News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
When you think of the word “ephemeral”, many people will immediately conjure up the image of a soap bubble: delicate, gorgeous, and gone in a blink (or maybe a few). Now a team of physicists led by Aymeric Roux of the University of Lille in France has defied this cliché, creating a bubble that maintained … Read more
Scientists have discovered a vast reef of “pristine” rose-shaped corals apparently unharmed by climate change in deep water off the coast of Tahiti, UNESCO announced Thursday. Mapping approximately three kilometers (two miles) long and up to 65 meters (213 feet) wide, UNESCO said it was “one of the most extensive healthy coral reefs on record”. … Read more
The Solar System may be an even soggier place than we suspected. New analysis of one of Saturn’s moons suggests that it may harbor a liquid ocean. No, not the usual suspects – the new culprit is Mimas, the little moon with a big crater, which gives it more than a passing resemblance to the … Read more
For only the second time ever – and the first involving a clinical-grade organ – a genetically modified pig kidney has successfully been transplanted into a brain-dead human body, in a milestone example of xenotransplantation. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are trapped in an agonizing wait for a lifesaving organ donation. But there are … 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
Scientists are warning of an emerging ‘epidemic‘ of myopia or near-sightedness, having observed sharp increases in the adult onset of myopia among late baby boomers. Based on data collected from 107,442 participants in the extensive Biobank program in the UK, people born in the late 1960s are 10 percent more likely to be near-sighted than … Read more
In less than 24 hours the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will update the Doomsday Clock. It’s currently at 100 seconds from midnight – the metaphorical time when the human race could destroy the world with technologies of its own making. The hands have never before been this close to midnight. There is scant … Read more
While most of us avoid creepy-crawlies at all costs, entomologists – scientists who study insects – need to actively go looking for them. “My colleague noticed a dead tree in the middle of our university campus,” entomologist Adrian Smith from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences told ScienceAlert. “If you’re an entomologist, when you … Read more
A major milestone has just been reached in quantum computing. Three separate teams around the world have passed the 99 percent accuracy threshold for silicon-based quantum computing, placing error-free quantum operations within tantalizing grasp. In Australia, a team led by physicist Andrea Morello of the University of New South Wales achieved 99.95 percent accuracy … Read more
The question of how life first sparked into existence on our planet is one we haven’t yet fully answered, but science is getting closer all the time – and a new study identifies the structures of the proteins that may well have made it happen. To begin with, the team behind the study decided … Read more