News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Each year, an estimated 11 million tons of plastic waste enter the ocean, equivalent to a cargo ship’s worth every day. The rising tide—in the oceans and beyond—is just a symptom of much wider problems: unsustainable product design, short-sighted consumption, and insufficient waste management, scientists say. To curb the flood, says Jenna Jambeck, an environmental … Read more
If you’re an avid fan of Golden Age pulp heroes who strap jetpacks to their backs, thwart dastardly villains and rescue damsels in distress, then mark your calendar for this April when IDW Publishing salutes the 40th anniversary of “The Rocketeer” with a new four-issue miniseries titled, “The Rocketeer: The Great Race.” Creator Dave Stevens’ … Read more
Governments across the world are massively undercounting the amount of methane that energy production is releasing into the environment, according to a report this morning from the International Energy Agency. The agency’s annual Global Methane Tracker said emissions from the energy sector are about 70 percent greater than the amount national governments have officially reported. … Read more
Unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity is the ultimate dream — or nightmare — of physics. It would be a way to finally describe the force of gravity with the tools of quantum mechanics, unlocking how gravity works when it’s really strong and at really small scales. Einstein’s theory of general relativity tells us that … Read more
Africa is the birthplace of our species, but ancient DNA from the continent has so far provided relatively few clues to our history there, partly because researchers have struggled to recover genetic samples that survived the hot, humid climate. Now, an analysis of ancient DNA from six individuals from southeastern Africa offers a glimpse of … Read more
As humans, we know we are conscious because we experience and feel things. But we are still unable to explain exactly what consciousness is or where it comes from. “Consciousness — or better, conscious experience — is obviously a part of reality,” Johannes Kleiner, a mathematician and theoretical physicist at the Munich Center For Mathematical … Read more
On a spring day 66 million years ago, as flowers bloomed and baby birds hatched in what is now North Dakota, a ball of fire streaked across the sky and wiped out nearly three-quarters of life on Earth. So says a new high-resolution study of fossilized fish bones, which pinpoints the season of the Cretaceous-Paleogene … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Idan Ginsburg, Academic Faculty in Physics & Astronomy, Georgia State University “I see thy glory like a shooting star.” So says the Earl of Salisbury as he ruminates about the future in Shakespeare’s “Richard II.” Shooting stars — … Read more
A recently discovered repeating fast radio burst (FRB) named FRB 20200120E is deepening the mystery of these already deeply mysterious space signals. Astronomers have tracked its location to a galaxy 11.7 million light-years away, which makes it the closest known extragalactic fast radio burst, 40 times closer than the next-closest extragalactic signal. But it … Read more
One in three adults in the United States has been arrested at least once, a strikingly high number compared with many other countries. Now, a new study reveals one of the implications of that figure: Nearly half of unemployed U.S. men have a criminal conviction by age 35, which makes it harder to get a … Read more