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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.    The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life, but the Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds also can be a by-product of life processes and their detection on an Earthlike planet someday may provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet. Previous observations of HD 189733b by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope found water vapor. Earlier this year, Hubble found methane in the planet's atmosphere. 

Stepping onto a scale after a calorie-filled holiday season isn't an activity many 21st-century Americans relish.But in the late 19th century, scales were all the rage at festive gatherings — the 1800s' answer to Guitar Hero."A family would think it fun to weigh themselves before and after a big holiday dinner to see how much they had gained," said Deborah I. Levine, Ph.D., an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry Fellowship Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Arts&Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis."Knowing your weight was a novelty, a kind of parlor trick, before scales became widely available through mass production," said Levine.

When faced with a difficult decision, we try to come up with the best choice by carefully considering all of the options, maybe even resorting to lists and lots of sleepless nights. So it may be surprising that recent studies have suggested that the best way to deal with complex decisions is to not think about them at all—that unconscious thought will help us make the best choices. Although this may seem like an appealing strategy, new research in Psychological Science cautions that there are limitations in the efficacy of unconscious thought making the best decisions.

Researchers at New York University's Center for Neural Science and the Baylor College of Medicine have identified a protein that when removed from mice results in behaviors that are akin to those with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, may enhance our understanding of these and other neurological disorders.

A detailed analysis of the measurements of five different satellites has revealed the existence of the warm plasma cloak, a new region of the magnetosphere, which is the invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the onslaught of the solar wind. The study was conducted by a team of scientists headed by Charles "Rick" Chappell, research professor of physics and director of the Dyer Observatory at Vanderbilt University and published this fall in the space physics section of the Journal of Geophysical Research. The northern and southern polar lights – aurora borealis and aurora australis – are the only parts of the magnetosphere that are visible, but it is a critical part of Earth's space environment. 

It's the age-old conundrum for potential Prius owners - emit CO2 and cause global warming using combustion engines or pollute the ground and water with acid rain due to batteries.   Climate scientists at Cardiff have found a way to stop having the environmental money maker for the 2000s fighting against the environmental moneymaker of the 1980s - climate change is hampering acid rain recovery, they say.Yes, wet weather in Wales is keeping rivers from getting better.The research by Professor Steve Ormerod and Dr Isabelle Durance of the School of Biosciences is based on observations over a 25 year period around Llyn Brianne in mid-Wales. Their findings are published online today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

A team of astronomers from Europe and the US studied the "Einstein Cross", a famous cosmic mirage. This cross-shaped configuration consists of four images of a single very distant source. The multiple images are a result of gravitational lensing by a foreground galaxy, an effect that was predicted by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his theory of general relativity. The light source in the Einstein Cross is a quasar approximately ten billion light-years away, whereas the foreground lensing galaxy is ten times closer. The light from the quasar is bent in its path and magnified by the gravitational field of the lensing galaxy.

The best flame retardant for your Christmas tree is still plain old water. Worse,  researchers have determined that some flame retardants not only don't work on cut Christmas trees, they actually sped up the drying process and made trees more flammable.Drs. Gary Chastagner, professor of plant pathology at Washington State University's Puyallup Research Center, and Eric Hinesley, professor of horticulture at North Carolina State University, tested two flame retardants on Douglas-fir and Fraser fir, two of the favorite Christmas tree species in the United States.

There are hurdles to clear before malaria elimination can be achieved. A supplement published in Malaria Journal features a series of articles reviewing the many aspects of the research agenda for global malaria elimination.

Astronomy&Astrophysics is publishing spectroscopic observations with NASA's space-based Far-Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) of the white dwarf KPD 0005+5106. The team of German and American astronomers who present these observations show that this white dwarf is among the hottest stars known so far, with a temperature of 200,000 K at its surface. It is so hot that its photosphere exhibits emission lines in the ultraviolet spectrum, a phenomenon that has never been seen before. These emission features stem from extremely ionized calcium (nine-fold ionized, i.e., CaX), which is the highest ionization stage of a chemical element ever discovered in a photospheric stellar spectrum.

A new paper in The Astrophysical Journal suggests that turbulence plays a critical role in creating ripe conditions for the birth of planets, a challenge to the prevailing theory of planet formation, gravitational instability. Using three-dimensional simulations of the dust and gas that orbits young stars, the study claims that turbulence is a significant obstacle to gravitational instability, which scientists have used since the 1970s to explain the early stage of planet formation. 

One of the moons in our solar system that scientists think has the potential to harbor life may have a far more dynamic ocean than previously thought.   If Europa is tilted on its axis even slightly as it orbits the giant planet Jupiter, then Jupiter's gravitational pull could be creating powerful waves in Europa's ocean, according to Robert Tyler, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and author of a letter on the subject in the Dec. 11 Nature. As those waves dissipate, they would give off significant heat energy.