News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Making new molecules to treat disease has relied upon the painstaking art of synthetic chemistry, but now we’re developing robots that could do it all for us Technology 2 March 2022 By Katharine Sanderson Graham Carter Perhaps the most storied aspect of modern chemistry is total synthesis. This is the craft of taking simple molecules … Read more
The cells in our skin that fabricate fatty acids could play an unappreciated role in acne breakouts. Recent experiments on human acne and mouse skin have found pimples and lesions are closely regulated by fat-producing fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are the most common type of connective tissue cell we have in our bodies; they produce and … Read more
Astronomers have discovered the largest radio galaxy ever, stretching at least 16 million light-years through space, new research shows. The galaxy — named Alcyoneus after the son of Ouranos, the Greek primordial god of the sky — was discovered about 3 billion light-years from Earth by a “stroke of luck,” according to a statement from … Read more
Twice in our planet’s history, colossal mountain ranges that towered as tall as the Himalayas and stretched thousands of miles farther reared their craggy heads out of the Earth, splitting ancient supercontinents in two. Geologists call them the “supermountains.” “There’s nothing like these two supermountains today,” Ziyi Zhu, a postdoctoral student at The Australian National … Read more
By Layal Liverpool Marius Heil/EyeEm/Getty Images I WANT to hunt for shooting stars, but it’s cold outside so I’m starting the search from my living room. You can do the same by joining the Radio Meteor Zoo project online. If you have ever seen a shooting star, you were probably witnessing a small solid object … Read more
Astronomers have found evidence of a black hole snacking on a star in data gathered back in the 1980s, according to new research. The researchers say that they have identified the signature of such an event in data gathered during the 1980s, thanks to a pair of high school interns from Massachusetts. When a star … Read more
The bottlenose dolphin (Tersiops truncatus) appears to have a very large and well-developed clitoris, potentially better placed for coital pleasure than the clitoris of humans, according to new research. The visible tip of the human clitoris is but the size of a pea and located slightly north of the vagina and urethra (although much … Read more
Stretching thousands of light-years across the Milky Way, a newly discovered filament of hydrogen named Maggie is one of the biggest structures ever discovered in our galaxy, and researchers think there could be others like it. A group of astronomers led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) in Germany has spotted … Read more
Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a massive explosion that gave rise to the first subatomic particles and the laws of physics as we know them. About 370,000 years later, hydrogen had formed, the building block of stars, which fuse hydrogen and helium in their interiors to create all the heavier … Read more
Like some cherished old friends circling back into our lives during the shiniest of seasons, the intrepid crew of the Serenity returns for a new holiday one-shot courtesy of Boom! Studios. “Firefly Holiday Special #1” rockets down our chimneys this week to great fanfare and celebration as Captain Mal Reynolds and his brave Browncoats deliver … Read more