An Anglo-German team of astronomers has discovered a new planet orbiting a nearby sun at just the right distance for an Earth-like climate that could support life. The team actually found three new planets orbiting the star 44 light years away, but only one of them is in the so-called Goldilocks Zone, the band around a sun where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist. "The star HD 40307 is a perfectly quiet old dwarf star, so there is no reason why such a planet could not sustain an Earth-like climate," said Guillem Angla-Escude from Germany's University of Goettingen, who led the research with Mikko Tuomi at the University of Hertfordshire in Britain. The planet has a mass at least seven times that of Earth but it orbits at about the same distance from its sun, meaning it receives a similar amount of solar energy as Earth gets. More than 800 planets have been discovered outside our solar system since the first was detected in the early 1990s, but only a handful of those have been in the habitable zone. Even more rare are planets in the zone that rotate, as this one does, to create a day-time and night-time, which increases the chance of an Earth-like environment. Those that don't spin are said to be tidally locked, with one half in constant darkness. More»

Smoking has long been linked with slower recovery in general from injuries and surgeries, and now a new study finds that smokers face more complications and higher chances of death following major surgery for colorectal cancers and other diseases. "We wanted to see if smoking has a specific effect on these patients... and really wanted to know if patients who stopped smoking had better results," said lead author Dr. Abhiram Sharma, who was at the University of Rochester in New York during the study. Smoking constricts the flow of blood throughout the body and is thought to prevent oxygen from getting to tissues that are trying to heal, according to the authors. In September, a review of surgeries to repair knee ligaments found that smokers tended to have worse outcomes, including not being able to get back full knee function. (See Reuters Health article of September 26, 2012: reut.rs/Xqf6is) For the new report, published in the Annals of Surgery, Sharma and his colleagues studied patients included in a nationally representative database of U.S. surgeries between 2005 and 2010. Overall, 47,574 patients were included in the analysis. All had part of their colon or rectum removed, a surgery known as a colorectal resection, either because of cancer, diverticular disease or inflammatory bowel disease. More»

Seminal American author Philip Roth, whose novels explored modern Jewish-American life, has told a French magazine that he will write no more books because he has lost his passion for it. The author of such novels as "American Pastoral", for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and "Portnoy's Complaint" slipped his retirement announcement into an interview last month with French magazine Les Inrocks. On Friday, Houghton Mifflin confirmed his decision. "He told me it was true," said Lori Glazer, executive director of publicity at the publisher.Roth, 79, one of the world's most revered novelists and a frequent contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, said he had not written for three years. "To tell you the truth, I'm done," Roth was quoted as telling Les Inrocks. "'Nemesis' will be my last book," he said of his 2010 short novel set against a fictional polio epidemic in Newark, New Jersey, in 1944. The novella "Goodbye, Columbus" catapulted Roth onto the American literary scene in 1959 with its satirical depiction of class and religion in American life. Published along with five other short stories, it won the National Book Award in 1960. He again received that award in 1995 for "Sabbath's Theater." More»

More than $1 billion worth of fine art, from Picassos and Monets to Rothkos and Richters, will be auctioned at Christie's and Sotheby's in sales that officials say are shaping up to be some of the biggest in years. The art market, especially at its upper echelons, has thrived as the rich seek a safe haven for their wealth with artworks. "We had a great rush of consignments for the November auctions," said Marc Porter, Christie's Americas' chairman. "The property was made up increasingly of discretionary sellers versus estates," he said, referring to collectors who decide to sell a work. The prices that some of the main items are expected to fetch are eye-popping. Works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Mark Rothko are each expected to sell for as much as $50 million. Brooke Lampley, Christie's head of Impressionist and modern art, described it as "an exuberant market" with buyers from around the world. "Participation in our major sales is more global than ever, with buyers from growing markets in South America, Asia, and the Middle East," she explained. Monet's "Nympheas", one of the artist's water lilies works which Christie's estimates could sell for as much as $50 million, is among the highlights of the sales. More»

