News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Elected officials who campaigned against critical race theory (CRT), the study of how social structures perpetuate racial inequality and injustice, are being sworn into office all over the U.S. These candidates captured voters’ attention by vilifying CRT, which has become a catch-all to describe any teaching about racial injustice. Lessons about the genocide of Native … Read more
NASA’s Perseverance rover managed to spit out pieces of rock that had been blocking its Mars-sampling gear since late December. Although the un-choking procedure hadn’t been previously tested, the engineers on the Mars mission found it was rather “straightforward,” the team said in an earlier blog post. It involved pointing the drill containing a clogged … Read more
Scientists have estimated the number of “small” black holes in the universe. And no surprise: It’s a lot. This number might seem impossible to calculate; after all, spotting black holes is not exactly the simplest task. Because they’re are as pitch-black as the space they lurk in, the light swallowing cosmic goliaths can be detected … Read more
New York-based director Michael Krivicka is a guy whose expertise in creating award-winning tie-in prank videos for corporate clients has become legendary over the last few years. Having already produced hilarious urban stunts for Netflix’s “Sweet Tooth,” Sony’s “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Warner Bros.’ “Geostorm,” Digital Extreme’s “Warframe,” and Fox’s “The X-Files,” the filmmaker and his crew … Read more
A thousand years ago the islands that today form New Zealand were riotously wild. Birds, reptiles and invertebrates flourished in lush forests hundreds of miles from any other landmass. Māori settlers in the 1200s brought Polynesian rats for food, and together the humans and the rodents began to shift the ecological balance. Native species started … Read more
Today’s the day: Nearly a month after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope will arrive at its deep-space celestial destination on Monday (Jan. 24). Webb will be orbiting Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), which is about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from our planet. Here, the spacecraft can use a minimum of fuel to orbit thanks … Read more
Pickling is a delicious way to beat the microbes that would otherwise spoil your food, says Sam Wong
Peter Fleischmann’s Hard to Be a God (1989) is a vintage sci-fi gem Photo 12/Alamy Film Hard to Be a God (1989) Peter Fleischmann THE scrabble for dominance in sci-fi and fantasy streaming continues to heat up. At the time of writing, Paramount had decided to pull season four of Star Trek: Discovery from Netflix and … Read more
Kseniia Zagrebaeva “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are three unalienable rights emphasised by the US Declaration of Independence as being the duty of their leaders to protect and secure. The third one gives perhaps most pause for thought. What should governments – and all of us – be doing to maximise societal … Read more
We’ve put together our list of the best Doctor Who villains. From malevolent machines to sentient plastic, these are the Doctor’s most iconic foes ranked from worst to best. It has been 58 years since William Hartnell thrummed onto our screens in a blue box, and Doctor Who has since become a world-recognized icon of … Read more