Search results for:

On the Meudon Bellevue CNRS campus, you will find the first large instrument dedicated to fundamental research in France and in the world, the Large Electromagnet of the Academy of Sciences. It was imagined and designed by the physicist Aimé Cotton in 1928 and operated until the 1970s. Denis Guthleben, science historian, shares with us the various stages in the history of the large electromagnet, from the birth of the project before the 1914 war to its…

Two hundred million years ago, a meteorite crashed to Earth and formed a crater 20 kilometres in diameter, one of the largest in the world, in the heart of present-day French department Haute Vienne. Although the impact zone is today totally invisible to the naked eye, evidence of the cataclysm can be detected in the composition of the soil and by observing local relief. Now home to the village of Rochechouart, this area is of particular interest to geophysicists. A thorough study of soils in…

This film takes a look back on the career of Muriel Labonnelie, a scholar specialised in Greco-Roman ophthalmology in her research at the LAMS laboratory (Laboratoire d'Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale/laboratory of molecular and structural archaeology) into collyrium tablets. These tablets designate local action medications used on the conjunctiva to treat eye conditions. They provide valuable information on Roman medicine. They started to be listed as early as the eighteenth century…

Established in 2009, the Haut-Vicdessos valley Human and Environment Observatory (OHM, Observatoires Hommes-Milieux) in one of those entities created in France and in the world by the CNRS's INEE (Institut Ecologie et Environnement/ Institute of Ecology and Environment) and pooled together as part of the DRIIHM excellence laboratory, or Labex. Its director, Didier Galop, makes a presentation of this cross-disciplinary observatory whose mission is to observe, document and investigate into…

On the occasion of the 2017 CNRS innovation medal award ceremony, this film is a look back on Raphaèle Herbin's career, a mathematician specialized in the numerical analysis of partial differential equations who heads the Marseille Mathematics Institute (a joint research unit between CNRS/École centrale de Marseille/University of Aix-Marseille). The research she conducted with her colleagues on the theoretical analysis of finite volume methods and computerized simulation of compressible flow…

Motorised two-wheelers moving up traffic queues lead to almost 2,000 serious accidents in France every year. With this practice particularly present in large cities, where traffic continues to grow, a team of ISTTAR researchers is trying to understand the mechanisms behind these motorcycle and scooter accidents. They conducted a one-year observation campaign on 14 major traffic routes in the city of Marseille. Ultimately, their objective is to come up with proposals for the development and…

Cosmic rays constantly sweep past the Earth. Whilst in great number, most low energy rays come from the Sun, whereas high and even very high energy rays much less frequently come as messengers of the Universe, whose origin scientists are at pains to explain where they come from. Addressing this question on the origins of those extremely high energy particles would amount to solve a primordial enigma on the nature of the extremely violent phenomena occurring in the Universe. In the province…

Muriel Labonnelie, a researcher in Greco-Roman medical history at the laboratory of molecular and structural archaeology gives an insight into her research on collyrium tablets (also often called “collyrium stamps”). After the discovery of the 346th specimen found during survey excavations in a dump used during the fourth century in Lyon, she traces the artefact's history and explains its role and characteristics in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Collyria were in the form of “small loaves” a small…

Cosmic rays are those accelerated subatomic particles of unknown origin constantly showering the Earth and whose energy for some of them equates that of a shotgun bullet. The film is a short overview of current detectors and research paths for the years to come. A longer version of this film entitled “Radio cosmic” is available.

This video is an interview with Patrick Maestro, as a winner of the 2015 CNRS Innovation Medal. The 62 year-old chemist and a freshly appointed member of the French academy for technologies is a forerunning authority in material science. He has worked during his research on rare-earth based oxide compounds which are to be found now in low-consumption lamps (LEDs), that he had a major part in their making, in automotive post combustion catalysers or as dyes in plastics. With his 60 publications…

NOEMA (NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array) is the most powerful millimetre radio telescope in the northern hemisphere. Located on the Bure plateau, in the Hautes-Alpes, the observatory will eventually consist of 12 antennae that will form a single large radio telescope capable of revealing the invisible thanks to interferometry. Equipped with a new generation of receivers and electronics, these antennas will be able to capture the coldest light emitted by the universe, around 250°C. The…

In the Effervescence, Champagne and Applications laboratory at the University of Reims, a team of researchers is studying the effervescent properties of champagne and carbonated wines in general. The physicist Gérard Liger-Belair is particularly interested in all the stages of the life of a bubble in a flute of champagne, from its birth to the moment it bursts on the surface. Using an ultra-fast camera, he identified the origin of bubble trains climbing up a flute wall. Far from being trivial,…

LIMMS, Laboratory for Integrated Micro Mechatronic Systems, is a joint laboratory between French CNRS and The University of Tokyo.

