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From Genesis, Demosthenes or Homer and Xenophon, we were aware of the existence of a ritual where three animals, a sheep, a pig and an ox are sacrificed, what is called trittoia. In Thassos, an island of northern Greece, a random discovery of the remains of a pig, an ox and earlier a sheep, dated around IVth century B.C., the science of archaeozoology adds the missing piece of the puzzle: the rear partof the sheep. The three animals were immolated, cut in half and buried in a hole in the…

A scientific team from the Institute for Astrophysics from Paris went to Sidi Barani in Egypt at the occasion of the solar eclipse of March 29, 2006. This film shows the complete eclipse which last 2 minutes and 40 seconds.

In the archaeological museum of Thassos, in northern Greece, archaeologist Arthur Muller introduces us to his research in coroplastic art, the study of terracotta votive statuettes found in the surroundings of temples in ancient Greece, for example in the temple of Artemis and Demeter Thesmoforos (5th to 2nd century). By studying how they were made, through successive moulding, heads combinations, and modifications in their clothing, we discover a nearly modern fabrication method of these…

Zoï Kapoula, a CNRS senior researcher, is welcomed in the Saint Suplice Middle and High School, in order to execute a test showing the link between motricity, vision and dyslexia.

In order to study the propagation of fire into space, the CNRS laboratory for combustion and detonation has sent a team of researchers to the airport of Mérignac near Bordeaux, for an experience during a parabolic flight.

Today, the physicists' grail is more than ever the theory that will unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, the infinitely large and the infinitely small, so these scientists construct new theories. The most publicised of these is “string” theory, which implies a ten or eleven-dimensional Universe! Apart from the three dimensions of space that we know, the other dimensions could be microscopic and rolled up, totally beyond our perception. In another approach, physicists are trying to…

Sideswri is an ashram bengali restaurant, located in central Calcutta. This micro society shows intense brotherhood.

During construction work in the town of Besançon, an exceptionally well preserved mosaic dating from the beginning of the 2nd century CE was discovered. It represents the shield of Athena with at its center a Medusa head medallion. The archaeologist, Claudine Munier, describes the décor in detail and explains its symbolism. Christophe Laporte, a topographic draftsman, explains the various processes which will be used to save and reinstall the mosaic, which will be glued and then fixed in place…

In 2000, the mathematician Jacques Tits resigned his Chair in group theory at the Collège de France. On this occasion, the Collège and the Institut des hautes études scientifiques organized two days of lectures in his honor, on May 3 and 4, 2000. Ten well-known mathematicians testify to the contributions of Jacques Tits and explain the significance of his theory of buildings.

On November 19, 2002, three astronomers, Jérémie Vaubaillon, Jean Duprat, and François Colas, came together to observe a rare astronomical phenomenon: a meteor shower. The Earth was passing through a cloud of dust left by the Tempel Tuttle comet in 1776. These shooting stars, actually tiny meteorites, were called the Leonids because they appeared to fall from the constellation Leo.

In March 1989 a Bourbaki seminar was held at the Institut Henri Poincaré in Paris. Bourbaki is the name of a group of French mathematicians founded shortly after the Second World War. The first of its famous seminars was held in 1948. Work was published jointly by the mathematicians in the group, who chose to sign it with the name of a fictitious person, Bourbaki. Henri Cartan and three other mathematicians (Pierre Cartier, Etienne Ghys, and Jean-Louis Verdier) review the history of the…

This film tells the story of the meeting in Gabon between Sébastien Bodinga Bwa Bodinga and linguist Lolke Van der Veen. In 1986 Sébastien Bodinga Bwa Bodinga began to work on producing a lexicon of his language, Geviya, an oral dialect, in order to preserve it. This language is clearly threatened, as there are only an estimated forty people left who speak it well. He composed his life's work, a 1,300-page manuscript. In 1988, Lolke Van der Veen was sent by his director of research to work on…

The network of French Schools abroad has maintained, for more than a century, sustained research activities in history, archaeological excavations, monuments restorations, welcoming and training of researchers and PhD students.

As chemical and sound pollution increases, the electric vehicle becomes a solution to urban transportation problems. In La Rochelle and Bordeaux, the city government has set an example. The idea comes in various forms - scooters, river boats, and delivery services. Industry and research organizations are actively involved. CNRS laboratories are carrying out research on battery components. The use of electric vehicles of many kinds is becoming widespread.

