Author archives: Invited Researcher

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Outstanding researchers present their work and share their opinions in Mapping Ignorance.

Could the euro replace the dollar as global reserve currency? It’s not getting any less likely

Could the euro replace the dollar as global reserve currency? It’s not getting any less likely

Economics

By Invited Researcher

Author: Sergi Basco, Adjunct Professor of Economics, Universitat de Barcelona A global reserve currency is one that is extensively held by foreign Central Banks. Since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement this position has been occupied by the US dollar and it still holds true – according to IMF data from late 2024, the dollar represented […]

Specific brain cells enable intelligent behaviour

Specific brain cells enable intelligent behaviour

Neuroscience

By Invited Researcher

Author: Mohamady El-Gaby, Postdoctoral Neuroscientist, University of Oxford For decades, neuroscientists have developed mathematical frameworks to explain how brain activity drives behaviour in predictable, repetitive scenarios, such as while playing a game. These algorithms have not only described brain cell activity with remarkable precision but also helped develop artificial intelligence with superhuman achievements in specific […]

Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science

Changing the Eurocentric narrative about the history of science

HistoryPhilosophy of science

By Invited Researcher

Author: Karen K. Christensen-Dalsgaard, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, MacEwan University In the 11th century in Cairo, the foundations for modern science were laid through the detention of an innocent man. The mathematician Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham had been tasked with regulating the flow of the Nile, but when he saw the river […]

Magnetrons: high-efficiency power microwave sources for a new generation of particle accelerators

Magnetrons: high-efficiency power microwave sources for a new generation of particle accelerators

Particle physicsPhysics

By Invited Researcher

Magnetrons are high-power vacuum tubes conceived more than a century ago to produce microwaves. Their working principle involves the interaction of a cloud of electrons jumping from the cathode to the anode of the device together with a magnetic field. This spinning electron cloud trajectory induces electromagnetic fields in several resonant cavities at a certain […]

150 years ago, the Metre Convention determined how we measure the world

150 years ago, the Metre Convention determined how we measure the world

History

By Invited Researcher

Author: Jonathan Simone, Adjunct Professor of Biological Sciences, Brock University On May 20, 1875, delegates from a group of 17 countries gathered in Paris to sign what may be the most overlooked yet globally influential treaty in history: the Metre Convention. At a time when different countries (and even different cities defined weights and lengths […]

Lexical alignment: the art of speaking in sync and how our brain copes with it

Lexical alignment: the art of speaking in sync and how our brain copes with it

Neurolinguistics

By Invited Researcher

Have you ever found yourself spending five minutes talking to someone and suddenly using their words instead of your own? Say, for example, that you usually say “couch” but now suddenly you call it “sofa.” You say “TV,” but suddenly it’s “the telly.” You’ve never in your life referred to dinner as “tea” but after […]

Nanoscopic motor proteins in the brain build the physical structures of memory

Nanoscopic motor proteins in the brain build the physical structures of memory

NeurobiologyNeuroscience

By Invited Researcher

Author: Albert HiuKa Fok, Postdoctoral Fellow in Neuroscience, McGill University The puzzle of memory has intrigued philosophers and intellects for a very long time. Plato and Aristotle believed that memory was found only in the realm of the soul and the mind, but there was nothing corporeal or physical about it. Memory is closely tied […]