-in-the-box who's had too much caffeine, but this last week has seen an unusual amount of officially announced Facebook tweaks, as well as a bit of saber rattling regarding its future plans.

Special Issue: Cities The city is a solution to the problems of our age, and this week, we present it in the true urban spirit: best ideas forward

Special Issue: Cities The city is a solution to the problems of our age, and this week, we present it in the true urban spirit: best ideas forward

Reporting in Nature Materials this week, researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Physics Department of Sapienza University of Rome have discovered a technique to 'draw' superconducting shapes using an X-ray beam. This ability to create and control tiny superconducting structures has implications for a completely new generation of electronic devices.

The Cities are the topic of the month here at Scientific American (and at least this week on the blogs), so I should chime in on an aspect of urban ecology that I am comfortable discussing – the effects of increased light at night on animals. [More]

In the media this week were reports (see here and here and here) that the brain-eating amoeba Naeglaria fowleri has killed three people this summer, as it does in a typical year. [More]

The city is a solution to the problems of our age, and this week, we present it in the true urban spirit: best ideas forward [More]