Even professional chess players, after four or five hours of play, can start making big mistakes. Do you yourself not feel exhausted after a day of intense intellectual effort? This cognitive fatigue, far from being a mere figment of the mind, is based on physiological foundations. This is revealed by a French study, published on …
Cognitive fatigue, a signal that warns your brain of a risk of overheating Read More »
It is one of the Grails of agronomy: allowing the main cereals – wheat, maize, barley or rice – which constitute half of the calorie intake of humanity, to capture nitrogen from the air as legumes do this, thus limiting the spreading of nitrogenous fertilizers (nitrates), costly in energy and harmful to the environment and …
A cereal genetically modified to better capture nitrogen from the air Read More »
Remember your college biology textbooks and those pictures of chromosomes, with their X shape. At the center of almost every X is the centromere (in our chromosomes 13, 14, 15, 21 and 22, however, it is very eccentric). Well, these centromeres play a crucial role in the division of our cells: they ensure the balanced …
the amazing evolutionary adventure of centromeres Read More »
On February 16, 2001, the journals Science and Nature announced a feat. Human intelligence, finally, had managed to read the code that programs its existence: the great book of the human genome. In other words, the instruction manual for the construction of a human being. A success obtained after more than ten years of effort, …
The sequencing of the human genome is (nearly) coming to an end Read More »
OOpen doors and windows. Let in the spring air, circulate the oxygen. Breathe. Delight in the scent of wisteria, the green smell of new grass that cools off under a few drops of dew. In the early morning humidity, the plants also open their windows wide… not to absorb oxygen, but carbon dioxide. The latter …
Once in the plant, the phytopathogenic bacteria close the door behind them Read More »
