Nanotechnology Update

N°16 quarterly january 2010

nanotechnology update

profile

Serge Haroche advancing the frontiers 2009 CNRS Gold Medal

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CNRS International Magazine COVER STORY Trimestriel - Janvier 2010 1 place Aristide Briand F-92195 Meudon Cedex 18 Telephone: +33 (0)1 45 07 53 75 Fax: +33 (0)1 45 07 56 68 FRENCH RESEARCH NEWS 4 Email: [email protected] Structural reform at CNRS, Michel Website: www.cnrs.fr NANO- CNRS (headquarters) Spiro heads CERN Council. 3 rue Michel Ange F-75794 Paris cedex 16 LIVE FROM THE LABS Publisher: TECHNO- Arnold Migus (CNRS) 6 Editorial Director: Marie-Hélène Beauvais (CNRS) LOGY Deputy Editorial Director: Fabrice Impériali (CNRS) UPDATE Managing Editor: Isabelle Tratner (CNRS) > The latest advances in the field, Production Manager: Laurence Winter including: precision drugs, nanolight,

Staff Writer: optics, carbon nanotubes, green Charline Zeitoun nanomaterials, electronics, nanohorns, Freelance Writers: Emilie Badin and nano-biological probes. Kheira Bettayeb Jean-Philippe Braly Sébastián Escalón Marion Girault-Rime Matthieu Grousson Mathieu Hautemulle Stéphan Julienne Séverine Lemaire-Duparcq Fui Lee Luk Sarah MacKenzie Mélisande Middleton Photothèque f/CNRS Mark Reynolds Tom Ridgway . Bobrof Vrignaud/CNRS Photothèque Vrignaud/CNRS

Dominique Salomon . Graham Tearse 31 © F

Vahé Ter Minassian agno, J Philippe Testard-Vaillant Marie-Hélène Towhill AROUND THE WORLD

Clémentine Wallace Rest © F. > FOREIGN PARTNER 31 > SPOTLIGHT 6 NaBi LEA Translation Manager: On Electrons and Solids Aimée Lahaussois (CNRS) France and Israel join forces in Copy Editor: Celebrating 50 years of research nanobioscience. Saman Musacchio at the LPS. Graphic Design: > THEY CHOSE FRANCE 32 Céline Hein Sarah Landel > NEWS 8 Chretien Moonen Iconography: Surviving an extinction crisis, Marie Gandois (CNRS) Developing new ways to fight Cover Illustration: A green answer to heavy metal, cancer. © S.Swartz/ Fotolia.com, 2009 Melanopsin, Cellular biology on a Michelin, LK Trading CO, LOOK CYCLE INTERNATIONAL 2009, 2009 Nikon chip, Isotopic stopwatch, Earth’s Corporation, 2009 Apple Inc. All rights Photothèque rin/CNRS good vibrations, Stem cells, er INNOVATION 34 reserved, Science Museum/Science and Society, HERBOL-SYMBIOTEC, Memory and sleep, Largest Peptide-based drugs, Learning Orca, © C.LEBEDINSKY/CNRS dinosaur footprints uncovered. © E. P from marine organisms, and Fast Photothèque Photoengraving: IN IMAGES 28 and cheap gas analysis. > ON LOCATION 15 PLB Communication - The Autochrome F- 94276 Le Kremlin-Bicêtre Uncharted Territory Printing: The Lumière brothers’ first CNRS NEWSWIRE 36 Imprimerie Didier Mary Exploring the Cordillera Darwin. The European Space Observatory, 6, rue de la Ferté-sous-Jouarre industrial color photography F-77440 Mary-sur-Marne > PROFILE 16 process. Monitoring air traffic, The most ISSN 1778-1442 Serge Haroche powerful NMR spectrometer, and AIP 0001308 2009 CNRS Gold Medal. International collaborations. CNRS Photos are available at: [email protected] http://phototheque.cnrs.fr

All rights reserved. Partial or full reproduction of articles or illustrations is strictly prohibited CNRS Photo and Video databases now in English without prior written permission from CNRS. The CNRS photo and video libraries provide open Photos and DVDs can be ordered online. access to a wide range of scientific pictures (18,000) and films* (1400). Guests and registered users can access PHOTO LIBRARY a search engine in English, or browse through the thematic http://phototheque.cnrs.fr/indexL02.html selections on the home page. VIDEO LIBRARY *over 200 in English. http://videotheque.cnrs.fr/index.php?langue=EN

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

4 FRENCHRESEARCHNEWS

Reorganization Structural Reform at CNRS

CNRS is undergoing a major structural overhaul, in Once universities become autonomous, the line with the new national guidelines on French coordination and integration of research across the scientific research. Eight institutes have been created country will become the responsibility of institutions to replace the organization’s eight existing like CNRS. This is likely to give the institution greater departments, bringing the total number of CNRS influence and responsibility for exploring new avenues institutes to ten (see inset). of research. They will be endowed with more autonomy and flexibility than the former scientific departments. 1. Agence nationale de la recherche. www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/Intl 2. Agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur. They will also take on new tasks. Besides running www.aeres-evaluation.fr/ the laboratories, which the departments also handled, they will act as funding agencies for targeted thematic and/or multidisciplinary programs. These changes are being implemented in the context of a general reform of the French The Ten CNRS Institutes research sector. * Institute of Chemistry (INC) Over the past five years, the French * Institute of Ecology and Environment (INEE) government has created the ANR,1 in charge * Institute of Physics (INP) of funding research projects; launched the * Institute of Biological Sciences (INSB) AERES,2 an evaluation agency for higher * Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (INSHS) education and research; and implemented * Institute for Computer Sciences (INS2I) a major reform aimed at giving universities * Institute for Engineering and Systems Sciences (INSIS) more autonomy. * Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INSMI) * National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics (IN2P3) * National Institute for Earth Sciences and Astronomy (INSU)

For more information: www.cnrs.fr/en/aboutCNRS/institutes.htm Death of Claude Lévi-Strauss The ethnologist This is the number of patents filed by CNRS between July and anthropologist 339 2008 and June 2009, compared to 284 for the previous 12 Claude Lévi-Strauss months. Forty-four percent of these new patents are died on October 31st at already being exploited. In total, CNRS expects to receive €56 billion in royalties for the age of 100. An 2009. CNRS is one of the ten public research organizations filing the most patents in emblematic figure of the US, an important first for a European organization. these two disciplines and CNRS Gold M. Gantier/GAMMA/Eyedea Presse © M. Gantier/GAMMA/Eyedea Medalist in 1967, he established the Laboratoire d’anthropologie Michel Spiro New President of the Cern Council sociale1 in Paris. Author of over 20 publications Currently director of CNRS’ National Institute of Nuclear and Particle including the well-known Tristes Tropiques, Physics (IN2P3), Michel Spiro has been elected president of the Cern Council, Lévi-Strauss is considered to be the father of the European organization for nuclear research. “This is a great honor,” he modern anthropology. His essays were based on his ethnographic missions in the Amazon said. “I will become the Council’s 20th president, with the during the 1930s. According to anthropologist important responsibility of following in the footsteps of my Frédéric Keck, illustrious predecessors. I will directly succeed Professor “his work has inspired the greatest studies Akesson, who has made the Council evolve significantly in humanities: those of Foucault, Deleuze, over the past few years. Given the first results of the Large and Bourdieu. It has had an outstanding Hadron Collider (LHC), the future promises to be very international influence, with no equivalent exciting. Discoveries made at LHC will be the ones that in modern French thinking.” shape the future of particle physics in the world, and hence 1. CNRS / Collège de France / EHESS. of CERN and its operations.” ebedinsky/CNRS Photothèque © C. L

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

editorialeditorialEDITORIAL 5

Michel Lannoo development in the 21st century. Truly interdisciplinary, CNRS advisor for nanoscience nanoscience and nanotechnology carry a major potential for and nanotechnology. innovations to address the many issues facing today’s society: health (by creating better medical applications), information and communication technologies, sustainable development and the environment, or energy production and storage, to Tiget/CNRS Photothèque Tiget/CNRS

© N. name but a few. In this context, CNRS is a major player in the field, as illustrated by the 2007 Nobel Prize laureate Albert Fert. Its strategy, centered around scientific creativity and innovation, Nanotech at CNRS benefits from its interdisciplinarity, which is essential to developments in nanoscience and nanotechnology. With close to 5000 researchers involved in the field, spread across anoscience and nanotechnology aim to create, intramural or joint laboratories, 7 large technological facilities control, and above all, use objects or sets of and 9 local facilities shared by several laboratories, CNRS is objects of extremely small size—close to the one of the largest contributors to French research in atomic or molecular scale. At this scale, matter nanoscience. presents novel properties that can be used for a France’s coordination in nanoscience has been bolstered Nhost of new applications. While in general nanoscience mostly by the creation of six competence centers—called focuses on the knowledge we can obtain from such systems, “C’Nanos”—which form a support network for the scientific nanotechnology is centered on their applications in industrial community on a national scale. The ANR—France’s research or medical fields. funding agency—continues to play an important role by Though often believed to have resulted from a sudden financing and supporting projects in the discipline. A recently revolution, the field has in fact evolved over decades. And launched government program in nanoscience research— during those years, important discoveries paved the way for ”Nano-Inov”—is dedicated to boosting industrial innovation today’s scientific advances: major breakthroughs in and transfer via three “integration” centers (Grenoble, Saclay, instrumentation, manipulation at the atomic level, together and Toulouse). with continuous progress in surface science, colloids, But nanoscience and nanotechnology have also raised public interfaces, aggregates and more generally new findings in concern. A responsible approach within the field requires materials science. To these can be added miniaturization in scientists to work diligently, in terms of traceability, ethics, and micro- and nanoelectronics, the manufacturing of micro- and public information. As a major European interdisciplinary nanosystems, and the field’s increasing importance to biology. institution, CNRS must play a leading role in safeguarding these The creation of the American NNI (National Nanotechnol- ethics, and anticipating the far-reaching consequences of such ogy Initiative) in the year 2000 played an important role in research. In this context, it has recently created the Strategic pushing research towards more technological applications. By Unit for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, which will not only stressing this emerging field’s vast potential for innovation, promote and develop nanoscience research, but also assess and the NNI implied that nanotechnology was key to economic examine all the relevant ethical issues associated.

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

6 LIVEFROMTHELABS Spotlight

PHYSICS On Electrons and Solids

The LPS,1 a renowned French solid- state physics laboratory, turned 50 last year. Alongside fascinating experiments, the laboratory continues to make important discoveries, particularly regarding the intriguing electronic properties of matter.

t looks much like any other control room: two had passed before it received funding from two major LPS physicists conduct very low computers, a panel with screens and buttons, electric scientific awards given to Raimond Castaing in 1966, temperature experiments to cables and pipes that run from the ceiling to the and to André Guinier, Jacques Friedel, and Pierre-Gilles elucidate the quantum properties of superconductors. floor—and even a few tools, including a soldering iron de Gennes in 1967. In fact, two of the last four French in the corner. But the real “attraction”—and one of Nobel prize-winners in physics—Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Ithe solid-state physics laboratory’s latest acquisitions— (1991) and Albert Fert (2007)—worked at the LPS at one lies behind the glass panel: a super-powerful 14-tesla2 point in their careers. But Pouget prefers to focus on magnet that could pull the keys right out of your pocket. the lab’s present activities. LPS researchers are expecting wonders from this magnet that should expose undiscovered quantum MAGNETIZATION, CONDUCTION, OR BOTH

properties of matter in nuclear magnetic resonance Solid-state physics, which ranges from electronics to Photothèque/LPS ajau/CNRS (NMR) experiments, a technique used to determine nanotechnology and also encompasses biology, is the properties of each electron in a sample. “We finished flourishing. And renewed interest in the physics of R © B. setting up this new lab two months ago,” explains LPS electrons in materials is the perfect illustration. researcher Julien Bobroff. “Apart from the magnet, “The general area of study is materials in which everything was made in-house: the cryostat, the electrons have difficulty moving about because they spectrometer, the computer software... And with remote are constrained to one or two dimensions, and thus access, experiments can continue round the clock!” hinder each other. At first sight, these materials should For LPS Director Jean-Paul Pouget, “developing be poor electrical conductors and therefore of little original instrumentation is one of our trademarks. interest. But paradoxically, it is in these materials that What’s more, our aim is to tackle all aspects of solid- the most surprising properties have been observed in state physics, from the study of the structure of materials the past few years,” Bobroff explains. to their electronic properties, and to do this via a strong The archetype of these new states of matter, in link-up between experiment and theory.” This has been which the LPS specializes, is “high temperature super- the methodology of the LPS since its creation, exactly conductivity,” observed in materials composed of 50 years ago. And it soon produced results. Not a decade multiple layers of copper oxide (cuprates) or more recently, iron pnictides. This complex name hides one of the greatest mysteries in physics today: superconductivity. It occurs in metal when the temperature approaches absolute zero (-273.15 °C) and is characterized by the disappearance of resistance to the flow of electric 1Orsay currents. Since the 1960s, physicists have known that superconductivity results from the interaction between electrons and vibrations in the crystalline matrix in Left: Using their new magnet, the which they circulate. researchers will be able to study the electronic properties of ajau/CNRS Photothèque/LPS ajau/CNRS In the case of cuprate oxides, superconductivity different materials with

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 LIVEFROMTHELABS 7 f/CNRS Photothèque f/CNRS The superconductor state of current record observed in one oxide standing at Schematic

this oxide (in black) is . Bobrof -135 °C, which is still cold, but much less than for representation demonstrated in a magnet metals. This makes scientists believe that of the magnetic levitation experiment. In fact, agno, J superconductivity could one day be achieved at room moments (or superconductivity is spins) of copper temperature, leading to materials that could convey

characterized by the expulsion Rest © F. atoms within an of any magnetic field outside electricity over great distances without any loss. To this oxide sample of the sample. This is known day, the origin of superconductivity in oxides has not known as a spin as the Meissner effect. been elucidated. “What’s even more mysterious is that ladder. you only need to slightly tweak an oxide to turn it from f a superconductor to a magnetic insulating material,” says Bobroff. The physicist and his team recently discovered Bobrof © J. something surprising. In an NMR experiment on a pnictide, the researchers discovered that the electrons FROM DISORDER TO ORDER exhibited both properties of magnetism3 and super- Using NMR technology, LPS researchers have also conductivity at the same time. “It’s fascinating because, obtained remarkable results on what are known as in principle, magnetism and superconduction have a spin ladder materials, in which the crystal lattice forms tendency to be mutually exclusive. Yet our results the rungs of a ladder, at the end of which the electrons suggest that they could have a shared origin in the case are positioned. In a standard material, at very low of pnictides,” exclaims the researcher. temperature, the spins of all the electrons are either all To get these results, the LPS researchers worked in lined up in the same direction or oriented head to tail. close collaboration with physicists and chemists from The material is then said to have magnetic order. the SPEC,4 a division of condensed matter physics of Conversely, in a spin ladder, the electrons are oriented the French atomic energy commission (CEA). As Pouget in all directions. The material is thus magnetically explains: “With the CEA, the University of Orsay, and disordered. the different laboratories located in Palaiseau, the LPS “Collaborating with Nicolas Laflorencie, a young has access to an extraordinary scientific environment. theoretician working in the laboratory, we have shown To make the most of this, we initiated in 2006 an that by randomly removing one magnetic atom out of advanced research network called the ‘triangle of 100, the system, until then disordered, becomes physics,’ which enables funding for common projects ordered,” explains Bobroff. It would be similar to having This low-temperature among the different associated laboratories.” Véronique one’s bookshelves reorganized alphabetically after manipulator, used on the Soleil synchrotron, was made at the Brouet, another specialist of high critical temperature randomly removing a few books. LPS, and illustrates the superconduction at the LPS, is preparing to work with Are these strange quantum effects simply good laboratory’s ability to produce another neighbor, Soleil, the national synchrotron fun for a few fringe specialists? Maybe, but it was also original instrumentation. radiation source,5 on what are known as in the LPS in 1988 that the Nobel prizewinner in photoemission experiments. “The labo- physics, Albert Fert, discovered another strange property ratory has built some of the equipment of condensed matter known as magnetoresistance, the used on certain lines of Soleil, particu- phenomenon behind an emerging type of electronics larly the photoemission line,” explains based on magnetism, now known as spintronics. “The the physicist. “This technique provides important thing is to ensure that the laboratory does not insights into the relationship between become an ivory tower,” says Pouget. “For instance, the energy of an electron and the direc- we encourage collaboration with other institutions, tion in which it propagates within a with industry, and even between our different research material. It is thus a complementary teams because it is at the very interface between existing technique to NMR which, for its part, disciplines that new ones appear.” The researchers of provides information on the spatial dis- the LPS are thus active on all fronts of condensed . Brouet V tribution of electrons.” matter. With their new NMR-dedicated magnet, it is © unlikely that the electron specialists will be left behind. Mathieu Grousson 1. Laboratoire de physique des solides (CNRS / Université Paris-XI). THE LPS IN FIGURES 2. The tesla is the unit used to measure magnetic fields. By way of The LPS is one of the largest French research centers specialized in condensed matter. comparison, the magnetic field of the Earth is around 50 microteslas. Between 200 and 250 people work at the LPS on a daily basis, including 61 CNRS researchers, 3. In other words their spin (internal magnetization) is oriented in a 35 academics, 50 engineers, technicians, and administrative staff, and 35 PhD students. favored direction. 4. Service de physique de l’état condensé (CNRS/ CEA). Eighteen research teams are grouped together around three main research topics: “New 5. Synchrotron radiation is an electromagnetic radiation emitted by electronic states of matter,” “Physical phenomena with reduced dimensions,” and “Soft matter electrons in movement. and physics-biology interface.” The topics of research thus extend from superconductors to CONTACT INFORMATION living tissues, while encompassing liquid crystals and nano-objects. Jean-Paul Pouget, [email protected] Between 2005 and 2008, the LPS produced 650 publications, including 500 articles in Julien Bobroff, [email protected] international scientific journals with peer-review committees. Véronique Brouet, [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine 6n°1January 2010

