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With one billion stars mapped in a thousand days, European researchers have shown that they are not afraid to tackle the most daunting tasks.

It was already known that genes inherited from ancient retroviruses 1 are essential to the placenta in mammals, a finding to which scientists in the Laboratoire Physiologie et Pathologie Moléculaires des Rétrovirus Endogènes et Infectieux (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud) contributed. Today, the same scientists 2 have revealed a new chapter in this astonishing story: these genes of viral origin may also be responsible for the more developed muscle mass seen in males! Their findings are published on 2 September 2016 in PLOS Genetics .

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.

A major therapeutic challenge, the retinal prostheses that have been under development during the past ten years can enable some blind subjects to perceive light signals, but the image thus restored is still far from being clear. By comparing in rodents the activity of the visual cortex generated artificially by implants against that produced by “natural sight”, scientists from CNRS, CEA, Inserm, AP-HM and Aix-Marseille Université identified two factors that limit the resolution of prostheses.

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 .

To survive, the parasites responsible for malaria and toxoplasmosis depend on mechanisms inherited from the plant world. This is what a team of researchers from CNRS 1 (Institute for Advanced Biosciences, CNRS/INSERM/Université Grenoble Alpes) and the University of Melbourne 2 has shown. They have just published two studies in Cell Microbiology and PLOS Pathogens.

Researchers from the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS/University of Paris Diderot), the Institute of Biology of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS/CNRS/Inserm), and the University of Bristol, have described for the first time in its totality the mechanisms by which DNA damaged by UV radiation is repaired, and how the proteins involved in this process cooperate to ensure its efficiency.

Researchers at CNRS, INSERM, Aix-Marseille University and AP-HM have just created a virtual brain that can reconstitute the brain of a person affected by epilepsy for the first time. From this work we understand better how the disease works and can also better prepare for surgery. These results are published in Neuroimage, on July 28, 2016.

To monitor a segment of the North Anatolian seismic fault near Istanbul, an international team of researchers, in particular from CNRS and Université de Bretagne Occidentale, has installed a network of transponders on the floor of the Sea of Marmara. The aim is to measure motion of the sea floor on either side of this segment.

Where did the two natural satellites of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, come from? For a long time, their shape suggested that they were asteroids captured by Mars. However, the shape and course of their orbits contradict this hypothesis. Two independent and complementary studies provide an answer to this question.

Frigate birds were already known for their ability to fly continuously for weeks without landing. A telemetric study of their trajectory and flight strategy has just revealed that they can remain airborne for over two months during their transoceanic migrations.

The first autonomous vehicles are expected in the next few years. They should ease traffic and reduce pollution and accidents compared with today's cars. But these self-driving cars (SDC) will face tragic dilemmas: for example, they will have to choose between saving the lives of their passengers or those of pedestrians.

With eruptions of ice and water vapor, and an ocean covered by an ice shell, Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating in the Solar System, especially as interpretations of data provided by the Cassini spacecraft have been contradictory until now.

For the past 20 years, exoplanets known as 'hot Jupiters' have puzzled astronomers. These giant planets orbit 100 times closer to their host stars than Jupiter does to the Sun, which increases their surface temperatures. But how and when in their history did they migrate so close to their star? Now, an international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a very young hot Jupiter orbiting in the immediate vicinity of a star that is barely two million years old—the stellar equivalent of a week-old infant.

How will the traumatic events of the terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015 evolve in people's memories, whether collective or individual?

On 26 December 2015, scientists from the LIGO and Virgo collaborations received an unexpected Christmas gift when the Advanced LIGO detectors recorded a new gravitational wave signal, three months after the first detection 1 . And once again, the signal—a tiny distortion of spacetime—came from the final spinning 'dance' of two black holes on the point of merging, a phenomenon known as coalescence.

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.

Mission accomplished for the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft after only two months of science operations. Not only were the technologies needed for the future eLISA 1 gravitational wave space observatory validated, but the performance of the ESA demonstrator also exceeded the project specifications by a factor of five, and was very close to requirements for eLISA .

Researchers from CEA, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université and INRA, in France have discovered a unique system of acquisition of essential metals in the pathogenic bacterium Staphylococcus aureus.

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.