News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
For more than 50 years, Omega has helped astronauts keep track of time as they traveled through space and walked on the moon. Now, thanks to a new collaboration, the Swiss watchmaker is lending its timing skills to help track all of the items humanity has placed and left in Earth orbit, ensuring that astronauts … Read more
Several instruments are preparing to help the James Webb Space Telescope with its mirror alignment and future observations, with several key steps achieved in recent days, according to NASA. The filter wheel for the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) has been successfully calibrated, allowing this key part of the Fine Guidance System (FGS) … Read more
Ask any Dutch schoolchild about Reynard the fox, and they’ll tell you all about the adventures of the dashing, anthropomorphic folk hero, whose exploits were laid down in the 13th century by Willem die Madoc maecte, or “William who made the Madoc.” Madoc is likely the name of another once-popular poem about a legendary Welsh … 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
During Arctic winter, the sun disappears below the horizon for long weeks of “polar night.” But new research shows that tiny crustaceans in the Arctic Ocean somehow maintain their daily rhythms during these extended periods of darkness. Most living creatures use sunlight to time their biological processes and behaviors. This becomes a challenge when there … Read more
Climate change is on track to ramp up the annual cost of US flood damage more than 25 percent by 2050, according to new research Monday that warns disadvantaged communities will likely bear the brunt of the financial burden. The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change used new flood models to map … Read more
A thousand years ago the islands that today form New Zealand were riotously wild. Birds, reptiles and invertebrates flourished in lush forests hundreds of miles from any other landmass. Māori settlers in the 1200s brought Polynesian rats for food, and together the humans and the rodents began to shift the ecological balance. Native species started … Read more
Located in the Okanagan Valley outside of Penticton, British Columbia, there is a massive radio observatory dedicated to observing cosmic radio phenomena. It’s called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a cylindrical parabolic radio telescope that looks like what snowboarders would call a “half-pipe”. This array is part of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory … Read more
The International Space Station (ISS) is a multi-nation laboratory, orbiting 248 miles (400 kilometers) above our heads. It perhaps comes as no surprise that the ISS can easily be seen and tracked from Earth. The colossal structure reflects sunlight and appears as a bright white pinpoint of light in the sky. According to NASA, the … Read more
Impatient children can pass time waiting for their Christmas presents by tracking Santa as he proceeds with his annual deliveries across the globe in a simulation by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It has already become a tradition for NORAD, in cooperation with private companies Analytical Graphics (AGI) and Cesium, to follow Santa … Read more