8 LIVEFROMTHELABS news

Dijon 1 PALEONTOLOGY 1 Getting Over an Extinction Crisis Lyon

ver the course of millions of tion2 (252.6 million years ago), Researchers believe a single of human generations, but is years, the Earth regularly ammonites,3 an extinct group of species, among the two or three that remarkably sturdy. According to Oundergoes extinction crises marine animals, rebounded in survived, is at the origin of the post- Arnaud Brayard from the during which biodiversity merely one million years, and not in crisis diversification. They indexed Biogeosciences laboratory6 in Dijon, plummets. Then, a few species that tens of millions of years as 860 ammonite genera5 from 77 who based his PhD work on this survive the disaster diversify again. previously thought. “Relatively soon different past oceanic basins all over topic, “life always manages to survive A group of laboratories in France after the crisis, biodiversity started the world. somewhere and to rediversify, even and Switzerland, bridging decades up again, and new species rapidly Some of the fossil samples were if we’re not sure exactly how this of past data with extensive fieldwork appeared in the oceans in masses, already present in databases from happens. It may take a long time, and statistical modeling, has shown resuming levels of diversity previous studies, and the remainder but it will eventually reappear.” that this revival can happen comparable to those just before the were collected over the past seven Melisande Middleton 1 astonishingly fast. event,” says Gilles Escarguel from years mainly from the US and 1. A. Brayard et al., “Good Genes and Good The team found that in the wake the PEPS laboratory4 in Lyon, who southern China (Guangxi). The field Luck: Ammonoid Diversity and the End- of the Permo-Triassic mass extinc- worked on the project. investigation is still taking place in Permian Mass Extinction,” Science, 2009. 325: 1079-80. Tibet and Pakistan. The specimens 2. Documented as the largest mass Permo-Triassic extinction crisis were hard to gather, since these mol- extinction over the past 550 million years, lusks typically do not fossilize during killing more than 90% of marine species. 3. Ammonites are fossil mollusks related to a crisis-event, due to the ocean’s present-day octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. severely deteriorated conditions. 4. Paléoenvironnement et paléobiosphère (CNRS / Université Lyon-I). “Surprisingly, living beings 5. A genus is a set of closely related species. actually regenerate much more 6. Biogéosciences (CNRS / Université de quickly than the ocean retrieves its Bourgogne). Crédit /CNRS Photothèque © Crédit /CNRS physical and chemical balance,”

Number of ammonite genera Permian Ceratites CONTACT INFORMATION ammonites explains Escarguel. This finding helps predict what Gilles Escarguel PEPS, Lyon. million years might follow the sixth major extinc- [email protected] Permian Triassic tion phase that our biosphere has Arnaud Brayard While different groups of ammonites coexisted during the Permian (red), only one currently entered. Recovery after a Biogéosciences, Dijon. [email protected] group, ceratites (green), survived the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. downfall spans tens of thousands

ENZYMOLOGY A Green Answer to Heavy Metal © CEA In the ongoing fight against unlocked the mechanism that reveals that one by pollution, plants offer a valuable produces NA, paving the way for one, three molecules contribution by collecting, trans- new biological tools.4 of the substrate forming, or removing pollutants The key to NA synthesis lies in S-adenosylmethionine from soil or water—something nicotianamine synthase (NA-Syn- penetrate a tiny opening called phytoremediation. thase), a plant enzyme that is to the enzyme’s reaction To counter heavy metal waste, extremely difficult to isolate. To over- chamber, to reach the active site for example, vegetal tools rely on come this obstacle, the researchers where the reaction takes place. molecules like nicotianamine (NA), examined NA-Synthase-like enzymes Once the first molecule is processed, a small molecule crucial for trans- in the archaea5 Methanothermobac- it is pushed deeper into the chamber porting the ionic forms of metals ter thermautotrophicus after noticing by the second molecule that replaces such as iron, zinc, and copper, that “NA-Synthase in eukaryotes it in the active site. The two mole- throughout plant organs. But finds distant counterparts in certain cules then link together and move mystery surrounding how NA— archaea,” explains Pascal Arnoux further into the chamber while the which has proven aptitude for nickel from the CEA. They have thus third molecule takes its turn in the detoxification—is synthesized, has uncovered the secret to NA’s active site. It is finally fused to the so far prevented its potential from synthesis in the reaction chamber duo, completing the NA molecule. being fully explored. A team from buried at the enzyme’s heart. With this finding, the design of 3D structure of the NA-Synthase 1 2 IBEB working at the CEA’s So how exactly is NA made? NA-reliant biosensors for detecting from Methanothermobacter Cadarache research center,and from 3D structure analysis of the heavy metals in the environment thermautotrophicus. INRA3 in Montpellier has now NA-Synthase-like enzyme at work can now be optimized. “This result

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 LIVEFROMTHELABS 9

Strasbourg PHYSIOLOGY 1 The Many Roles of Melanopsin Bron1 Two CNRS studies help further understand the mechanisms by which melanopsin—a new photopigment found in the human retina—regulates non-visual functions of light such as the synchronization of the sleep-wake cycle and the pupillary reflex.

bout a decade ago, when rods and cones The researchers used were considered the only photoreceptors melanopsin-deficient trans- of the vertebrate eye, a previously unde- genic mice, a model tradition- Atected photopigment was identified: ally used to study non-circa- melanopsin. It has been shown to regulate a dian aspects of sleep. wide range of non-visual functions, such as the Transgenic mice and control synchronization of the circadian rhythms and mice were placed under the sleep-wake cycle with the light-dark cycle. various light-dark schedules,

Two main mechanisms regulate sleep: the and their sleep-wake patterns a et Cooper/INSERM y ah circadian mechanism, which determines the opti- and sleep electrocorticography y mal time for sleep, and the homeostatic system, were recorded. en which keeps track of how long the body is awake In mice, sleep is induced and asleep, and triggers “sleep pressure” when the by light, and alertness by dark- © Dkhissi-B body suffers from sleep deprivation. Though light ness. In their study, the scien- Section of a mouse response to light stimulation, contrary to was known to influence the circadian mecha- tists observed that melanopsin- retina showing the rods and cones, which only respond to cones of the outer layer nism via melanopsin, its effects on non-circa- deficient mice slept about one (green), and a large transient changes in light. dian processes were considered minor. Now, in a hour less than control mice melanopsin-expressing To explore this process in vivo, the team recent study,1 a team from CNRS’ INCI2 reveals during light phases, and that ganglion cell (red) in studied the pupillary light reflex in humans. that light detection by melanopsin acts directly on their level of alertness, induced the inner layer. Input from all photoreceptors causes the non-circadian mechanisms and that circadian by darkness, was lowered. human pupil to constrict. However, the and non-circadian routes interact with one another. Despite their lack of sleep, electrocorticography scientists observed that rods and cones only allow recordings showed that melanopsin-deficient an initial transient constriction of the pupil, mice did not “catch up” on sleep. On the contrary, whereas melanopsin produces a stabilized state they presented a trend of decreased sleep, which of sustained constriction in response to light. suggests that depriving mice of melanopsin The team suggests that “a normal sustained disrupts their homeostatic system. More generally, pupillary constriction requires melanopsin, which these observations suggest that light influences remains photosensitive even during extended the sleep-wake cycle not only through circadian exposure to light,” says Cooper. The authors routes, but also non-circadian mechanisms, both hypothesize that exploiting melanopsin’s also paves the way for devel- via melanopsin. “Confirmation of these findings bi-stability and its sustained response capability oping molecules related to NA in humans could lead to important applications could lead to clinical applications for improving as novel actors in the field of for light therapy and better lighting phototherapy to treat dysfunctional circadian bio- and phyto-remediation,” management,” says Patrice Bourgin, co-author rhythms of sleep, or seasonal depression. indicates Arnoux. of the study. Clémentine Wallace 3 Fui Lee Luk The second study, led by CNRS researcher 1. J.W. Tsai et al., “Melanopsin as a sleep modulator: 4 1. Institut de biologie Howard Cooper, investigates how melanopsin circadian gating of the direct effects of light on sleep and environnementale et de biotechnologie responds to light stimulation. altered sleep homeostasis in Opn4(-/-) mice,” PLoS Biol., 2009. 7(6): e1000125. (CNRS / CEA / Université Aix-Marseille In 2005, in vitro studies had revealed that II). 2. Institut des neurosciences cellulaires et intégratives 2. Commissariat à l’énergie atomique. the transduction of light signals by melanopsin (CNRS). 3. Institut national de la recherche more closely resembles that of invertebrate pho- 3. L.A. Mure et al., “Melanopsin bistability: a fly’s eye technology in the human retina,” PLoS One, 2009. 4:e5991. agronomique. topigments than vertebrate rods and cones. When 4. C. Dreyfus et al., “Crystallographic 4. Photoréception et chronobiologie (Inserm U846). snapshots of iterative substrate a photon is absorbed by melanopsin, a response translocations during nicotianamine is elicited but the photopigment also becomes synthesis in archaea,” PNAS, 2009. 106: 16180-4. desensitized. In contrast to rod and cone 5. Unicellular micro-organisms that thrive photopigments that require the enzymatic CONTACT INFORMATION in extreme conditions. retinoid cycle to restore their light sensitivity, Patrice Bourgin INCI, Strasbourg. CONTACT INFORMATION melanopsin uses the absorption of a second [email protected] Pascal Arnoux photon to regenerate the photopigment. This Howard Cooper CEA, St Paul lez Durance. light-driven reversibility, called “bistability,” is Inserm 846, Bron. [email protected] what enables melanopsin to maintain a sustained [email protected]

St Paul les Durance 1 CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 10 LIVEFROMTHELABS news

BIOTECHNOLOGY circulatory system: they flutter about freely in Cellular Biology on a Chip the currents. And if lymphocytes are butterflies, Liviu Nicu 1 is an avid collector. With colleagues in Grenoble, Researchers at the Toulouse-based LAAS have devised new types the LAAS-based physicist has developed a method of chips enabling three-dimensional imaging of cells and for pinning down lymphocytes to a microscopic experimentation at the single-cell level. chip.3 By doing so, scientists can now study these key elements of the body’s immune system on an individual cell basis. o matter how good a microscope’s res- sional model that gives researchers a deeper “The challenge is that these cells do not nor- olution, the two-dimensional view in understanding of their subjects. mally stick onto a surface, because they move its eyepiece will only reveal a small part The device is especially useful for tracking fast about constantly through the blood vessels in Nof a cell’s mysteries. biological reactions, like those involving DNA, our body. To study how the cell operates on a “To get 3D images,” explains Aurélien without risking damage to the cells through the single cell level, you have to find a way to stick the Bancaud of LAAS, “a researcher would need multiple light flashes required by more cum- cell onto a surface and study it while it is still alive multiple images of the cell from multiple bersome 3D imaging techniques. Bancaud’s par- on this surface,” explains Nicu. angles”—a process that up to now was both slow ticular interest is to study yeast chromosomes, and The solution is to glue each cell into place in and damaging to the cells being studied. the first experiments using the chip tracked the an orderly fashion. He thus devised a “bio-pen” Bancaud has devised an elegantly simple actions of a fluorescent-tagged chromosome in —a series of micro-scaled silver silicon cantilevers. solution—a mirrored chip2—with an unlikely yeast cells, which he was able to capture in almost Each pen is filled with a biological solution, inspiration. “When you walk into certain hotel real time. which is deposited by simple contact onto surfaces bathrooms, there are mirrors that you can adjust Although the size and angle of the mirrors for different applications. to see yourself head-on or from the sides. Basi- are easily adjustable, the technology is currently In this case, the solution was specifically for- cally, we adopted that technology, but adjusted the best suited to smaller cells like yeast; the larger mulated to hold slippery lymphocytes in place, size for yeast cells,” says Bancaud. the cell, the more distant its organelles from the though the system could easily be adapted for Of course, he is simplifying matters. Bancaud, mirror. Bancaud is collaborating with researchers other types of cells or viruses. The end result is whose background is in biophysics, used the in Paris to test the feasibility of using his chip to a chip containing orderly rows of cells. Each cell LAAS microfabrication facility to create a tiny observe neurites—small projections from a can then be exposed to stresses and chemicals, silicon wafer, into which were grooved several neuron. and its reactions tested and measured individu- trenches. When coated with a thin sheen of While yeast cells are easily trapped and guided ally—unlike in the free-flowing chaos of a Petri aluminum, the sides of these grooves formed a by Bancaud’s reflective trenches, lymphocytes dish, where tracking the reaction of a single cell two-angled mirror. are much more difficult to pin down. Lympho- is almost impossible. Yeast cells with fluorescent-tagged proteins, cytes are like cellular butterflies in the human “The challenge is to look at the pathologies when passed through the trenches of this on the single-cell level,” Bio-pens depositing specific reflective “lab on a chip,” become visible from antibodies on a slide to trap says Nicu. The applica- multiple angles in a single viewing. These images live cells. tions for this system are can then be combined to create a three-dimen- many: it could be used in drug screening, for example, and the technology has already been licensed by a French private company (Microbiochip, Paris) for manufacturing

© L.Nicu protein chips on-demand. Mark Reynolds 1. Laboratoire d’analyse et d’architecture des systèmes (CNRS). 2. H. Hajjoul et al., “Lab-on-chip for fast 3D particle tracking in cells,” Lab on a Chip, 2009. 9: 3054-8. 3. Y. Roupioz et al., “Individual Blood-Cell Capture and 2D Capture on Microarrays,” Small, 2009. 5: 1493-7.

Toulouse 1

A hundred of V-shaped micro-mirrors (orange scheme) allow 3D imaging of biological material (here CONTACT INFORMATION yeast nuclei, in the lower LAAS, Toulouse. right corner) by this lab-on- Aurélien Bancaud, [email protected]

illa/LBME V

. a-chip device. Liviu Nicu, [email protected] © D

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 LIVEFROMTHELABS 11

COSMOCHEMISTRY 1Nancy Isotopic Stopwatch

ew high-precision analyses extremely precise (on the order of The glassy matrix of the aluminum radioiso- 100,000 years), is still “relative,” (green) embedding tope 26 (26Al) reveal that it since it can only date objects in pyroxene crystals N (purple) in this was distributed homogeneously relation to one another. sample from the across the nascent Solar System, To make it reliable, and allow Semarkona giving researchers fundamental scientists to retrace a precise meteorite is the insight into its chaotic beginnings. chronology of the formation of oldest glass To come to this conclusion, solids, one would have to prove that known in the solar S system. scientists looked at the oldest solid the aluminum isotope was distrib- materials in our Solar System, uted homogeneously throughout 5 µm primitive meteorites known as chon- the early Solar System. ©CRPG/CNR drites. These are made up of round This is what Johan Villeneuve their 26Al initial content is very The next step is to establish grain-like particles—called chon- from CRPG1 and his colleagues set homogeneous. possible correlations between the drules—and calcium-aluminum- out to show.2 “Since the aluminum isotope’s chondrules’ formation times and rich inclusions (CAIs). The team used the secondary homogeneity is present in the oldest their petrographic and chemical For the past 30 years, cosmo- ion mass spectrometer (SIMS), a materials as well as in more recent characteristics. chemists have dated meteorites high-precision tool that can measure constituents, this homogenisation Marion Girault-Rime 26 using Al, a short-lived isotope with isotope abundance in natural rock must have occured very early on,” 1. Centre de recherches pétrographiques et a half-life of just 730,000 years, samples, to analyze the Semarkona explains Villeneuve. This validates géochimiques (CNRS). which is believed to have been abun- meteorite. This chondrite, which the use of 26Al as a chronometer to 2. J. Villeneuve et al., “Homogeneous distribution of 26Al in the Solar System dant during the formation of the fell in India in 1940, has remained measure the timing of chondrule from the Mg isotopic composition of Solar System, more than 4.56 billion relatively unaltered by thermal and formation. chondrules,” Science, 2009. 325: 985-8. years ago. chemical changes since its forma- “It also helps us understand the Though no longer in existence, tion, more than four billion years Solar System’s evolution models,” this isotope radioactively decays to ago. They found that although adds Villeneuve, “since such solids CONTACT INFORMATION 26 the magnesium isotope ( Mg), Semarkona’s chondrules have very underwent the first condensation Johan Villeneuve which can be effectively measured. different formation ages, spanning and accretion processes that finally CRPG, Nancy. This dating method, although a range of about three million years, led to the formation of planets.” [email protected]

BIOCHEMISTRY

Enzyme Displays Astonishing Property 1 Clermont-Ferrand

arielle Lemaire and her upon which an enzyme acts) within erons for glycosidases. To do so, one our field,” has been described in an team at SEESIB,1 who study the cells. can use enzymes that catalyse the article labelled VIP—Very Impor- Menzymes that form sugar For a few years now, a thera- formation of sugar analogues. A tant Paper.3 The perspectives opened analogues, have made an accidental peutic strategy called “chaperon few months ago, her team began by this discovery remain to be and unexpected discovery: an molecular therapy” aims to create studying one of these “resource” explored: from diabetes treatment to enzyme that can produce both small chaperon molecules, which, enzymes: D-Fructose-6-phosphate artificial sweeteners, it will all glucose and fructose depending on combined with the ill-built enzyme, Aldolase, which usually produces depend on where industry takes it. the substrate it uses. will restore its functional form and sugars from the fructose family. Marie-Hélène Towhill Her team and that of Pere reinstate its biocatalytic properties. What they stumbled on was an 1. Laboratoire Synthèse et études de Clapès2 in Spain are looking for The researchers’ goal is to produce unusual peculiarity: this specific systèmes à intérêt biologiques, Aubière therapeutic solutions to treat chaperon molecules that look like aldolase also creates sugars of the (CNRS/ Université Blaise Pascal). 2. Instituto de Quimica Avanzada de diseases affecting the lysosome, an the natural substrate of the targeted glucose family, an ability never Cataluña-CSIC, Barcelona. organelle of the cells whose function enzyme so that chaperon and described before within the scope of 3. X. Garrabou et al., “Asymmetric Self- and is intra-cellular digestion, carried enzyme will easily interact with one this enzyme group. “What makes Cross-Aldol Reactions of Glycolaldehyde Catalyzed by D-Fructose-6-phosphate out by over 50 enzymes. In these another. this enzyme exceptional is its abil- Aldolase,” Angew Chem Int Ed Engl., 2009. rare genetic afflictions, a deficient In this field, Lemaire was ity to catalyse reactions with varied 48: 5521-5. gene leads to the production of ill- particularly interested in some substrates. Usually, enzymes, like built enzymes, which cannot play glycosidases, enzymes that digest locks, only work with one key and their natural role of biocatalyst. Their sugars in the lysosome. Her team only generate a reaction with specific CONTACT INFORMATION deficiency generates a toxic wanted to create specifically- molecules,” explains Lemaire. Marielle Lemaire accumulation of metabolites (the designed chaperons that resembled This “exotic” property, “absolutely SEESIB, Clermont-Ferrand. natural substrates or molecules sugars and would be tested as chap- stunning for scientists working in [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine 6n°1January 2010 CNRS Magazine n°OFall 2005 12 LIVEFROMTHELABS news

