News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Earth’s interior is not a uniform stack of layers. Deep in its thick middle layer lie two colossal blobs of thermo-chemical material. To this day, scientists still don’t know where both of these colossal structures came from or why they have such different heights, but a new set of geodynamic models has landed on a possible answer … Read more
A new class of immunotherapy drugs – used to treat arthritis, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease – might also work for those with severe asthma. The pharmaceuticals are known as ‘jakinibs‘ because they inhibit the protein JAK1. This protein plays an essential role in the body’s immune response by activating cytokines, which can then lead … Read more
Over the past 70 years, humanity has made great strides on a number of metrics: increasing life expectancy, cutting hunger and disease, boosting education levels. But a prime engine of these gains—the burning of fossil fuels—now threatens to slow down global development, according to a new report today from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate … Read more
Domestic dogs are fertilizing the green spaces where they regularly poop and pee, and not in a good way. Even in nature reserves where dogs are supposed to be kept on leash, a new study in Belgium shows our pets’ droppings are a major disturbance to wildlife. Each year, researchers estimate the paths that run … Read more
Dogs’ urine and faeces bring large amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into suburban nature reserves, which could be harmful to plant biodiversity Life 7 February 2022 By Chen Ly A dog in a wildflower patch at St Abbs Head Nature Reserve, UK Rebecca Cole / Alamy Stock Photo Taking your dog for a walk in … Read more
Do you love spending time in nature? Or are you a city slicker, happier in the concrete jungle than the great outdoors? Back in 1986, the US biologist EO Wilson proposed that humans have an innate connection with the natural world, an idea known as biophilia. Almost every aspect of our lives depends on … Read more
The venerable elders of a forest are hugely important to the diversity, fitness, and survival of the woodland as a whole, new research shows – and they bring with them a hardiness and experience in dealing with change, as well as a lifetime of ecological interactions preserved in their immediate surrounds.. Scientists used models … Read more
Genetically identical fruit flies raised in the same environment still learn at different rates, suggesting that random differences in brain development may have evolved to produce variation in a species Life 2 February 2022 By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Fruit flies may have random variance to account for different learning styles Aleksandar Kitanovic / Alamy Genetically similar … Read more
A thousand years ago the islands that today form New Zealand were riotously wild. Birds, reptiles and invertebrates flourished in lush forests hundreds of miles from any other landmass. Māori settlers in the 1200s brought Polynesian rats for food, and together the humans and the rodents began to shift the ecological balance. Native species started … Read more
Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of “Ask a Spaceman” and “Space Radio,” and author of “How to Die in Space.” Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. On Oct. 19, 2017, Robert Weryk, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at … Read more