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Health - Environment - 26.12.2016
Divide and rule, or how plant diversity increases the sustainability of their resistance
Divide and rule, or how plant diversity increases the sustainability of their resistance
In the Yuanyang region of China where rice cultivation is a tradition, scientists from INRA and CIRAD, working in collaboration with a Chinese team, have focused on the defence mechanisms of rice against its pathogenic agents.

Health - Environment - 26.12.2016
Divide and rule, or how plant diversity enhances the sustainability of their resistance
Divide and rule, or how plant diversity enhances the sustainability of their resistance
In the Yuanyang region of China where rice cultivation is a tradition, scientists from INRA and CIRAD, working in collaboration with a Chinese team, have focused on the defence mechanisms of rice against its pathogenic agents.

Life Sciences - Environment - 21.12.2016
The blob can learn—and teach!
The blob can learn—and teach!
It isn't an animal, a plant, or a fungus. The slime mold ( Physarum polycephalum ) is a strange, creeping, bloblike organism made up of one giant cell. Though it has no brain, it can learn from experience, as biologists at the Research Centre on Animal Cognition (CNRS, Université Toulouse III—Paul Sabatier) previously demonstrated.

Environment - Earth Sciences - 12.12.2016
Atmospheric methane concentrations are rising faster since 2007
An international group of researchers led by LSCE (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ) has published a thorough budget of methane sources and sinks 1 over the last decade in the Earth System Science Data (ESSD) journal,

Environment - Earth Sciences - 14.11.2016
Searching for the world's oldest ice
Searching for the world’s oldest ice
Why did the rhythm of glaciations suddenly slow down about a million years ago? To answer this question and to better forecast future climate change, a consortium of researchers from 14 institutions

Environment - 30.08.2016
DACCIWA: better understanding the impacts of pollution in West Africa
DACCIWA: better understanding the impacts of pollution in West Africa
With an exploding population, massive urbanization and uncontrolled deforestation, West Africa is faced with major change, which could see anthropogenic 1 pollution increase threefold between 2000 and 2030.

Astronomy / Space Science - Environment - 24.08.2016
Closest ever exoplanet is potentially habitable
Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, has a rocky, Earth-sized planet located in the star's habitable zone, where liquid water can exist on the surface. This major discovery was made by an international team of researchers including Julien Morin from the Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier (CNRS/Université de Montpellier), and is published on 25 August 2016 in Nature .

Environment - 14.06.2016
CO2 hits record highs in the Southern hemisphere
CO2 hits record highs in the Southern hemisphere
Last month, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) as measured at Amsterdam Island, in the southern Indian Ocean, for the first time exceeded the symbolic value of 400 ppm 1 , or 0.

Environment - History / Archeology - 25.05.2016
French cave sheds new light on the Neanderthals
French cave sheds new light on the Neanderthals
Deep inside Bruniquel Cave, in the Tarn et Garonne region of southwestern France, a set of man-made structures 1 336 meters from the entrance was recently dated as being approximately 176,500 years old.

Environment - Life Sciences - 14.04.2016
Tara PACIFIC 2016-2018
Tara PACIFIC 2016-2018
Coral reefs biodiversity facing climate change The research schooner Tara will leave her home port of Lorient on May 28th 2016 for a new expedition in the Asian Pacific.

Environment - Agronomy / Food Science - 11.04.2016
Goals of the Paris Agreement on climate unachievable without reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture
Goals of the Paris Agreement on climate unachievable without reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture
For the first time, scientists have calculated the reduction in emissions required in agriculture to reach the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2°C by 2100.

Environment - 23.03.2016
The past, present and future of African dust
The past, present and future of African dust
So much dust is scattered across the planet by the winds of the Sahara that it alters the climate. However, the emission and transport of this dust, which can reach the poles, fluctuate considerably. Although many hypotheses have been put forward to explain this phenomenon, no unambiguous relationship between this dust and the climate had been established until now.

Chemistry - Environment - 23.03.2016
Staying in shape: How wood chemistry relates to structural stability
Staying in shape: How wood chemistry relates to structural stability
Wood has many uses, which require to know its shrinking 1 and swelling capacity in relation to humidity (known as dimensional stability). Researchers from the CNRS and Cirad 2 have shown that in Bagassa guianensis , a fast-growing Guianese tree, the secondary metabolites, whose main purpose is to defend the tree against insects and fungi, also serve to reduce shrinkage.

Life Sciences - Environment - 18.01.2016
How ants self-organize to build their nests
Ants collectively build nests whose size can reach several thousand times that of individual ants and whose architecture is sometimes highly complex. However, their ability to coordinate several thousand individuals when building their nests remains a mystery. To understand the mechanisms involved in this process, researchers from CNRS, Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and Université de Nantes 1 combined behavioral analysis, 3D imaging and computational modeling techniques.