Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Aaaarthuuur here!
Journalism intern, 27 years old, getting ready to meet some PhD studentsÖ
People who are going to change my life!
Thesis subject
Arthur?
- Hi Erwan, please have a seat.
Coercing Caterpillars Hi Erwan, please have a seat.
Coercing Caterpillars -
Coercing Caterpillars So, do you know where I'm taking you?
No idea. You didn't tell me in the e-mail.
Well, we're going to Garancières La Queue to visit the biggest butterfly greenhouse in the Paris area.
Good idea, but, at this time of year, you won't see any caterpillars or butterflies...
Well...erm...what is your PhD about?
Well, my thesis was about a moth, in its caterpillar state in particular.
And I studied the olfaction of this insect.
As our planet becomes more and more populated, we need to produce more and more food.
We could actually save this food that insects eat, and give it to humans, instead.
But to fight the insects, we use pesticides that also harm humans.
Here you can see the adults - Is that a bat?
Nope, that's an Atlas moth, the one you saw on the sign.
Here are some chrysalises and cocoons, with some butterflies still inside.
It first hangs onto its cocoon, dries its wings, and then it finally takes flight.
As these pests rely enormously on their sense of smell,
which helps them locate food or mates to reproduce,
we could figure out how to disturb their recognition abilities
so they can't find mates or food,
and in a much cleaner way than we currently do with pesticides.
For example, we could use olfaction disturbance strategies:
by spreading out many many pheromones so that the male can't find the female,
and also by learning which genes and proteins are responsible for these great olfaction abilities
and then finding molecules that can block these receptors so that the bug can not find its food.
Hey, look here!
We should have brought some bananas in here...
I heard bananas attract them.
Is it important for you to go and work abroad, in Chicago?
Totally. If that works out, it would be such a great opportunity.
It's a really big lab, and the team I want to work with, it only formed a year ago, and they're all very young.
There's a lot to do, it's exciting to begin a new adventure,
even if it's still about olfaction, it's a new insect, a new problematic.
I'm a bit disillusioned by these past 3 years of PhD.
Doing research today isn't exactly what I expected when I was a kid and dreamed about being a researcher.
It's a tough world, there are a lot of people with huge egos, caught up in tribal warfare about money, subjects, articles.
Here you can almost make out the butterfly.
It's the same here with the green ones, the Parides, with the thorax, the abdomen behind, the wings on the other side.
Here, take a look, this one came out just a short while ago.
You wouldn't happen to have another thesis subject for me?
Not any more, but I know that nobody is replacing me.
So maybe you can apply to do a PhD in my old lab and see if they need someone.
There are still a lot of ongoing questions...
Bye, Erwan!
Algorithmic meandering in the fortresses!
Barchan meandering... erm... no, the barchan meandering in the fortresses!
Neuronal algorithms... in the olfaction process.
How does the barchan meandering create an olfactive... fortress?
Olfactive algorithm...
in the barchan fields...
I guess nobody did that one, eh?
Fortresses in the algorithmic... process!