News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
A huge amount of money, skill and organizational complexity goes into testing a single new therapy in a randomized controlled trial—the “gold standard” type of study that forms the bedrock of modern medicine. Among the steps: devising a valid statistical design, determining dosages and measures of efficacy, passing ethical reviews, training collaborators in the study’s … Read more
NONFICTION Life, Linked A reverse journey through geologic time shows the interconnectedness of Earth’s species Otherlands: Journeys in Earth’s Extinct Ecosystems by Thomas Halliday Random House, 2022 ($28.99) As a teenager, I was obsessed with dinosaurs, but I had little aptitude for what came before them. I couldn’t make sense of what John McPhee, in … Read more
Reducing carbon emissions in the U.S. to net zero is achievable. It’s economically sustainable, environmentally essential, technologically feasible and, with some work, even politically viable. But to have a good chance of reaching net zero, we must change the way we regulate the construction of clean energy projects. We have all of the building blocks: … Read more
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destroyed a “large” part of its own space history, with reports now confirming the fate of an enormous aircraft that was originally built to transport Soviet space shuttles. Once the world’s largest flying machine by both wingspan and weight, the Antonov An-225 “Mriya” (“Dream”) was parked in an open-air hangar … Read more
NASA, SpaceX and Houston company Axiom Space will discuss a landmark private space mission today (Feb. 28), and you can watch it live. Axiom Space plans to launch Ax-1, the first all-private crewed mission to the International Space Station, on March 30. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Crew Dragon capsule carrying four … Read more
The GOES-T satellite is ready to take its place as part of the U.S.’s most sophisticated weather and environmental observation system. The satellite, which will be operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will launch on Tuesday (March 1) aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral … Read more
These are dark times, and I take solace where I can get it. Lately I’ve gotten it from The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by anthropologist David Graeber, who died shortly after finishing the book, and archaeologist David Wengrow. Dawn is both a dense, 692-page scholarly inquiry into the origins of civilization … Read more
Over the past 70 years, humanity has made great strides on a number of metrics: increasing life expectancy, cutting hunger and disease, boosting education levels. But a prime engine of these gains—the burning of fossil fuels—now threatens to slow down global development, according to a new report today from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate … Read more
On Jan. 15, 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted off the coast of Tonga in the South Pacific Ocean, generating a tsunami and triggering resulting wave action alerts around the world. The underwater volcanic eruption spewed ash, steam, and gas a radius of over 160 miles (260 kilometers) and more than 12 miles (19 … Read more
Brains contain maps of the bodies they inhabit, with neurons dedicated to the perception or control of particular parts—and research suggests there may be quite a bit of wiggle room in that representation. In 2016 scientists set up an experiment that made subjects fleetingly feel like they had a sixth finger on one hand (one … Read more