From November 13-16, 2018 in Versailles, the base units of the International System will all be redefined in reference to seven physical constants, whose value will be definitively fixed at the time. A look back at the reasons and issues involved in a reform that has been awaited for 30 years, and...
Article
10.15.2018
The Medal of Innovation was awarded on October 10 to Valérie Castellani, Thierry Chartier and Daniel Le Berre. Awarded by the CNRS since 2011, this prize rewards researchers for their outstanding work in the technological, therapeutic or social fields.
Article
10.10.2018
Whether it’s developing smart materials for safer roads or connected medical instruments to help doctors make the best-informed decisions, CNRS research is at the heart of a number of start-ups. We take a look at three of these new companies currently in the...
Article
10.09.2018
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10.08.2018
Upon the publication of the IPCC’s Special Report on the Impact of Global Warming of 1.5 °C, three experts who contributed to its drafting—the ecologist Wolgang Cramer, the paleoclimatologist Joël Guiot and the economist Jean-Charles Hourcade—provide an...
Article
10.02.2018
With its sizeable capacity to absorb atmospheric CO2 from greenhouse emissions, the ocean is a key weapon in our fight against global warming, employed in a growing number of climate-regulation and ecosystem-protection solutions. But not all these ocean-...
10.01.2018
If we are to one day communicate naturally with robots, they will need to master not only speech, but also the subtle yet essential rules of non-verbal communication such as posture and eye movement. A team of researchers is using machine-learning...
Article
09.27.2018
The results from a major campaign of lidar mapping in Guatemala caused a sensation early this year, revealing the remains of 60,000 Maya ruins, most of them totally unknown and buried beneath the dense tropical forest. Seven international teams used this...
Article
09.27.2018
The 2018 CNRS Gold Medal, France's highest scientific prize, is awarded to the philosopher and Hellenist Barbara Cassin for her work on the world’s languages, the challenges of translation, and...
09.26.2018
This month saw the launch of Sciences 2024, a research project that is unprecedented in France. Its objective is to optimize the performance of French athletes, and to contribute to their success at...
Article
09.21.2018
In northern Jordan, a Roman-era painted tomb has been unearthed by the Department of Antiquities. An extraordinary document of religious, political, and social history that three historians and...
Article
09.19.2018
Can social phenomena be described by mathematical laws? In his recent book, the physicist Pablo Jensen warns against the temptation of modeling everything, which—following our increasing reliance on...
09.18.2018
From South America to Asia, from Akhenaten to Marcel Proust, here is an overview of the different research for conserving, protecting, and reconstructing our shared heritage.
Article
09.12.2018
Nine crisscrossed lines on a 73,000-year-old South African rock fragment have emerged as the world’s earliest-known drawing following a scientific study into how they were originally traced.
09.10.2018
Is science doing enough to help protect the environment? Following a detailed analysis of 13,000 publications on the subject, the answer is yes. A retort to those who believe that conservation...
09.06.2018
One day, our superhuman bodies, augmented with memory implants and infrared eyesight, will stop ageing. And we will never die, our conscience uploaded to heavenly clouds of bits and bytes, floating...
09.03.2018
Machines will one day be able to carry out all tasks currently performed by humans. We asked the economist Gilles Saint-Paul to describe six possible futures for the 22nd century.
08.31.2018
In Greenland, French and Quebec-based researchers are monitoring the impact of climate change. Their clues consist of various marine creatures such as bivalves and shell-based mollusks, whose growth...
Article
08.28.2018
Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, the pioneering science-fiction novel that went on to become a universal myth, is the subject of a romantic period-drama that hit movie theaters this Summer. Did...
08.23.2018
Chemists, historians and conservators are seeking to preserve—and possibly one day exhibit—extremely fragile prints by Louis Ducos du Hauron, the little-known pioneer of color photography and whose...