News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
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 People register to undergo PCR testing in Wong Tai Sin, Hong Kong, China, 5 February, 2022 Marc Fernandes/NurPhoto/Shutterstock Latest coronavirus news as of 12pm on 7 February Even with … Read more
At a point some 12,800 years ago, a tenth of Earth’s surface suddenly became covered in roaring fires. The firestorm rivalled the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and it was likely caused by fragments of a comet that would have measured around 100 kilometers (62 miles) across. As dust clouds smothered Earth, they … Read more
More than 30 per cent of deaths in England among over-30s from Bangladeshi, Black African or Pakistani ethnic groups since 2020 have involved covid-19 – more than double the proportion among adults recorded as white British Health 3 February 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu A woman looks at the National Covid Memorial Wall in London, … Read more
Evidence for an intense asteroid impact on Mars has been found in a Martian meteorite, which could alter the timeline for when the red planet might have been habitable. In a famous meteorite named NWA 7034, or ‘Black Beauty’, scientists discovered a shocked crystal of the mineral zircon, showing a feature only seen on Earth … Read more
Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His work continues to help astronomers study everything from gravitational waves to Mercury‘s orbit. The scientist’s equation that helped explain special relativity – E = mc^2 – is famous even among those who don’t understand its underlying physics. Einstein is … Read more
Climate change is on track to ramp up the annual cost of US flood damage more than 25 percent by 2050, according to new research Monday that warns disadvantaged communities will likely bear the brunt of the financial burden. The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change used new flood models to map … Read more
This image from CaSSIS aboard the ExoMars TGO reveals an impact crater on Mars that looks like a tree stump. (Image credit: ESA/Roscosmos/CaSSIS, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) A Mars probe has snapped a peculiar image of the Red Planet’s surface that looks like a giant tree stump, rings and all. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter … Read more
From sea to land to sky, Earth’s systems are contaminated with synthetic substances, and scientists warn it has already pushed the integrity of our planet over the brink. Today, there are about 350,000 human-made chemicals on the market, including plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals, cosmetic chemicals, antibiotics, and other drugs. The fact this number continues … Read more
Inventorying the plants in a tract of woods or fields or searching for invasive species can take days of hot, hard work slogging through thorny brush and tick-infested grass. Now, researchers have shown that simply capturing and analyzing the DNA plants release into the air can work as well as putting boots on the ground—and … Read more
We have a lot to thank meteorites for. Had they not instigated several mass extinction events, including wiping out non-avian dinosaurs, we probably wouldn’t be here today. But some things still don’t add up about the massive scale of decimation they can cause. “For decades scientists have puzzled over why some meteorites cause mass … Read more