1 Paris GEOPHYSICS 09 Shear wave velocity perturbations, here measured Earth’s Good Vibrations at a depth of 140 km, and collected at stations all over the world (black dots), tell ur planet is humming, and graphic methods, where section scientists about the Earth’s this hum relates to the Earth’s images are compiled from structure. Ostructure below its crust. This earthquake data. Images can be © K. Nishida et al. Science 20 finding,1 that also promises to help created on the basis that seismic possible to track the speed and path modeled by tapping into their hums. delve into the structures of planets waves evolve as they travel through of specific sounds passing through This solution, Montagner believes, beyond our own, was revealed by a various geological formations. For the Earth’s crust and thus establish could work “on Mars and Venus, collaboration between teams from example, they travel more quickly phase-velocity maps. planets with atmospheres dense the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake through cold, dense volumes than By associating wave velocity enough to excite their own hums.” Research Institute and the Institute through hot, less dense ones. fluctuations with variations in the Ideally, this possibility would be of Earth Physics of Paris (IPGP).2 While traditional tomography mantle’s physical and chemical tested by setting up a network of In 1998, Japanese scientists dis- can only use data from strong composition, the team successfully stations on the planets and operating covered that vibrations coursing earthquakes to generate images, the derived a 3D model of the upper them for several years. through the Earth generated a hum, Franco-Japanese team has come up mantle.4 The feasibility of this Fui Lee Luk said to result from the interaction with an alternative that “could work approach, capable of plunging to 1. K. Nishida et al., “Global Surface Wave between solid landmasses and fluid without quakes, relying instead on depths of 500 km, is confirmed by Tomography Using Seismic Hum,” Science, layers of air and water. Since then, the Earth’s perpetual and ubiquitous its correlation with mantle models 2009. 326: 112. 2. Institut de physique du globe de Paris researchers have been listening very hum,” says Jean-Paul Montagner of established from seismic data. (CNRS / Université Paris Diderot / IPG). attentively to our planet’s song, the IPGP. Where the team’s method 3. Frequencies of 2-10 mHz. trying to read more into the melody. Using data from 1986 to 2003, promises to go even further is in 4. Indicating the speed at which a given phase of a wave travels. For though this low-frequency3 the team analyzed the hum’s sound the exploration of other terrestrial hum may elude human ears, it nev- waves gathered by 54 stations planets. Since the existence of CONTACT INFORMATION ertheless speaks volumes—literally. around the globe. As hum variations quakes on such planets is not Jean-Paul Montagner Until now, the Earth’s subsur- caused by atmospheric disturbances demonstrated, the team posits that IPGP, Paris. face has been explored by tomo- or ocean swells occur randomly, it is their mantles may instead be [email protected]

CELL BIOLOGY Stem Cells: Renewal vs Differentiation GEOPHYSICS ematopoietic stem cells (HSC) can poten- and stimulates them to proliferate. “We have tially give rise to any of the blood cell types. shown that the transcription factor MafB Largest French HBut when a stem cell divides, how is the modulates stem cells’ sensitivity to the cytokine decision taken to simply duplicate itself or to M-CSF,” explains Sieweke. When MafB level is differentiate into a specific new cell type? high, stem cells are less sensitive to the action of Glacier Melting A team led by Michael Sieweke at the M-CSF. Conversely, reduced levels of MafB make The Cook ice cap in the Kerguelen Immunology Center of Marseille-Luminy1 it possible for the cytokine to stimulate the stem Islands, a French territory in the addressed this question by examining how cell to specifically give rise to myeloid cells. southern Indian Ocean, has shrunk at hematopoietic stem cells generate myeloid cells, Although focused on hematopoietic stem an ever increasing speed over the last a type of white blood cell that fights infections. To cells, this study might be relevant for other types 20 years.1 gather evidence, lab member Sandrine Sarrazin of stem cells. It may also provide clues on how Matching satellite data from 1991, investigated the very first divisions of stem cells abnormal blood stem cells multiply in leukemia, 2001, and 2003 with historical data drawn from mouse bone marrow.2 and help develop treatment methods. Potentially, from 1963, researchers from LEGOS2 “To isolate stem cells, we harvested all the one might also learn how to orient the differen- observed a 22% volume loss over the cells contained in the bone marrow, then sorted tiation of blood cells in a deliberate direction, for 40-year period, a process which hematopoietic stem cells by Fluorescence Activated example making more white blood cells to fight accelerated in recent years. Cell Sorting (FACS),” she explains. These cells an infection. On average, the ice mass has thinned were then either studied in vitro or reinjected into Melisande Middleton by 1.5 meters per year, a much faster the spleen of a mouse, to follow their commitment 1. Université Aix-Marseille-II / CNRS / Inserm. pace than that recorded for other to the myeloid lineage in situ.” 2. S. Sarrazin et al., “MafB Restricts M-CSF-Dependent glaciers in the world. The team discovered that the decision to Myeloid Commitment Divisions of Hematopoietic Stem Cells,” Cell, 2009. 138: 300-13. Scientists believe global warming, generate myeloid cells results from the joint action through high temperatures and low of two proteins. One is located inside the cell (a CONTACT INFORMATION precipitation since the 1980s, is partly transcription factor, which turns different genes Michael Sieweke responsible for the melting. But since on or off), while the other is a cytokine—a small CNRS, Marseille. the ice loss started in the 1960s, protein that carries signals locally between cells [email protected]

Marseille CNRS International Magazine 6n°1January 2010 1 LIVEFROMTHELABS 13

NEUROBIOLOGY Memory Improves with Sleep Not only does “sleeping on it” help with decision-making, it also lets us memorize important information acquired during the day. Recent research throws new and astonishing light on this process.

hough apparently asleep, a healthy rat is stood the task, they were allowed to go to sleep. busy memorizing its way through a The scientists were then able to compare

specially-designed maze it had earlier neural activity during wakefulness and sleep. © G. Girardeau been placed in. “When the rat was carrying out its task, neu- Sleeping right after The other part of this T 4 These neurophysiological processes, ronal assemblies developed which were acti- this exercise will help research concerns the role specifically the mechanisms of memorization vated simultaneously in the cortex and hip- the rat remember of the hippocampus in where to find the food during sleep, were recently investigated1,2 by pocampus. Then, during sleep, we observed that this dialogue with the in the maze. researchers from LPPA.3 the same patterns were reproduced,” explains cortex. Cortex-hippocam- According to the most widely-accepted LPPA researcher Adrien Peyrache. In other pus interactions occur hypothesis, during sleep a dialogue takes place words, the rat was dreaming about the maze: specifically when the latter emits very rapid between two structures in the brain—the the cortex and hippocampus together “replayed” electrical oscillations called “ripples.” “The most hippocampus and the cortex—which enables the events that the animal had just experienced, common hypothesis is that ripples allow memory long-term memorization of information in the letting the rat assimilate new knowledge. But consolidation during sleep, probably by cortex. Yet until now, this dialogue had never there is more: “We realized that neural activity transferring labile memories to the cortex,” really been observed. To meet this challenge, the during sleep corresponded to that which occurred explains Gabrielle Girardeau, another researcher researchers implanted electrodes in the brains of when the rat had understood a task during wake- at LPPA. This is the hypothesis that the scientists rats to observe ongoing neural activity. The fulness. In other words, the brain only replayed wanted to test. rodents were placed in a maze where they had to episodes in which the rat’s behavior was the For this, they placed rats in a chamber shaped learn a specific task, such as turning right at most efficient.” Thus the animal first and fore- like an eight-pointed star. A reward was each junction, for example. Once they had under- most retained what would prove useful to him. placed at the end of three of the points (always the same). The rats were encouraged to explore the star to find the reward, and were then allowed to go to sleep. During their sleep, the scientists used electrodes to apply very weak electrical pulses to the rats’ hippocampi. Though this did not wake the rodents or disturb other parts of their brain, it specifically blocked the ripples. The result was that during the 15-day experiment, treated rats found it difficult to memorize the rewarding points of the star, unlike the control rats that were highly successful. “The ripples thus play a fundamental role in memory erthier (LEGOS) consolidation, probably by transmitting information to the cortex.” Sebastián Escalón raitement E. B T 1. A. Peyrache et al., “Replay of rule-learning related neural patterns in the prefrontal cortex during sleep,” Nat. Neurosci., 2009. 12: 919-26. 3D view of the 2. G. Girardeau et al., “Selective suppression of hippocampal ripples impairs spatial memory,” Nat. Lapparent nunatak Neurosci., 2009. 12: 1222-3. (region of Ampère 3. Laboratoire de physiologie de la perception et de l’action glacier) with its (CNRS/ Collège de France). outline in 1963 (white) 4. A subpopulation of coordinated cells whose synchronous and 2001 (red). discharge is associated with internal process and information encoding. © CNES 2003 / Distribution Spot Image researchers also put the blame on the 1. E. Berthier et al., J. Geophys. Res., 2009. 114 glacier’s delayed response to the doi:10.1029/2008JF001192. 2. Laboratoire d’études en géophysique et CONTACT INFORMATION natural warming that followed the océanographie spatiales (CNRS / IRD / CNES / 1 LPPS, Paris. Université Paul Sabatier). Paris Little Ice Age, a cold period that Gabrielle Girardeau ended in the second half of the 19th > Contact Information: Etienne Berthier, [email protected] century. [email protected] Adrien Peyrache [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 14 LIVEFROMTHELABS news

PALEONTOLOGY In the Footsteps of the Largest Dinosaurs

In early October of last year, CNRS announced the discovery, near the city of Lyon, 1Lyon of the largest dinosaur footprints ever found. How significant is this discovery and what can these footprints tell us about the animals that left them?

hen Marie-Hélène Marcaud and given that the dinosaur tracks are more than 150 needed to stop first,” adds Mazin. “They were Patrice Landry, two nature million years old. certainly incapable of running, and were pretty enthusiasts, came across oval tracks Beyond simply breaking a size record (the much trudging along, keeping three W 1.5 m long in Plagne in April 2009, largest footprints until now measured 1.2 m) paws on the ground at any one time. In fact, they immediately reached out to Pierre “what interests us is the wealth of information even to lift a single paw must have required a Hantzpergue and Jean-Michel Mazin from the these footprints will reveal about the animals huge effort.” PEPS laboratory.1 who left them,” says Mazin. “We will be able to What were these dinosaurs doing in an area “These tracks were left by some of the largest understand how they walked.” And it must have that was covered by sea for millions of years animals to ever walk the planet,” says Mazin, been something of a challenge, considering the during the Jurassic period? “We know that at who is studying the large soil depressions, animal’s weight. According to known sauropod the end of this period, the region was frequently together with geologist Hantzpergue. Beyond skeletons, the footprints suggest these dinosaurs immersed,” says Hantzpergue. These dinosaurs, their unusual size, Mazin also notes the presence were more than 25 meters in length and weighed which were 300 km further north, probably took of a fold of limestone sediment towards the front more than 40 tons. The weight at which a living advantage of a drop in sea level to head south. of the prints. “The fold was formed when the being would collapse under its own weight is Vegetation-covered islets, interspersed through- animal’s paw sank into mud,” he explains. only 10 or 20 tons off... out this vast muddy plain, probably provided He also recognizes evidence of quadruped To reconstruct a few minutes of the life of a food for the expedition. “To know more, we need locomotion, with alternating prints made by the 40-ton giant from these footprints—some 20 to reconstruct the lives of these sauropods, mainly front and back paws. “In this case, the animal foot- have already been uncovered—the researchers by using fossils of other animals we hope to print partly overlaps its handprint. The hand- want to work with biophysicists who will provide find,” says the geologist. print thus only appears as a thin crescent-shaped biomechanical equations for quadruped So, how did the footprints survive until now? print at the front of the footprint.” locomotion, models that have already been used Made in carbonated mud and preserved from As for Hantzpergue, he is dating the foot- on smaller dinosaurs from the same family. the paths of other animals, they probably dried prints by biostratigraphy. “This involves studying Using the distance between footprints, the fairly quickly in the sun. “They were then covered the different strata which have built up under the researchers hope to calculate the speed at which by several hundreds of meters of sediment, and footprints to analyze the fossils within them, the animal was moving—probably no more than later exposed through the erosion that created the notably ammonites,” he explains. Ammonites 4 km/h—as well as determine its acceleration and Jura’s topography,” says Hantzpergue. More went through a very rapid morphological evolu- deceleration. The angle between footprints left by recently, a path used to carry wood led to the tion, which makes it possible to date, in relative the right and left feet is expected to reveal the removal of the top layer of soil, virtually exposing terms, the strata where they are found to within maneuverability of the animal, which was the footprints. 150,000 years. This is a precise enough estimate, probably very limited. “To turn, they probably Further exploration has suggested the presence of other tracks, hundreds of meters away, under 10 to 50 cm of earth and plant cover. Uncovering them will mean digging up a meadow of several hectares. The whole area needs to be mapped, through laser survey of the tracks and aerial photography. This research is expected to take three to four years for a team of 30 people whom the researchers hope to recruit. They will also need to secure funding, possibly from the regional authorities of the area, in order to pursue their work and uncover more sauropod footprints. Charline Zeitoun 1. Paléoenvironnements et paléobiosphère (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon-I).

.paleospot.com CONTACT INFORMATION PEPS, Lyon. 09/www Artist’s rendering of sauropods Jean-Michel Mazin (yellow) whose footprints [email protected] were found at Plagne. Pierre Hantzpergue

A. Beneteau 20 A. Beneteau [email protected] ©

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 On location LIVEFROMTHELABS 15

ECOLOGY 1 Grenoble draw enough phosphorus and nitrogen from Uncharted Territory the soil, they are not able to grow. The other complementary hypothesis has to do with the microbial diversity of the soil. For nutrition and Last October, a group of explorers crossed one of the last unknown growth, trees rely on the activity of soil bacteria expanses on Earth, the Cordillera Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, and fungi that recycle nutrients. The growth southern Patagonia. CNRS researchers took advantage of this barrier for trees may result from differences in the abundance and species of microorganisms unique expedition to collect samples that will help them understand in forest soils. how species adapt to the harshest climates. During the one-month expedition, Ibanez, aboard the Nueva Galicia vessel which served as the expedition’s logistical base, performed several excursions to take soil and leaf samples. He collected 120 samples, around 15 kg altogether, in the three plant communities that are distributed along an altitude gradient from sea level up to 650 meters. “This is the most difficult but also the most beautiful field work I’ve ever done,” he comments. “Sometimes, to reach the most interesting areas, it was necessary to cut a path through ice fallen from the glaciers, or to dig holes over a meter deep in the ice,” he adds. The collected samples are now being analyzed at a Chilean laboratory2 which LECA has been cooperating with for several years. DNA samples will be brought back to LECA to be sequenced in order to characterize the local microbial biodiversity. One of the key assets of this research is that

. Estienne it was carried out in virgin ecosystems. “When Y © we do research in the here is little doubt the spirit of great In Patagonia, the team Alps, for example, we trekked a 100 km across explorers like Darwin, Humboldt, or passes, peaks, and know we are working in Bougainville escorted the French unknown glaciers. places that have been Texpedition which left in late September cleared, colonized, and to travel through one of the last unexplored used for agriculture or regions on Earth, the Darwin Cordillera in the experiments to be con- forestry throughout southernmost part of Patagonia. ducted. “The moun- history,” says Lavorel. “In The participants included mountaineers, taineers wanted to leave this remote part of Tierra researchers, photographers, as well as a at the beginning of del Fuego, there has been . Estienne Y filmmaker and a writer. As during the golden age spring for the Southern © no human interference. of world exploration, all aspects of discovery were Hemisphere, when the snow bridges still fill All the physiological traits of the species are present on this six-week expedition, aptly called crevasses. That’s why we decided to base our directly related to climatic conditions.” The expe- “A Darwin dream.” research on trees, the only plant form that would dition should lead to insights into the evolution “The original idea came from a group of emerge from the snow cover.” and adaptation of species to the harshest cli- mountain guides who wanted to set up an expe- More specifically, researchers decided to look mates. And these will provide precious dition to an unexplored region of Earth. They set- at the subantarctic beech Nothofagus pumilio. information at a time when climate change is hit- tled on the Darwin Cordillera fairly quickly. Even Although this beech originated in the Southern ting subantarctic regions full on. though some of the coastal peaks of the range have Hemisphere and is well adapted to rigorous Sebastián Escalón been climbed, no one has ever attempted to cross climatic conditions, it cannot grow above a certain 1. Laboratoire d’écologie alpine (CNRS / Université the entire length of the range,” explains Sandra altitude. “Research carried out in New Zealand Grenoble-I / Université Chambéry). Lavorel, CNRS senior researcher at LECA1 in on related beech species shows that the altitude 2. Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad, Universidad Católica de Chile. Grenoble. “Yvan Estienne, the expedition leader, limit is not only climatic—if the only issue were wanted to add a scientific dimension to the project. temperature, beech forests would be found at That’s how I got involved.” As an ecosystems higher altitudes.” Previous observations in Chile specialist for regions with extreme climates, she and New Zealand point to an “invisible barrier” planned the scientific project together with that beech trees cannot cross. Sébastien Ibanez, also from LECA, who actually What is the true nature of this barrier? The CONTACT INFORMATION participated in the expedition and collected the scientists will attempt to test two hypotheses. Sandra Lavorel samples. For once, it is the expedition itself that The first one focuses on the availability of LECA, Grenoble. determined the direction of research and the nutrients. If above a certain elevation trees cannot [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

16 LIVEFROMTHELABS Profile

2009 CNRS GOLD MEDAL Serge Haroche: Photon Tamer Serge Haroche is the recipient of the 2009 CNRS Gold Medal, the highest French scientific award. This outstanding physicist was able to carry out some of the most elaborate thought experiments ever imagined by the inventors of quantum physics, over a hundred years ago, in order to observe the infinitesimally small.

