The Dreyfus Affair became an international scandal after the publication of Émile Zola’s open letter “J’Accuse”, prompting thousands of readers the world over to write to the author of the Rougon-Macquart novels. This planetary correspondence will be discussed by a panel of guest researchers at a...
Article
05.22.2019
On 23 May, the Tara Ocean schooner will leave Lorient for a 6-month expedition in European estuaries. On board, forty scientists will be tasked with assessing the concentration of plastic waste swept along by rivers, and the impact it has on sea organisms. A...
Article
05.22.2019
The CNRS was, for the first time, at VivaTech from May 16-18 in Paris. Its researchers, start-ups, and technologies were present at this yearly European tech fair. With nearly 100 startups created each year, 5,800 patents, 1,400 active licences, and 20...
Article
05.16.2019
Our topics
Opinion
05.14.2019
Artificial intelligence algorithms are often seen as 'black boxes' whose rules remain inaccessible. We must therefore create a new scientific discipline to understand the behaviour of the machines that rely on them, as we did for the study of animal...
Opinion
05.10.2019
Would an antimatter orange have fallen on Newton's head like an apple? Physicists have not provided a serious answer to this question, for lack of being able to test it.
05.09.2019
As the first scientific report of IPBES is irrefutable with regard to the state of biodiversity, and the fight against global warming is at a standstill, a little-known international research program has been trying since 2015 to unite scientists, politicians...
05.06.2019
Nature is declining globally at an unprecedented rate, and the blame lies with human activities. This is the conclusion of the 7th plenary session of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which endorsed...
Article
05.03.2019
Cécile Asanuma-Brice, a sociologist and urbanist living in Japan, discusses how successive economic models have been transforming the country’s urban landscapes for more than a century.
04.26.2019
What are robots? What can they do today? Will they be able to decide for themselves tomorrow? Jean-Paul Laumond, co-curator of the new permanent exhibition “Robots” at the Cité des Sciences et de l’...
04.26.2019
The relation between matter and antimatter has puzzled scientists and sparked experiments on a gigantic scale. The physicist Marie-Hélène Schune explains.
Opinion
04.26.2019
The CNRS celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. Throughout 2019, our chronicler Denis Guthleben will be recounting its history. This first episode takes us back to the inception of our...
Article
04.23.2019
Knocking or injuring yourself is not intrinsically painful; it is how our brain interprets such an event that is. We now know more about the circuits involved in pain, and also about its emotional...
Article
04.22.2019
New studies have revealed how our brain helps us move around while never losing sight of where we are and where we are going.
04.17.2019
Using Nature as a model for better robots? A team of bioroboticists in the South of France have created, for the first time, an autonomous six-legged robot able to—without using GPS—find its way...
04.11.2019
It is in the Callao cave on the island of Luzon in the north of the Philippines that a new species of early human has been discovered by an international team: Homo luzonensis. It was identified from...
Article
04.10.2019
After tracking it for five nights, scientists have revealed to the world the image of a supermassive black hole in the heart of the M87 Galaxy. A picture obtained by the international collaboration...
04.09.2019
From the jungles of the Amazon to the peaks of the Himalayas, the depths of oceans to those of underground wells, scientists are sometimes severely put to the test in collecting data, setting up...
04.04.2019
The factor that unites both of these pathologies: memory. The recently-demonstrated ability to modify reactivated memories paves the way for potential new treatments. Pascale Gisquet-Verrier and...
Article
03.28.2019
Introduced in the past ten years, immunotherapy is starting to revolutionise the treatment of cancer. Scientists no longer settle for making the immune system destroy a tumour, but indeed strive to...