President Barack Obama's re-election erased the last major threat to his signature healthcare reform law, but left questions about implementation as the national focus shifts to tackling the mounting U.S. deficit. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the biggest overhaul of the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system since the 1960s, aims to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans beginning in January 2014. Republican challenger Mitt Romney had vowed to repeal the law if elected, calling it a costly government expansion, despite the fact that the reforms are based on healthcare legislation he signed as governor of Massachusetts. "There's sort of an immediate acceptance that this law will stay in place in some meaningful way," said Chris Jennings, a top healthcare adviser to former Democratic President Bill Clinton. "It's sort of like a big barrier has been removed." More»

In a world that celebrates romance and finding The One, people can be rather rude to single people, writes James Friel. No-one is supposed to be single. In the course of my life, I have loved and lost and sometimes won, and always strangers have been kind. But I have, it appears, been set on a life of single blessedness. And I haven't minded. Or rather, I realise, I haven't minded enough. But now I kind of do. Take dinner parties. There comes a moment, and that question: "Why don't you have a partner?" It is usually asked by one of a couple, with always a swivel of the eye to his or her other half, so really two people are asking this question. And I struggle to answer: "I have never found the right person... I am a sad and sorry manchild... I am incapable of love... I am a deviant, and prefer giraffes." Any answer will fail to satisfy. The questioner expects no happy answer. I am only covering up my bone-deep, life-corroding loneliness. The questioners know this, and the insight they believe it affords comforts them. They are safe. More»

Known for his challenging and complex pieces, he won two Pulitzer Prizes and was also honoured with the US National Medal of Arts. While not widely known by the general public, he was hugely respected by critics and musicians. In 2002, The New York Times said Carter's string quartets were among "the most difficult music ever conceived". Carter was hailed by fellow composer Igor Stravinsky for his Double Concerto for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras (1961) and Piano Concerto (1967), both of which Stravinsky dubbed "masterpieces". In a BBC Radio 3 interview 12 years ago, Carter said hearing Stravinsky's famous work The Rite of Spring in the 1920s was what made him want to become a composer. "It was a scandal. Everybody walked out of the hall and people were terrified. Maybe that's why I liked it but in any case I became a fan of modern music in very early adolescence." His music publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, said in a statement announcing his death: "The great range and diversity of his music has, and will continue to have, influence on countless composers and performers worldwide. More»

Some of the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease have been found in the brain, more than two decades before the first symptoms usually appear. Treating the disease early is thought to be vital in order to prevent damage to memory and thinking. A study, published in the Lancet Neurology, found differences in the brains of people destined to develop an early form of Alzheimer's. Experts said the US study may give doctors more time to treat people. Alzheimer's disease starts long before anyone would notice; previous studies have shown an effect on the brain 10-15 years before symptoms. It is only after enough brain cells have died that the signs of dementia begin to appear - some regions of the brain will have lost up to 20% of their brain cells before the disease becomes noticeable. More»

Receding water after Hurricane Sandy left its ugly mark on the walls of New York's art district, rising up to five feet on some buildings, and gallery owners sifted through the debris on Friday and assessed damage to valuable works of art. Streets in the Chelsea district on the West Side of Manhattan bordering the Hudson River were strewn with discarded frames and building material from damaged galleries, remnants of the ravages of Sandy, which flooded some spaces with several feet of water. Helen Im, a co-owner of the Fine Art Conservation Group with Suyeon Kim, which restores art, said most of the damage was to ground-floor galleries. "We've never seen an event like this in the neighborhood. It is surreal, honestly, to see this much damage all at the same time and so widespread," she said in an interview. Chelsea is home to a hundred or more art galleries clustered from West 14th to West 26th streets with total inventories in the tens of millions of dollars. Galleries range from big names like Gagosian and Pace Gallery to startups and smaller dealers. More»

Climate change could lead to crops from the banana family becoming a critical food source for millions of people, a new report says. Researchers from the CGIAR agricultural partnership say the fruit might replace potatoes in some developing countries. Cassava and the little-known cowpea plant could be much more important food crops as temperatures rise. People will have to adapt to new and varied menus as traditional crops struggle, say the authors. “Start Quote When the farmers see the problems they are having with production, they really are willing to shift” Bruce Campbell CCAFS Responding to a request from the United Nations' committee on world food security, a group of experts in the field looked at the projected effects of climate change on 22 of the world's most important agricultural commodities. More»