News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
By Michael Marshall WHO were the first people to reach the Americas? When did they get there, and how? These are among the most mysterious questions in prehistory, and have long been studied using traditional archaeology: bones, artefacts and so on. In recent years, however, the field has been revolutionised by genetic data. DNA from … Read more
By Michael Le Page Illustration of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus Shutterstock/Naeblys Another year, another variant. Even before the omicron wave is over, the rising number of cases caused by a variant of omicron known as BA.2 is causing concern. Here is what we know about BA.2. What is BA.2? It is basically another flavour of omicron … Read more
Conservationists have used artificial insemination to help grow giant panda populations, but data from decades of births show that panda mothers are less likely to care for cubs born this way Life 28 January 2022 By Sophie Freeman A female giant panda at the Bifengxia Panda Base in China Imaginechina Limited/Alamy Giant pandas that become … Read more
“The Man Who Fell To Earth” is legendary British director Nicolas Roeg’s classic 1976 alien encounter film starring rock megastar David Bowie, and to this day it stands as a milestone achievement in sci-fi filmmaking. With its fascinating portrayal of a gentle extraterrestrial visiting Earth to retrieve water for his perishing planet, it’s a scathing … Read more
Turns out that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope project manager is a self-described “parrot head.” The term is a playful reference to fans of calypso singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who project manager Bill Ochs recently quoted when congratulating the Webb Space Telescope team. (For his part, Buffett was said to once call his fans “parrot heads” … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope is setting its eyes towards the Big Dipper. Although the spacecraft is still months away from beginning its official scientific observations, one particularly bright star named HD 84406 will soon be the object of JWST’s attention. “Star light, star bright … the first star Webb will see is HD 84406, … Read more
Artifacts that were recovered from the fallen space shuttle Challenger and prepared for presentation to the President of the United States have been recovered again, 36 years later, after they surfaced at auction among the collection of a NASA liaison to the White House. Little is known about how or why the late James Foster … Read more
China’s next five years in space may be even busier than the previous five. On Friday (Jan. 28), the nation released a white paper outlining its plans and priorities for the next half-decade of spaceflight and exploration. China has achieved a great deal in the final frontier recently, from returning moon samples to Earth to … Read more
Two tiny fossils, each smaller than an aspirin pill, contain fossilized nerve tissue from 508 million years ago. The bug-like Cambrian creatures could help scientists piece together the evolutionary history of modern-day spiders and scorpions. Still, it’s not clear exactly where these fossils – both specimens of the species Mollisonia symmetrica – fit on the arthropod … Read more
A star that exploded into brightness nearly 200 years ago can now be explored in glorious, multi-wavelength detail. In a new video, a team of scientists modeled the Homunculus Nebula around the star Eta Carinae in three dimensions, enabling insight into this incredible event. The binary system Eta Carinae started erupting in the late … Read more