News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Because we can’t see black holes, it’s hard to know exactly how many are out there in the big, wide Universe. But that doesn’t mean we have no means of trying to figure it out. Stellar-mass black holes are the collapsed cores of dead massive stars, and new research incorporating how these stars and binaries … Read more
As it’s the foundation for all life on Earth, discovering carbon on other planets always gets scientists excited – and the Curiosity Rover on Mars has found an unusual mix of the chemical element that could hypothetically point to the existence of alien life. That’s by no means certain, but it’s a possibility. It’s … Read more
A team of researchers hunting for the wreck of a lost WWII destroyer ship in the Philippine Sea returned to land with another, perhaps even more exciting discovery: video evidence of the deepest-swimming squid ever recorded. Cruising just above the floor of the Philippine Trench at a staggering 20,300 feet (6,200 meters) below the … Read more
The human mind, it seems, is a very powerful thing. According to a new study involving over 45,000 patients, most of the adverse reactions people experienced after having a COVID-19 vaccination could be due to the nocebo effect. The nocebo effect is a bit like the ‘evil twin’ of the placebo effect, occurring when … Read more
With the rapid spread of Omicron, many countries are rethinking their COVID mask advice for the community. Respirators have been mandatory in public places in Austria for a year. Now, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests respirators be considered for greater protection, for instance, on public transport or in enclosed crowded … Read more
The signs of death are everywhere, if you look. For years, scientists have rung the alarm bell, warning that grave declines in animal biodiversity around the globe herald the onset of what will be Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Despite the looming weight of evidence to suggest this grim phenomenon is unfolding all around us, … Read more
Cultured meat grown in a lab has the potential to be much more environmentally friendly than current practices in the agriculture industry, but a new study has revealed a looming problem: a lot of people really don’t like the idea of eating it. We’re talking here about meat produced in the laboratory from real … Read more
The road to life in the Arabian desert might once have been paved with the dead. In what is now Saudi Arabia, archaeologists have revealed an impressive network of lost highways, marked by human tombs, that link one oasis to another. Many thousands of years ago, these roads would have led Bedouin people and … Read more
Planetary-scale engineering schemes designed to cool Earth’s surface and lessen the impact of global heating are potentially dangerous and should be blocked by governments, more than 60 policy experts and scientists said on Monday. Even if injecting billions of sulphur particles into the middle atmosphere – the most hotly debated plan for so-called solar radiation … Read more
In 2018, archaeologists described a truly fascinating puzzle. It looks like this medieval Italian man went through life with a knife attached to his arm, in place of his amputated hand. The skeleton in question was found in a Longobard necropolis in the north of Italy, dating back to around the 6th to 8th centuries … Read more