Four slime moulds, strange single-celled organisms without brains, will accompany French astronaut Thomas Pesquet when he blasts off for the International Space Station on 22 April. On board, Pesquet will use them for various experiments, which will also be carried out back on Earth by thousands of French school students, with the assistance of France’s space agency CNES and the CNRS.
New mathematical tools have improved our ability to interpret the information contained in ancient DNA samples. Bioinformaticians have developed a model that can visualise the migrations and gene...
No fewer than 180 candidate vaccines against Covid-19 are being developed around the world and 40 are currently in clinical trials. How do these vaccines work? And how can we measure their...
Since the attacks of November 2015, the “13 November” research programme has endeavoured to understand how the individual and collective memory of such an event is formed. Five years after the...
By considering criteria other than purely biological or medical, such as language ability, social background, and gender, hospital practitioners and scientists have developed strategies for improving...
Nearly a year after the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was identified, researchers have yet to determine how it “jumped species” to infect humans. Virologist Étienne Decroly discusses the various hypotheses...
A Paris-based research team has developed a capsule to swallow that will produce images and 3D maps of the intestine. A new era is dawning in colorectal cancer screening.
Plastics, chemicals and oil spills pollute and endanger marine ecosystems. Yet cleaning up the ocean is rarely, if ever, possible. Solutions must therefore consist in reducing waste and other...
Knowing how to look sideways can be crucial for professional football players, and goalkeepers in particular! A researcher in cognitive science recently conducted a study involving a number of them,...
As a historian specialising in the environment, Fabien Locher takes a particular interest in different concepts of property and how they are related to environmental or industrial disasters.
The relief of patients suffering from Covid-19 requires technical gestures that can contribute to the exhaustion of healthcare staff. The ExoTurn project seeks to help them through the use of...
A new method, as quick and simple as a breathalyser, was recently tested to detect Covid-19 via the molecules present in exhaled air. Beyond the current pandemic, this could open new avenues for the...
Can specially trained dogs be used for coronavirus screening? A research team in northeastern France is investigating the premise that the canine sense of smell can help prevent the emergence of new...