News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The characters used to write the Vai script, which was invented in Liberia in 1833, have become visually simpler over time, reflecting the evolutionary pressures acting on writing Humans 11 January 2022 By Colin Barras A character representing the syllable “bi” in Vai script Kelly et al The symbols we use to write words evolve … Read more
To health care workers in the COVID era, holidays mean death, and we knew Omicron was coming before it had a name. The wave caused by this variant has barely begun, rapidly gathering steam, and we are exhausted, attempting to pull from reserves badly drained by earlier surges. Back in August, the beds of my … Read more
Amazon is offering a whopping $52 off the Holy Stone HS720, a great drone for video and photo capture that’s also ideal for inexperienced flyers. The Holy Stone HS720 is a drone that comes with a number of user friendly features including GPS assisted flight, a camera with image stabilization and long lasting batteries. In … Read more
A new organization called the Association for Mathematical Research (AMR) has ignited fierce debates in the math research and education communities since it was launched last October. Its stated mission is “to support mathematical research and scholarship”—a goal similar to that proclaimed by two long-standing groups: the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Mathematical Association … Read more
Astronomers have long suspected that merging black holes can give the resulting larger black hole a massive boost of speed, and have finally spotted this happening Space 11 January 2022 By Leah Crane When a pair of black holes merge, the resulting larger black hole can be sent hurtling away at extraordinary speeds – and … Read more
Because they emit nothing we can detect, there are many things about black holes we simply do not know. Amongst the most perplexing are supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Since black holes form from the cores of massive dead individual stars, how do supermassive behemoths grow so … Read more
An astonishing fossil of an extinct ‘sea dragon’ discovered by a wetland conservationist one day at work has been hailed as the largest and most complete fossil of its kind ever found in Britain. The fossil, identified as an ichthyosaur, an ancient marine reptile that swam in Earth’s prehistoric oceans when dinosaurs walked on … Read more
When China’s Chang’E-5 probe visited the Moon in December of 2020, it didn’t just collect a sample of lunar material to return to Earth. While it was there, the mission took observations of the surrounding lunar rock – data vital for contextualizing the sample in future studies. Those observations have turned out to be … Read more
A treasure trove of some 200 Roman-era coins was discovered in northwestern Spain thanks to the apparent efforts of a hungry badger hunting for food, archaeologists have said. Described as “an exceptional find”, the coins were discovered in April 2021 in La Cuesta cave in Bercio in the Asturias region, with details outlined in the … Read more
The bottlenose dolphin (Tersiops truncatus) appears to have a very large and well-developed clitoris, potentially better placed for coital pleasure than the clitoris of humans, according to new research. The visible tip of the human clitoris is but the size of a pea and located slightly north of the vagina and urethra (although much … Read more