news 2023

In the spring, Alpine glaciers sometimes don a sheer red or orangish veil. Known as 'red snow' or 'blood snow', this phenomenon is caused by the blooming of Sanguina nivaloides , a microscopic alga. Scientists from the CNRS, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Météo-France, INRAE, and Université Grenoble Alpes 1 turned their attention to this organism, which forms the pillar of a snowy ecosystem still poorly understood.

In spring, Alpine glaciers sometimes turn a thin layer of red or orange. This phenomenon, known as "glacier blood", is due to the proliferation of a microscopic alga called Sanguina nivaloides . Scientists 1 from CNRS, CEA, Météo-France, INRAE and Grenoble Alpes University have been studying this organism, which forms the backbone of a little-known snow ecosystem.

PRESS RELEASE LED BY WESTERN SYDNEY UNIVERSITY - INRAE participated to a new research led by Western Sydney University's Dr Jürgen Knauer, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, published today [Saturday 18 November 2023 AEST] in leading international journal Science Advances paints an uncharacteristically upbeat picture for the planet.

Scientists from INRAE and the CEA have taken a giant step towards lifting the veil on plant reproduction, by identifying proteins that are essential for the creation of new plant varieties. Their results were published on 16 November in Nature Plants. The scientists have delved into the way plants reproduce.

A better understanding of how bacteria acquire resistance to antibiotics is a key research issue in tackling the major public health problem of antibiotic resistance. The main mechanism by which these resistances are disseminated is called "DNA transfer by bacterial conjugation". Until now, this was thought to occur only between bacteria in direct contact with each other.

Researchers from INRAE, Universidad del Desarrollo (Chile), University of Geneva and University of Grenoble developed a new method to assess the risk associated with rockfalls in the mountains, taking into account various triggering factors and all the issues exposed. They successfully tested it in the Chilean Andes.

French, Singaporean and British researchers, led by Prof. Florent Ginhoux, head of a research team at Gustave Roussy/Inserm, have succeeded in demonstrating in a neuronal organoid the role of the brain's immune environment in its formation and development. The development of these three-dimensional structures integrating neuronal cells and the immune environment is, to date, one of the most complete in vitro models of the human brain.

Glioblastomas are highly aggressive brain tumors whose treatment consists of surgery and radiochemotherapy. A new medical imaging technique could improve patients' prognosis, according to a recent clinical trial led by élisabeth Moyal, Professor at Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier University and Head of the Radiotherapy Department at the IUCT-Oncopole.

Publication of the RDP in the journal PNAS on November 21, 2023. News by CNRS Engineering on December 7, 2023. Water flowing over soluble rocks can create patterns of multiple troughs bordered by sharp ridges. By combining field measurements, a numerical model and laboratory experiments, a team led by the MSC laboratory (CNRS/Université Paris Cité), in collaboration with the LPG (CNRS/Nantes Université/Université d'Angers) and the RDP (CNRS/ENS de Lyon/Inrae) has shown that the appearance of these shapes results from a geometric mechanism.

Unlike animals, plants have cells that are all surrounded by a strong wall. This protects them but also encloses them in a rigid skeleton. So how can they grow despite this wall? Scientists from INRAE and the CNRS, in collaboration with Swiss and Belgian teams, have now unlocked part of this secret.

The largest floating ice shelves in the polar ice sheet have lost more than a third of their volume since 1978.

Between 13,000 and 9,650 years ago, the Natoufian culture developed on the eastern Mediterranean coast of northern Israel. According to recent discoveries, these hunter-gatherers were the first to use red pigments of organic origin. "It was a great surprise to discover such ancient and well-preserved pigments of organic origin" , confides Laurent Davin, archaeologist at the Laboratoire Technologie et ethnologie des mondes préhistoriques (Temps) 1 and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and co-author of the study just published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Neuroscientists from Inserm, CNRS and Université de Bordeaux in France, along with Swiss researchers and neurosurgeons (EPFL/CHUV/UNIL), have designed and tested a "neuroprosthesis” to correct the gait disorders associated with Parkinson's disease. In a study published in Nature Medicine , the scientists describe the development process of the device they used to treat a Parkinson's disease patient for the first time, enabling him to walk fluidly, confidently, and without falling.

A team led by CNRS scientists 1  has discovered that, just like humans, Guinea baboons develop complex strategies to select partners for cooperation, basing their decisions on past interactions. Humans naturally engage in strategic cooperation in many contexts. For example, when children help schoolmates by lending them their class notes, they may expect the same in return the next time: this is known as reciprocity.

Our microbiome is directly and indirectly linked to the development of a growing number of human pathologies. This is true for the bacterial component, but also for the population of microscopic fungi that make up the intestinal microbiome. However, most of the fungi in our diet come from the food industry (cheeses, bread, etc.

Sleeping in prone position was identified as the major risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the early 1990s. Royalty-free image - Association Naître et Vivre and ANCReMIN In several European countries where the incidence rates of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are high, a high frequency of unsafe parental sleep practices has also been observed.

Before modern humans settled definitively in Europe, other human populations left Africa for Europe beginning approximately 60,000 years ago, albeit without settling for the long term. This was due to a major climatic crisis 40,000 years ago, combined with a super-eruption originating from the Phlegraean Fields volcanic area near current-day Naples, subsequently precipitating a decline in ancient European populations.

Between 2016 and 2022, the research world witnessed 47% growth in the annual number of scientific publications, which climbed from 1.9 million to 2.8 million. In contrast, the number of researchers has hardly budged. This trend could have borne good tidings for science, if it were the result of more researchers disseminating more diverse results.

Adding certain odorants to food can make us perceive it as sweeter or saltier than it actually is. A recent study shows that this phenomenon is even more present in obese people. Obesity in adult populations in France has increased from 8.5% in 1997 to 17% in 2020 Source: Ligue contre l'obésité With obesity rates steadily increasing, reducing the amount of sugar and salt in food, whether at home or in ready-made meals, is high on the list of priorities.

When we sleep we are not completely cut off from our environment: we are still able to hear and understand words. These observations, resulting from the close collaboration between researchers from Inserm, CNRS, Sorbonne Université and AP-HP at the Brain Institute and the Department of Sleep Disorders at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, call into question the very definition of sleep and the clinical criteria that distinguish between its different stages.