News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Millions of people die every year from fibrosis, a build-up of scar tissue in the liver, heart, and other organs. Scars are key to healing, but sometimes “the scar becomes a problem instead of the solution,” says Scott Friedman, a liver disease specialist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Now, by blending … Read more
India, from the earliest days of the pandemic, has reported far fewer COVID-19 deaths than expected given the toll elsewhere—an apparent death “paradox” that some believed was real and others thought would prove illusory. Now, a prominent epidemiologist who contended the country really had been spared the worst of COVID-19 has led a rigorous new … Read more
The Peruvian anchovy is a small fish with a big impact. Only about the size of an index finger, they make up the single largest fish catch in the world—sometimes up to 15% of the global haul. Nearly all the highly nutritious fish are ground up to feed salmon and other farm-raised species that are … Read more
In a near rerun of early 2020, when dozens of meetings were canceled on short notice because of the pandemic, a handful of scientific societies are once again canceling their in-person meetings as the ultracontagious Omicron variant sweeps across the globe. Although many societies were better prepared for the latest wave because they planned hybrid … Read more
The sun gives energy to life on Earth, and without this star, we wouldn’t be here. But like most things in space, even stars have limited lifetimes, and someday our sun will die. You don’t need to worry about this solar death anytime soon, though. Inside the sun, a churning fusion engine fuels the star, … Read more
PHOENIX—Fearing a case of potentially debilitating Lyme disease, countless hikers postpone their trips to the woods until winter, when the ticks that carry the disease have disappeared for the season. Or so many people had thought. Research reported here this week at the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology has revealed … Read more
This sky map shows the view from New York City just after sunset on Jan. 7, 2022. (Image credit: SkySafari app) The flighty planet Mercury, typically a tricky observing challenge from planet Earth, will be at its greatest distance from the sun in our sky Friday (Jan. 7). While Mercury will be shining quite brightly … Read more
NEW YORK — Another kind of countdown hit New York City’s Times Square Friday (Jan. 7) as a commercial spaceflight company celebrated joining the NASDAQ stock exchange. Virgin Orbit, the satellite-launching company founded by Richard Branson, brought one of its 70-foot-long (21 meters) rocket, LauncherOne, to Times Square amid New York City’s first sizeable snow … Read more
We can all breathe a bit easier now. In spite of a launch bedeviled by problem after problem, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is finally in space, making its way to its new home. And if you needed a little reassurance that this is the case (which is totally understandable), the European Space Agency … Read more
For a ship that sank 80 years ago, the SS Virginia has traveled a fair distance: the oil tanker has moved more than 10 kilometers since it was torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1942. The shipwreck, located off the coast of Louisiana, is riding lobes of mud moving over the seafloor. These mudflows occur … Read more