News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
panda Packages of RNA and proteins that bud off from cells have reversed some signs of ageing in mice, and they may account for the rejuvenating effects of young blood Health 10 March 2022 By Michael Le Page Artwork showing red blood cells SCIEPRO/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY The rejuvenating effect of young blood could be largely due … Read more
An enormous impact crater, hiding deep beneath Greenland’s Hiawatha glacier, is probably the result of a kilometer-wide asteroid that crashed into Earth 58 million years ago. That’s much older than scientists presumed – roughly eight million years after the infamous impact that killed off most dinosaurs. When the Hiawatha crater was first discovered in … Read more
Training artificial intelligences to identify faces or digitise text involves thousands or millions of iterations of a two-stage process known as back-propagation, but a new approach could save time, energy and computing power Technology 10 March 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Cutting training time for AI could make face recognition systems more efficient iStockphoto Artificial intelligence … Read more
Organic molecules and clay minerals found in Gale Crater could be a sign of ancient Martian life, but it isn’t possible yet to rule out that they are products of inorganic processes Space 10 March 2022 By Alex Wilkins The Gale Crater as viewed through a camera on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The Curiosity … Read more
The catastrophic disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 was caused by an explosion at the Reactor 4 Unit. This expelled a sizeable quantity of radioactive material into the surroundings, alongside a partial meltdown of the reactor core. The last few decades have seen substantial international efforts to safely contain and decontaminate the … Read more
Existential themes of identity and immortality are carefully explored in Edward Ashton’s engaging new sci-fi novel “Mickey7” (St. Martin’s Press, 2022), a witty book filled with a refreshing dose of clever humor and old-fashioned planetary adventure. Billed as “The Martian” meets “Multiplicity” (with a touch of Duncan Jones’ “Moon“), “Mickey7” introduces readers to an Expendable … Read more
On the heels of a third straight successful launch from California earlier this year, Virgin Orbit plans to extend its liftoffs to the United Kingdom. The company aims to launch for the first time this summer from Spaceport Cornwall, in the western United Kingdom, Virgin Orbit announced on Wednesday (March 9). The mission will loft … Read more
President Biden has ordered his administration to produce a report on the environmental costs and potential benefits of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain technologies they rely on. Biden’s request came yesterday as part of a sweeping executive order on the “responsible development of digital assets.” Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum are a growing part of … Read more
An underground mountain-sized chunk of rock may be affecting paths of large earthquakes in southern Japan. The dense igneous rock, known as the Kumano pluton, is lurking about 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) below the surface beneath Japan’s Kii Peninsula. It sits in the crust of the continental Eurasian plate. Under this slab of continental crust, … Read more
A burned-out stellar core produced a shockwave that pushed particles to their theoretical speed limit, scientists have reported. Astronomers used a gamma-ray observatory in Namibia called the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) to show how an eruption creates a shock wave that accelerates material around it super-fast speeds. The research focused on RS Ophiuchi, a … Read more