News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
If you were to move to a new country with a different language and bring along the family dog, your pet would likely have a hard time understanding commands from the locals, according to a new study looking at how dogs’ brains react to different languages. MRI scans revealed that dogs‘ brains can distinguish between familiar … Read more
By Francesca Steele Jessica searches every corner of Colombia for the source of the noise Neon Film Memoria Apichatpong Weerasethakul “IN THIS town, there are a lot of people who have hallucinations,” a doctor tells Jessica (Tilda Swinton) at the beginning of Memoria. Then, in a neat encapsulation of the mix of the mystical and … Read more
A 2,700-year-old drop toilet, found at an ancient royal estate in southern Jerusalem, still shows traces of what could have been an epidemic of parasitic infection long ago. The findings suggest even the wealthiest inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem, elite enough to use an outhouse, commonly suffered from intestinal worms. While latrines and toilets are … Read more
According to legend, the devil once took a walk down the side of a volcano in southern Italy, each step preserved forever in solid rock. The tracks are known as the “Ciampate del Diavolo“‘ or “Devil’s Trail” – but details published in 2020 reveal a less diabolical yet far more interesting story on how they … Read more
NASA astronaut Cady Coleman shows the habitat that golden orb spiders Esmeralda and Gladys occupied on the International Space Station in 2011. (Image credit: NASA) From insects to primates, from dogs and cats to cold-blooded reptiles, animals have played a significant role in space exploration since the first fruit flies launched to Earth’s upper atmosphere … Read more
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jay Van Bavel, a psychologist at New York University, wanted to identify the social factors that best predict a person’s support for public-health measures, such as physical distancing or closing restaurants. He had a handful of collaborators ready to collect survey data. But because the pandemic was … Read more
NONFICTION Rachel Carson: The Sea Trilogy Sandra Steingraber Library of America, 2021 ($40) Before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962—a literary masterpiece and foundation of the modern environmental movement—she was a marine biologist and a prolific writer on the subject of the ocean. Carson first made her name with a trilogy of best-selling books … Read more
From the outside, humans are pleasingly symmetrical, with arms, legs, and eyes that have matching right and left sides. But inside, it’s a different story: our heart is on the left; our liver is on the right. Lungs and kidneys are also asymmetric. Now researchers have pinned down a gene that helps developing organs find … Read more
It turns out there are still exciting new discoveries to be made in a field as well-studied as human anatomy: researchers have confirmed the existence of a layer of muscle in the human jaw that has until now eluded anatomists. This new muscle is a deeper, third section of the masseter muscle. It’s the most prominent … Read more
One of the ocean’s most legendary creatures is also one of the most sensitive to human noise. A new study finds the unicornlike narwhal is affected by ship sounds more than most other whales and dolphins. The noises—which are growing more frequent as ships push further into the narwhal’s Arctic habitat—could disrupt the whales’ hunting … Read more