News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Successfully achieving nuclear fusion holds the promise of delivering a limitless, sustainable source of clean energy, but we can only realize this incredible dream if we can master the complex physics taking place inside the reactor. For decades, scientists have been taking incremental steps towards this goal, but many challenges remain. One of the … Read more
Flowering plants in the Antarctic region are rapidly expanding, scientists say, indicating the continuing effects of climate change on the continent. The findings suggest we may have reached a tipping point in this fragile, remote ecosystem. A new study of this plant expansion looked at the two flowering plants native to Antarctica, Deschampsia antarctica … Read more
NASA wants your help to safely land future lunar spacecraft in the dark, including permanently shadowed craters that may be icy. The agency’s new Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge No. 1 plans to award as many as three prizes of up to $650,000 each. The challenge asks applicants to create sensors able to detect hazards from … Read more
Of the many “firsts” from NASA’s Apollo program of lunar exploration, one often overlooked is that the Apollo missions included the first—and so far only—times that humans have driven on another world. Presaging today’s eco-conscious market for carbon-neutral transportation, Apollo’s battery-powered lunar roving vehicles were all-electric as well. Astronaut David Scott, who was the first … Read more
SpaceX aims to make progress in space and on Earth with its new venture, the Polaris Program. And the team behind it couldn’t be more excited. The Polaris Program is a joint effort involving SpaceX and Jared Isaacman, the tech entrepreneur and billionaire who funded and commanded the Inspiration4 orbital crewed mission to benefit St. … Read more
Leading surgeon David Cooper talks about the dawn of a new era of transplantation in which organs for human transplants come from genetically modified animals Health 8 February 2022 By Michael Le Page Few people know more about transplanting animal organs into humans than David Cooper. “I think this is the beginning of a complete … Read more
This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University Research has shown that the Earth trails an asteroid barely a kilometer across in its orbit about the sun — only the second such body to have ever been … Read more
Coral reefs have long been regarded as one of the earliest and most significant ecological casualties of global warming. In new research published in the journal PLOS Climate, we found that the future of these tropical ecosystems – thought to harbor more species than any other – is probably worse than anticipated. Climate change … Read more
The world could lose half of its best coffee-growing land under a moderate climate change scenario. Brazil, which is the currently world’s largest coffee producer, will see its most suitable coffee-growing land decline by 79 percent. That’s one key finding of a new study by scientists in Switzerland, who assessed the potential impacts of … Read more
By Layal Liverpool A rising global population has led to a resurgence of eugenics-based ideas Ben Edwards/Getty Images Control: The dark history and troubling present of eugenics Adam Rutherford Weidenfeld & Nicolson WHAT does the word “eugenics” bring to mind? For many, it is Nazi Germany and the atrocities that were committed in its name, … Read more