She’s the boss—but why? A large-scale study of one-on-one conflicts between members of Tanzanian spotted-hyena communities, commonly dominated by female individuals, now presents empirical evidence that she-hyena authority comes down to family and social ties.
Article
11.19.2018
Contrary to belief, it only takes a few seconds for a memory to form. Once recorded, it can be modified or made inaccessible, but it does not vanish. Pascale Gisquet-Verrier and David Riccio talk about their recent work, which revisits the dogma of memory...
Opinion
11.20.2018
Ever since the concept of prehistory was invented, scientists have made a clear distinction between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, between modern and non-modern humans. Yet according to the prehistoric archaeologist Nicolas Teyssandier, it is this notion of “...
Opinion
11.15.2018
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Opinion
11.09.2018
Nearly 2 million Asians came to the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East during the First World War. From soldiers to factory workers and labourers—some tasked with cleaning the trenches from...
Article
11.07.2018
By analysing the manuscripts of literary works, specialists in 'genetic criticism' can better understand an author's creative process. A closer look at this discipline born from the...
10.22.2018
By explicitly connecting all base units to fundamental constants, the future reform of the International System of Units (SI) will complete the objectives of universality and stability sought by the...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.