Author archives: Invited Researcher

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

A centuries-old grid of holes in the Andes may have been a ‘spreadsheet’ for accounting and exchange

A centuries-old grid of holes in the Andes may have been a ‘spreadsheet’ for accounting and exchange

AnthropologyHistory

By Invited Researcher

Authors: Jacob L. Bongers, Tom Austen Brown Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney and Charles Stanish, Exec. Director, Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment; Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida In 1931, geologist Robert Shippee and US Navy Lieutenant George R. Johnson led one of the first aerial photography expeditions […]

Grand Designs at the molecular scale: building custom protein crystals

Grand Designs at the molecular scale: building custom protein crystals

BiochemistryBiotechnologyChemistryMaterials

By Invited Researcher

Order on a molecular scale is difficult to control. The systems with highest possible order are crystals, formed by long arrays of repeating constituent components in all directions. The most familiar examples of crystals encountered in daily life are table salt and sucrose, the sugar in our kitchens. Every grain of table salt is a […]

‘Noah’s Ark’, the USSR’s SETI (search for extraterrestrial life)

‘Noah’s Ark’, the USSR’s SETI (search for extraterrestrial life)

BiologyHistory

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

Witches’ treatments may have been medically sound

Witches’ treatments may have been medically sound

HistoryPharmacy

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

Why do giraffes have such long legs?

Why do giraffes have such long legs?

Biology

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

Dinosaur ‘mummies’

Dinosaur ‘mummies’

Geosciences

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

Quantum memory matrix: information could be a fundamental part of the universe

Quantum memory matrix: information could be a fundamental part of the universe

Cosmology

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

DEK::NUP214 acts as an XPO1-dependent transcriptional activator of essential leukemia genes

DEK::NUP214 acts as an XPO1-dependent transcriptional activator of essential leukemia genes

Biomedicine

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

Unusual red rocks in McGraths Flat are rewriting the rules on exceptional fossil sites

Unusual red rocks in McGraths Flat are rewriting the rules on exceptional fossil sites

Geosciences

By Invited Researcher

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 […]

Sora 2 and the environmental impact of  OpenAI

Sora 2 and the environmental impact of OpenAI

Computer scienceEconomicsEnergyEthics

By Invited Researcher

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 […]