News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
On 3 January, Isabella Apriyana grabbed her phone to take a picture of her lab bench and post it on Twitter. “A gloomy Monday morning in the beginning of the year,” she tweeted. Apriyana, a research assistant who helped prominent geneticist Herawati Sudoyo map the genomes of Indigenous groups across Indonesia, had just lost her … Read more
Halley’s Comet is arguably the most famous comet in history. As a “periodic” comet, it returns to Earth’s vicinity about every 75 years, making it possible for a person to see it twice in their lifetime. It was last here in 1986, and it is projected to return in 2061. The comet, officially called 1P/Halley, … Read more
Life on Earth is made possible by our planet’s magnetosphere – an invisible radiation shield that protects the surface – now it turns out that super-Earths could have magnetospheres too Space 13 January 2022 By Alex Wilkins The laser system at the National Ignition Facility in California used to study iron’s properties Damien Jemison The … Read more
Think your bishop’s opening, queen’s gambit, and pawn play are unique? A new artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm has got your chess style pegged. AI software can already identify people by their voices or handwriting. Now, an AI has shown it can tag people based on their chess-playing behavior, an advance in the field of “stylometrics” … Read more
Molecules containing carbon atoms, called organics, have been found all over Mars and could hypothetically have been formed by living organisms, but it seems they were not Space 13 January 2022 By Leah Crane The Allan Hills 84001 meteorite NASA/JSC/Stanford University Organic compounds – those containing carbon atoms – found all over Mars were produced … Read more
ECOLOGY Huge icefish colony found Scientists aboard an Antarctic research cruise have discovered the most extensive breeding colony of fish anywhere. In February 2021, while towing video cameras and other instruments close to the sea floor in the Weddell Sea, the RV Polarstern came upon thousands of 75-centimeter-wide nests, each occupied by a single adult … Read more
In 1797, English scientist Henry Cavendish measured the strength of gravity with a contraption made of lead spheres, wooden rods and wire. In the 21st century, scientists are doing something very similar with rather more sophisticated tools: atoms. Gravity might be an early subject in introductory physics classes, but that doesn’t mean scientists aren’t still … Read more
Declines in bird and mammal species are making plant seed dispersal more difficult, which means plants can’t adapt as effectively to climate change Environment 13 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan An American robin eats a winterberry Paul Vitucci Losses in the number of birds and mammals are limiting the capacity of plants worldwide to adapt … Read more
A connection between the human herpesvirus Epstein-Barr and multiple sclerosis (MS) has long been suspected but has been difficult to prove. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the primary cause of mononucleosis and is so common that 95 percent of adults carry it. Unlike Epstein-Barr, MS, a devastating demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, is relatively … Read more
One hundred and fifty years after a French neurologist first recognized a case of multiple sclerosis (MS) in a young woman with an unusual tremor, the cause of this devastating disease remains elusive. Now, a study that combed data from regular blood tests of 10 million U.S. soldiers has found the strongest evidence yet that … Read more