Pierre DE PARSCAU

For several decades, researchers and engineers have been trying to unravel the mysteries of Mars. Before humans can set foot on the planet, rovers will provide them with valuable information. Researchers from LAB and IRAP tell us about ChemCam, an instrument placed on top of the Curiosity rover to analyse the compositions of Mars rocks. After an eight-month space voyage, the robot finally landed on the Red Planet on August 6, 2012 to collect data on its different geological periods, reconstruct…

Following the race towards miniaturization that has brought us the smaller touch sensitive screens we use every day, scientists are now trying to see a bigger picture. Thanks to increasingly innovative screens, they are designing a number of tools that allow unprecedented interactions between man and machine. Discover the future technologies being developed at France's Digiscope, a network of experimental platforms.

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 species with extinction. Researchers have been tracking and monitoring them to better understand the increasing anthropogenic and environmental pressures on their ecosystem.

A very unique phenomenon is taking place on the French Guyanese coastline. In the heart of the mangrove, shoals of mud and vegetation roam along the coasts and greatly modify the contour of the coastline. This dynamic marshland ecosystem is being studied by geographer Antoine Gardel and his team, who have developed observation techniques to better understand this ever-changing natural environment.

Among our five senses, olfaction has a privileged relationship with our brain. This is evidenced by the significant neural activities observed in contact with different fragrances, which captivate both the scientific community and the cosmetics industry. At the Nice Institute of Chemistry, experiments are conducted to observe brain response to different scents in humans. If they vary according to age, level of education, and memories of subjects, they demonstrate the stimulating, soothing or…

At the Institut Henri Poincaré, the exhibition "Esthétopies, variétés d'espaces sensibles" (esthetopies, varieties of sensitive spaces) has the ambitious goal of sharing the fascinating beauty of non-Euclidian geometry with the general public. This project originated from the initiative of Pierre Berger, a former student of Decorative Arts, now a mathematician specialising in three-dimension spaces. Inspired as much by Man Ray's writings as by the work of William Thurston, he designed a…

Does our sense of direction change as we get older? A team of researchers is studying the toll that age takes on our vision. To do this, they immerse research subjects fully equipped with sensors in an artificial street. This StreetLab, developed by the Vision Institute and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, is as modular as a movie set.

The first-ever international race of molecule-cars will take place at the CEMES laboratory in Toulouse this fall. Five teams are fine-tuning their cars-each made up of around a hundred atoms and measuring a few nanometers in length. They will be propelled by an electric current on a gold atom "race track." We take you behind the scenes to see how these researcher-racers are preparing for the NanoCar Race.

"People of the Seine" is an audio programme for walkers. Created by Isabelle Bachoucke (historian at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and Center for Historical Studies) and Sarah Gensburger (sociologist at French National Center for Scientific Research and Institute for Political Social Sciences), written and dubbed by Michele Cohen (artistic director), this programme immerses the listener into the History of the Seine and its people at the eighteenth century, through nineteen…

Edible insects are now considered to be an alternative source of protein for a human population set to increase by 2 billion by 2050. Yet a competitive production method still needs to be found. We ask researchers and future manufacturers how they are trying to overcome the challenges involved in this new type of farming to turn it into a substantial French and European industrial sector.

Microalgae can produce food, fuel and capture carbon dioxide in the process. These tiny organisms seem to meet many of humanity's development challenges. Yet scaling up the technology from a lab environment to industrial capacity is no easy task. The AlgoSolis research platform, inaugurated this year on the West coast of France, will provide scientists the tools they need to develop and test the next generation of technologies for a mass production of microalgae.