News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
As storms become stronger, it might be possible to keep more trees standing if they are planted closer together Environment 11 March 2022 By Alex Wilkins A cedar forest in Kiso district, Nagano prefecture, Japan Sunphol Sorakul/Getty Images Trees that grow close together can survive powerful storms and prevent wind damage by supporting each other. … Read more
Shop-bought strawberries can taste disappointing, but home grown ones are delicious. Here’s how to succeed in growing these delicate fruits, says Clare Wilson Humans 2 March 2022 By Clare Wilson GAP Photos/Julia Boulton THERE are plenty of reasons people grow their own fruit and vegetables: it is a satisfying outdoor hobby, it gets you some … Read more
When aquatic plants first transitioned onto land, their success may have been due to genes they got from bacteria and fungi that let them take up nutrients from soil Life 1 March 2022 By Jake Buehler Plants may have taken root on land thanks to genes from bacteria Shutterstock/daniilphotos Around 500 million years ago, aquatic … 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
Several recent studies have led to the suggestion that humans can grow new neurons in some parts of the brain as adults, but the idea is being questioned after a close look at RNA in brain cells Mind 16 February 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu Conceptual illustration of a neuron Shutterstock/Rost9 Adults may be unable … Read more
By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu, Layal Liverpool, Carissa Wong and Alex Wilkins Nurses help a patient help walk again after recovering from covid-19, King’s College Hospital, London KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Latest coronavirus news as of 11am on 9 February … Read more
There is perhaps no better way to see the absolute pinnacle of human athletic abilities than by watching the Olympics. But at the Winter Games this year – and at almost all professional sporting events – you rarely see a competitor over 40 years old and almost never see a single athlete over 50. … Read more
When it comes to killing and eating other creatures, chimpanzees—our closest relatives—have nothing on us. Animal flesh makes up much more of the average human’s diet than a chimp’s. Many scientists have long suggested our blood lust ramped up about 2 million years ago, based on the number of butchery marks found at ancient archaeological … Read more
A study suggests that a small device powered by wind and rain can boost crop yield, but other researchers have cast doubt on the findings Life 13 January 2022 By Adam Vaughan Pea plants growing in a greenhouse Andreeshcheva Katerina/Shutterstock A team of researchers claims to have shown that a high-voltage electric field generated using … Read more
Because they emit nothing we can detect, there are many things about black holes we simply do not know. Amongst the most perplexing are supermassive black holes, millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. Since black holes form from the cores of massive dead individual stars, how do supermassive behemoths grow so … Read more