Outstanding researchers present their work and share their opinions in Mapping Ignorance.
Author: Gabriela Radulescu, Guggenheim Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Institution As humans began to explore outer space in the latter half of the 20th century, radio waves proved a powerful tool. Scientists could send out radio waves to communicate with satellites, rockets and other spacecraft, and use radio telescopes to take in radio waves emitted by objects […]
Author: Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster “Double double toil and trouble” is a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that conjures images of evil witches making potions in giant cauldrons. But the truth was that women persecuted as witches were probably legitimate healers of the time. Prior to the 14th century, female healers were […]
Authors: Roger S. Seymour, Professor Emeritus of Physiology, University of Adelaide and Edward Snelling, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria If you’ve ever wondered why the giraffe has such a long neck, the answer seems clear: it lets them reach succulent leaves atop tall acacia trees in Africa. Only giraffes have direct access to […]
Author: Paul C. Sereno, Professor of Paleontology, University of Chicago Dinosaur “mummies” couldn’t have been further from my mind as I trudged up a grassy knoll on the Zerbst Ranch in east-central Wyoming, followed by University of Chicago undergraduates on a field trip linked to my “Dinosaur Science” course. As a university professor, I realized […]
Author: Florian Neukart, Assistant professor of Physics, Leiden University For more than a century, physics has been built on two great theories. Einstein’s general relativity explains gravity as the bending of space and time. Quantum mechanics governs the world of particles and fields. Both work brilliantly in their own domains. But put them together and […]
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with t(6;9)/DEK::NUP214 is recognized as a separate entity in the World Health Organization classification of myeloid neoplasms, accounting for 1% of all AML cases and characterized by a high relapse rate and young age at diagnosis . The t(6;9) chromosomal rearrangement results in the fusion of almost the entire peptide sequence […]
Author: Tara Djokic, Scientific Officer, Palaeontology, Australian Museum; UNSW Sydney Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia’s most extraordinary fossil sites – McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today’s familiar plants and […]
OpenAI’s recent rollout of its new video generator Sora 2 marks a watershed moment in AI. Its ability to generate minutes of hyper-realistic footage from a few lines of text is astonishing, and has raised immediate concerns about truth in politics and journalism. But Sora 2 is rolling out slowly because of its enormous computational […]
Author: Sergi Basco, Associate Professor of Economics, Universitat de Barcelona On 25 September 2025, it was announced that 9 european banks, including UniCredit, ING and CaixaBank, have launched a consortium to issue a euro stablecoin – a cryptocurrency with a value pegged to the euro. While stablecoins are less volatile than regular cryptocurrencies like bitcoin […]
When we think of faster, cheaper electronics, we usually think “smaller transistors.” But the future is also about stacking—adding new layers of components on top of finished silicon chips. That’s called back‑end‑of‑line (BEOL) integration, and it only works if everything you add can be made at low temperatures (generally below ~400–450 °C), otherwise you damage […]