News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Almost half of Americans morally opposed to abortion would help a friend or family member with arrangements to get one, and a majority would offer emotional support, a new study said Friday. The authors of the paper, which appeared in the journal Science Advances, wrote the finding showed that people are willing to cross … Read more
In the Mediterranean region, the soil is degrading, and land is turning to desert faster than anywhere else in the European Union, according to a new analysis. Experts warn that the combined effects of unsustainable land practices and climate change have depleted a finite resource to a critical point. A recent publication by a … Read more
Flowering plants in the Antarctic region are rapidly expanding, scientists say, indicating the continuing effects of climate change on the continent. The findings suggest we may have reached a tipping point in this fragile, remote ecosystem. A new study of this plant expansion looked at the two flowering plants native to Antarctica, Deschampsia antarctica … Read more
Over the course of the history of the Universe, the Milky Way has not been serenely sailing through intergalactic space. Quite the contrary, actually. Over the last 13.6 billion years or so, it has collided with and consumed multiple other galaxies. Now, through painstaking work, astronomers led by Khyati Malhan of the Max Planck … Read more
The past few weeks or so have been a very busy time for the Sun. Our star has undergone a series of giant eruptions that have sent plasma hurtling through space. Perhaps the most dramatic was a powerful coronal mass ejection and solar flare that erupted from the far side of the Sun on February … Read more
An extensive new study has found evidence that links physical attractiveness to the functioning of the immune system. While there are still numerous questions left to answer, the researchers suggest their findings show “a relationship between facial attractiveness and immune function is likely to exist.” Just how reliable that relationship is remains to be seen, however. … Read more
Nothing on Earth can live without water. The origin of water on Earth, therefore, is the origin of life in the Solar System (and the Universe) as we know it. Figuring out where and how our world obtained its water might be key to finding life on other worlds, but the truth is we don’t … Read more
Species can actually go extinct more than once. In a biological sense, species become extinct when the last animal of a species stops breathing. But they can also become extinct a second time, researchers say. When a species disappears from our collective memory and cultural knowledge, it becomes extinct in a different way. That second … Read more
Humpback whales can swim as far as 3,700 miles (5,955 kilometers) for the chance to mate, per a new study. Scientists analyzed a database of over 450,000 pictures of whales in the wild to track the animals. They found that some would swim thousands of miles during the mating season. Two distinctive males, which could be … Read more
We’ve just taken another step closer to time crystals that can be used for practical applications. New experimental work has yielded a room-temperature time crystal in a system that is not isolated from its ambient surroundings. This, the researchers say, paves the way for chip-scale time crystals that can be used in real-world settings, … Read more