iels Bohr once argued that truth and clarity probes to detect radiation with very high sensi- After an early appointment at CNRS, Haroche could not simultaneously be achieved, but tivity. In the cavity experiments, these probes, moved to Pierre and Marie Curie University NSerge Haroche’s work shows us that they called Rydberg atoms, cross the cavity and carry where he became physics professor in 1975, can be,” says MIT Professor Daniel Kleppner, away with them a print of the photonic state, while keeping his research activity at ENS. talking about the 2009 CNRS Gold Medal just like X-rays can take prints of a body’s inter- Between 1981 and 1993, he also held both visit- laureate. nal structures. In this way, the photons’ state is ing and part time positions at Stanford, MIT, As the leading pioneer of quantum theory, revealed as an abstract picture containing all the Harvard, and Yale. Niels Bohr, together with Werner Heisenberg, information about its quantum features. Such Today, Haroche is head of the “Electro- Erwin Schrödinger, and a few other scientific studies of single quantum systems would have dynamics of simple systems” group at the Kastler heavyweights, revealed the strange world of the amazed Bohr,Heisenberg, or Schrödinger. Brossel laboratory and professor of quantum infinitesimally small. They imagined a number Haroche’s interest in science began when physics at the Collège de France. He has authored of thought experiments to illustrate the state he arrived in Paris in 1956, after a childhood more than 170 publications and has received a superposition of particles, and Serge Haroche, spent in Casablanca (Morocco). In high school, number of scientific awards. As for the CNRS now 65, has worked hard over the last 30 years he discovered a passion for math and realized to turn these experiments into reality. with amazement that nature obeyed mathemat- At such a scale, one can neither measure ical laws. Admitted to the prestigious “Ecole nor accurately predict both the velocity and Normale Supérieure” (ENS) in 1963, he partic- CATS IN A CAVITY position of a particle at the same time: it can be ularly appreciated the fact that he could imme- both here and there, or spin clockwise and coun- diately start working in a research lab. Cavity experiments carried out by the team at terclockwise. The quantum systems are so to Three years later, he began working on his the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (LKB) study the speak “suspended” between different classical PhD in the Laboratoire de Spectroscopie strange nature of the principle of superposition realities, their state being described by so-called Hertzienne at ENS (now renamed Laboratoire by performing what physicists call a 1 “quantum superpositions.” “In our work, we Kastler Brossel ), which was—and still is—at the “Schrödinger’s cat” experiment, in reference to observe the state superpositions of systems made forefront of quantum physics research. At the a famous thought experiment formulated by of a few particles,” Haroche explains. “Our goal time, major leaders in the field were working Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. is to catch the moment when a system ceases to there, like Jean Brossel, who was later awarded To illustrate the superposition of particle states, be quantum and becomes classical. This the CNRS Gold Medal (1984), or Alfred Kastler, Schrödinger imagined the following set-up: in a transition from one world to the other is called the winner of the 1966 Nobel Prize in Physics. sealed box are placed a cat and a flask of decoherence. It happens because the coherence His thesis advisor, Claude Cohen Tannoudji poison whose condition depends on the state of the system is somewhat disturbed by its (1997 Nobel Prize in Physics) guided Haroche’s of a radioactive atom. If the atom decays, the macroscopic environment which forces it to take first steps into the world of atoms and photons. flask shatters, killing the cat. If it doesn’t decay, an unambiguous stand in the classical the flask remains intact, and realm.” the cat alive. According to Haroche has become a master in quantum theory, there is a the art of catching quantum coher- time during which the state ence, i.e., the state superpositions of of the atom is uncertain: it is particles. To observe this phenome- just as likely to have non, he confines a few photons to a trap decayed as to have remained (see box), forcing them to bounce back intact. In other words, the and forth, more than a billion times, atom is in a superposition of between two highly reflective mirrors. two states, and so is the cat: In this device, called an electromag- there is no way of knowing netic cavity, the captive photons survive whether it is dead or alive, it more than a tenth of a second before is both things at once. decaying into the mirrors. This gives In the experiments at LKB, Haroche enough time to observe their the cat is replaced by a quantum state and witness the decoherence phenomenon. In the 1970s, he was the first to Serge Haroche and his ebendinsky/CNRS Photothèque suggest using highly excited atoms as colleague Igor Dotsenko are

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 Profile LIVEFROMTHELABS 17

Gold Medal, “I consider it an acknowledgment of a team’s work and a mark of CNRS’ commitment to basic research,” he says. Haroche is already thinking about the future, with a full program ahead: “Our objective is to improve the cavity experiments in order to control decoherence: we want to find ways to delay it as much as possible and better understand why it occurs,” he adds. He also wants to further some of the possible applications of his work in quantum information physics. “This field has been thriving over the last 15 years and has led to the development of innovative technologies such as quantum cryptography.” Haroche is a team player and never misses an opportunity to pay tribute to his students and co-workers, primarily Jean-Michel Raimond and Michel Brune, who have been his students and are now his colleagues and co-workers at the Kastler Brossel laboratory. “I could have done nothing without them,” he says. “The work rewarded today is their achievement as much as it is mine.” Emilie Badin 1. CNRS / ENS Paris / Université Paris-VI.

handful of photons (from the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum). To capture the superposition of states, the team seals up the photons in a cavity, or more specifically between two circular walls 5 cm in diameter that face each other. The walls are covered with ultra-high- reflectivity mirrors cooled to a near absolute zero temperature. In this set- up, the photons bounce back and forth between the walls over a billion times, which means that they travel 40,000 km, the same distance as the circumference of Earth. This considerably delays the moment at which they are absorbed by the mirrors. Their lifespan is extended to 130 milliseconds, which is enough time to observe the quantum system before decoherence takes place. But how can the quantum system be prepared in a Schrödinger cat state and then be observed? The key is to prepare and detect it with special probe atoms—atoms placed in a Rydberg state through laser excitation1—which are extremely sensitive to microwave photons. “Our goal is to catch Crossing the cavity one by one, the Rydberg atoms manage to carry an imprint of the field state without absorbing light energy or significantly the moment when a disturbing the system. From these imprints, the team creates a “quantum map,” a kind of image of the state of the field trapped in the cavity. Two system ceases to be peaks can be distinguished, the signatures of classical states (the equivalent of the “dead” and “alive” states of Schrödinger’s cat) between quantum and which are interference fringes, signs of quantum superposition. When a quantum map of the field as a function of time is created, the fringes becomes classical.” progressively fade away, revealing the process of quantum decoherence. E.B.

1. Named after the physicist Johannes Rydberg, one of the founders of atomic spectroscopy.

CONTACT INFORMATION Serge Haroche LKB, Paris. [email protected]

18 COVERSTORY

NANO- ONICS ; O ELECTR O SCIENCE AGA

TEC® ; DAEW TECHNO- YMBIO -S UPDATE . Launois/LPS; F. Caillaud/CNRS Photothèque/S

ou et P LOGY arlini/Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies ; HERBOL 09 ; A.P CLE INTERNATIONAL 20 ed ; 2009 Nikon Corporation ; F. Semond; J. Cambedouz v Nanotechnology is already a part y ; LOOK CY of everyday life. Carbon nanotubes, for instance, are used in the manufacturing of golf clubs and golf balls, as well as bicycle

Apple Inc. All rights reser frames. Nanomaterials are also 09 used in cosmetics (sunscreen, anti-ageing creams, etc.), tires, electronics, paints and varnishes, or anti-bacterial systems in some 09 Michelin ; 20 © Science Museum/Science and Societ 20 washing machines.

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 COVERSTORY 19

Four years ago, CNRS International Magazine covered the spectacular take-off of nanoscience and nanotechnology, set to revolutionize entire disciplines, from medicine to electronics. What Cover of the Spring 2006 edition of CNRS progress has been made since then? Are there already real-world International Magazine. Four years applications? Have there been any catastrophic failures? What new on, what are the latest developments in challenges face today’s researchers—and what is France’s role in nanotechnology? this rapidly-expanding field? Last October, the country’s public debate commission (CNDP),1 launched a national debate on nanotechnology. CNRS International Magazine revisits the field and - explores its latest discoveries to take a look at the current state of play. Our first finding? That nanotechnology is indeed delivering on

its promise. Special report by Philippe Testard-Vaillant

anoscience and nanotechnology Then, there are nanostructured titanium nitride are developing so fast that they are coatings to extend the lifespan of cutting tools, now among the top fields in nanofiltration of ground water and wastewater, research and innovation across silver nanocrystals as an antimicrobial barrier Europe, the US, and Asia, and are in band-aids, inorganic nanoparticles Nthus playing an increasingly important role in incorporated into paints as additives to increase the global economy. Currently estimated at Û100 their resistance to abrasion, inorganic billion, analysts forecast that the international nanoparticles used as UV absorber in sunscreen, nanotechnology market will reach Û1.7 trillion nanocatalysts, nanocomposite packaging by 2014 and make up an astonishing 15% of the materials, and so on. world’s manufacturing output. We are far indeed “In the race towards ever-increasing from nanotechnology’s first faltering steps, and miniaturization, electronics was without a doubt US physicist Richard Feynman’s provocative at the cutting-edge five years ago,” says Jean- 1959 lecture in which he stated that the entire Michel Lourtioz, director of the Institute for Encyclopaedia Britannica could fit on the head Fundamental Electronics (IEF).2 “But of a pin. “There is plenty of room at the bottom,” today, research that blends micro- and he prophetically remarked. nanotechnology with biology and medicine also No longer confined to the laboratory, blossoms at the forefront, and is making nanotechnology is now very much a part of significant progress.” everyday life, with the ubiquitous presence of nanoelectronics in the computing field, the ENTER THE NANOWORLD encapsulation of drugs in nanoparticles, or To begin with, it is worth defining some terms. microdevices for medical analysis and diagnosis. Nanoscience “aims to explore the novel >

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 20 COVERSTORY

> physical, chemical, and mechanical properties NANOSCIENCE VS In this field, “France is in the ‘ivory tower’ cat- that matter takes on at scales of a billionth of a NANOTECHNOLOGY egory,” says Alain Costes, from LAAS.6 “In other meter, while nanotechnology tries to make use How well is France doing in this highly words, we have problems turning the results of of such properties in all sorts of marketable end- aggressive international competition? With some our scientific research into technical innovations products,” explains Claude Weisbuch, of the 3500 yearly publications on the subject, France that can boost economic growth through filing PMC laboratory.3 There are two ways of making takes an honorable fifth place, behind the US, patents. And without a strong reaction within the nano-objects: the top-down approach, which con- Japan, China, and Germany. As for research in French scientific community, faced with extremely sists in gradually shrinking material structures nanotechnology, France, with less than 2% of successful newcomers such as Taiwan, South until you finally reach dimensions that are less worldwide patents, is at a considerable Korea, Singapore, Israel, and Russia, we will grad- than 100 nm; or the bottom-up approach, which disadvantage. ually fall even further behind the group of nations consists in manipulating matter such as atoms and molecules so that they build nano-objects. For purists like Christian Joachim, from CEMES,4 the term nanotechnology should be Precision DRUGS restricted to the latter approach. He believes that the definition has become far too broad, and that There are already a dozen or so in 95% of the cases, the term “nanotechnology” nanodrugs on the market, mainly aimed

is wrongly used. at treating cancer (Caelyx, Doxil, etc.) SCIENCE

In fact, when it comes to building objects or serious fungal infections AGA atom by atom, or experimenting with a single (Ambisome), or used for liver imaging molecule, there has been tremendous progress (Endorem). over the past five years, which can be attributed The nanoparticles used in these drugs to scanning tunneling microscopes (STM) and are 70 times smaller than a red blood atomic force microscopes.5 “Very recently, cell and are completely biodegradable.

researchers at the IBM Research center in Zurich They deliver their active principles Photothèque/S . Caillaud/CNRS succeeded in mapping chemical bonds inside a directly to the diseased organ, tissue, © F molecule of pentacene,” Joachim enthuses. This or cell. Yet not all these nanomedicines Liposomes, vesicles period, and can be is a bit like using X-rays to see inside the human have the same properties. measuring tens to used to target other body. Yet the most fascinating progress is in the First-generation nanomedicines are hundreds of afflictions, like field of mechanics. “We can make molecule- nanometers, make recognized by the immune system as foreign excellent degenerative brain motors, molecule-gears, molecule-wheelbar- bodies and are therefore eliminated via the nanovectors for diseases. Third- rows, etc., with sizes of one to two nanometers. liver, which makes them very useful, but only drugs. generation There’s even an ‘entertaining’ international com- for liver diseases. nanocarriers are now petition on who can make the first molecule-car On the other hand, second-generation being introduced. “Their main advantage is equipped with four wheels and an engine! nanocarriers—so-called “stealth”—are that they are decorated by ‘homing devices’ Though no one really knows what applications covered with hydrophilic, flexible polymers (such as vitamins, hormones, antibodies, these molecule-machines might have, this is that make them invisible to the immune peptides, etc.) that can selectively recognize teaching us how to design machines or circuits system. These nanovectors remain in the the targeted diseased cells,” explains Patrick in a single molecule.” general bloodstream for a much longer Couvreur, director of the PPB laboratory.1 These hyper-miniaturized “missiles” can also carry metal nanoparticles, meaning that the drug can be released at will via ultrasound or radio-frequency heating. Another application of nanovectors that looks highly promising is the delivery of chunks of DNA to cells. “Completely replacing a defective or missing gene is still extremely tricky,” says Couvreur. “Yet nanovectors could be engineered to deliver small fragments of nucleic acids so as to inhibit, for example, the expression of a cancer or a viral gene.” 1. Laboratoire Physicochimie, pharmacotechnie, biopharmacie (CNRS / Université Paris-XI). Patrick Couvreur [email protected]

Researchers incubate nanodrugs with mouse cancer cells to screen for novel aguet/CNRS Photothèque aguet/CNRS anticancer drugs. © H. R

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 COVERSTORY 21

Test set for the light- emitting properties of LEDs.

street and industrial lighting.” To get around this problem, researchers make use of photonic crystals, a type of light cage made up of a regular arrangement of nanostructures that works like reflective road

rin/CNRS Photothèque rin/CNRS signs. This should “improve the er directionality of LEDs,” comments Henri Benisty, from LCFIO,3 “preventing them from

© Photos : E. P Let there be dispersing light in all directions.” The future is already bright for Scanning electron 1. Centre de recherche sur l’hétéroépitaxie et ses light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which NANOLIGHT microscope image applications (CNRS). 2. The lumen is the unit of light flux. are based on semi-conducting develop LEDs that only use a single of micro-disks of aluminum gallium 3. Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l’Institut d’Optique materials—mainly gallium nitride. In fact crystal that can directly emit all colors. nitride, a semi- (CNRS / Université Paris-XI). not a month goes by without engineers To do this, we insert nanometer-sized conductor used to Jean-Yves Duboz finding a new use for LEDs in television components in the crystal, which are little make LEDs. [email protected] sets, remote controls, automobiles, cell chunks of various sizes that emit blue, Henri Benisty phones, street and interior lighting, etc. green, red, etc., together producing white [email protected] “But we’re now trying to incorporate light. On paper, it’s an ideal solution, nanocrystals into them, rather than the though for the moment our LEDs are still conventional layers that convert blue to not powerful enough.” Although their yellow, as in fluorescent tubes,” explains output is actually very efficient, the white Jean-Yves Duboz, director of CNRS’ LEDs now on the market have a luminous Research Center for Heteroepitaxy and efficacy of 100 lumens2 per watt (lm/W), its Applications (CRHEA).1 as opposed to 60 to 80 lm/W for Nanocrystals emit photons (light) when fluorescent lamps and 16 lm/W for electrons (i.e., an electric current) pass incandescent bulbs. “There are through them, and the color of the light prototypes that reach close to 200 lm/W,” emitted depends on the size of the Duboz continues. “But if LEDs are very nanocrystal. “White light is obtained by a efficient when they work at low currents, clever mix of red, blue, and green their efficacy falls off Photonic crystals a little (75 lm/W) at photons, which means that you have to could soon be couple three LEDs,” explains Duboz. the higher currents used to improve

“What we’re trying to do here is to needed for cheaper LED efficiency. © IEEE 2008

that will play a leading international role in the Grenoble. “These three complementary clus- their work,” adds Costes. Eventually, each economic development of nanotechnology.” ters will make it possible, for the first time in integration center will have shared facilities As a result, last May saw the launch of the this key sector, to closely associate scientific covering the entire range of nanotechnology, Nano-Innov plan. Last year, it was provided with research and industrial development,” says and will thus be in an ideal position to work a Û70 million budget to be managed by the Pierre Guillon, director of CNRS’ Institute for hand-in-hand with industry. French National Research Agency (ANR), which Engineering and System Sciences (INSIS).7 The With around 170 laboratories and 2000 is already granted for 2010. The program is set aim is not to curb nanoscience research, but researchers involved, CNRS is a serious contributor to create three major technological integration rather to “make a number of top-level academic to the plan, and has indeed set nanoscience and centers at Saclay (south of Paris), Toulouse, and groups aware of the potential applications of nanotechnology as a major scientific priority. >

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 22 COVERSTORY

A Lab-on-a-CHIP

Nanomanufacturing Rather than identifying a single molecule technologies are in a biological sample, “the objective used to develop tools here is to carry out a large number of for biology or medicine, like the analyses at the same time,” says Gué. biochips shown here. To do this, the biochips are made up of a solid substrate (glass, plastic, or silicon) covered with a microarray of tiny sites on which are placed molecules of DNA, proteins, or chemical groups that can specifically capture complementary DNA or RNA (DNA chips), or proteins (protein chips). “A DNA chip is able to simultaneously analyze anywhere between dozens and thousands of different DNA sequences to identify a virus or detect a specific marker for a disease.” Unlike biosensors, signal readout is not incorporated into the biochip, but carried out by external instruments. “One promising development, where both technologies would meet, is the integration of nanobio- sensors at each site of a biochip,” adds Gué. But the real challenge is to integrate complete analytical procedures on very small surface areas. Biosensors and biochips could thus become a “lab-on-a- chip” (LOC). In such a device, it would even be possible to integrate lasers, made from semi-conducting nanostructures of the gallium nitride (GaN) and zinc oxide (ZnO) families, which are very much in 3 rin/LAAS/CNRS Photothèque rin/LAAS/CNRS fashion at CRHEA. “We’re testing the er feasibility of a nanolaser based on GaN © E. P nanowires emitting in the ultraviolet,” Biosensors and biochips are progressing “The possibilities opened up by says researcher Jesús Zúñiga Pérez. by leaps and bounds, and feature among nanotechnology are far-reaching. Approximately 100 nm across, this laser, the most exciting new approaches in For example, scientists can use integrated on an LOC, could be used nanobiotechnology. Biosensors, though ‘probes’—DNA strands, or antibodies— to excite organic molecules in a still at the prototype stage, “are used to grafted on silicon nanowires or biological sample and analyze the detect a particular ‘biological species’ nanobeams to catch specific molecules.” composition of such molecules. But in This biochip allows (such as DNA, proteins, viruses, etc.), for When the target binds to an ultra- order to develop these pocket-size labs, analysis of thousands of instance in a highly complex system like sensitive microbeam, the beam starts to researchers need to master fluid proteins or DNA a drop of blood,” explains Anne-Marie vibrate, showing that the target molecule dynamics for volumes of less than a sequences. Gué, of LAAS.1 has been captured, while the rest of the nanoliter, and to be able to manipulate system analyzes it. “At the Institute for biological species right down to the level Fundamental Electronics (IEF),2 we are of a single cell. developing a novel nano-biosensor. Each 1. Laboratoire d’analyse et d’architecture des beam has an internal channel etched into systèmes (CNRS). it along which biological fluid can 2. Institut d’électronique fondamentale (CNRS / circulate. So the beam itself is not Université Paris-XI). 3. Centre de recherche sur l’hétéroépitaxie et ses immersed in the fluid,” explains Jean- applications (CNRS). Michel Lourtioz. “This trick makes it easier to detect variations in the Anne-Marie Gué [email protected] amplitude or in the frequency of Jean-Michel Lourtioz vibration.” [email protected] And then there are biochips, already Jesús Zúñiga Pérez

