News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
If a hangover is an experience you’re familiar with, then you might have your own go-to hangover cure to try and get yourself back from that painful, zombie-fied state. However, we have bad news: new research suggests that most of these cures don’t have any solid science behind them. Through a review of 21 … Read more
Roughly 13.8 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a massive explosion that gave rise to the first subatomic particles and the laws of physics as we know them. About 370,000 years later, hydrogen had formed, the building block of stars, which fuse hydrogen and helium in their interiors to create all the heavier … Read more
Those two orbs we see in the sky during the day and night have even more of an influence on the animals and plants on Earth than you might think. The gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon really does appear to affect flora and fauna activity, although the exact mechanisms by which this happens … Read more
An evolutionary battle between fungi and bacteria on hedgehogs’ skin gave rise to a type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria long before humans started using the antibiotics that were thought to lead to such superbugs, a new study reveals. Researchers traced some lineages of the superbug MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, to a parasitic fungus found … Read more
An accidental slingshot hit on a Cecropia tree in Panama has led to a surprising discovery: the Azteca alfari ants that live inside these trees are often ready to fix damage to their living homes. When high schooler Alex Wcislo fired the 9 mm (0.35 inch) clay ball through the tree, leaving clean entry and exit … Read more
A 2,700-year-old drop toilet, found at an ancient royal estate in southern Jerusalem, still shows traces of what could have been an epidemic of parasitic infection long ago. The findings suggest even the wealthiest inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem, elite enough to use an outhouse, commonly suffered from intestinal worms. While latrines and toilets are … Read more
New years often come with new resolutions. Get back in shape. Read more. Make more time for friends and family. My list of resolutions might not look quite the same as yours, but each of our resolutions represents a plan for something new, or at least a little bit different. As you craft your 2022 … Read more
Chemical leftovers from the very earliest days of our planet could still be present near Earth’s core, according to new research, and the discovery could improve our understanding of plate tectonics phenomena happening today. The team behind the study compares these leftovers to clumps of flour at the bottom of a bowl of batter … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope fully deployed its tennis-court sized sunshield Tuesday, a critical milestone for the success of its mission to study every phase of cosmic history, NASA said. “All five layers of the sunshield are fully tensioned,” said an announcer at the observatory’s control center in Baltimore, where team members cheered, a … Read more
“The last star will slowly cool and fade away. With its passing, the Universe will become once more a void, without light or life or meaning.” So warned the physicist Brian Cox in the recent BBC series Universe. The fading of that last star will only be the beginning of an infinitely long, dark epoch. … Read more