News in Brief
Event - Oct 13
Damien Stehlé and Alice Pellet-Mary, recipients of the best paper award at Asiacrypt 2021
Damien Stehlé and Alice Pellet-Mary, recipients of the best paper award at Asiacrypt 2021
Physics - Sep 22
Spectroscopic Signature and Structure of the Active Sites in Ziegler-Natta Polymerization Catalysts Revealed by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance
Spectroscopic Signature and Structure of the Active Sites in Ziegler-Natta Polymerization Catalysts Revealed by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance
Computer Science - Sep 13
CEA-Leti Proposes Nine Research Tracks to Guide ICT Industry's Quest to Reduce its Carbon Footprint
CEA-Leti Proposes Nine Research Tracks to Guide ICT Industry's Quest to Reduce its Carbon Footprint
news
Environment - Oct 13
Astronomy - Oct 7
Images from Perseverance's French-American instrument SuperCam show that the crater where the rover landed once contained a lake.
Environment - Oct 4
To cool off in summer, there's nothing better than a walk in the woods. Trees act as a buffer that cools the air beneath their foliage in summer and warms it in winter.
Astronomy - Oct 6
There was a surprise in store for NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it prepared to land on asteroid Bennu in October 2020 in order to collect samples.
Laboratory - Sep 27
Like a work of art enshrined in a museum, some stones end up on a pedestal of ice in nature, with no human intervention.
Category
Results 1 - 20 of 33.
Whether Venus, one of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, ever had oceans remains an unsolved puzzle. Although an American study hypothesized involving in particular scientists from the CNRS and University of Versailles-Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines 1 (UVSQ). Using a state-of-the-art climate model, the research team has come up with an alternative scenario to the American study.
Images from Perseverance's French-American instrument SuperCam show that the crater where the rover landed once contained a lake. The SuperCam observations also identified strata containing boulders, related to a major change in the hydrological regime. This study, led by a French researcher, will facilitate selection of the most suitable areas for Perseverance to collect samples.
There was a surprise in store for NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it prepared to land on asteroid Bennu in October 2020 in order to collect samples. Contrary to what astronomers believed, the asteroid's surface was not covered with a layer of fine dust, called regolith. This dust, which blankets the Moon and some asteroids, is formed when thermal shock and meteorite impacts break up surface rocks.
To cool off in summer, there's nothing better than a walk in the woods. Trees act as a buffer that cools the air beneath their foliage in summer and warms it in winter. This phenomenon is caused not only by the protection that the forest canopy provides, but also by the transpiration of trees in summer: trees absorb cooler water from the soil, and this water is then transported up to the leaves, ending up in the atmosphere and thus cooling the surrounding air.
Like a work of art enshrined in a museum, some stones end up on a pedestal of ice in nature, with no human intervention. This "Zen stone" phenomenon, named after the stacked stones in Japanese gardens, appears on the surface of frozen lakes, Lake Baikal (Russia) in particular. These structures result from the phenomenon of sublimation, which causes a body, in this case ice, to change from solid to gaseous form without the intermediary form of a liquid.
One of Earth's unique features is that it has continents. Contrary to many theories, the continents have always been rich in silica (which is found in quartz for example). The continents did not form continuously over time but result from episodic events throughout Earth's history. The continents, a specific feature of our planet, still hold many secrets.
Cell nuclei protect the DNA. Nuclei can rupture when cells are deformed, causing DNA damage. In the case of breast cancer, this damage makes tumour cells more invasive, with increased risk of metastasis. When cells multiply and migrate, they can be compressed and their nucleus may break open. This phenomenon causes DNA damage.
Part of the Universe’s missing matter found thanks to the MUSE instrument
CRAL publication in MNRAS , on September 16, 2021. CNRS press release on September 16, 2021. Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Thanks to the MUSE instrument from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 , has mapped a galactic wind for the first time.
CRAL publication in MNRAS , on September 16, 2021. CNRS press release on September 16, 2021. Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Thanks to the MUSE instrument from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l'Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 , has mapped a galactic wind for the first time.
Every winter, thousands of emaciated seabird carcasses are found on North American and European shores. In an article published on the 13 September in Current Biology , an international team of scientists including the CNRS 1 has shown how cyclones are causing the deaths of these birds. The latter are frequently exposed to high-intensity cyclones, which can last several days, when they migrate from their Arctic nesting sites to the North Atlantic further south in order to winter in more favourable conditions.
COVID-19: Will telecommuting strategies stop the virus from circulating?
How can we best organise on-site workplace and school attendance periods and remote work to slow the circulation of Sars-CoV-2? Is it better to separate classes? Bring your whole team in at the same time? Set this up on daily or weekly schedules? The COVID-19 pandemic has forced most countries to impose contact limitations in workplaces, universities and schools.