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 COVERSTORY 23

> ETHICAL ISSUES One key question is whether the large-scale “Today there are approximately 2000 articles Although nanotechnology opens up many manufacturing of nanostructured materials will concerning the ecotoxicity of nanoparticles, as exciting prospects, for some it is already a source lead to the uncontrolled release into the opposed to a mere 50 or so five years ago,” says of concern.”Nanotechnology carries its share environment of nanoparticles, some of which Éric Gaffet, of the NanoMaterials Research of worries,” admits Robert Plana, of LAAS. “It may be harmful to our health. Among the many Group.9 “Yet there is an evident shortage, at both comes at a time when science and technology public concerns linked to nanotechnology, “this a national and international level, of toxicolo- are already under fire from all sides. But if the issue has garnered the most media attention,” gists and ecotoxicologists working on a subject 8 uncertainties and risks associated with says Stéphanie Lacour, of CECOJI. “Right from that is not easy to tackle: a simple gram of TiO2 nanotechnology must be explored, scientifically the start, a parallel was established between (titanium dioxide) nanoparticles, for instance, naive and exaggerated warnings should be nanotechnology and the precedents set by asbestos can contain up to ten million billion nanopar- avoided.” and biotechnology—especially GMOs,” which ticles, which all differ in size, chemical reactiv- As Weisbuch explains, some people are had a profound effect in France. Until a few ity, or stability over time.” Characterizing the worried about the invisibility of nano-objects, months ago, “there was no specific legal text appli- distribution of each parameter (size, shape, which implies that exposure could go completely cable to nanotechnology, either in France or in persistence in tissue or organisms, etc.) in a unnoticed. In fact, frequently, nano-objects are Europe,” Lacour points out. “But things are mov- sample is very difficult because “every type of not used in nanometer-sized form, but are incor- ing now. In March and April of 2009, the Euro- nanoparticle has a specific potential toxicity which porated into a clearly visible material device like pean Parliament approved two resolutions on the depends on its lifecycle,” explains Gaffet. “Given an integrated circuit, for example. The fact that presence of nanomaterials in cosmetic products current human and technical means, it would nanotechnology will provide new means to facil- and food. And the French ‘Grenelle Law,’ whose take an estimated 50 years to test the toxicity of itate access and storage of vast amounts of data, Article 42 deals with risks related to nanoparti- all the nanoparticles already on the market.” including genetic and computer records of indi- cles, was passed on August 3rd, 2009.” Then in order not to test all nanoparticles viduals, is more worrying. This will no doubt Above all, a new discipline is in rapid expan- individually, some research groups, like the one raise new issues with regard to the protection sion: nanotoxicology, whose aim is to describe led by Jean-Yves Bottero at CEREGE10 have devel- of privacy and freedom. and quantify the dangers of nanomaterials. oped a procedure that first categorizes >

The Future of OPTICS

Ever heard of plasmonics? improving the capture This is a specific field of of light and its further ws nanophotonics. If the latter conversion within studies the behavior of light nanostructured on the nanometer scale in materials. general, plasmonics In the field of investigates how light surfs telecommunications, . Stomeo /Univ St Andre . Stomeo /Univ St T on the surface of metals the use of photons is in using the metal’s free rapid expansion, being electrons—and this has exploited in much

researchers very excited. enisty /LCFIO et shorter connections It got a boost in 1998, when © H. B within circuit boards Thomas Ebbesen, today for their high director of the Institute of throughput. In fact, Supramolecular Science and Engineering channeled to the other side of the A nanophotonic optical connections should soon be able (ISIS),1 discovered a completely sample.” Plasmons manage to convey structure used to to second electronic connections, even in unexpected phenomenon he dubbed this light into the holes instead of spoiling direct optical electronic circuits (“chips”) themselves. information, here “extraordinary optical transmission” or or reflecting it. two channels “Ultra-densely packed electronic the “photon sieve.” The researchers are trying to make use of carried by two connections are negatively affected by “A photon sieve is a network of holes these unconventional properties to perform similar interference and consumption issues,” pierced in a nanostructured metal new manipulations of light at nanometric wavelengths. This explains Benisty. “We’re trying to build type of system could surface, at regular intervals and with scales. “We’re hoping to bring about ultra- nanometrically controlled architectures one day be used in diameters of 100-200 nm, in other words localized modifications, far more than what electronic chips. where optics could be used to transmit considerably smaller than the wavelength is possible with a laser, for applications in the largest or most energy-hungry of visible light,” explains Henri Benisty, of lithography, in biology—for example in the information flows inside chips.” LCFIO.2 “When you illuminate this compartments inside a cell—or even to 1. Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie surface, the quantity of light that comes write information at smaller scales on a Supramoléculaires (CNRS / Université de Strasbourg). out on the other side is much larger than hard disk,” says Benisty. 2. Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l’Institut d’Optique the fraction that struck the holes. Even In addition, plasmonics could improve the (CNRS / Université Paris-XI). the light that falls next to the holes is efficiency of photovoltaic cells by Henri Benisty, [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 24 COVERSTORY

The Leading ROLLS

An exhaustive list of all the nanomaterials “We are particularly interested in new so- currently under research or already present in called nanohybrids. These are nanotubes everyday life would be impossible. But leading inside which are inserted various molecules them all—and by far—are the famous carbon to try and alter their mechanical or electronic nanotubes, which were discovered in 1991 and properties.” The cylindrical cavity of certain have become the showcase of nanoscience. nanotubes—those made up of a single wall— These nanomaterials take the form of hollow can be used to synthesize molecular chains cylinders whose surface is made up of one or that exist nowhere else. As Launois explains, several rolled up sheets of carbon. They are “peapods, for example, so called because of distinguished especially by their mechanical their resemblance to real peapods, are made 2 properties—they are a hundred times tougher up of chains of C60 fullerene molecules inside and six times lighter than steel, and can nanotubes. Fullerenes and other molecules that undergo considerable deformation under are confined to nanometric scales in this way bending and torsional stress—and by their have novel physical properties. It might be a outstanding electrical conductivity. long way off, but we can already imagine The use of carbon nanotubes, already found applications for filtration, desalination of sea today in a variety of objects, ranging from water, or storage of radioactive waste.” tennis rackets to bicycle frames and Formula 1 1. Laboratoire de Physique des Solides (CNRS / Université car bodies, “is constantly making new ground, Paris-XI). with 7000 publications and 2500 patents 2. C60 fullerene contains 60 carbon atoms arranged in a throughout the world in 2008,” says Pascale soccer ball-like structure. Launois, from the LPS1 in Orsay. Pascale Launois, [email protected] rin/CNRS Photothèque rin/CNRS er

Each year, the components of integrated ELECTRONICS circuits get increasingly smaller. They have shrunk from 90 nm in 2004 to a mere 45 nm1 today, and the silicon wafer

. Launois/LPS industry plans to get them down to 15—or

ou et P even 10 nm. The reason for this is Artist’s rendition of a straightforward: the smaller the basic peapod structure as components of integrated circuits—

. Cambedouz determined by X-ray transistors—the more of them can fit on a

© J diffraction. chip, resulting in more computing power. To push miniaturization even further, teams of scientists “are exploring all sorts of avenues, like transistors based NANOMATERIALS on carbon nanotubes or silicon nanowires, or even on graphene, a crystal made up of carbon atoms,” The environment could also benefit from Go Green explains Jean-Michel Lourtioz, director of nanotechnology, particularly when it comes the Institute for Fundamental Electronics.2 to wastewater treatment. Researchers are CEREGE.1 In another process, ceramic Nanoscience experts are trying to working on the possible use of nanoparticles membranes based on nanoparticles of iron develop structures on atomic and of metal oxides (iron, titanium, cerium, oxyhydroxide (ferroxanes) are used for the molecular scales. “The ultimate approach aluminum, etc.) to treat wastewater or clean up nanofiltration of polluted effluents. This green to process information faster is to use just contaminated ground. “When a surface coated chemistry holds out great promise, especially a single atom or a single molecule as a with a nanofilm of titanium oxide is exposed to in developing countries where water is often basic electronic building block,” says sunlight, it can break down organic pollutants contaminated. Henri Mariette, of the “Nanophysique et 3 (pesticides) and potentially dangerous disease- 1. Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement des Semiconducteurs” group in Grenoble. causing microorganisms (bacteria and viruses) Géosciences de l’Environnement (CNRS / IRD / Université But these so-called quantum electronic present in water. But this technique is still de Provence / Université Paul-Cézanne / Collège de systems are still in their infancy. France). uncommon, and only used for the treatment of Another very active field is spin effluents containing a limited number of Jean-Yves Bottero, [email protected] electronics, or spintronics. Whereas pollutants,” explains Jean-Yves Bottero from Jérôme Rose, [email protected] traditional electronics only uses the

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 COVERSTORY 25

Extreme vacuum to keep the information stored.” device used for Beside quantum electronics and making spintronics, a third type of electronic nanostructures based on semi-conductors technology could well emerge from (quantum wells, nanoscience: plastic electronics. wires, and boxes). Georges Hadziioannou from LCPO7 is working on semiconducting polymers, carbon-based materials that have properties similar to silicon. Applications include large flexible display screens or foldable photovoltaic cells. “Plastic electronics will not replace conventional electronics, but complement it,” adds Hadziioannou. Semiconducting polymers have the significant advantage of being flexible, which means, for example, that they could be placed inside clothing. And above all, they are easier and cheaper to viau/CEA

Ava produce than traditional integrated

P. © P. circuits. 1. The size of the “grid,” one of the three electrodes that make up a transistor. 2. Institut d’électronique fondamentale (CNRS / Inside view showing Université Paris-XI). the substrates on 3. Research group belonging to the Institut Néel which the (CNRS / Université Joseph Fourier) and to the CEA / INAC Grenoble. nanostructures are 4. Electrons can be thought of as small magnets, o of manufactured. whose orientation is defined by spin. 5. Discovered by Albert Fert, Nobel laureate in ELECTRONICS physics. 6. CNRS / Thalès in association with Université Paris-XI. electron’s electric charge to send signals physical properties since the already 7. Laboratoire de chimie des polymères organiques (CNRS / Université Bordeaux-I). through a network of transistors, well-known giant magnetoresistance spintronics makes use of the electron’s effect,5” says Frédéric Van Dau, director Henri Mariette, [email protected] magnetic properties. This physical of the CNRS/Thales Joint Physics Unit.6 Frédéric Nguyen Van Dau property is already being used to store “Some phenomena, like ‘spin transfer,’ [email protected] information on hard disks in computers even make it possible to foresee a type of Georges Hadziioannou, [email protected] and servers. memory that could work without having Jean-Michel Lourtioz Pushing this technology further, to apply magnetic fields to store [email protected] researchers hope to use the orientation information, unlike current devices. This of electron spin4 to memorize information technique should enhance and speed-up in circuits that combine electronics and the wide-accessibility of Magnetic Example of copolymer- magnetism. More specifically, spintronics Random Access Memory (MRAM), which based nanostructures “has given rise to the discovery of other is both faster and does not require energy used to design photovoltaic cells.

This silicon nanowire, observed by transmission electron microscopy, was obtained by vapor-liquid- solid growth from a gold droplet in the presence of silane. The white stains

are gold aggregates TIOZ/IEF

selectively formed on the UR nanowire walls. M. Urien/Université Bordeaux 1/LCPO-IMS Bordeaux © M. Urien/Université © J-M LO

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 26 COVERSTORY

> nanoparticles in terms of physico-chemical nanoparticles,” says Dominique Thomas, of internationale (CNRS / Université de Poitiers). properties and then tries to compare and some- LSGC.12 9. Research group belonging to the Institut de recherche sur les archéomatériaux (CNRS / Université de technologie how classify and generalize the biological effects. Finally, do scientists spend enough time de Belfort-Montbéliard / Université Bordeaux-III / Can we already affirm that nanomaterials thinking about the ethical and societal impact Université d’Orléans). constitute a genuine health and environmen- of their research? Not for philosopher and 10. Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement des Géosciences de l’Environnement (CNRS / IRD / Université tal threat? There is no evidence that they do— science historian Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, de Provence / Université Paul-Cézanne / Collège de but unfortunately, nor is there evidence that they from CNRS’ Ethics Committee (COMETS). France). 11. The report, entitled “Nanomatériaux et sécurité au don’t. “Nanomaterials should be considered “French researchers recognize the need to travail” (Nanomaterials and Occupational Safety), is potentially dangerous, as indicated in the report assess the possible toxicity of nanotechnology,” available at the Documentation française website. of the French Agency for Environmental and she says. “But most of them are still reluctant (www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr) 12. Laboratoire des sciences du génie chimique (CNRS). Occupational Health Safety published in June to explore any long-term effect it may have.” 2008,”11 adds Gaffet. “Toxicity tests carried out Bensaude-Vincent regrets the fact that “save for on animal and cell models demonstrate that a few laboratories, there is no place where certain nanomaterials are specifically dangerous, researchers can talk about their doubts and and that they can cross certain biological barriers. concerns.” Jacques Bordé, of COMETS, thinks However, much more work must be done before that promoting direct dialog between scientists reaching a conclusion on that matter.” More- and the public is another necessity. “This CONTACT INFORMATION over, the importance of environmental risks also implies training scientists to not simply consider Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent needs to be evaluated. their research from the viewpoint of the scientific [email protected] challenge, but also in regards to ethical issues. Jacques Bordé [email protected] SEEKING PROTECTION Thinking about ethical issues doesn’t prevent Alain Costes, [email protected] Do we know how to protect ourselves from creativity, it may even stimulate it.” Éric Gaffet, [email protected] nanoparticles when they are sprayed as aerosols? 1. Commission nationale du débat public. Pierre Guillon Current systems such as fiber filters placed in 2. Institut d’électronique fondamentale (CNRS / Université [email protected] ventilation systems or in the respiratory masks Paris-XI). Christian Joachim worn by operators are very efficient. The most 3. Laboratoire de Physique de la matière condensée (CNRS/ [email protected] École polytechnique). effective filters manage to trap over 99.99% of 4. Centre d’élaboration des matériaux et d’études Stéphanie Lacour 4 nm-sized particles. Particles of 100-500 nm structurales (CNRS). [email protected] are not as easy to stop, which refutes the 5. The scanning tunneling microscope uses an extremely Jean-Michel Lourtioz fine metal needle, which is moved over the surface to be [email protected] widespread idea that the effectiveness of filters studied at a distance of just a few atoms. This makes it Robert Plana, [email protected] depends solely on the size of its pores. But there possible to locate and manipulate the atoms on the sample’s surface. The atomic force microscope works Dominique Thomas has been progress: “By using electrically according to the same principle, but is used to explore non- [email protected] charged fiber filters and playing on electrostatic conducting samples and especially biological material. Claude Weisbuch effects to modify the path of particles and 6. Laboratoire d’analyse et d’architecture des systèmes [email protected] (CNRS). facilitate their capture, we are already able to 7. Institut des sciences de l’ingénierie et des systèmes. Jean-Yves Bottero neutralize between 95% and 99% of large 8. Centre d’études sur la coopération juridique [email protected]

NANOHORNS for Storing Hydrogen

The definitive answer to vehicle the hydrogen, and on the other to pollution could well be the fuel cell, release it easily so that it can combine which uses pure hydrogen and with oxygen in the air. Among such produces no harmful emissions. But a materials, carbon nanoforms, in other number of problems need to be words all carbon structures, “turn out to solved before this technology can see the be very serious contenders because of light of day. Nanotechnology may help their low mass and high absorption solve one of them: the storage and capacity,” explains CRMD1 director availability of hydrogen. Marie-Louise Saboungi. “Work is So far, the most reliable and economical currently focusing on carbon nanohorns, means suggested to which were discovered in the 1990s. Dahlia-shaped store hydrogen is to These are materials two to three carbon structures use porous materials. nanometers long that assemble to form called nanohorns are promising This would make it dahlia-shaped structures 80 to 100 candidates for the possible, on the one nanometers in diameter. Hydrogen’s armont/CNRS Photothèque armont/CNRS storage of hydrogen. hand to confine interaction with nanohorns is much .W © F

CNRS International Magazine 6n°1January 2010 COVERSTORY 27

NANO-BIOLOGICAL Probes

Laboratory (LKB).1 “They tell us in real time about the motion and position of the biological players to which they are attached.” Such imaging techniques at the level of individual nanoparticles, which were only just beginning to emerge five years ago, have since been vastly improved and are finding a greater number of applications. They let us “see” beyond the cell membrane what occurs inside the cell, a region which until now was extremely hard to access. Eventually, by attaching probes of different colors to different proteins, it will be possible to record the motion of all

y/CNRS Photothèque y/CNRS these players simultaneously and study their interactions in vivo.” This will improve Godefro . our understanding of the complexity of the © S innermost mechanisms of living organisms. A fluorescence Biology is another field where The trick is to attach the quantum dots So far, this technology has only been microscope is nanotechnology has real and exciting to biological molecules such as proteins applied to cultured cells, but researchers used to follow the applications. Biologists are particularly (enzymes, antibodies) or nucleic acids hope to eventually use it in vivo, which movement of molecules inside interested in semiconducting nanocrystals (DNA, RNA). The light emission should lead to major improvements in cells. (or “quantum dots”) devised in the past few wavelength can then be chosen by medicine. In particular, by making years by physical chemists, which they varying their size (the smaller the biological imaging ultrasensitive, it should would like to use as probes to explore nanoparticles, the more the emission is help both physicians and surgeons identify biological processes at the molecular scale. shifted towards blue), which would make the smallest tumors and metastasis, on the These objects are made up of several tens it possible to distinguish biological scale of a hundred thousand rather than a or hundreds of thousands of atoms processes from one another. “In fact, the billion cells. arranged in a crystal lattice structure, with nanoparticles behave like tiny light bulbs 1. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (CNRS / École normale an overall size of approximately 2-8 nm. that can be tracked for several tens of supérieure / Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie). When excited by light—a laser, for minutes using a microscope,” explains Maxime Dahan example—they become fluorescent. Maxime Dahan, of the Kastler-Brossel [email protected] g Hydrogen FOR FURTHER INFORMATION BOOKS > Recent advances in quantum (New York: Springer, 2010, in > Understanding Carbon dot physics, Jean-Michel press). stronger than with carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes: From Basics to Gérard and Henri Mariette Applications, Annick Loiseau, (Paris: Elsevier Masson, 2008). So these tiny horns trap hydrogen more FILMS Pascale Launois, Pierre Petit, easily than their close relatives.” > Environmental > Nanosciences, Stephan Roche, and Jean- Moreover, nanohorns retain most of the Nanotechnology, Nanotechnologies (2008, Pierre Salvetat (Eds.) (Berlin: adsorbed hydrogen at temperatures as Mark. R. Wiesner 160 min) by Hervé Colombani, Springer, 2006). high as 20°C, contrary to carbon and Jean-Yves Marcel Dalaise, Alain Monclin nanotubes which need low > Nanosciences: Bottero (New- and François Tisseyre. The Invisible temperatures for hydrogen storage York: McGraw- Production: CNRS Images. Revolution, (below -200°C). Along with these Hill, 2007). From electronics to biology, Christian Joachim from chemistry to ethics, this many advantages, one snag remains: > Nanoparticles in Biomedical & Laurence DVD will make you discover their relatively high manufacturing Imaging, Jeff W.M. Bulte, Plevert (London: nanoscience, its numerous Michael M.J. Modo, (Eds.)(New- cost. World Scientific, applications, and the issues it York: Springer, 2008). 1. Centre de recherche sur la matière divisée 2009). raises. (CNRS / Université d’Orléans). > Introduction to Nanoscience, > Macromolecular Anticancer http://videotheque.cnrs.fr/inde Marie-Louise Saboungi, Stuart Lindsay (Oxford: OUP, Therapeutics, L. Harivardhan x.php?urlaction=doc&id_doc= [email protected] 2009). Reddy and Patrick Couvreur 1909&rang=1

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

28 INIMAGES 1 ec l’aimable autorisation des descendants d’Édouard Blanc) v . Cornu (a Y ©

PHOTOGRAPHY SHEDDING light on the Autochrome The Lumière family was not only innovative in cinema, but also in photography, where its inventions made a considerable mark. At the start of the 20th century, the Lumière brothers marketed the Autochrome plate, the first industrial color photography process based, surprisingly, on potato starch. Two French

ut Lumière researchers recently revisited the Autochrome, conceived not 2 © Instit without difficulty and protected by secrecy for many years. INIMAGES 29

3 4 5 6 7 © Photos : B. Lavédrine © Photos : B.

