Astronomers have discovered clear skies and steamy water vapor on a planet known as HAT-P-11b - outside our solar system. HAT-P-11b is about the size of Neptune, making it the smallest exoplanet ever on which water vapor has been detected. 

HAT-P-11b is a so-called exo-Neptune, a Neptune-sized planet that orbits another star. It is located 120 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan). Unlike Neptune, this planet orbits closer to its star, making one lap roughly every five days. It is a warm world thought to have a rocky core, a mantle of fluid and ice, and a thick gaseous atmosphere. Not much else was known about the composition of the planet, or other exo-Neptunes like it, until now.

A 1997 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule allowed food manufacturers to use ingredients "generally regarded as safe," or GRAS, like vinegar and lots of other things, without needing approval all over again.

Food advocates say the current GRAS process allows substances into the food supply that might pose a health risk. How can safe products be risky?

In the future, new organs will be created from a patient's own stem cells and they will require no waiting lists, no immunosuppressive drugs, and no stickers on drivers licenses making people available for organ donations.

Currently, organ transplantation is "opt in" - you have a choice. A new paper by psychologists examines whether it might be better to have organ donation be opt-out.

Knowing your DNA will is not a panacea. Credit: PA/Harvard University

By Walter Gilbert, Harvard University

Walter Gilbert won the Nobel Prize in 1980 in Chemistry for his contribution to sequence DNA, or “determination of base sequences in a nucleic acid”. Mohit Kumar Jolly, researcher at Rice University and contributor to The Conversation, interviewed him at the 2014 Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting.

How people perceive and taste alcohol depends on genetic factors, and that influences whether they "like" and consume alcoholic beverages, according to a nutritionist
and colleagues at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

The iPhone 6 is apparently flexible, though that's a not a good thing; people are warping them when they sit down, and people without abnormal strength can simply twist them in their hands.

But that won't always be a design and construction defect. As tech company LG demonstrated this summer with the unveiling of its 18-inch flexible screen, the next generation of roll-up displays is tantalizingly close.

While it is well-known that Americans conserve electricity more than, for example, Canadians, and that CO2 emissions from energy productions have plummeted to 20 year lows without raising prices, an environmental group and scholars from UC Irvine and Stanford University are saying that won't last - they believe that unless people can't afford electricity generated by fossil fuels, expansion of cleaner energy sources, such as wind and solar, will be harmed.

Bereft of expensive subsidies and mandates, solar is not ready and wind never will be. Solar clearly needs more basic research and natural gas, long touted by environmental groups, seems to be the ideal bridge for Americans, since lobbyists for environmental groups make sure nuclear is kept out of circulation. 

Researchers have developed two new anticancer peptide vaccines and two peptide inhibitors as part of a larger peptide immunotherapy effort, according to two studies published in  OncoImmunology. 

Researchers from  at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center identify new peptide vaccines and inhibitors that target the HER-3 and IGF-1R receptors. All four agents elicited significant anti-tumor responses in human cancer cell lines and in animal models. 

Natural gas hydraulic fracturing - fracking - has been wonderful for CO2 emissions while keeping energy costs for poor people manageable but a few sites have been treating fracking wastewater and returning it to rivers. 

A new study finds that this is just as risky as dumping any municipal treated wastewater back into rivers. As runoff, it is safe but it shouldn't be done in volume. In the case of fracking wastewater, existing facilities are not equipped to thoroughly deal with halides so until they are ready, it's simply better to use fracking wastewater for fracking.

A new study by researchers found that the majority of players were able to return to play after having knee surgery to repair an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury.

But age matters. athletes who had ACL surgery when they were in high school or younger were much more likely to suffer repeat ACL reinjuries than athletes who experienced their first ACL injury during collegiate play.