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First discovered by sailors, the masses of plastic debris floating at the center of vast ocean vortices called gyres are today under close scrutiny by scientists. To better understand the fragmentation of microplastics under the effect of light and abrasion by waves, researchers combined physico-chemical analyses with statistical modeling.

Almost two thousand years after the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum, certain periods of the history of Naples have just been reconstructed. Until now, historians and archaeologists had wondered about the impact of this volcanic eruption on the Aqua Augusta aqueduct which supplied Naples and neighboring cities with water.

For the first time, scientists in the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology (CNRS/INSERM/Collège de France) have produced direct evidence that the long-term storage of memories involves a dialogue between two brain structures, the hippocampus and cortex, during sleep; by enhancing this dialogue, they succeeded in triggering the consolidation of memories that would otherwise have been forgotten.

At present, liquid water on Mars only exists in small quantities as a boiling liquid, and only during the warmest time of day in summer. Its role has therefore been considered insignificant until now.

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that an organism devoid of a nervous system is capable of learning. A team from the Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CNRS/Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier) has succeeded in showing that a single-celled organism, the protist Physarum polycephalum, is capable of a type of learning called habituation.

A team of marine biologists and oceanographers from CNRS, UPMC 1 and the German organization GEOMAR have revealed the importance in all the world's oceans of a group of large planktonic organisms called Rhizaria , which had previously been completely underestimated.

The LEAFY protein, a transcription factor responsible 1 for flower development, is able to assemble itself in small chains made up of several proteins. This mechanism allows it to bind to and activate regions of the genome that are inaccessible to a single protein. These results were obtained by scientists in the Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire Végétale (CNRS/Inra/CEA/Université Grenoble Alpes) and the Institut de Biologie Structurale (CNRS/CEA/Université Grenoble Alpes) 2 , working in collaboration with their international partners.

Treatments available for glioblastoma—malignant brain tumors—have little effect. An international collaboration 1 led by the Laboratoire Neurosciences Paris-Seine (CNRS/ INSERM/UPMC) 2 tested active ingredients from existing medications and eventually identified one compound of interest, prazosin, on these tumors.

Coral reefs biodiversity facing climate change The research schooner Tara will leave her home port of Lorient on May 28th 2016 for a new expedition in the Asian Pacific.

Scientists have just identified an Achilles heel in the parasite that causes malaria, by showing that its optimum development is dependent on its ability to expropriate RNA molecules in infected cells – a host-pathogen interaction that had never previously been observed. Although the precise function of this deviation remains mysterious, these findings open new perspectives for the targeted delivery of therapeutic agents within the parasite.

Researchers have for the first time shown that ribose, a sugar that is one of the building blocks of genetic material in living organisms, may have formed in cometary ices. To obtain this result, scientists at the Institut de Chimie de Nice (CNRS/Université Nice Sophia Antipolis) carried out a highly detailed analysis of an artificial comet created by their colleagues at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (CNRS/Université Paris-Sud).

High-tech sponges of the infinitely small, nanoporous materials can capture and release gaseous or liquid chemicals in a controlled way.

The Earth's magnetic field permanently protects us from the charged particles and radiation that originate in the Sun. This shield is produced by the geodynamo, the rapid motion of huge quantities of liquid iron alloy in the Earth's outer core. To maintain this magnetic field until the present day, the classical model required the Earth's core to have cooled by around 3 000 °C over the past 4.3 billion years.

So much dust is scattered across the planet by the winds of the Sahara that it alters the climate. However, the emission and transport of this dust, which can reach the poles, fluctuate considerably. Although many hypotheses have been put forward to explain this phenomenon, no unambiguous relationship between this dust and the climate had been established until now.

Wood has many uses, which require to know its shrinking 1 and swelling capacity in relation to humidity (known as dimensional stability). Researchers from the CNRS and Cirad 2 have shown that in Bagassa guianensis , a fast-growing Guianese tree, the secondary metabolites, whose main purpose is to defend the tree against insects and fungi, also serve to reduce shrinkage.

Following spinal cord injury, most patients experience an exaggeration of muscle tone called spasticity, which frequently leads to physical disability.

For more than ten years the H.E.S.S. observatory in Namibia, run by an international collaboration of 42 institutions in 12 countries, has been mapping the centre of our galaxy in very-high-energy gamma rays. These gamma rays are produced by cosmic rays from the innermost region of the Galaxy.

An exceptional collection of bronze weapons dating from the Iron Age II (900-600 BC) has been uncovered near Adam, in the Sultanate of Oman. The remains were discovered scattered on the ground in a building belonging to what is thought to be a religious complex, during excavations carried out by the French archaeological mission in central Oman.

The ice buried inside comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko is mainly found in crystalline form, which implies that it originated in the protosolar nebula and is therefore the same age as the Solar System. This discovery was made by an international team led by a researcher at the LAM 1 (CNRS/Aix Marseille Université) and also including scientists from the Laboratoire J.-L.

Oxytocin plays a crucial role in modulating the response to pain, but until now the process leading to its release was unknown.