1 Autochrome self-portrait of Édouard Blanc, a chemist at the Lumière factory in Monplaisir (Lyon), around 1907.

2 Auguste and Louis Lumière, inventors and industrialists, 1895. ous droits réservés. T 3 4567Several steps in the reconstitution of an Autochrome: drying then sorting the starch, coloring solutions for dyeing, sprinkling lampblack, and coating the second varnish.

8 9 Autochrome tests, around 8 © Coll. Société Française de Photographie. © Coll. Société Française 1902-1905, with a negative plate (8) and a positive plate (9), in the 9 laboratory of Louis Lumière.

10 A press used for flattening the starch grains has been restored and is now classified as a historic . Lavédrine ous droits réservés.

T monument. © B

11 Starch lamination. Louis Lumière discovered the advantage

o of lamination accidentally, by scratching the network of starch . Gondolf

.-P with his fingernail. This resulted 10 © J in better transparency.

11 © Coll. Société Française de Photographie. © Coll. Société Française 0,1 mm 12 Diagram of an Autochrome plate. “The plate prepared in this oon the whole world will run wild with This was followed by lamination—pressing the way is exposed through its back color, and the Lumière brothers will be plate—and a second application of varnish. The and then developed. Once responsible,” intuitively proclaimed the final step—the most difficult to recreate by hand on reversed, the resulting image American photographer Alfred Stieglitz small plates in a dark room—was the application reproduces, through transparency, S the colors of the photographed when the Autochrome plate was first put on sale in of the final layer of the Autochrome, a black and 1907. And this industrial color photography process white emulsion of gelatino silver bromide, a light- original,” explained Louis Lumière enjoyed considerable success, as the Lumière brothers sensitive substance which requires particular care. in 1904. went on to sell millions of Autochrome plates over The device works on the basis of “additive color the following decades. To better understand the synthesis,” the principle that enables all color hues technology behind the Autochrome, researchers to be created from only three primary colors (red, Bertrand Lavédrine, director of the CRCC,1 and green, and blue) and which was later to be used in Jean-Paul Gandolfo, professor at the film school television screens. In Autochromes, the photosen- ENS Louis-Lumière, decided to revive it, more than sitive layer is exposed to light rays, which are filtered half a century after it went out of production. beforehand by the dyed grains of starch. After Painstakingly recreating the steps involved in taking the picture and developing it, the silver making Autochromes, they began by selecting grains in the photosensitive layer mask certain minuscule grains of potato starch, dyeing them colored grains of starch to a greater or lesser extent, . Munoz Gouet violet, green, or orange, and mixing them. They thus recreating the colors of the original image © S then sprinkled millions of these grains onto a photographed. The image appears by viewing the varnished glass plate and added lampblack—soot transparent positive print in a special device or by from oil lamps—to fill the gaps between the grains. projecting it as a slide. “The grains are extremely > 12

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 30 INIMAGES

13 © Musée Albert-Kahn / Dép. des Hauts-de-Seine © Musée

15 © E. Blanc

small, invisible to the naked eye. An optical mix- > 16 ous droits réservés.

© Coll. Société Française de Photographie. © Coll. Société Française T ture of the different starch colors is then created within the eye... resulting in the palette of colors 13 Paris, 1918. The author, visible in the Autochrome,” explains Lavédrine. Auguste Léon, worked for the If the underlying principle of the Autochrome “Archives de la Planète,” an (first formulated by French inventor Louis Ducos immense photo- and du Hauron) is sound, it nevertheless took seven cinematographic record of the years for the mighty Lumière family business, epoch, founded by the banker already specialized in photography Albert Kahn. Today, the Albert- and cinema, to launch its indus- Kahn Museum archives some trial production. The choice of ut Lumière 72,000 Autochromes. starch for example, a key aspect

of the invention, required months © Instit 14 Children dressed up as small of head scratching. Potato grains exposure time, approximately one soldiers. Autochrome by Léon were preferred to rice grains, which second, virtually precluded 17 Gimpel, press correspondent, 1915. take on colors less easily. instantaneity. Despite both For this in-depth study of 18 this weakness and their 15 In this Autochrome by Édouard Autochromes, Lavédrine and high price, millions of Blanc (1908), fields and forest Gandolfo also struggled for Autochrome plates were sold contrast with poppies. many years. Not only did throughout the world in they try to produce them 30 years. In 1931, the glass 19 16 Gabriel Doublier, the manager but, as they explain in their plates were replaced by a flexible 0,1 mm of a factory in Paris, poses in front book L’Autochrome Lumière,2 substrate, but it was only in the mid- of machines used for mixing they also interviewed the chil- 1950s, two decades after the introduction of the starch, 1931. dren of eyewitnesses from the period, more popular Kodachrome, that the invention fell dissected laboratory notebooks, and analyzed the into obsolescence, and that the Lumière factory

17 18 19 Unsorted (17) or sorted dyes in old plates. They also closely examined a Lavédrine © Photos : B. ceased production of its Alticolor films, direct and dyed (18) potato starch, and lamination press, which the Lumière brothers chose descendants of the Autochrome plate. Beside its unsorted rice starch (19). not to patent, probably to keep it unique. obvious historical interest, a more in-depth Lamination—a crucial phase which, by squashing understanding of this technology should no doubt the grains against each other, enhanced the help us better preserve the existing samples. transparency of the granular network—was indeed Mathieu Hautemulle alluded to in a patent, but only in an elusive manner. 1. Centre de recherche sur la conservation des collections Competitors were thus kept at bay. And they needed (CNRS / Ministère de la culture et de la communication / to be: at the turn of the 20th century, photography, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle). which was invented in 1839, was thriving. Creating 2. Bertrand Lavédrine and Jean-Paul Gandolfo, L’Autochrome Lumière (Paris: Editions du CTHS, 2009). photographs in color was a major challenge, and the object of much research and experimentation which benefited from the scientific progress on light phenomena and color recombination. CONTACT INFORMATION With the Autochrome, photography finally Bertrand Lavédrine adopted color. But the process proved fragile and CRCC, Paris. the production of Autochrome plates difficult. The [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 AROUNDTHEWORLD 31

NANOBIOSCIENCE ing on provide a daily framework for the France and Israel Join Forces activities of the different teams.” A total of 40 people, divided equally between the two partners, now work for the LEA. Post- in Nanobioscience doctoral fellows form the backbone of the program. “We have seen a growing, spontaneous For the past two years, CNRS and the Weizmann Institute, a flow of requests from potential partners who want to be part of the LEA,” stresses Zyss, who prestigious Israeli research institution, have joined forces to explore admits he is often approached by students eager the rapidly-growing field of nanobioscience, at the interface to join such a prestigious laboratory. And between nanoscience and biology. prestige does play its part, at both an individual and institutional level. Francesca Grassia, who contributed to setting et up in January 2008 by CNRS and the The LEA NaBi was officially inaugurated in up the LEA at the CNRS Office of European Weizmann Institute, the European Asso- March 2009 at the Weizmann Institute in Affairs, recalls the importance of this partnership: ciated Laboratory Nano Bioscience (LEA Rehovot (south of Tel Aviv). But it is also active “The Weizmann Institute is one of the best-per- SNaBi) is the successful combination of on three sites in France: the Institut d’Alembert1 forming research institutions in the world, both both scientific and human elements. On the one in Cachan near Paris, the French “bridgehead” in terms of scientific results and technology hand, its creation is motivated by the shared headed by Zyss; the laboratory of statistical physics transfer.” Similarly, CNRS is perceived in Rehovot need to move forward in this new field which (LPS)2 and the PASTEUR chemistry laboratory,3 as a European partner of choice. applies the methods of nanoscience to biological both at the ENS in Paris; and the Institut Fresnel4 As for the LEA NaBi, its future depends on systems and structures. And on the other hand, in Marseille. three major factors. The first is to obtain results it acknowledges the longstanding bond that has Yet this geographical distance does not affect that will enhance the reputation of nanobio- developed between French and Israeli researchers. the cohesion of the teams involved: “We host science and its applications. The second is the Joseph Zyss, who, along with his Israeli coun- Israeli researchers for several months, and vice hope that the advances achieved by the laboratory terpart Ron Naaman, is the technical and scien- versa,” explains Zyss. “The projects we are work- will result in industrial exploitation. “In this tific co-director of the LEA, respect, the Weizmann Institute and CNRS have was the initiator of this all the expertise necessary,” notes Grassia. Finally, project. “In 1990, I launched perhaps one day the LEA NaBi could have its a series of biennial Franco- own site. It would then become the first CNRS Israeli conferences in physi- International Joint Research Unit in Israel. cal optics, the FRISNO series, Stéphan Julienne which continue to this day. To a large extent, these conferences provided a framework THE WEIZMANN INSTITUTE for the development of the Founded in 1934 as the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, it was renamed Weizmann Institute in 1949 and has since been LEA. The project now offers distinguished on several occasions. Its scientists were responsible an opportunity for greater for developing the RSA cryptography algorithm that is today used for understanding and apprecia- the security of bank credit cards or for online transactions. One of its tion between our two 2600 members, Ada Yonath, received the 2009 Nobel Prize for countries in the field of chemistry. The Institute’s participation in the LEA NaBi allows Israel, an associate country in EU programs since the end of the 1990s, to photonics and beyond.” reinforce its position in the European Research Area. There is one Little negotiation was noteworthy precedent: the Pasteur-Weizmann Foundation has for therefore necessary before the past 35 years involved scientists from both institutions. the two institutions signed a preliminary agreement in 2007, which led to an initial four-year renewable joint 1. Institut fédératif de recherche (CNRS/ ENS Cachan). 2. Laboratoire de physique statistique (CNRS/ ENS Paris/ research program. This agree- Universités Paris-VI and -VII). ment covers a dozen or so 3. Processus d’activation sélectif par transfert d’énergie uni- projects that are all related to électronique ou radiatif (CNRS/ ENS Paris/ Université Paris-VI). nanobioscience with a 4. CNRS / Universités Aix-Marseille -I and -III / Centrale photonics component. For Marseille. example, teams are working on the design and production of biochips for biological CONTACT INFORMATION analyses, as well as on the Joseph Zyss ENS, Cachan. development of systems for [email protected] The Weizman the control of cell differenti- Francesca Grassia ation, which could both be of Institute’s particle DAE-CNRS, Paris. accelerator. [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n° 16 January 2010

32 AROUNDTHEWORLD They chose France

Chretien Moonen apply for funding, and cutting-edge lab equipment... It was heaven for a researcher,” he recalls. All-out War on Cancer But Moonen and his French wife decided to return to Europe. “We didn’t want our kids to have to move constantly during their adolescence. As pen-minded and curious about every- biggest draw was his desire to study the three sub- we are nonetheless culturally more European, we thing, Chretien “Chrit” Moonen is the jects that fascinated him the most: chemistry, decided to move back here.” opposite of an ivory tower scientist. The physics, and biology. Moonen arrived in Bordeaux in 1996 and ODutch researcher, now 53, is a polyglot And though science is undoubtedly his realm, joined CNRS, which presented an advantage of who speaks Dutch, French, English, and German. Moonen, unlike many other researchers, has an great value: it offered jobs that were “entirely Born in the Maastricht region (Netherlands), almost visceral need to see the results of his dedicated to research.” He was therefore able to Moonen grew up on a farm. He admits that this research put into practice. “Fundamental research devote all his time to developing a mini-invasive is maybe what subconsciously drew him to an is all very well, but what matters are its clinical therapy that uses focused ultrasound guided by agricultural university for his early studies. But the applications,” he says. Indeed, this explains why MRI. His interdisciplinary laboratory, which he has always sought to involve doctors in his brings together physicists, computer scientists, work on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and biologists, received the 2006 Antony-Bernard like Hervé Trillaud, who has been working with Oise Award for their painstaking work in fight- Moonen for the past ten years on real-time ing cancer, a work that has been backed for the control by MRI of several non-invasive technolo- last ten years by the National Anti-Cancer League. gies aimed at fighting cancer. A radiologist at The device co-developed by Moonen’s lab the Saint-André hospital in Bordeaux, Trillaud and produced by the company Philips is under- even says that Moonen is “unhappy when he going clinical trials at the Saint-André hospital in doesn’t see doctors in his lab on a regular basis.” Bordeaux, in the department run by Trillaud. After a memorable year at the Federal Poly- “The machine has been under a clinical research technic School in Zürich, where he studied in the protocol since June 2008. We have treated around laboratories of future Nobel Prize winners Richard ten patients for uterine fibroma,” Trillaud explains. Ernst1 and Kurt Wüthrich,2 it was in 1983, the year This is just a first step before treating cancers of of his PhD on the structure of proteins, that the breast, kidney, and possibly liver, the real- Moonen steered his research toward medical world applications so close to Moonen’s heart. applications. Dominique Salomon At the time, one of the main methods to 1. Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1991 for his contribution to study protein structure involved nuclear mag- the development of multidimensional nuclear magnetic netic resonance. So when magnetic resonance resonance spectroscopy. 2. Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2002 for his work on the imaging, which was to completely transform use of multidimensional nuclear magnetic resonance for radiology, was developed, Moonen became the study of protein structure. enthralled. A few years later, at the age of only 31, he became director of the MRI research center CONTACT INFORMATION at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Wash- Chretien Moonen ington. He has fond memories of his long stay IMF, Bordeaux. Vrignaud/CNRS Photothèque Vrignaud/CNRS . [email protected]

> GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS

ÉGIDE (accommodation, childcare and Deadline: April 7, 2010. Chile: March 31, 2010. Égide is a non-profit organization schools, healthcare...) for each http://erc.europa.eu (grant section) Argentina: April 15, 2010. that manages French government country. www.univ-paris13.fr/cofecub-ecos international mobility programs. http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/ ECOS PROGRAMS Many funding opportunities ECOS are scientific cooperation 5TH STIC-AMSUD CALL are listed on the website, and most EUROPEAN RESEARCH programs between France and The STIC-AmSud program calls content is in English. COUNCIL South American countries, divided in for research-development projects www.egide.asso.fr This entails a number of calls for ECOS-Nord (Colombia, Mexico, in all topics related to ICT. proposals by the European Research Venezuela) and ECOS-Sud Projects must include at least two EURAXESS Council (ERC) for both starting and (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay). Calls for participating South American This portal provides information on advanced grants in Physical applications are open in basic countries, and one team of French grants, fellowships, or positions Sciences and Engineering, Life research in all scientific fields for scientists. available throughout Europe Sciences, and Social Sciences and selected countries. Deadline: May 15, 2010. as well as practical information Humanities. Deadline: Mexico: Feb. 26, 2010. www.sticamsud.org

CNRS International Magazine 6n°1January 2010 AROUNDTHEWORLD 33

Michael Detlefsen Questioning Truth

he American Michael Detlefsen is a questions: Why did these children humanist in search of truth. Yet at the really decide to leave their family? same time, he questions the very Is the truth, as told to him by his Texistence of truth: can several truths, and older brother, the real truth? Does thus several proofs, co-exist at one and the same a single truth ever exist, or is truth time? Surprisingly, or not, Detlefsen affected by our own history? And tackles these complex questions through math- what about our own history in ematics. The philosopher and mathematician relation to History? from Notre Dame University (Indiana, US) has When he started his under- set up camp in France until 2011 in CNRS- graduate studies, Detlefsen turned affiliated laboratories, where he heads a towards the sciences, mathema- program called “Ideals of proof.” tics, physics, as well as towards The program explores what are known as philosophy. Eventually he obtained “imaginary” numbers, which can result in a PhD in logic. After a dissertation surprising outcomes. With imaginary numbers, on Gödel’s second incompleteness the square of a number (the multiplication of a theorem—which shows that certain number by itself) can become negative. “The sentences expressing the consis- very existence of these numbers is a totally tency of systems are impossible to irrational concept for many people untrained in demonstrate in those systems— mathematics.” And yet, this concept is a the scientist’s first position was as mathematical truth for those who deal with these professor of philosophy in numbers on a daily basis. Minnesota followed by a second at This questioning of truth has its origins in the University of Notre Dame in

Detlefsen’s own roots, and in the incredible epic Indiana. “Do mathematical con- Photothèque y/CNRS of his great-grandfather and great great uncle cepts really exist in nature, or are

who decided, at ages 9 and 11, to leave Denmark they only a creation of the mind, . Godefro

and their family on their own to embrace the which tends to rationalize the order © S American Dream. “A long and trying adventure of the world in this manner and project its truth?” specialist in the foundations of mathematics, then ensued which led them, by boat, train, and That was the starting point of a thought process has been awarded the 2007-2011 Senior Chair of then finally on foot, to the town of Dannebrog in that Detlefsen has followed throughout his career Excellence.1 At the end of 2007, he joined a Nebraska,” explains Detlefsen. “There, the in the US and across the world. Nancy-based laboratory specialized in the government gave them land on the condition Croatia, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, history of sciences and philosophy.2 This year, he that they cultivate it for at least five years. The Japan, Spain, and many other countries have signed on with the History and philosophy of dream became reality.” Detlefsen, who knows hosted Detlefsen over the last 25 years. It is now science department of Paris-VII University3 for the story by heart, can himself raise a number of France’s turn, where Detlefsen, as a world a duration of two years. He will then return to Nancy for a final year before heading back to Notre Dame. Will this take him closer to the truth? That’s another question entirely. WORKING IN A FRENCH LAB, Séverine Duparcq PRACTICAL INFORMATION: 1. With the support of CNRS, Paris-VII TS'AI YÜAN-P'EI PROGRAM and Nancy-II Universities, the Collège de France, and Notre Dame University. WITH CHINA The Kastler Foundation (FNAK): Association Bernard Gregory: 2. Laboratoire d’histoire des sciences et This program is open to students, Helps foreign researchers settle in This association helps young PhDs de philosophie-Archives Henri-Poincaré post-doctoral fellows, and France and maintains contact after from any discipline make the (CNRS / INPL Nancy / Universités their departure. transition into business. Nancy-I and -II). confirmed scientists in all scientific www.fnak.fr www.abg.asso.fr 3. Département d’histoire et philosophie fields to develop scientific des sciences (Université Paris-VII). This exchanges between France and includes three structures, two of which Foreign embassies and consulates France Contact will help you plan are joint research units linked to CNRS. China. The initial one year funding in France: and arrange your stay in France: can be renewed for a second year. www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/ www.francecontact.net annuaire/ Deadline: March 20, 2010. Edufrance: Information on France's Contact Information: French embassies and consulates higher education programs–course [email protected] abroad: enlistment, grant and fellowship CONTACT INFORMATION universitaire@ambafrance- www.expatries.diplomatie. applications. Michael Detlefsen, cn.org gouv.fr/annuaires/annuaires.htm www.edufrance.fr Université Paris-VII, Paris. [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

34 INNOVATION Interview

IMMUPHARMA Therapeutic Peptides Immupharma France, in Mulhouse, is developing several drugs based on peptides–protein fragments–discovered by researchers at CNRS. Company president and managing director Robert Zimmer tells us about the company’s most promising treatments.

