How dark is dark within the solar system? We suppose black holes, by their very nature, are pretty dark. But high on the list of astronomical objects that don’t reflect much light is a new contender: TrES-2b, a Jupiter-sized gas giant around 750 light-years from Earth that’s now taking top billing as the darkest exoplanet that astronomers have ever discovered.

Brightness readings measured by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft suggest that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight that hits it – and that’s coming from a star a mere three million miles away from the planet itself (GSC 03549-02811). For comparison’s sake, Earth is around 93 million miles from the sun and, we should note, a whole lot cooler. The average temperature of TrES-2b hovers around 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although the super-heated planet’s atmosphere is full of light-absorbing chemicals, there’s no indication that their presence is the direct reason why the planet fails to reflect a great deal of light.

‘It’s not clear what is responsible for making this planet so extraordinarily dark,’ said Princeton University professor David Spiegel, co-author of the paper that first reported the planet’s existence. ‘However, it’s not completely pitch black. It’s so hot that it emits a […]

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Adult females with clinical depression are 29% more likely to suffer a stroke than other women of the same age without depression, according to an article published in the journal Stroke. The authors, from Harvard Medical School added that there is a 39% higher risk for those on SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). Examples of SSRIs include Prozac, Celexa and Zoloft.

The investigators performed a six-year follow-up in the Nurses’ Health Study, which included 80,574 females aged from 54 to 79 years. The study spanned from 2000 to 2006. None of the women had a history of stroke.

Dr. Kathryn Rexrode, a senior author, explained that the usage of anti-depressant medications could be an indication of the severity of depression.

Rexrode wrote:

‘I don’t think the medications themselves are the primary cause of the risk. This study does not suggest that people should stop their medications to reduce the risk of stroke.’

The investigators assessed depressive symptoms on various occasions. They used a Mental Health Index. Starting in 1996, patient anti-depressant usage was reported every two years. Physician diagnosed depression reporting began in 2000.

For this study, depression was defined as either being currently diagnosed with the disorder or having a history […]

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With the dust settling after the debt ceiling fight, Republicans-along with a few Democrats-are moving on to their next agenda item: blocking states from collecting millions in much-needed tax revenue from corporations.

The Business Activity Tax Simplification Act, or BATSA, passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in early July and is set to be taken up by the full House when Congress returns from its August recess. The bill, which is sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), would forbid state and local governments in the 44 states that collect corporate income taxes from taxing a sizable chunk of corporate profits. How sizable? The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which scored a previous version of the bill in 2006, estimated that state revenue losses would explode to $3 billion annually within five years of enactment. Michael Mazerov, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, says BATSA’s current incarnation protects an even larger portion of corporate profits than the earlier bill, so state revenue losses could be even higher than the CBO projected. And here’s the kicker: since no federal revenue is lost in the process, it’s no skin off the backs of lawmakers in Washington.

The basic theory behind […]

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Your visit to one of America’s prisons may last only a few hours, but once you pass the first steel threshold, your perception of humanity is altered. The slammed doors, metal detectors and body frisks introduce you to life on the inside, but the glaring hatred from the guards and officials make it a reality. When you creep back into your own world afterward, you wonder what is really happening to the people who permanently languish behind bars.

In June 2006, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons released ‘Confronting Confinement,’ a 126-page report summarizing its 12-month inquiry into the prison systems. The commission follows up the analysis based on its findings with a list of recommendations. Topping the list of needed improvements is better enforcement of inmates’ right to proper health care and limitations on solitary confinement. Five years after the report’s release and despite its detailed and well-researched studies, inmate abuse continues. More recently, news reports from California’s Pelican Bay Prison amplified the need for change, but after the three-week inmate hunger strike ended, the torture of solitary confinement continues nationwide.

More than 20,000 inmates are caged in isolation in the United States at any one time. Originally […]

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KABUL, Afghanistan — For years, U.S. officials held up Kabul’s largest power plant project as a shining example of how American taxpayers’ dollars would pull Afghanistan out of grinding poverty and decades of demoralizing conflict.

But behind the scenes, the same officials were voicing outrage over the slow pace of the project and its skyrocketing costs. The problems were so numerous that one company official told the U.S. government that he’d understand if the contract were canceled.

‘We are discouraged and exhausted with the continued flow of bad information,’ one U.S. official complained in an internal memo that McClatchy obtained. ‘This is a huge example of poor performance on an extremely important development project.’

Despite expressing serious misgivings in internal memos and meetings, the U.S. agency that was overseeing the project more than doubled the plant’s budget.

Welcome to Afghan aid, American-style.

In the rush to rebuild Afghanistan, the U.S. government has charged ahead with ever-expanding development programs despite questions about their impact, cost and value to America’s multi-billion-dollar campaign to shore up the pro-Western Afghan president and prevent Taliban insurgents from seizing control.

The well-intentioned campaign comes at a high cost - and not only to American taxpayers.

An approach that experts denounce as ad hoc […]

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