News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Scientists have built the tiniest antenna ever made – just five nanometers in length. Unlike its much larger counterparts we’re all familiar with, this minuscule thing isn’t made to transmit radio waves, but to glean the secrets of ever-changing proteins. The nanoantenna is made from DNA, the molecules carrying genetic instructions that are around … Read more
COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 241,000 lives in the United States and prevented more than 1 million virus-related hospitalizations in the first six months of the country’s inoculation program, according to a new research model. A research letter, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Network Open, found coronavirus vaccinations also prevented more than 14 … Read more
Stars might be born much faster than previously expected, a new study by scientists using China’s huge radio super telescope has found. Chinese astronomers used the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the largest radio-telescope in the world, to probe the magnetic field inside a molecular cloud called Lynds 1544. Located in the Taurus constellation, some … Read more
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on people’s mental health, and young people are a particularly affected group, with school closures cutting off millions of both young and older children from their friends, teachers, and any semblance of normal life. The negative psychological effects of this have been documented in many studies, … Read more
With the enhanced virulence of the Omicron variant, some experts are urging us all to upgrade cloth and surgical masks to the much more protective N95s, but supply remains a concern. The limited supply is why this advice has so far been held back, but a new study may make this more feasible – suggesting … Read more
For female patients, operation outcomes tend to be significantly better when their surgeon is also female, recent research out of Canada has found. No one really knows why that is just yet, but a new model comparing the sex of the surgeon, the sex of the patient, and the outcomes of the surgery have now revealed an … Read more
Matter and antimatter behave the same way under the influence of gravity, a new study found, leaving scientists no wiser as to what makes the two different. Antimatter is the puzzling stuff created during the Big Bang together with normal matter. It is virtually normal matter’s mirror — exactly the same, only with the opposite … Read more
Women vaccinated against COVID-19 saw a slight delay in their period of almost a day compared to those who were unvaccinated, a US government-funded study said Thursday. But the number of days of bleeding was not affected, according to the research carried out on nearly 4,000 individuals and published in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Lead … Read more
Bacterial colonies can organize themselves into complex ring-like patterns which have an “intriguing similarity” to developing embryos and were thought to be unique to plants and animals, new research suggests. Bacterial cells band together in clumps to form tightly packed colonies called biofilms that have a growing reputation for acting strangely like multicellular organisms. … 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