Which treatment, out of all those developed in Do you collaborate with CNRS on other projects? wounds. We intend to test this candidate drug collaboration with CNRS, is the most far R.Z.: We are currently working on an anticancer next year in a clinical trial. Immupharma France advanced? drug also discovered by the ICT lab, together has just funded two positions at CRRT2 for a Robert Zimmer: Definitely Lupuzor, a drug can- with two other CNRS laboratories.2 The thera- PhD student and a technician to work on this didate for treating systemic lupus erythematosus, peutic molecule, called HB19, is also a peptide. project. The initial patent was filed by CNRS, a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease in It binds nucleolin, a protein abundant at the sur- and a second one, co-owned with Immupharma, which the patient’s immune system produces face of tumor cells and related blood vessels, has been filed to protect the method of produc- auto-antibodies that can result in serious symp- and inhibits both blood vessels and tumor growth tion of this peptide and to cover the more potent toms (rheumatological, neurological, dermato- in mice. HB19 could also be used to treat next generation peptide which will be tested in logical and renal). By floating the company on the psoriasis, diabetic retinopathy, and to heal humans early this year. British stock market in 2006, we raised Û15 million, enough to perform the full development up to phase II clinical trials. “For the first time in The results are very promising. In fact, Lupuzor is one of the first anti-lupus phase II clinical trials, treatments tested at this stage which has performed significantly better an anti-lupus drug than the placebo. The company that has been entrusted with the devel- has performed significantly opment of Lupuzor will start phase III clinical trials in the near future. better than the placebo.” If all goes well, the drug could be on the market by 2013. This is a real hope for people afflicted with What other diseases are you targeting? this disease—1.4 million in G8 coun- R.Z.: With the ICT, we are also developing an tries, 90% of which are women antibiotic to fight nosocomial infections due to between the ages of 18 and 50. Current bacteria resistant to common antibiotics. The drugs on the market are neither curative, way it works is quite innovative, as it destroys the nor specific to this disease and may cause bacterial membrane. It is presently at the stage serious adverse effects. of preclinical development and is also protected by a CNRS patent and joint-patents. But what is the specificity of this ‘anti-lupus’ Immupharma is also working on a painkiller drug? for severe post-operative and cancer pain. This R.Z.: Lupuzor is a peptide, in other words a compound, Cin-met-enkephalin, derived from a part of a protein, and is made up of a natural analgesic, would have fewer side effects, particular sequence of amino acids. Unlike and would last longer than morphine derivatives. certain immunosuppressive drugs that Our company also holds a chemical library of affect the entire immune system, this almost 300,000 molecules jointly-patented with peptide only targets the precise category CNRS. Some of these seem to be active against of immune cells involved in the disease. It inflammation, allergies, and malaria. was discovered in 2001 at CNRS’ ICT Interview by Jean-Philippe Braly 1 laboratory in Strasbourg, a laboratory we 1. Immunologie et chimie thérapeutiques. cooperate with via a framework partnership (CNRS) agreement signed with CNRS in February 2. CRRT: Croissance, réparation et régénération tissulaires (CNRS / Mulhouse 1 2002. Our strong ties to the ICT lab led us Université Paris-XII), and Régulation de to exploit the existing CNRS patent and, la transcription et maladies génétiques together with CNRS, to extend its protection. (CNRS). Since 2002, four ICT researchers have become shareholders in our company, and CONTACT INFORMATION Immupharma France has also recently Robert Zimmer,

eige/Horschamps Immupharma France, Mulhouse.

funded a technician position at the ICT W [email protected]

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 INNOVATION 35

1Roscoff

PHARMASEA A Cure from the Depths

hemical warfare waged ery of Roscovitine, a mol- between marine organisms ecule now patented by Ccould save human lives. This CNRS and undergoing is what the Pharmasea project hopes phase II clinical trials to achieve by fighting Alzheimer’s against lung and disease using marine molecules. nasopharyngal cancers, as Pharmasea partners—two well as against glau- SMEs and four academic research coma—an ocular illness centers, including CNRS1—are def- that can cause blindness. initely not starting from scratch. ManRos Therapeutics The project is led by the ManRos intends to overcome, with Therapeutics company,2 co-founded “speed and flexibility,” as in 2007 by biologist Laurent Meijer, Meijer puts it, all admin-

who works on protein phosphory- istrative and financial Photothèque ana/CNRS lation at the Roscoff biology station,3 obstacles that plague . Font Y and chemist Hervé Galons, cur- pharmaceutical research. © rently at Paris-V University. For the moment, ManRos The Axinella and Roscoff, hopes to 1. ManRos Therapeutics, C.RIS Pharma, Laurent Meijer’s CNRS team Therapeutics is testing sponge, off the develop on both sides of CNRS, CEA, and Rennes-I and Paris-V coast of Brittany, is Universities. has been studying the anti-tumor four families of marine the Atlantic, and has 2. www.manros-therapeutics.com a potential source and anti-neurodegenerative prop- molecules at the preclinical already found numerous 3. Laboratoire Phosphorylation de protéines of bioactive erties of certain molecules secreted stage against Alzheimer’s investors in the US. Its et pathologies humaines (CNRS research molecules. and service unit). by marine invertebrates—sponges disease but also against many awards and constant 4. Capital, August 2009. and ascidians—which may be syn- cancers, leukemias, and polycystic media attention (it was recently thesized to deter their predators. In kidney disease. Human trials will included in a French financial mag- humans, these molecules are capa- follow as soon as possible. azine’s top 100 “most promising” ble of acting on protein kinases, The company has eight start-ups in France4) should make CONTACT INFORMATION essential regulators in many employees, all biologists and it easier to find funding, especially for Laurent Meijer processes of cellular life and death. chemists. ManRos, the name of ambitious projects like Pharmasea. SBR, Roscoff. This research has led to the discov- which is a contraction of Manhattan Mathieu Hautemulle [email protected]

ALYXAN Tracking Down Gases

ir often contains traces of that required a skilled operator. Mass ecule out of a million or even a Medicine Department of the Paris- pollutant gases and other spectrometry involves the separa- billion in real time. “And we can Sud University to monitor workplace Asubstances in addition to its tion of substances according to the obtain up to one measurement every air quality, a technology that could common constituents, namely nitro- mass of their constituent molecules, second,” adds Heninger. The results be extended to private homes.” gen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. as this mass is unique to each type are so encouraging that the project Given the present concerns The ultra-rapid and transportable of molecule. So far, the only instru- won a French national competition regarding questions of public health, B-Trap analyzer, which is protected ments capable of high mass accu- to promote innovative technologies3 AlyXan should have a very by a double patent,1 can detect such racy measurements were designed twice—in 2003 and 2004—leading promising future. substances in a flash. “We live in a for the large molecules found in the to the creation of the start-up AlyXan Charline Zeitoun world with increasing safety con- petroleum and pharmaceutical in 2005. 1. CNRS / Universités Paris-XI and -VI. cerns. We therefore need to be able industries, and therefore not adapted AlyXan has already won several 2. Laboratoire de chimie physique (CNRS / to detect toxic substances on the to the small molecules that make contracts with France’s Ministry of Université Paris-XI). 3. Concours national d’aide à la création spot and in real time, to alert the up the air. Furthermore, their size— Defense for the continuous d’entreprises de technologies innovantes. surrounding population, for exam- that of a small apartment—meant measurement of atmospheres in ple,” explains Michel Heninger, a transporting them was impossible. submarines, where the confined researcher in the team behind The LCP team has succeeded environment makes any toxic leak B-Trap, at Orsay’s LCP.2 in miniaturizing and adapting this life-threatening. “A collaboration is Orsay1 Until now, this type of precise mass spectrometry technique. The also underway with the French analysis was costly and time-con- B-Trap analyzer, which is very sim- petroleum institute (IFP) to study CONTACT INFORMATION suming. A sample had to be taken ple to use, is the size of a small gas emissions produced by cars,” Michel Heninger and transferred to a laboratory to refrigerator and only costs around adds Heninger. “And we are also AlyXan, Orsay. be analyzed by a mass spectrometer Û150,000. It can detect a given mol- collaborating with the Occupational [email protected]

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36 CNRSNEWSWIRE

THE EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY The ALMA project aims to build a giant interferometer by 2013 Space Seen from Earth at an altitude of 5104 meters in northern Laurent Vigroux, the current director of the Astrophysics Institute of Chile. Paris,1 has also been president of the Council of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) since January 2009. He explains the role of this organization and its future projects.

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is today considered the best observatory in the world. . Kamphues/ESO © F Tell us about the European Southern of the world has an equivalent structure—namely Observatory. an organization capable of playing a federative Laurent Vigroux: It is an intergovernmental organ- role at the scale of an entire continent, with an ization which was set up in 1962 to develop annual budget and qualified in-house modern astronomy in Europe. At the time, the personnel—not even the US, where telescopes main objective of the five founding countries generally belong to universities or private (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, consortia. Furthermore, unlike the European CNRS. Besides, most of the 100 or so French arti- and Sweden) was to build a 4-meter telescope at Space Agency which devotes a large share of its cles based on ESO observations involve CNRS. La Silla in Chile that would be dedicated to study- activities to space launches and Earth observa- ing three objects that are hard to observe from tions, ESO only concerns itself with astronomy. What is the relationship between ESO and the the Northern Hemisphere: the Magellanic This gives it a much more significant mandate various space agencies? Is there competition Clouds, which are the two galaxies closest to our in the eyes of the scientific community. between space- and land-based astronomy? own, and our galaxy, the The latest call for proposals for observations L.V.: Not at all, these two branches of astronomy Milky Way—especially its received more than 1200 requests for the use of are complementary. To obtain images of exo- center. Because this first the ESO telescopes—unfortunately seven times planets, for example, a ground-based 40-meter instrument and those that more than available. Every year, 400 scientific telescope is essential. But determining where were added during the articles are published on studies performed to point it still requires a space-based telescope 1970s produced excellent using the VLT, i.e., more than one a day. To this of the CoRot type.3 results, other countries figure should be added the 25 to 30 yearly Similarly, observing the sky at certain wave- decided to join ESO, publications that focus on discoveries made lengths—X-ray, gamma-ray, or far-infrared—is making even more ambi- using the VLTI (Very Large Telescope not possible from Earth. For this reason, some tious projects possible. Interferometer: the interferometric mode of initiatives have to be taken outside ESO, especially amet/CNES The best-known example VLT2) and the telescopes at La Silla. since all terrestrial observation resources are not

© D. J was the construction in ESO is today a real science-generating machine represented in our organization. ESO does not the 1990s of the four 8-meter telescopes of the to which we owe results as spectacular as the carry out radioastronomy and does not partici- Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Mount Paranal in assessment, last year, of the mass of the black hole pate in high-energy astrophysics instruments Chile. Today, this observatory is considered the that lies at the center of our galaxy, or in 2005, like HESS or Auger. best in the world. ESO now has 14 Member the production of the first image of an exoplanet. States and owns some 20 instruments at the La How is ESO organized? Silla and Paranal sites, which enable observations To what degree is CNRS involved? L.V.: The observatory is managed by a Council of the sky at almost all wavelengths. L.V.: Although indirect, CNRS’ involvement in where each Member State has two representa- ESO is considerable since most French tives. This Council, of which I have been the What role does ESO play in world astronomy? astronomers work in CNRS laboratories. They president since January 2009, is responsible for L.V.: ESO occupies a unique place in the discipline also make important contributions to the design appointing the director general, approving the as it is currently the largest organization respon- of instruments. Out of the 15 instruments of the budget, and determining our principal policy sible for ground-based instruments: all major VLT and VLTI, 7 were designed with the assis- orientations. ESO’s annual budget is just over European countries are now members. No region tance of French teams, 6 of these being from Û130 million, which mainly comes from the con-

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010 CNRSNEWSWIRE 37

Endowed with a budget of Û800 million—half of which comes from ESO as the European contribution—this project aims to build a giant radio interferometer at an altitude of more than 5000 meters at the Llano de Chajnantor, Northern Chile. When it becomes operational in 2013, this network of antennae will be dedicated to studying the composition of interstellar clouds, the clouds of gas and dust from which the first galaxies probably emerged. As for the post-VLT period, we are currently studying the concept of a 42-meter telescope, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), whose main objective will be to obtain images of exoplanets. The ESO Council should decide on its construction by the end of 2010 or mid-2011. It could become fully operational by 2017-18. But this all depends on the political decisions taken by the different Member States. Supporting this project, which will cost approximately Û1 billion, means accepting a substantial increase in their financial contributions. Interview by Vahé Ter Minassian 1. Institut d’astrophysique de Paris (CNRS / Université Paris-VI). O 2. Interferometry produces images of a cosmic object by operating several telescopes in concert.

OJ/NRA 3. COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transit. © ESO/NA tributions of each Member State proportionally systems, called SPHERE, MUSE, and KMOS, to its GDP. Roughly 40% makes up the opera- should be operational by 2012 or 2013. The VLTI tional budget, which also includes industrial also has a second-generation instrumentation contracts for the building and instrumentation plan, in which CNRS will play a major role. CONTACT INFORMATION of the telescopes. The remainder is spent on the In parallel, ESO represents Europe in a vast Laurent Vigroux 650 or so staff, spread between the ESO head international program called ALMA, in which the IAP, Paris. office near Munich (Germany) and the US, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan also participate. [email protected] observatories in Chile. It should be noted that in most cases, ESO does not build the instruments that equip its telescopes. It issues calls for proposals that are answered by laboratories in the Member States in exchange for observation time. France is one of the leading countries in this A CAMERA TO FILM THE UNIVERSE ence v area, and has become renowned for its novel OCam, an ultrafast and ultra-sensitive camera for adaptive optics, able to capture 1500 images per ro

ideas in adaptive optics, the technique that uses second in almost complete darkness, has just been completed. It took five years for a consortium of . de P a deformable mirror to enable the real-time three French laboratories1 from CNRS-INSU to develop this camera, jointly funded by the European correction of disturbances caused by the Commission, ESO, and INSU, in the context of the European Opticon project. atmosphere. The country boasts several It was especially designed to be used on one of the VLT's second-generation instruments, called specialized teams, based in science observatories SPHERE, but will also be used on all VLT adaptive optics systems to come. This ultrafast camera will sique de Marseille/Univ in Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Grenoble, allow astronomers to measure and then correct for in real-time—and with hitherto unequaled y Nice, and Lyon, and at the French Atomic Energy accuracy—the atmospheric turbulence that interferes with the astronomical images captured by large stroph Commission (CEA). ground-based telescopes. A 1. Laboratoire d’astrophysique de Grenoble (CNRS / Université Grenoble-I, Observatoire des sciences de How will ESO instruments evolve over the next The detection system few years? l’Univers de Grenoble (CNRS / Université Grenoble-I / Institut polytechnique Grenoble)), Laboratoire of the OCam camera alard/Laboratoire d’ L.V.: The VLT is currently equipped with 12 instru- d’astrophysique de Marseille (CNRS / Université Aix- for VLT adaptive .B ments. These will gradually be replaced by new, Marseille-I / Observatoire astronomique de Marseille- optics. It can capture © P second-generation systems, two of which are Provence) and Observatoire de Haute-Provence (CNRS). 1500 images per currently being developed in France. Dedicated Contact information: second in almost Philippe Feautrier, [email protected] complete darkness. to research on exoplanets and to the visible and Jean-Luc Gach, [email protected] infrared spectroscopy of distant galaxies, these

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SESAR Modernizing Air Traffic in Europe A threefold increase in air traffic capacity in European skies, management costs halved, safety improved tenfold, and the environmental impact of each flight cut by 10%: just some of the objectives of the European SESAR program, to which CNRS is actively participating.