How can we best organise on-site workplace and school attendance periods and remote work to slow the circulation of Sars-CoV-2? Is it better to separate classes? Bring your whole team in at the same time? Set this up on daily or weekly schedules? The COVID-19 pandemic has forced most countries to impose contact limitations in workplaces, universities and schools.
Artificial intelligence surpasses the human brain only at the cost of consuming tens of thousands of times more energy. A major difference between the brain and electronic systems is that neurons use ions, not electrons, to carry information. French scientists have designed theoretical artificial neurons with ions to carry the information.
Mars: first results from the Perseverance rover
Publication of LGL-TPE in Science on October 7, 2021. CNRS press release on October 7, 2021. The Perseverance rover has now confirmed the suitability of its landing site: Jezero crater really did contain a lake, into which a river flowed through a delta 3.6 billion years ago. Led by a CNRS researcher, the international team involved scientists in France from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier , and published its findings on October 7 in Science.
Publication of LGL-TPE in Science on October 7, 2021. CNRS press release on October 7, 2021. The Perseverance rover has now confirmed the suitability of its landing site: Jezero crater really did contain a lake, into which a river flowed through a delta 3.6 billion years ago. Led by a CNRS researcher, the international team involved scientists in France from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier , and published its findings on October 7 in Science.
Biological invasions are one of the most important factors of biodiversity loss. They threaten the diversity of ecological strategies - the ways in which species feed, live, function and defend themselves - by up to 40% in birds and 11% in mammals. 11% of the evolutionary diversity of birds and mammals, i.e. their accumulated evolutionary history, is also threatened by biological invasions.
The origin and date of appearance of prehistoric cave art are the subjects of ongoing debate. Spain's Cueva de Ardales is one point of discussion. There a flowstone formation is stained red in places. This colouring is apparently almost 65,000 years old 1 but until now, a part of the scientific community attributed it to a natural coating of iron oxide deposited by flowing water.
Quantum information could be behind the next technological revolution. By analogy with the bit in classical computing, the qubit is the basic element of quantum computing. However, demonstrating the existence of this information storage unit and using it remains complex, and hence limited.
The blood groups of three Neandertal females and one Denisovan female have been determined by a Marseille-based team including a palaeoanthropologist, population geneticists, and haematologists. Their research provides new data for understanding the origins, history, and health of these extinct hominin lineages.
Using information obtained from around a dozen earthquakes detected on Mars by the Very Broad Band SEIS seismometer, developed in France, the international team of NASA's InSight mission has unveiled the internal structure of Mars.
While temporary sterility after childbirth lasts on average only a few weeks for a woman who does not breastfeed, it can last for months, or even more than a year, for one who does. But it was unclear how this contraceptive effect of breastfeeding is affected by a mother's 'energetic status' - that includes her nutrition and levels of physical activity.
Gravitational wave detectors have observed a new type of cataclysmic event in the cosmos: the merger of a neutron star with a black hole. The phenomenon was detected twice in January 2020. Several hypotheses could explain the existence of such mixed pairs. Further observations will be needed in order to settle the question. Another missing piece has just been added to our knowledge of cosmic phenomena.
Ten million years before the well-known asteroid impact that marked the end of the Mesozoic Era, dinosaurs were already in decline. That is the conclusion of the Franco-Anglo-Canadian team led by CNRS researcher Fabien Condamine from the Institute of Evolutionary Science of Montpellier (CNRS / IRD / University of Montpellier), which studied evolutionary trends during the Cretaceous for six major families of dinosaurs, including those of the tyrannosaurs, triceratops, and hadrosaurs.
News from the Lab is a selection of science news that are significant or interesting for a broad readership.
Add this page to your bookmarks 
Add this page to your bookmarks
News in Brief
Event - Oct 13
Damien Stehlé and Alice Pellet-Mary, recipients of the best paper award at Asiacrypt 2021
Damien Stehlé and Alice Pellet-Mary, recipients of the best paper award at Asiacrypt 2021
Physics - Sep 22
Spectroscopic Signature and Structure of the Active Sites in Ziegler-Natta Polymerization Catalysts Revealed by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance
Spectroscopic Signature and Structure of the Active Sites in Ziegler-Natta Polymerization Catalysts Revealed by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance
Computer Science - Sep 13
CEA-Leti Proposes Nine Research Tracks to Guide ICT Industry's Quest to Reduce its Carbon Footprint
CEA-Leti Proposes Nine Research Tracks to Guide ICT Industry's Quest to Reduce its Carbon Footprint