When you are a researcher in a scientific field, there are many ways to make people understand what you are working on: the classic way is to teach them the phenomenon in a class, but of course it is only aimed for students. For a larger public, you can make a conference, but the problem is that it is not enough interactive.

The last fashionable and better idea in the scientific world is to present your work on a simple poster. This one must be clear, with not too much text and it must contain many pictures: the principle aim is to attract people with good pictures, letting them read the short texts you wrote. If they are interested and want to learn more about your work, they will ask you some questions. And now your job is to explain more than the texts on the poster by basing you on the pictures.
The advantage of this strategy is at the beginning, to let the interested person understand the main idea by himself (because you don’t talk to him first, not like in class or in a conference). So it will be easier for him to be precise when asking questions, and it will take less time to make you clear (because he already knows the subject and its consequences)!

On last Tuesday, students in master 1 in physics had to make a poster about a scientific device or theory. I found one very attractive and very clear about the different microscopes invented and the way they work. I would like to show it to you because it is for me a good example of what I was just telling you before in this post:

You can see that the colour (brown/red) makes the poster very good-looking. There are lots of pictures that give us easy information and catch us to learn more about microscopes. The texts are now here to make us curious and asking questions to the poster owners: this is exactly what happened to me. For example, about the third slide on Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy, I couldn’t find the link between the IBM picture and the device because this picture shows us that you can move atoms as you like whereas the presented device is used to see atoms. The missing information was a good way to interact with my colleagues and that was the point!

Thank you for this pleasant time with drinks and peanuts!

Hello,

I’m unhappy to tell you this will be the last English lesson summary of this semester.

So last time, we read an article from the Chemistry World written on February 2008. It was about a new reactor invented by researchers at a laboratory situated in New Mexico: they made a successful process to recycle carbon dioxide into petrol!

The idea is directly taken from the process designed to split water to form hydrogen. In fact it uses solar energy to split carbon dioxide to get carbon monoxide. And when these two processes are combined, you can get methanol or petrol.

The ultimate aim of the researchers is to have a series of solar-powered reactors, but a first prototype will be operational only in 3 or 5 years… And today the main problem is to speed up the reactions, making up a concrete and efficient device to market.

The very interesting way to understand this article is to keep in mind that carbon dioxide is the molecule which is responsible for global warming. So using it to synthesise liquid hydrocarbon will transform the devil polluting circle to an harmonious circle!

Of course we learnt a bit of vocabulary about it: the word “endeavour” that means effort, “worthwhile” that means something is useful to be done, and the verb “to belch” that tells us something is thrown away (obviously, in the article, we talks about the carbon dioxide belched by cars!).

Thank you!

A friend of mine decided two years ago to create a Tour Operator specialized in motorcycle tours in India. He went to this country for his third year with his Ecole de Commerce, and there discovered many nice places.

Before going to India, he never made any motorcycle in his life. Because he found in this country a special and attractive atmosphere with old motorcycles like the Royal Enfield, he decided to move around the country with one of them.

India is a very big country with so many different landscapes: you can find in the south beautiful beaches like tropical paradises, and in the north there are some many deserts and incredible mountains that you feel like if you were on another planet…

Travelling on a motorcycle is an original idea and more than that, it is a new way to look around you because you’re free to go everywhere, to take your time, with the pleasure to be on a beautiful device…

I let you with his website http://www.vintagerides.com to look out what he offers! And please have a look to his photo gallery

Thank you!

I really want here to introduce you an English movie I saw yesterday night: it’s called “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. It was produced on 1945: I know the year is a bit frightened because you all think black & white movie, no interesting music, unknown actors and a very strange way to dress… But the date should tell you that when a movie is old, it can’t be attractive for the eye, but mostly for the ears… I just mean that elder is the movie, more interesting are their dialogues. I hope i’m not scaring you! I know it is strange, but if you want to watch this incredible movie, you should be very concentrated…

The story happens in London in 1866: a rich and seductive young man called Dorian Gray wants a well-known painter to make a portrait of himself. An old painter’s friend who is there when the picture has just been finished, tells Dorian that the picture is wonderful because of his youth. He

told him that his youth is the only good quality he has but it’s ephemeral. So the young man makes a secret wish: he gives his soul to the evil instead of keeping his youth for the rest of his life. This wish creates a strange relationship between him and the picture: as soon as he pronounced the magic formula, the picture becomes his soul and it starts to change as Dorian Gray goes along his luxury life…

This movie makes us thinking about the personality of young people, their hope and their will in a the upper class in London: women, drugs and pleasure were and are always present in minds.

