News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The capacity to engage with and comprehend music spans nearly every human society. While other creatures also display musical behaviors (think bird song, humpback whale calls, or bonobo vocalizations), our musical cognition appears to be evolutionary distinct within the animal kingdom. A new study has given us more insight into the brain’s relationship with music, finding that … Read more
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced yesterday that it will effectively terminate the controversial China Initiative, a programme that sought to protect US laboratories and businesses from espionage. Instead, the programme will be broadened to cover other countries of concern and renamed. Scientists who spoke to Nature are relieved to see the initiative end—the programme frequently … Read more
The loss of a beloved canine companion is devastating, and new research shows that you might not be the only one feeling it. Any other dogs in your family could also go through mourning, as indicated by their behavior. A survey of 426 multiple-dog owners in Italy revealed that, when one dog in the … Read more
It takes 10 to 15 years and around US$1 billion to develop one successful drug. Despite these significant investments in time and money, 90 percent of drug candidates in clinical trials fail. Whether because they don’t adequately treat the condition they’re meant to target or the side effects are too strong, many drug candidates … Read more
If you want to truly understand what makes a machine tick, you need to tinker. Swap gears, lock a lever, loosen a spring, and watch how it goes. When the machine is a deadly virus, you can’t afford to be so cavalier with its molecular clockwork. But researchers are getting around this problem by making … Read more
The Chicxulub asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs is one of the most momentous impact disasters in Earth’s history, and scientists have now identified the time of year when this deadly event took place. New evidence suggests the asteroid hit in the spring for the Northern Hemisphere, which would be fall (or autumn) … Read more
For over 25 years, a group in Poulton, England has been looking for a lost Cistercian abbey. Instead, over the decades the team has found hundreds of medieval skeletons and well-traveled Roman artifacts. Now, they have discovered what they’re calling “the best preserved picture of late prehistoric life ever found in [North West England]”. … Read more
You may already know the legend of King Tutankhamen’s space dagger – an iron weapon forged from the rock of meteorites, and entombed with the ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Now a new study has revealed more details about this most fascinating and mysterious of artifacts. A thorough chemical analysis involving high-resolution photography and X-rays has … Read more
Being unhealthily addicted to video games or the internet is now recognized by the World Health Organization‘s International Classification of Diseases, with adolescents particularly at risk – and as you might expect, the global coronavirus pandemic has made the situation worse. With the disorders linked to mental health problems and poorer academic performance, researchers … Read more
How do you design a sail that can get a spacecraft to another solar system? NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, which launched in the 1970s, remain the only two human-made objects ever to leave our solar system. While the pair have defied expectations and are still operational, researchers continue to devise new missions … Read more