At the Musée de l’Homme anthropology museum in Paris, an exhibition traces the movements of Homo sapiens across the long history of humanity. To address this complex topic, often the subject of fanciful representations, the scientific curators approached it from multiple points of view, including...
The metabolism of astronauts, the behaviour of plants, the reactions of living beings to radiation and of foams to weightlessness… The International Space Station does not only observe Space, as evidenced by the following four experiments.
How to measure the dislocation of ice floes, the immense expanses of ice floating in polar seas? Easy! Create a model of the ice pack, find the best way to shake it, and watch as it breaks under the effect of waves.
Are the dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park” realistic? How does the film franchise explore the impact and applications of science? These are some of the topics addressed in a book published last autumn, as...
At a ceremony held in Paris recenlty, the biologist Edith Heard was handed the CNRS Gold Medal, one of the most prestigious French scientific distinctions, for her outstanding research on epigenetics...
While very useful in ecosystems, mosquitoes tend to ruin the lives of humans. A CNRS team has even recently calculated how much these dipterans cost society, primarily due to the diseases they...
Before going to school to learn how to read and write their language, children first manage to understand and then speak it. How are they able to do so, almost all of them spontaneously, without a...
The only permanent bipeds of the animal kingdom alongside humans, birds have an extraordinary sense of balance. How do these direct descendants of the dinosaurs maintain this stability, especially...
The fossils of this primate, which were discovered in the early 2000s and date back 7 million years, remain the subject of intense debate, notably as to whether they should be considered part of the...
By depriving them more or less temporarily of their sense of smell, the Covid-19 pandemic made thousands of people abruptly realise the importance of their olfactory system. Research is now trying to...
Forests cover a third of the world's land surface. Although they provide us with invaluable services, they are now under so much pressure that we are faced with our own contradictions between...
For the past 20 years, this specialist in developmental and evolutionary biology has been passionately dedicated to studying a small fish that lives in the waters of Central America. So much so that...
Single-cell technologies for the analysis of genomic data enable scientists to better study tissue mechanisms and heterogeneity at the scale of a cell. They also generate masses of wide-ranging data...
Posture, behaviour, preparation… Everything that athletes do is of interest to science. For the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the CNRS is pulling out all the stops to support the French competitors. The...
Numerous cellular phenomena are guided by mechanical forces, such as embryonic development or the spread of metastases. These phenomena are the subject of intense research aimed at understanding how...