News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Stegouros elengassen, unearthed in Chile, had a strange flattened tail that looked like a fern frond – a feature never seen before in an ankylosaur dinosaur Life 1 December 2021 By Chen Ly An artist’s impression of Stegouros elengassen Lucas Jaymez A new species of ankylosaur found in Chile had a unique tail unseen in … Read more
A set of 3.7-million-year-old footprints were initially thought to have been left by a bear walking upright, but have now been reinterpreted as the prints of an unidentified hominin that walked a little bit like a modern catwalk fashion model Humans 1 December 2021 By Michael Marshall One of the hominin footprints preserved at Laetoli … Read more
Humans and AI working together can reveal new areas of mathematics where data sets are too large to be comprehended by mathematicians Technology 1 December 2021 By Matthew Sparkes A simple knot DeepMind AI software has collaborated with mathematicians to successfully develop a theorem about the structure of knots, but the suggestions given by the … Read more
By Simon Ings Getty Images/iStockphoto The first rule of popular science is to reveal the wonder and mystery of the world. For that reason, Sentient (Picador), written by photographer and wildlife film-maker Jackie Higgins, is my personal pick of the year. It reveals how the 86 billion nerve cells in the human nervous system afford … Read more
When we started finding planetary systems around other stars we thought many of them would be like ours. We’ve now found hundreds – and it’s so far, so wrong Space 1 December 2021 By Stuart Clark Duc LOng Once upon a time, there was a solar system. In it lived four small rocky planets called … Read more
By Gege Li Photograph Hubble Space Telescope These two spectacular images are some of the most recent shots of our solar system snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope. Its goals include investigating celestial bodies, such as planets and stars, and probing how our universe is evolving. Nasa, Esa, And J. Tan (Chalmers University Of Technology) … Read more
An uplifting film tells the story of how George Jarrett Helm Jr became a leading voice in a movement for environmental and Indigenous rights in Hawaii Humans 1 December 2021 By Simon Ings The US military used Kaho’olawe as target practice for decades Courtesy of CCFF 2021/Hawaiian Soul Film Hawaiian Soul ‘Āina Paikai WHAT IS … Read more
By Clare Wilson GAP Photos Winter and early spring are a good time of year for gardeners to enrich their soil with organic matter such as manure and compost. Many of the plants have died back, leaving more room to dig the material into the soil or making it easier to just lay it on … Read more
Humans have affected every aspect of life on Earth – from hunting prehistoric beasts to changing the climate – and the illusion that pristine nature still exists undermines our efforts to make a better world, says environmental writer Emma Marris Earth 1 December 2021 A Hakea tree stands alone in the Australian outback during sunset. … Read more
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque via Alamy One of the positives to come out of last month’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow was official recognition of the central role that climate science must play both in understanding and solving the problem. That might seem an odd thing to say – surely science has always been at the heart … Read more