I hope that will be enough to motivate yourselves to watch it!

Thanks.

This post will be about international and national website statistics: who doesn’t want to know which is the most popular website in the world or in his country? So many questions about website statistics are interesting but very difficult to answer!

I found out few months ago a very nice website which moves aside my curiosity: have a look at http://alexa.com/.

You will be surprised to find a ranking statement of the first twenty most popular websites in the world. This statement is updated every hour, and you’ll see that the ranking never stays the same. The system is exactly the same as a music statement on MTV!

Of course, the top of the list is not a surprise: you’ll find yahoo, google, youtube, myspace, msn and facebook. But if you have a look lower in the list, there appears strange Japanese or Chinese websites like baidu or hi5. Of course, if you think a little, many Asian people have got an internet access, more than the Europeans or Americans.

If you go deeper in alexa.com, you will find ranking statements classified by countries: this is the main interest of this website. You’ll see none obvious results, and you will be able to compare internet use between different countries!

You will see, this will become a pretty interesting hobby!

Thanks.

One of the most popular French websites, “Chacal Stream” have just closed down during the last days! Two months ago, on Monday 29th of January, his French admin was arrested by the French police.

Popular American films and series are used to be downloaded everyday by 38.000 people and about 280.000 connections were registered per month. Since the last seven months, French police were advised about it, thanks to one of the ALPA members(Association de lutte contre la piraterie audiovisuelle) …

As well as any other websites, like Dailymotion or Google, he is condemned to pay 300.000 € and three years of jail. However, they’ve never found any DVD or any other computer materials in his house, just only two laptops.

This has been the beginning of an important persecution, that French police have done during the last months, to discover illegal websites. In fact, is so rarely to find any website to watch recent series and films in these times.

If you find one, just let me know please!

Hello everyone!

I’m sure you all like watching guitar video everynight before going bed… For those who play and those who love listening to incredible and original guitar music, the video is for you! Just have a look on what follows

He is making what guitar players call “tapping”: he just hit on the guitar strings, so he doesn’t need to pick them. This technique can produce a strange and smooth sound, and better than that, the music he plays is very nice!

Thank you!

We saw during the last english lesson the better way to make an abstract easier to understand. In fact, if you want to be clear in your explonations, you may follow this typical order when you write an abstract:

During this lesson, we read an article taken from the website newscientist.com. It was about a device designed to generate power while people walk. The idea consists in a backpack you carry and it generates a power of 7 watts, taken from the ordinary motion of our bodies. It contains fibres that produce a voltage as they are brushed together trough the natural walking movement. The person can hold a kind of leg brace too : when the legs move, the gears in the brace turn, generating a power of 5 watts.The idea is pretty good and original, but the main problem is the weight : the backpack is a very heavy ,around 38 kilograms ! But scientists are trying to optimize the system to make it easier to hold, with a better power results.

The article permits us to learn some vocabulary about mecanical physic : a brace is an orthopedical device, a gear is an ‘engrenage’ in french, a loping means you’re running taking long relax steps, and a treadmill is the device where you can run in a fitness room.

At the end of the course, we made a little oral presentation on an article about thin coatings in the industry. We had to explain the idea of the process by writing on a slide, which showed the main steps of it. The principal difficulty was to make it clear for other people, by explaining small drawings we made, showing the process advantages and problems.

Thank you.

I’m going to give you now a very very nice link about Wallpapers.

Since we have these beautiful big LCD screen at home, you can imagine that wallpapers has become very essential for the decoration. But it is pretty difficult to find an interesting and original one.

This website is for you: http://www.deviantart.com/.

You can find there many wallpapers, classified in many different sections. They are all made by amateurs, and most of them are not very good. But sometimes, you can find out a very special wallpaper you like. And with this wallpaper, you can find its author, and look at his favourite drawings: by now, Deviantart becomes a powerful way to find nice wallpapers. You will see that surfing on favourite pages becomes quickly addictive, because you will find so many good wallpapers: a good author always has got very interesting favourites links…

You will see by yourself that it works very well! Good luck!