For several decades the scientific world has agreed that biodiversity is threatened, in particular in regions where it is especially rich, such as the tropical and equatorial zones. At the same time, it seems that this biological diversity cannot be preserved without the active participation of the peoples who live in direct contact with it. In conjunction with the Ecoles thématiques organized in 2002 by the ecology field station in Lamto (Ivory Coast), African students comment on this problem…

A film of the press conference at which physicist Albert Fert presented the work which earned him the CNRS Gold Medal for the year 2003. Albert Fert is the scientific director of the mixed unit for physics at CNRS-Thalès, associated with the Université Paris-Sud. He discovered giant magnetoresistance and contributed to the development of spintronics. This research finds its application in the design of the drive heads of hard disk drives. Albert Fert is now studying magnetic tunnel junctions,…

A production of the play "The Heifer and the Pythagorean" written by Alain Prochiantz and Jean-François Peyret, based on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, provides an opportunity for literary reflection on the meaning of humanity today, and for exploration of the borders between the human and the animal. The film follows as closely as possible the process of creating this dramatic work. The relation between the theatre and the sciences is a subject of great interest to the play's…

The Ecole de l'ADN at the Palais de la découverte in Paris offers a practical approach to the techniques of molecular biology and outlines methods for studying DNA. Here, students in their second-last year of high school learn how to reveal a genetic imprint using methods similar to those used in forensic laboratories, but to simplify the procedure the DNA they work with is that of the bacteriophage lambda.

A session with a group of high-school students in the electrostatics room of the Palais de la découverte. The experiments shown involve high voltage (300,000 volts) but are not dangerous because the current is very weak. The current is active only during the charging and discharge of the materials used. Two girls positioned on a platform with a high electrostatic potential are not in danger, because they are isolated from the outside. Each one's hair, which is charged, repels that of the other…

The mirrors inside large telescopes are periodically disassembled for maintenance work. This operation takes place every 18 months on the main telescope of the Haute Provence observatory. The primary mirror measures two meters in diameter and weighs 1.2 tonnes.

Jean Brette, head of the Mathematics department at the Palais de la découverte, invites a class to the mathematics lecture hall and summarizes the history of the number pi. Today computers can calculate pi to billions of decimals.

In Jerez de la Frontera in southern Andalusia, the gypsies pay homage to Christ and the Virgin Mary by offering them saetas, sacred songs performed during the processions on the days of Holy Week. These songs form the subject of little contests between neighborhoods linked in a flamenco circle. These contests provide a special occasion for observing the rivalry between Gypsies and "Payos." Various performers of saetas explain their meaning and vocal technique. These are sung prayers…

The Franco-German Téramobile project has constructed the only mobile femtosecond laser in the world. Since the energy produced is concentrated into a very short time period, the power of this laser is unusually great - four terawatts. In the large auditorium of the University of Berlin, Jean-Pierre Wolf, a CNRS researcher, demonstrates one application of this laser: controlling the direction of lightning bolts. Housed in its mobile laboratory container, this laser makes it possible to take…

Three biomedical researchers from INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale) speak about their profession, their motivations, and the high points of their careers, devoted to searching for new anti-cancer drugs. A patient who participated in a therapeutic trial of a vaccine against cancer tells her story. See also: "A vaccine against cancer?"

After several years of experimentation on mice, a joint team from the Institut Curie and the Institut Gustave Roussy has just developed a vaccine against cancer which is now beginning to be tested on human subjects. This vaccine uses vesicles secreted by dendritic cells. The results obtained are too recent and the number of cases treated are not yet sufficient to prove its success, but hopes are high and the enthusiasm of the researchers is infectious. See also: "A vaccine against cancer…

Two researchers from INSERM, specialists in the diseases of the central nervous system, present a new treatment for the battle with Huntington's disease. This currently incurable disease attacks the striatal neurons. The method proposed consists of transplanting fetal cells. It is being tested on five patients. See also: "Language in the head."

From earliest times the Egyptians sought to imitate the blue of lapis lazuli in their paintings. Around 2600 BC, they succeeded in synthesizing a blue pigment composed of copper, natron, and calcareous sand. The manufacturing technique used to produce this pigment was described by the Latin authors Pliny and Vitruvius. Prehistorian Gerard Onoratini, a CNRS researcher, managed to reconstruct this synthesis, which he describes here in complete detail.

On the island of Réunion, in the house of Maximilienne, a follower of Hinduism, a ceremony is being held in honor of the family's guardian divinity, as it is on the first Sunday of every month. Once the preparations for the ritual are complete, Maximilienne is the first to honor the gods. The ritual consists of several stages: depositing a piece of camphor in the fire with the right hand, aspersion, and prostration in front of the divinity.

Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, winner of a Nobel Prize in physics, presents the research under way in the Kastler Brossel laboratory (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Collège de France): quantum fluctuations, combining of fermions and bosons, and Bose-Einstein condensation of metastable helium.Michèle Leduc, head of research at CNRS, then describes in more detail this latter experiment, which they were able to perform due to a better understanding of cold atoms (atoms slowed down by the use of a laser beam).

A brief history of the construction of the arts building "La tête au carré" in Nice, based on the work of the sculptor Sacha Sosno. At 28 meters high, it is the world's first inhabited sculpture, a kind of brain for the administrative staff of the library, with three floors in the neck and four more in the square head.