ith nearly 30,000 flights a different national systems.1 “Air between Û3-5 billion a year, one and new turbulence detection day during peak travel traffic control has evolved very little billion of which is due to system systems. Once fully developed, these Wperiods and more than 10 since communication by radio and fragmentation. Air traffic control technologies will first be deployed on million flights a year (set to increase radar became the norm,” explains costs two times more in Europe than the ground, then in airplanes by to 17 million by 2020 and 20.4 Philippe Baptiste, one of the 12 in the US, mainly due to this 2014. million by 2030), European air members of the SESAR scientific segmentation problem.” traffic risks paralysis if its manage- committee and director of the LIX.2 LONG TERM RESEARCH ment and control are not rapidly “To a large extent, it is still fairly low- DEFINING OPTIMAL In parallel with the technological modernized. tech, with very little automation, and FLIGHT PATHS developments currently underway, For this reason, in 2007 the continues to rely on the individual “At present, the flight paths set by air SESAR’s scientific committee is set- European Commission launched capacity of controllers to manage traffic controllers are far from ting up academic research networks the SESAR (Single European Sky ever increasing traffic levels.” optimal. They are overly dependent on various topics like modeling and Air traffic management and A member of the SESAR on the geographic segmentation of optimization of air traffic, the con- Research) program, the techno- scientific committee and senior national management systems and troller/computer interface, and logical side of the “Single European researcher at PREG,3 Alain military training spaces,” explains improving the system’s economic Sky” initiative, which aims to Jeunemaître points out that “the eco- Patrick Ky, SESAR’s executive direc- performance. restructure air traffic management nomic losses linked to the system’s tor. “For instance, it is estimated In France, several CNRS labo- in Europe, currently split into 27 lack of efficiency are estimated to be that current flight paths deviate from ratories are conducting research in optimal paths by 3 to 5%, these fields. PREG, for example, has which results in excessive fuel been examining ways of restruc- consumption, pollution, lost turing European air traffic control to time, and wasted money.” reduce its cost, while the LIX has SESAR is therefore now been working on traffic modeling working on optimizing flight aspects. The modernization of Euro- paths. For any given flight, pean air traffic control is essential, an optimal path will be jointly since failures come at a high price, defined by controllers, airline like the 2002 mid-air collision above companies, and other users of Lake Constance in Switzerland airspace (airports, business which resulted in 71 fatalities. jets, private and military Jean-Philippe Braly aviation, etc.). To do so, a number of technologies are 1. Its present budget stands at Û2.1 billion, being developed such as an divided between the European intranet that links every player Commission, Eurocontrol (European Organization for the Safety of Air involved in air traffic control Navigation) and 15 industrial partners. or direct data transfer between 2. Laboratoire d’informatique de l’école the ground and airplanes by polytechnique (CNRS / École Polytechnique). digital link, to complement 3. Pôle de recherche en économie et gestion the current radio link. Other de l’école polytechnique (CNRS / École solutions involve the first Polytechnique). satellite navigation tests using the European Galileo system CONTACT INFORMATION planned in 2010-2011, Patrick Ky controller and pilot assistance SESAR Joint Undertaking, Bruxelles. via new automatic functions, [email protected] www.sesarju.eu Philippe Baptiste To optimize air traffic control, LIX, Palaiseau. yimages t various technologies will be [email protected] implemented like an intranet Alain Jeunemaître connecting all the players PREG, Paris. involved, digital links with [email protected] ully/Stone/Get T airplanes, or new turbulence

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With its 69 antennae mounted on its ASSOCIATED LABORATORIES three arms, the SMOS satellite will analyze the oceans’ salinity and the soil’s moisture. Uruguay The Franco-Uruguayan Institute of Mathematics (IFUM), which was created on December 10th, 2009, associates a number of French laboratories in Paris, Montpellier, and Toulouse, with the University of the Republic and the Program for the Development of Basic Sciences (PEDECIBA) in Montevideo (Uruguay). Following a long-standing cooperation in mathematics between the two countries, this International Associated Laboratory (LIA) will coordinate research in three mathematical fields: algebra and geometric algebra; dynamic systems; and statistics and probability. http://www.math.univ-montp2.fr/~cibils/IFUM/

Argentina The International Franco-Argentinian Nanociences Laboratory (LIFAN), associating two laboratories in France,1and two in Argentina,2 was created last December. Mainly geared towards research on hybrid systems in spintronics, metal-oxide interfaces, and nanophonics, this International Associated Laboratory is expected to boost the existing collaboration, over ten years long, between the founding laboratories. A 1. Institut des nanosciences de Paris (CNRS / UPMC); Laboratoire des © ES collisions atomiques et moléculaires (CNRS / Université Paris-XI). 2. From the “Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica,” and from the “Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva,” in Buenos Aires SMOS and Bariloche. Tracking the World’s Water Greece / Romania fter more than 20 years of 1000 kilometers wide. “It lets Dubbed SmartMEMS, a new European Associated research and development, researchers compile maps of our Laboratory (LEA) was created between CNRS, the Greek Athe SMOS (Soil Moisture and planet’s surface water every three Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH) in Ocean Salinity) satellite was finally days with a resolution of 40 Heraklion (Greece), and the National Institute for Research launched from Plesetsk, in northern kilometers or better,” adds Kerr. and Development in Microtechnologies in Bucharest Russia, on November 2nd, 2009. It Since water levels, whether as (Romania). Its objective: to advance the knowledge on will spend at least the next three years soil moisture or in the oceans, are materials and their electromagnetic properties, and to in orbit, monitoring the Earth’s water. seen as “a tracer or an indicator of exploit such properties in the development of novel The SMOS project, which orig- climate change,” the SMOS components for communications and instrumentation. inated at the Center for the Study of mission—a joint French, Spanish, The first LEA created with Greece, SmartMEMS associates the Biosphere from Space (CES- and European Space Agency for four years some 40 researchers from CNRS’ Laboratory BIO)1 in Toulouse, aims to provide project—will not only let researchers for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS), the the first global maps of soil moisture track long-term climate change, but Microelectrics Research Group in Greece, and the and ocean salinity, two key indicators also predict it with greater accuracy Laboratory of Micromachined Structures, Microwave of the state of the Earth’s climate. in the short term. Circuits and Devices (RF MEMS) in Romania. “Getting the satellite into orbit This also means scientists can has been the work of an follow ocean currents as they move international team,” says Yann Kerr, around the globe, and thus “better understand and model thermoha- CESBIO’s director and SMOS PI. have gone marvellously well and CONTACT INFORMATION The SMOS satellite acts as a line circulation,” in other words, the we have received the first images Yann Kerr giant radio-thermometer picking way temperature and salinity earlier than anticipated,” Kerr says. CESBIO, Toulouse. up the Earth’s microwave radiation, interact. “We’re extremely satisfied.” [email protected] which is reduced by soil moisture Since its launch last November, Tom Ridgway and salinity. The 69 antennae SMOS has already started sending mounted on the satellite’s three back data, which is promising for 1. Centre d’études spatiales de la biosphère “arms” pick up radiation from large meteorologists, hydrologists, and (CNRS / Université Paul Sabatier / CNES / pseudo-hexagons approximately agronomists. “All the first stages IRD).

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PHYSICS Most Powerful NMR Spectrometer Now Operational

The most powerful nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer in the world was recently inaugurated at Lyon’s European Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center (CRMN).1 Gilberte Chambaud, director of CNRS’ Institute of Chemistry, tells us about this exceptional instrument and how collective efforts and ambitious policies have made the project possible.

Can you tell us more about this This machine belongs to the ultra- spectrometers in an environment requires a strong collaboration newly inaugurated instrument? high field NMR network.4 What is of competent technical and scientific between the researchers and the Gilberte Chambaud: It is a nuclear this network? support. In addition to their own manufacturers. magnetic resonance (NMR) spec- G.C.: It is a large and unique research research activity, the network’s Interview by Kheira Bettayeb trometer (see box) of unrivalled infrastructure spread on six sites scientists also host and help other power. It was funded—to an amount throughout France, each combin- researchers carrying out studies 1. Centre Européen de résonance of Û11 million—by French national ing a specific scientific expertise and requiring the use of the NMR magnétique nucléaire (CNRS / Ecole and regional institutions.2 This large a specific NMR spectrometer. The spectrometers. The new 1 GHz normale supérieure de Lyon / Université Claude Bernard Lyon-I). apparatus, which weighs 12 tons strength of this network stems from NMR spectrometer is the center- 2. CNRS, the Rhône-Alpes Region, the and stands 5.2 meters high, will the excellence of its expert teams piece of the network. urban community of Lyon, and Claude certainly allow significant advances (45 researchers and engineers), Bernard University. 3. The Tesla is a unit that characterizes the in the structural analyses of internationally recognized in the Is there a project for an even more force of a magnetic field. molecules of interest for medicine, field of solid inorganic or bioorganic powerful apparatus ? 4. TGIR-RMN: www.tgir-rmn.org biology, or materials science. Its NMR as well as in liquid NMR. G.C.: We are expecting a 1200 MHz magnet can generate a magnetic Through this network, French, but machine by 2015-2020, though the CONTACT INFORMATION 3 field of 23.5 Teslas, i.e., about also European scientists can have technology needed to produce such Gilberte Chambaud 500,000 times the magnetic field of access to these ultra-high field an apparatus is still in progress and CNRS, Paris. Earth. This will make it possible to [email protected] reach a “resonance frequency” of 1 Gigahertz (1000 MHz) for hydrogen atoms. Until now, the most powerful spectrometers in the world were limited to a frequency of 950 MHz. During the past 30 years, successive improvements in NMR techniques have led to new discoveries, and it is expected that this new step in technology will further advance the field.

What will be the specific use of this instrument ? G.C.: The teams with access to this machine are working on a large number of fundamental issues. For example, NMR spectroscopy can help detect structural alterations of NMR SPECTROSCOPY molecules associated to cancer. Discovered some 60 years ago, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) can precisely analyze the Determining proteins’ architectures composition and structure of a sample of matter at the atomic scale. The technique consists in and their dynamics could lead to detecting variations in the internal magnetization (spin) of specific atomic nuclei—such as that of the development of novel thera- e Roux/UCBL hydrogen—placed in a strong magnetic field. In practice, the nucleus absorbs an electromagnetic

peutic compounds. The instrument © E. L radiation at a given frequency—the resonance frequency—which modifies its internal can also be used to analyze the magnetization. When the radiation is withdrawn, the nucleus returns to its fundamental state. This The new 1 GHz structure of materials like wood, “relaxation” causes the emission of a characteristic electromagnetic wave that can be measured NMR spectrometer glass, or concrete, or to improve the and analyzed. The higher the magnetic field, the larger the resonance frequency and the more in Lyon can design of polymers. At least 70% generate a detailed the spectrum obtained. Because variations in internal magnetization depend on the of the projects are in chemistry and magnetic field immediate environment of the nucleus, the technique allows for a detailed structural analysis of of 23.5 Teslas. the life sciences. the matter studied. FD

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PALEOCLIMATOLOGY Thawing Climate History uring the interglacial Eemian and environmental conditions in CNRS scientists. By the summer’s biological material, like bacteria, or Period, which occured approx- polar regions. end, NEEM had reached a depth of by measuring both ice crystal struc- Dimately between 130,000 and To retrieve this evidence, the 1757.84 meters—establishing a new tures and bore-hole temperatures. 115,000 years ago, polar tempera- NEEM project (North Greenland world record for single-season deep- The ice reached last summer tures were significantly warmer than EEMian Ice Drilling), led by the ice core drilling. It now hopes to dates from 38,500 years ago. First at present, with sea levels 4-6 meters University of Copenhagen reach the annual Eemian ice layers analyses show the site at that time higher. This period offers a perfect (Denmark), but made up of a team by the end of summer 2010. Each of received the heaviest precipitations benchmark for current global warm- of scientists from 14 countries1 these layers is on average 7 mm in the summer, and reveal the nature ing models, which predict a tem- including CNRS researchers,2 is thick and found close to the bedrock, of climatic variations prevalent over perature rise of 2.4°C per century. established at a remote base in 2542 meters below the surface. the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay. Yet little is known about Eemian northwestern Greenland. The site of The samples brought to the Graham Tearse evolution—including the sequence this ambitious project, drilling to surface are analyzed by stable water 1. The United States, Belgium, Canada, of changes in polar ice caps and ice older than that of any previous isotope ratios, revealing the tem- China, Denmark, France, Germany, ocean currents. Crucial evidence of study, was chosen by radar prospec- peratures prevalent at the time in Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United this period and its transition into tion for optimal conditions: it had to Greenland, and the regional sources Kingdom. the last Ice Age is buried deep below be above an ice divide, where the of the precipitations. 2. From INSU-CNRS, CEA, Versailles the Greenland ice cap as thin layers oldest ice is located, and on a flat Gases trapped between snow St. Quentin University, Joseph Fourier University (Grenoble), with the support of of ice, each representing annual bedrock to ensure the undisturbed crystals and the particulates they the French national research agency (ANR), snowfall, compacted over tens of preservation of the layers. contain tell us about atmospheric and the French polar institute (IPEV). thousands of years. Each of these NEEM began deep drilling in conditions, notably greenhouse gas layers contains a trove of informa- June 2009, using its own non- levels. But more information can CONTACT INFORMATION tion about previous atmospheric polluting drill fluid developed with be obtained from chemical and Valérie Masson-Delmotte LSCE, Gif-sur-Yvette. [email protected] ASTRONOMY

CoRoT Mission but its mandate was renewed due to the Planck Keeps overall high quality of data obtained— Extended including some recent breakthroughs on both its Promise stars and exoplanets. The results of the The CoRoT satellite’s mission has been mission were published in a special issue of The Planck satellite, launched in May 2009, extended for another three years. The Astronomy & Astrophysics in October 2009.1 gave its first reading of the sky, a narrow band satellite was launched in 2006 with two The mission’s extension was granted by across the entire celestial sphere, providing objectives: to scan the universe for France’s National center for space studies excellent quality data. This European mission exoplanets and to learn more about star (CNES), together with its national and is designed to measure cosmic microwave structure (by measuring star oscillation). international partners (CNRS-INSU, the Paris background radiation, the oldest radiation CoRoT was originally a three-year mission, Observatory, the European Space Agency emitted in the Universe, showing us how it (ESA), Austria, Belgium, was 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The Germany, Spain, and Brazil). satellite will provide a complete map of the During the next three years, sky with unprecedented accuracy for the researchers hope to heterogeneity of the temperature and acquire more information on polarization of cosmic microwave new types of stars. They will background radiation, using the French High also focus on finding “super Frequency Instrument. CNRS laboratories hot earths,” planets slightly from INSU and IN2P3 have played a crucial more massive than the role in its conception, development, and Earth that rotate much implementation. Complete readings from closer to their parent star. Planck are expected by 2012. 1. “The CoRoT space mission: early results,” Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2009. Vol. 506 / 1 - October IV. 06/CNES , 20

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CNRS in Brief The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research) is a government-funded research organization under the administrative authority of France’s Ministry of Research. Facts…

Founded in 1939 by evaluations. There are two between fields, ensure civilian research. This funding governmental decree, CNRS types of labs: economic and technological comes from various sources: has the following missions: CNRS labs: fully funded and development, and solve Government and public To evalulate and carry out all managed by CNRS complex societal problems. funding research capable of Joint labs: partnered with www.cnrs.fr/prg/PIR/liste.htm CNRS funds, primarily from advancing knowledge and universities, other research industrial and EU research bringing social, cultural, and organizations, or industry The CNRS annual budget contracts and royalties on economic benefits to society represents one-quarter of patents, licenses, and To contribute to the As the largest fundamental French public spending on services provided application and promotion of research organization in research results Europe, CNRS is involved in all To develop scientific scientific fields, organized into communication the following areas of To support research training research: To participate in the analysis Life sciences … And Figures of the national and Physics international scientific Chemistry Budget for 2009 Organization Industrial Relations climate and its potential for Mathematics Û3.36 billion of which > 10 thematic institutes (2007) evolution in order to develop Computer science Û607 million comes > 19 regional offices, > 1680 contracts signed a national policy Earth sciences and from revenues ensuring decentralized by CNRS with industry Astronomy generated by CNRS direct management of in 2007 CNRS research units are Humanities and Social contracts laboratories > 30 current agreements spread throughout France, and sciences > 1100 research with major internat- employ a large body of Environmental sciences and Personnel units–90% are joint ional industrial groups permanent researchers, Sustainable development 32,000 employees: research laboratories > 3103 patent families engineers, technicians, and Engineering 11,600 researchers, with universities and > 729 licenses and other administrative staff. 14,400 engineers and industry financially remune- Laboratories are all on CNRS conducts some twenty technical staff, and 6000 rating active acts four-year, renewable interdisciplinary programs in non-permanent > Û58.2 million in royalties contracts, with bi-annual order to promote exchange employees > 394 companies created between 1999 and 2008

DAE AND DRI, TWO OFFICES DEVOTED TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

CNRS carries out research direct relations with its organizations as well as the IN NUMBERS: > International Programs for activities throughout the institutional partners abroad. activities of the Ministries of Exchange agreements: Scientific Cooperation world, in collaboration with The DAE and the DRI Research and Foreign 85 (with 60 countries) (PICS): 368 local partners, thus pursuing promote cooperation Affairs. > International Associated an active international policy. between CNRS laboratories To carry out their mission, Foreign visiting Laboratories (LEA + LIA): 123 and foreign research teams the DAE and the DRI–with scientists: 5000 (PhD > International Research students, post-docs, and Groups (GDRE + GDRI): 90 The Office of European through a set of structured head offices in Paris–rely on visiting researchers) > International Joint Units Affairs (DAE) and the Office collaborative instruments a network of eight (UMI): 22 of International Relations developed for this purpose. representative offices Permanent foreign staff (DRI) coordinate and At the same time, they abroad, as well as on the members: implement the policies of coordinate CNRS actions science and technology > About 1700 researchers of Contact: Antonia Alcaraz, CNRS in Europe and the rest with those of other French offices in French embassies whom more than 1200 come [email protected] of the world, and maintain and international research around the world. from Europe www.drei.cnrs.fr

CNRS International Magazine n6°1January 2010

AMAZING IMAGES

Capturing Earth’s Dynamics This seemingly abstract painting of a dinosaur skull is actually a map of a part of Iran’s coastline near Khamir, where the northward-moving Arabian tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate collide. The resulting folds are the Zagros Mountain Range. 5 km The map was developed by researchers from the Geosciences Montpellier lab1 using the Landsat 7etm+ satellite. Remote sensing was used to obtain digital photographs taken from space in which different components of the Earth’s surface are captured at different wavelengths and then combined into a single false-color picture. This technique lets researchers create evolving records of the Earth’s surface. It is a particularly useful tool for surveying inaccessible areas, and furnishing dynamic data for patterns of erosion, sedimentation, the nature and age of rocks, and tectonic activity. Such information will help evaluate the global dynamics of the Earth’s natural processes and the effects of human interventions. Sarah MacKenzie

1. CNRS / Université Montpellier-II.

. Dominguez/Géosciences Montpellier/ CNRS Photothèque . Dominguez/Géosciences Montpellier/ CNRS Contact information: Stephane Dominguez, Géosciences Montpellier. [email protected] © S FRENCH NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OFFICES ABROAD

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