Manipulating DNA with tweezers is now possible, using technology developed at a cutting-edge French-Japanese laboratory (LIMMS). The researchers designed silicon nanotweezers capable of grabbing and analyzing cells or molecular fibers. This microscopic instrument has already been used in Lille to test the resistance of DNA to irradiation. LIMMS, Laboratory for Integrated Micro Mechatronic Systems, is a joint laboratory between French CNRS and The University of Tokyo.

After 20 years of research and innovation, LIMMS has proved its worth and is now running innovative and interdisciplinary projects in fields such as Bio-MEMS or nanobiotechnology. LIMMS is a French-Japanese laboratory created in 1995 by Jean-Jacques Gagnepain from the CNRS and Fumio Harashima from the University of Tokyo. It is the first international joint unit of the CNRS and Asia. Several researchers explain how working in a multinational team has stimulated their creativity and opened up…

Five young researchers talk about their work at LIMMS, a French-Japanese laboratory created in 1995 by the CNRS and the University of Tokyo. They describe their current research and explain how they benefit from working in an interdisciplinary and intercultural laboratory.

At the "Ondes et Matière ' " laboratory in Aquitaine, soap bubbles have become a study subject for detecting instability and turbulence. The aim is to simulate flux and flows to create faithful models of vortexes comparable to natural phenomena such as cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons.

HyMex (HYdrological cycle in Mediterranean EXperiment) is an international cross-disciplinary research programme which started in 2010 and whose objectives are to observe and understand the different components of water cycles around the Mediterranean Basin. It is part of the wider range MISTRALS programme. Researchers from different disciplines (climatologists, agronomists, sociologists, atmospheric physicists) work on this project, which involves considerable resources (aircraft, ships, low…

Aged 53, Claude Grison directs the bioinspired chemistry laboratory for environmental innovation (laboratoire Chimie bio-inspirée et innovations écologiques - CNRS/UM2/Stratoz) and is a professor at the University of Montpellier-II. She successfully filed twelve CNRS patent applications which make it possible not only to use plants to progressively clean up mining sites, but also to exploit the metals that these plants absorb. There are many applications available, from an anti cancer agent…

As a laureate of the 2014 Innovation Medal granted by the CNRS, Didier Roux, 59, head of research and innovation at Saint-Gobain, talks about his career path and his main research activities. He first worked as a physicochemist at the CNRS by getting involved in fundamental research while interfacing with the industrial world through the creation of two companies (Capsulis and Rheocontrol). He held scientific management positions at Rhône-Poulenc, then Rhodia, before "switching 100% to industry…

FRIPON (Fireball Recovery Interplanetary Observation Network) is a network of hundreds of cameras spread over 22 regions of France. This technical device allows the meteorite flight path and their falling point on the ground to be estimated. Scientists also wanted to create a community including general public in order to save time gathering meteorites after their fall. Volunteers are trained during the astronomy festival of Fleurance (France) ; this exercise will help scientists to focus on…

At the CNRS primatology centre in Rousset, Joël Fagot, a CNRS senior researcher and Nicolas Claidière, also a researcher at the cognitive psychology laboratory in Aix-Marseille, study cultural evolution through social transmission among baboons. To do this, they installed an experimental set-up which the monkey can enter freely and access a computer program offering exercises. Each monkey is identified with a small chip implanted in its arm. The aim is for the two researchers to observe how the…

Marie Charpentier, an evolutionary biologist at the CEFE (Centre d ' Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Montpellier, France) and coordinator of the Mandrillus project (created in early 2012, until April 2013 at Lékédi Park in the province of Upper Ogowe Gabon). There, She has followed, during a year and an half, a population of mandrills in the wild in order to understand the social structure of a group and its impact on the health of its individuals. Her research focuses on the influence…

