News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
In May 2020, as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic chewed through Texas, I went to an Austin nature store and bought several bird feeders. The birds, drawn by seed and suet slabs, came soon afterward. They flitted down from the pecan trees and telephone wires: bold Tufted Titmice, bouncing Northern Cardinals and bullying … Read more
SARS-CoV-2 is not picky about its host. Since the virus first started spreading among humans, it has jumped from our species to pets, livestock, and even wild animals. Cats appear to be particularly susceptible to contracting COVID, although they often don’t show symptoms, and it’s unlikely that they can pass the virus back to us. Even … Read more
Brain cells that promote wakefulness fire too much in older mice, which may explain why many people find it harder to sleep as we get older Health 24 February 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu A man wearing an eye mask in bed Peter Dazeley/Getty Images It may get harder to sleep as we get older … Read more
Social media profiles with deepfake photos and AI-generated text fooled most participants in a study, even when there were obvious errors Technology 21 February 2022 By Chris Stokel-Walker A man browsing LinkedIn Chris Batson / Alamy Social media profiles that contain telltale signs of fakery still convince large numbers of users to accept friendship requests … Read more
Warning: Spoilers ahead for “The Book of Boba Fett” Episode 7 Everything that we’ve seen up to now in “The Book of Boba Fett” had been leading us to this moment, and it does not disappoint. Episode 7 begins right where we left off last week as Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison), Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) … Read more
We all know that drinking too much is bad for us. But what about just a few glasses a week? Red wine has antioxidants, we’ve been told, so a few glasses are apparently ‘good for you‘. Other studies have suggested that low-to-moderate drinkers are less likely to have a heart attack than those who avoid drinking altogether. Wine … Read more
SpaceX delayed two back-to-back rocket launches from Florida on Saturday (Jan. 29) due to bad weather that has already pushed back the missions in recent days. The private spaceflight company hoped to launch an Earth-observation satellite for Italy Saturday evening from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:11 p.m. EST (2311 GMT), but unacceptable … Read more
Mother Nature has foiled a planned SpaceX launch for the second day in a row. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was originally supposed to launch the Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 (CSG-2) satellite from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday evening (Jan. 27), but thick clouds and strong winds forced a 24-hour delay. That … Read more
A SpaceX resupply ship will have to wait at least one more day before returning to Earth. Yesterday (Jan. 19), cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov ventured outside the safe confines of the International Space Station to conduct a seven-hour, 11-minute spacewalk. While the pair cleaned up following the spacewalk, SpaceX was preparing its robotic … Read more
As this year begins, the Omicron variant is smashing COVID-19 infection records across Europe, North America, Africa, and Australia. With massive numbers of people infected or in quarantine, tens of thousands of flights and trains have been canceled, and work and schools disrupted. Earlier in the pandemic, the frightful, near-vertical rise in cases would have … Read more