News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Last week, Congress agreed to give roughly 5% more money to many federal science agencies when it passed a $1.5-trillion government budget for 2022. But what science advocates had hoped would be a banner funding year fell victim to a bipartisan push to spend much more on defense than President Joe Biden had requested—and to … Read more
The Sun is continuing its rowdy behavior, with flares and coronal mass ejections almost every day since mid-January. That means the inevitable has happened: some of those eruptions have blasted in the general direction of Earth, which means we’re in for some solar storms. The Space Weather Prediction Center of the US National Oceanic … Read more
Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant and all the facilities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone have been completely disconnected and are now without electricity, Ukraine’s state energy company has announced. Russian forces attacked the defunct nuclear facility on the very first day of the invasion (Feb. 24), seizing it after heavy fighting and taking its roughly 210 staff hostage, Live Science … Read more
Sony’s Gran Turismo is one of the biggest racing game series of all time, having sold over 80 million copies globally. But none of those millions of players is the fastest. In a new breakthrough, a team led by Sony AI – the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) research division – developed an entirely artificial player … Read more
By Adam Vaughan A demonstration by Rainforest Action Network, Stop the Money Pipeline and Bank Track at COP26, Glasgow, Scotland jeremy sutton-hibbert / Alamy St This is Fix the Planet, the weekly climate change newsletter that reminds you there are reasons for hope in science and technology around the world. To receive it in your … Read more
In popular imagination, the Black Death is the most devastating pandemic to have ever hit Europe. Between 1346 and 1353, plague is believed to have reached nearly, if not every, corner of the continent, killing 30-50 percent of the population. This account is based on texts and documents written by state or church officials … Read more
Sparrows on a collection of Canadian islands change their behaviour when they fear predators are nearby, and an experiment shows this reduces their ability to raise their offspring to adulthood Life 7 February 2022 By Luke Taylor Song sparrow (Melospiza melodia) in British Columbia, Canada Jess Findlay/BIA/Minden/Naturepl.com The fear of predators alone is enough to … Read more
Earth’s oceans were once home to an absolutely fearsome predator. We know it only from teeth and vertebrae in the fossil record, but these tell us that megalodon (Otodus megalodon) was absolutely colossal. Many of those teeth are as big as your hand. Megalodon, we can only conclude, was the largest shark ever to swim … Read more
In this episode, join freelance journalist and radio producer Tasha Lemley and podcast host Lydia Chain as they unravel the story of Pervis Payne, a man with an intellectual disability sentenced to death, and the decades-long court battle to remove him from The Row. Below is the full transcript of the podcast, lightly edited for … Read more
The term “endemic” usually means that an infection is stable, not that it’s less deadly or that protective measures are no longer required. With the omicron variant surging, covid-19 is unlikely to become endemic soon Health | Analysis 13 January 2022 By Clare Wilson Commuters in London this month TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images The … Read more