News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
From world politics to top-ranking businesses, to the upper rungs of academia and even Nobel laureates, men outnumber women by a significant margin. One claim to such disparity has been attributed to biology. The idea there’s some kind of ‘superdiversity’ among male brains has been repeatedly cited in the scientific literature in recent decades; but according … Read more
A new scientific study published Monday has identified the brain region linked to genital touch in women, and found that it was more developed in volunteers who reported having more sex. The research involved stimulating the clitorises of 20 adult females while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The researchers … Read more
Owners’ insights on the behaviour of their pet rats could help researchers improve the welfare of rats in the laboratory Life 20 December 2021 By Christa Lesté-Lasserre A rat in a research laboratory fotografixx/Getty Images Laboratory rats might live better lives if they had cages that let them stand up, climb and romp about, according … Read more
A team of physicists claims to have entangled a superconducting qubit and a tardigrade, moving the freezing, tiny, and well-controlled world of quantum into the “hot and wet” systems of life. However, the results described in this preprint paper are not quite so cut and dried, and many quantum researchers are arguing that the … Read more
Many people have experienced reductions in stress, pain, and anxiety, and sometimes even euphoria after exercise. What’s behind this so-called ‘runner’s high’? New research on the neuroscience of exercise may surprise you. The runner’s high has long been attributed to endorphins. These are chemicals produced naturally in the body of humans and other animals … Read more
Rather than engineering robotic solutions from scratch, some of our most impressive advances have come from copying what nature has already come up with. New research shows how we can extend that approach to robot ‘minds’, in this case by getting a robot to learn the best route out of a maze all by itself – even … Read more
For people with post-traumatic stress disorder, recalling memories of physical or sexual assault, combat or disaster-related events can induce intense anxiety or panic attacks as well as debilitating flashbacks. In the US, about seven percent of people suffer from PTSD and lose an average of about four working days each month as a result. … Read more
The anti-seizure qualities of the cannabis plant can likely not be boiled down to a single compound, like cannabidiol (CBD), according to emerging research. Studies in Australia have recently revealed numerous other compounds in the cannabis plant that also show anticonvulsant effects. Some of them could even be more powerful than CBD. A small … Read more
Copper is well known for being able to kill off bacteria that it comes into contact with – the metal releases ions that are toxic to bacterial cells, punching through their outer membranes. However, this process usually takes several hours. A newly developed copper surface does the job in just a couple of minutes, … Read more
Mercury pollution is a global problem. Emissions from gold mining, coal burning, and other industrial processes travel through the atmosphere, eventually falling to Earth as rain or snow. The poison can make its way to fish and the humans who eat them, where it can damage the developing nervous system, causing problems with memory and … Read more