News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
If you ever come across a king baboon spider (Pelinobius muticus), which lives primarily in Tanzania and Kenya, keep your distance: Its bite and the associated venom aren’t fatal but do produce a lot of pain and itchiness that can last for days. Scientists think they have worked out why the spider’s venom is … Read more
Thanks to a combination of sensing the Earth’s magnetic field through vision and an in-built compass that allows them to orient themselves according to magnetic intensity, migratory birds don’t have much trouble finding their way. Those biological gadgets, known as magnetoreception, allow birds to not only know which direction to head in on their first outbound migration but … Read more
Apart from fish, scientists have found only one other animal that can regulate its buoyancy in the water using swim bladders, and it’s probably not what you were expecting. The phantom midge is a type of lake fly (genus Chaoborus), but before it can take to the air, its larvae must first grow up in the … Read more
The search for life on Mars is not an easy one. Not only is the red planet difficult to get to, it’s deeply inhospitable to life as we know it. However, there are places on Earth that could show us how life may have been able to survive on Mars – if not now, then … Read more
Two tiny fossils, each smaller than an aspirin pill, contain fossilized nerve tissue from 508 million years ago. The bug-like Cambrian creatures could help scientists piece together the evolutionary history of modern-day spiders and scorpions. Still, it’s not clear exactly where these fossils – both specimens of the species Mollisonia symmetrica – fit on the arthropod … Read more
A star that exploded into brightness nearly 200 years ago can now be explored in glorious, multi-wavelength detail. In a new video, a team of scientists modeled the Homunculus Nebula around the star Eta Carinae in three dimensions, enabling insight into this incredible event. The binary system Eta Carinae started erupting in the late … Read more
Efforts to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control while still returning to some sort of normal life are delicately balanced – and new research suggests more attention needs to be paid to the long-term effects of the virus for those patients who required placement in intensive care units (ICUs). An analysis of 246 patients … Read more
Deep beneath the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, researchers have found signs of an enormous solar ‘tsunami‘ that once crashed against Earth’s atmosphere more than 9,000 years ago. This ancient superstorm was triggered by a wave of hot plasma and magnetism from the Sun, and it is significantly larger than anything we have recorded … Read more
One day in June 1195, around noon, something unusual took place near the city of London. A dark cloud appeared to give birth to a white orb of light, which dropped towards the Thames river, rising and falling in a spinning motion. The observation – recorded by the Benedictine monk Gervase of Christ Church … Read more
A widely-used cancer drug that works on the immune system could push HIV out of hiding, potentially leaving the virus open to being attacked and eliminated, according to promising results from a small new study. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) almost needs no introduction: the virus is notorious for its ability to evade the immune … Read more