News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Severe coastal flooding inundated islands and atolls across the western equatorial Pacific last week, with widespread damage to buildings and food crops in the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands. On one level, very high tides are normal at this time of year in the western Pacific, and … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The next launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is slated for May 2022, company officials announced on Monday (Dec. 13). That is if everything goes as planned. Teams from both Boeing and NASA have spent the last four months combing over data and inspecting valves on the Starliner spacecraft in an effort … Read more
Remnants of industrial chemicals in the air can potentially transform into new substances more toxic and persistent than the original pollution, according to a global study published on Wednesday. Using samples gathered around the world, the study published in Nature found that these previously unidentified products are present in the atmospheres of 18 big … Read more
A Kuaizhou-1A solid rocket by Chinese commercial company Expace failed to make it to orbit Tuesday (Dec. 14), taking two commercial satellites with it during its demise. The rocket launched from the China National Space Administration‘s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT or 10 a.m. local time … Read more
Scientists have spotted a long hypothesized, never-seen-before state of matter in the laboratory for the first time. By firing lasers at an ultracold lattice of rubidium atoms, scientists have prodded the atoms into a messy soup of quantum uncertainty known as a quantum spin liquid. The atoms in this quantum magnetic soup quickly became connected, … Read more
Fans of flashy interstellar odysseys can rejoice this holiday season as the premiere issue of Heavy Metal’s “The Adventures of Adrienne James” sci-fi comic book series arrives later this month, carried by the cosmic wings of an enthusiastic pre-launch buzz. Think of a gender-bent Indiana Jones darting about the galaxy searching for a priceless artifact … Read more
Water ice may be lurking just a few feet below the Martian surface at one of the Red Planet’s most dramatic sites. That’s according to new research based on data gathered by the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), part of the ExoMars mission operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos. ExoMars … Read more
A NASA spacecraft has entered a previously unexplored region of the Solar System—the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. The long-awaited milestone, which happened in April but was announced on 14 December, is a major accomplishment for the Parker Solar Probe, a craft that is flying closer to the Sun than any mission in history. “We … Read more
Robotic hands often trade strength for adaptability, but a sticky coating inspired by gecko feet has given this artificial hand a delicate touch Technology 15 December 2021 By Matthew Sparkes The gecko-inspired robot hand farmHand/Standford University Mechanical hands with human-like fingers are more adaptable than the simple two-pronged clamps found on industrial robots, but they … Read more
Researchers have just identified a security flaw in a software program called Log4J, widely used by a host of private, commercial and government entities to record details ranging from usernames and passwords to credit card transactions. Since the glitch was found last weekend, the cybersecurity community has been scrambling to protect applications, services, infrastructure and … Read more