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Computers, data centers, networks and the like now gobble up nearly 10% of the world’s electrical consumption—and the figure continues to rise. While there is no question of giving up the progress made possible through digital technology, researchers point to...
Article
05.23.2018
The IPBES, which is to biodiversity what the IPCC is to climate change, recently published five reports at its sixth plenary session held in March in Medellín, Colombia. In this synthesis of current scientific knowledge about biodiversity, experts have drawn...
Article
04.10.2018
The song of skylarks, linnets and meadow pipits traditionally resonate across French farmlands. But for how much longer? Studies from long-term observatories paint an alarming picture: the populations of farmland birds have fallen by one third in the last 17...
Article
03.21.2018
All life on Earth exists on a thin layer that surrounds the planet. To better understand this so-called "critical zone," researchers are setting up state-of-the-art instruments and creating open-air laboratories all over the world. We take you on a guided...
Video
02.07.2018
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Article
01.22.2018
The Earth hasn't always been the blue, hospitable planet it is today. On at least three occasions our planet was completely covered with ice. How did the Earth get into this state and, above all...
01.05.2018
Common ownership of a resource causes its demise. This was what a biologist had concluded in a 1968 paper published in Science. His article, "The Tragedy of the Commons" has shaped the...
12.04.2017
Each year, the Stars of Europe competition rewards twelve French teams involved in European scientific collaborations. Among the 2017 laureates are three projects coordinated by CNRS researchers on...
Article
11.26.2017
The origin of a volcanic eruption in the Middle Ages, one of the biggest in the last ten thousand years, had long remained a mystery. It was only in 2013 that a group of scientists would solve the...
11.23.2017
Some 15,364 scientists from 184 countries signed a dire warning about the state of our planet in the journal BioScience. The French Ecologist Franck Courchamp, senior researcher at the CNRS, comments...
11.06.2017
The Coriolis rotating platform is the world’s only research structure of its kind devoted to fluid mechanics. First set up in the 1960s at the Laboratoire des écoulements géophysiques et industriels...
Article
10.20.2017
An environmental disaster in Brittany, blooms of green algae provide evidence of a rapidly-growing occurrence caused by pollution: eutrophication. A scientific report published on 19 September 2017...
10.04.2017
One of the most accessible and complete reports on the state of our oceans is now available as a free download. Tackling issues from carbon dioxide absorption to sea level rise, plastic pollution and...
09.21.2017
In French Guiana, leatherback turtles—the largest sea turtles in the world—return to the same beach multiple times over the year to lay their eggs. But fewer are making it back, threatening the...