A summary of a day of lectures in conjunction with an "Open Day" event organized by the IHES (Institut des hautes études scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette) at the Centre Georges Pompidou on September 18, 2000. Highly varied aspects of mathematics are addressed by eight experts. Stacked oranges and correction codes, by Denis Auroux. Morley's marvelous theorem, by Alain Connes. Under the street lies symmetry, by Etienne Ghys. The genome and mathematics, by Alessandra Carbone. …

The strike of December 1995 was the largest one in France since May 1968. During a period of two weeks, in the Montparnasse station which was paralyzed by the strike, a sociologist and a film producer followed the lives of railroad workers, both those on strike and those still at work..

Mendevin, an Uldeme living in the extreme North of the Cameroon, is a farmer breeding small-livestock. He is also an excellent musician and harp maker. This film shows precisely through long takes the different phases of the making of a harp.

Founded in June 1995 in Benin, the Ecumenical Christian Church “Jesus ' Blood”, which gathers about fifty believers, mixes deliberately in its liturgy some catholic, orthodox, apostolic and celestial Christian elements.

In the Pyrénées Orientales region, the old solar power station Thémis used a heliostat field made out of 200 mirrors, each 50 square meters in size. Astrophysicists were able to reuse these mirrors to observe cosmic gamma rays, the most high-energy particles in the universe. These rays emit luminous flashes which are collected by the mirrors and directed toward the CELESTE detector. In this way researchers hope to be able to reach a better understanding of the mechanisms of energy production at…

A report from the 23rd International Congress of Mathematicians, held August 18-27 1998 in Berlin.Four Fields medals were awarded, to Richard E. Borcherds and Timothy Gowers (Cambridge University), Maxim Kontsevich (IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette), and Curtis T. McMullen (Harvard University). Interviews with the mathematicians provide an overview of the current state of mathematical research, addressing the relations between mathematics and physics, the Moscow school of mathematics, etc.

In the village of Peruvamba in Kerala (in southern India), the Ramachandran family has been manufacturing drums of various kinds (tabla, mrindingam, mandalam, etc.) for several generations. The technical and artistic know-how is handed down from father to son, by means of rhythm, movement, and glances, but with very little use of words. All the procedures which go to produce the tabla are followed in detail, and the choice of various materials and their sources explained, while the everyday…

Pierre Potier, Director of the Institut de chimie des substances naturelles in Gif-sur-Yvette, received the CNRS Gold Medal for 1998. A pharmacist by training, Potier became interested very early on in the isolation and structural analysis of organic substances, then in the biosynthesis of these substances. Subsequently he specialized in the search for new compounds which could be used in the treatment of tumoral diseases. To facilitate this research he developed a simple biological test, the…

Marie, a healer in Antananarivo, the capital city of Madagascar, takes care of people in the name of the ancestors who guide and advise her. She uses plants and soil from worship places dedicated to historical ancestors. In the high central lands, on the summits of the Ankaratra mountains, she participates to the Alakaosy celebration, an important date in the Malagasy lunar calendar.

The Rencontres de Marseille of April 28 1998, organized by CNRS, present innovative laboratories or enterprises from the region, including the laboratory Parole et langage, the company GDEI, and the company Opiocolor.

In 1991, CNRS founded the primatology station of Rousset, near Aix-en-Provence, designed for the breeding and raising of baboons for research purposes.

Horse racing is a business like any other, and professionals in the racing world are turning more and more to the latest scientific and medical research to improve the performance of their stable.

In order to preserve the biodiversity of the several million plant and animal species, a gigantic census is necessary. This is the goal of taxonomy, the science of the classification of living things. Seven researchers from different disciplines - biologists, botanists, entomologists, and paleontologists - describe their work.

In Togo among Kabye people, trials by fire ordeal happen among truth masters in order to settle witchcraft cases which cannot be judged by usual men. This film shows two cases.

At Joal in Senegal, a mother washes her new born baby, Maghet Sène.

Located in the Canary Island, the Themis telescope, conceived by the INSU and the CNRS, is an essential link in a chain of terrestrial observatories and satellites, allowing to answer to questions concerning the magnetic activity of the Sun, as temperature aberrations noticed between its surface and its corona.

The film describes the physical properties of granular materials (powders and grains), whose complex behaviour is between solids, liquids and gases.

In March 2007, a new oceanographic ship of the INSU (French National Institute for Earth Sciences and Astronomy), the “Côtes de la Manche” cleared off. He is devoted to the study of biology, physics and chemistry of the coastal and estuarial ecosystems of the English Channel, and also of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. This short film shows its first missions.

Formerly reserved for soldiers, cryptology is now used progressively in the civil and commercial society. The art of encrypting information interests now bankers, internet users and also… the public welfare system. The diffusion of cryptography ways is booming to the rhythm of the development of electronic communications.

Wolfgang Pauli imagined the neutrino in 1936 in order to save the principle of energy conservation. An experiment confirmed its existence 20 years later. Since then, physicists keep on tracking down this particle with more and more sophisticated and expensive means. This film is an investigation which shows three different ways to catch neutrinos.