Stéphane Mallat, mathematician and professor at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, winner of the 2013 CNRS innovation medal, looks back on his research. He is one of the pioneers who introduced orthogonal wavelet bases and parsimonious representations. This theory has been applied in many scientific and industrial fields. In particular, he introduced wavelet image representation and compression algorithms, which led to the international JPEG-2000 standard. Stéphane Mallat subsequently…

The Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IMN) in Bordeaux (France) combines basic research, preclinical and clinical research in the context of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly in Parkinson's disease. This disease, whose origin is not known, affects 150,000 people in France. Researchers of this institute explain its mechanism and treatments that exist as the drug L-Dopa. They offer a solution for deep brain surgery simulation currently practiced in the Pellegrin Hospital…

In this film, Jérôme Casas, a researcher from the Institute for research on insect biology, located in Tours (France), presents the studies led in his laboratory, concerning the mechanisms developed by insects in order to get a better adaptation to their environment. He evokes in particular one of the used models: the cricket and its hairs sensorial function.

The Observatories “Men and Environments” (called in French OHM) are intended to encourage the interdisciplinary researches on a given territory, marked by a major event which has a very important environmental, economical and social impact. The observatory dedicated to the coalfield of Provence was the first created by the CNRS in 2007. The area observed by this OHM is the former Gardanne coalfield, which covers 17 towns of about 100,000 inhabitants, and whose exploitation was definitively…

Scientists from the Institute of Space Astrophysics (IAS) and the ENS (Ecole Normale Supérieure), including Cynthia Herrera, a young Chilean doctoral student, and François Boulanger compared the scientific data collected by the new Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) telescope with observations from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The results made it possible for the first time to trace the beginnings of star formation in Antennae Galaxies and to…

The Berre pond is one of the largest brackish water ponds in Europe. Located at the outskirts of Marseille, it is today one of the most studied lagoons around the Mediterranean. Researchers in different disciplines (historian, ecologists, industry, politicians) elaborate on theindustrial history of this place and demonstrate how it has become a threatened and threatening place. They try to find solutions to rehabilitate this lake and its ecosystem into a living place for those staying on its…

To face the last of the fossil fuels stocks, Franck Dumeignil, a chemist, coordinates the Eurobioref project. It gathers research centers and manufacturers from fourteen countries. Its concept is based on the principle of an integrated and flexible biorefinery, which allows to link the preoccupations of agriculture and chemical industry.

At the CNRS Center for Primatology located in Rousset, France, Joël Fagot, a researcher from the "Laboratory for cognitive psychology" studies the animal cognition through a group of 29 baboons. He has just published a paper with an American homologue which demonstrates that baboons are able to reason by analogy without language.

Mathias Fink, the director of the Langevin Institute, who received the CNRS 2011 Innovation Medal, presents in this film the principle of his inventions, which have made his success.

The IFRAF gathers six laboratories specialized in the cold atoms manipulation. Since 1984, this physics domain has considerably developed and its applications have increased. This DVD contains two films which explain, in an entertaining way, what are the cold atoms and present one application: the atomic clock.

Nowadays medical imaging techniques allow to obtain more and more sophisticated and effective images. This film shows the works of four laboratories specialized in the bones observation.

Portrait of Gérard Férey, a world-famous chemist, member of the French Academy of Sciences since 2003, emeritus professor at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and laureate of the 2010 CNRS Gold medal.

On the occasion of the inauguration of theEcotron, the CNRS' very large ecological research infrastructure, its director, Jacques Roy, explains the experiments currently being conducted in this research centre. Located near Montpellier, Ecotron is a European experimental research platform that studies the functioning of ecosystems, organisms and biodiversity in response to environmental changes. By confining ecosystems in enclosures, this equipment provides for simulations of a wide range…

The Institute of functional genomics (IGF) is a joint research unit between the CNRS, the INSERM and Montpellier 1 and 2 universities created in 2005 and located on the Arnaud de Villeneuve campus near Montpellier. Its director Joël Bockaert describes the various activities of the IGF where both fundamental research and applied research is carried out genomics, an increasingly complex discipline. In particular, the objective of this organisation divided into five departments is to work on…

The yard of the bridge over the Oyapock river is dug by the INRAP (National Institute for Preventive Archaeology), which after excavates the “Pointe Morne” site.

In the scientific research station located in the Nourages natural reserve, in French Guiana, researchers make an inventory of the different tree species.