News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Since the 1990s, bed nets impregnated with insecticides have been an invaluable tool for malaria prevention. Babies and young children who sleep under them are far less likely to die of the disease. But some scientists have worried this might increase the risk of contracting malaria later in life by preventing development of the immunity … Read more
Paleontologists were dismayed this week to learn that early Cretaceous dinosaur prints at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite near Moab, Utah, were damaged during efforts by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to repair a boardwalk there. A backhoe ran over some of the more than 200 tracks at the site, one of the richest … Read more
In 2012, archaeologists were excavating a series of large stone tombs in Peru’s Chincha Valley when they found something none of them had ever seen before: human vertebrae threaded onto a reed, almost like a spinal abacus. Over the next 10 years, researchers found nearly 200 such remains in the same valley. At first, they … Read more
In 2013, a team led by Steven Newmaster, a botanist at the University of Guelph (UG), took a hard look at popular herbal products such as echinacea, ginkgo biloba, and St. John’s wort. The team published a study that used DNA barcoding—a system to identify species using small, unique snippets of genetic material—to test whether … Read more
To scientists’ relief, the “reignited” Cancer Moonshot to be formally announced today by President Joe Biden will not offer an unrealistic deadline for wiping out cancer. It instead sets a long-term goal of gradually reducing cancer deaths. The plan would focus research in several areas, including preventive vaccines and blood tests that screen for multiple … Read more
The skeletal remains of a man buried 1,400 years ago near a headless horse have been discovered at an ancient cemetery in the town of Knittlingen in southern Germany. He likely was the horse’s owner/rider when he was alive. The man was buried at a time when the Merovingian dynasty (476–750 CE) flourished in … Read more
Tick … tick … boom? In the center of a galaxy 1.2 billion light-years from Earth, astronomers say they have seen signs that two giant black holes, with a combined mass of hundreds of millions of Suns, are gearing up for a cataclysmic merger as soon as 100 days from now. The event, if it … Read more
Albert Einstein is often cited as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century. His work continues to help astronomers study everything from gravitational waves to Mercury‘s orbit. The scientist’s equation that helped explain special relativity – E = mc^2 – is famous even among those who don’t understand its underlying physics. Einstein is … Read more
On 7 December 2021, as the Omicron variant of the pandemic coronavirus began to pummel the world, scientists officially identified a related strain. BA.2 differed by about 40 mutations from the original Omicron lineage, BA.1, but it was causing so few cases of COVID-19 that it seemed a sideshow to its rampaging counterpart. “I was … Read more
Hunters are killing gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains in numbers not seen since the animals were driven to near extinction in the continental United States in the 20th century. The killing of more than 750 wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming in recent months—including nearly 20% of the wolves that roam Yellowstone National … Read more