News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
By Michael Le Page A BioNTech worker tests the procedures for making mRNA Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images 2022 could be the year when we find out whether mRNA vaccine technology can be used for a lot more than just making vaccines. The hope is that it can also get our bodies to produce drugs that … Read more
By Matthew Sparkes Google’s Sycamore quantum processor is one of the most advanced Peter Kneffel/dpa/Alamy A POWERFUL quantum computer could crack encryption and solve problems that classical machines find impossible. Although no one has yet succeeded in building such a device, recently we have seen a gathering pace of progress – so could 2022 be … Read more
By Adam Vaughan Solar reflectors in Australia’s Northern Territory generating power John Warburton-Lee Photography/Alamy INDIA gained notoriety when it finished November’s COP26 climate summit by weakening a move to end the use of coal. Less widely recognised is that the country also started the Glasgow summit in a more positive fashion, with a plan to … Read more
By Swapna Krishna James Dimmock/CBS The best films and TV Towards the end of 2021, a glut of movies and shows that had been delayed by covid-19 finally hit the screens. Next year, that trend continues with a plethora of sci-fi offerings. Paramount Plus (which is due to launch in the UK in 2022) has … Read more
By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu and Layal Liverpool A man passes a temporary ‘Nightingale’ field hospital constructed in south London, England, 3 January 2022. NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm on 4 January Staff shortages force health service providers … Read more
As the U.S. braces for the possible rollback of abortion rights later this year, seismic shifts are happening south of the border. A series of recent legal and legislative decisions has begun to loosen restrictions in Latin America, a region with some of the world’s harshest antiabortion laws. And they could chart a path toward … Read more
Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images HELLO and welcome to the first issue of 2022 – and our predictions of what the year ahead holds. This magazine went to press as the omicron variant of the coronavirus was on the rise. As the pandemic enters its third calendar year, we look at the likely evolution of … Read more
Surprising new insights about the strange physics underlying how clocks work could transform our understanding of time’s arrow – and hint at how time works at the quantum scale Physics 29 December 2021 By Miriam Frankel Hardziej Studio A CENTURY ago, two intellectual giants met to debate the nature of time. One was the French … Read more
A new video of solar streamers evokes the streaking stars seen during spacecraft hyperdrives in “Star Wars.” The new NASA video from the Parker Solar Probe shows these mysterious sun structures up close for the first time, flowing past the spacecraft like interstellar fireflies. Previously, we could only catch a glimpse of streamers during solar … Read more
By Abigail Beall NASA/CXC/SAO/P. Plucinsky et al. THE first week of the new year brings us a new moon, and the perfect time to hunt for the fainter objects in the night sky. I will be looking to spot a galaxy called Triangulum, or M33, which can be seen from anywhere in the world with … Read more