News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
panda Warning: Spoilers ahead for “Star Trek: Discovery” season 4, episode 12 This is it. This is the penultimate episode of the fourth season of “Star Trek: Discovery” on Paramount Plus. After this one…there’s only one more and we pick up right where we left off last week. The USS Discovery approaches the hyperfield structure where … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope’s main mirror is fully aligned and performing even better than it had been designed to do, NASA officials revealed in a news conference held virtually on Wednesday (March 16). The 21.3-foot-wide (6.5 meters) mirror composed of 18 hexagonal segments had to travel to space folded. Aligning it into one smooth … Read more
Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly plans to halt his Twitter fight with a senior Russian space official, which was sparked by the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In a CNN report published on Tuesday (March 15), Kelly said that NASA had requested that he and other former agency astronauts stop such feuds, as they could … Read more
An old superstition suggests that if you wish upon a shooting star, your wish will be granted. The implication is that shooting stars are so rare, and your sighting so fortuitous, that you’ve been specially selected for a dose of good luck. But are shooting stars actually all that elusive? And what are they, exactly? … Read more
We tend to split people into creative and non-creative types, but does this distinction actually exist? A recently devised training method hints that just about anyone can tap into their creativity – if they’re given the right methods to unlock it. The new method hones in on narrative cognition – in its simplest terms, … Read more
Russia’s war in Ukraine is squeezing food supplies in countries that depend on those two nations for critical grains and cooking oils. The halt in agricultural shipments out of the Black Sea has sent the price of wheat and fertilizer soaring and prompted growing concerns of a global food crisis. In Turkey, people are scrambling … Read more
Last week, Congress agreed to give roughly 5% more money to many federal science agencies when it passed a $1.5-trillion government budget for 2022. But what science advocates had hoped would be a banner funding year fell victim to a bipartisan push to spend much more on defense than President Joe Biden had requested—and to … Read more
In 2012, evolutionary biologist Catherine Sheard started an ambitious Ph.D. project: measuring the shape of every kind of passerine, or perching bird, in the world. “I thought, ‘This is about 6000 species, that almost seems doable,’” Sheard says. It was, and her project catalyzed an international effort to measure all the world’s birds. Now, a … Read more
A new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope during its alignment process shows galaxies and stars in the background. (Image credit: NASA/STScI) The next great observatory is sharpening its vision and well on the way to cracking mysteries of the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope launched in December, arrived at its station … Read more
President Joe Biden last week got his wish for a new agency to fund high-risk, cutting-edge biomedical research when Congress created the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and gave it a $1 billion startup investment. That’s a fraction of the $6.5 billion Biden had proposed, but advocates say it’s plenty to launch ARPA-H. … Read more