News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
By Mick Hamer The masts of the shipwrecked SS Richard Montgomery James Bell/Alamy Three masts sticking up above the waves near the coastal town of Sheerness in the UK mark the spot where a deadly wreck has been rusting for almost 80 years. They belong to the SS Richard Montgomery, a US second world war-era … Read more
New Year’s Day comes around once every 47.5 hours on the roughly Neptune-sized exoplanet TOI 674b, which makes it something of a rare creature. In spite of years of hunting, surprisingly few middle-sized gas giants have ever been seen with orbits shorter than a few days in length, creating what astronomers refer to as a … Read more
Being sun smart could one day include a vaccination not unlike those currently providing millions around the world with immunity against coronavirus. While most immunizations sensitize our immune system to an aggressive agent like a virus or even cancer cell, emerging mRNA vaccine technology could instead train our bodies into generating additional antioxidant proteins, boosting our ability … Read more
Multiple sclerosis – an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord – may emerge after infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). An estimated 90 to 95 percent of people catch EBV, also called human herpesvirus 4, by the time they reach adulthood, according to the clinical resource UpToDate. In children, the virus typically causes an asymptomatic or … Read more
To date, we’ve found over a hundred precious Mars rocks that have travelled from the red planet and landed on Earth at some point. Among those, specimen ALH84001 might well be one of the most enigmatic. This meteorite fragment was picked up during a snowmobile ride in the ice field of Alan Hills in Antarctica … Read more
Scientists onboard an icebreaker in Antarctica were blown away when they spied a trove of 60 million icefish nests dotting the floor of the Weddell Sea. The bonanza of nurseries – each guarded by a ghostly looking parent – represents the largest known breeding colony of fish. Autun Purser of the Alfred Wegener Institute was on the … Read more
Make it three in a row for Virgin Orbit. Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket lofted seven small satellites for three different customers today (Jan. 13), marking the third straight successful mission for the California-based company. Cosmic Girl, Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft, lifted off from Mojave Air and Space Port in Southern California today … Read more
The nine years spanning 2013-2021 all rank among the 10 hottest on record, according to an annual report a US agency released Thursday, the latest data underscoring the global climate crisis. For 2021, the average temperature across global surfaces was 1.51 degrees Fahrenheit (0.84 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average, making the year the … Read more
Quantum computers are machines that use the properties of quantum physics to store data and perform computations. This can be extremely advantageous for certain tasks where they could vastly outperform even our best supercomputers. Classical computers, which include smartphones and laptops, encode information in binary “bits” that can either be 0s or 1s. In a … Read more
Something is endemic if it is found in a particular geographic area, population or region. An endemic disease is constantly present in a particular area: for example, AIDS is endemic in parts of Africa. When used to describe a species, however, endemic refers to being native to a specific location and found naturally nowhere else. … Read more