HeForShe. By Rebecca FORREST-EVANS

Emma Watson: spokesperson of HeForShe

Emma Watson, who was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women in 2014, is one of the three key people who initiated HeForShe. This campaign for gender equality encourages men and boys to fight for women's rights.

It is during her speech at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York on the 20th of September 2014 that Emma Watson launched the HeForShe movement.

Here's a quote from her speech: "How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feels welcome to participate in the conversation?"

This is a new way of thinking about gender equality because here, men are encouraged to get involved. Emma Watson has asked the world to take action to build a new solidarity movement for gender equality because women and girls continue to be victims of discrimination and violence everywhere in the world. She says that this is not just a women's issue, it's a human rights issue.

During this speech, a call was made for the first 100,000 men to sign up to HeForShe. Barack Obama and Matt Damon were amongst those who signed.

On the 23rd of January 2015, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a new initiative was launched: the Impact 10x10x10 initiative. Its goal was also to promote gender equality and women's empowerment but within companies, governments and universities. It is, once more, Emma Watson who launched the movement with a speech.

To celebrate International Women's Day on the 8th of March 2015, a live conversation in the offices of Facebook in London with Emma Watson was organised and broadcast live on her Facebook page. The actress responded to questions about the campaign but also about her point of view on feminism.

The strong-willed Hermione Granger has grown up to become Emma Watson, the woman who fights for women's rights!

Rebecca FORREST-EVANS wants to work for the UN.

IoT. By Baptiste PETITJEAN

Cloud cuckoo land?

The Internet has become an integral part of our lives. Almost everyone has a personal computer, a Smartphone or a tablet. Everyone uses email for work, and many of us are connected on and off the whole day long to various social networks. We are living as connected people…

The “connected objects” revolution started in 2015. We are now thinking about connecting all the objects we use in our daily lives like our fridge, washing machine, or oven, but also our clothes!

The leaders of this revolution are some of the giants of the new technologies, like Samsung, Apple, and Google. They feel that it is very important to show their ability to create new things. Samsung, for one has created a virtual platform that will connect together all the connected devices to create a kind of “Internet of Things” (IoT).

These devices were put on the front lane at Las Vegas’ CES in January 2016.  In the great halls of the event, thousands of these devices were on show, with hundreds of different uses, from health to the house. The aim of this event was to promote the new gadgets and find investors.

The experts in this topic are planning that the connected tings and IoT will be up and running within three years and that all the devices we use will all be connected to each other by the years 2020.

However, IoT raises security problems. Indeed, devices must be very secure so that the private life of the user is not vioalated; nobody wants all his personal data to be hacked! So, if they want their connected objects to be a success, the inventors and constructors have to inssure the consumers a high level of security first.

Links:

http://www.information-age.com/it-management/strategy...

http://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/business/university-s-leading-role...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things

http://www.archos.com/fr/products/objects/index.html

http://www.connect-object.com/

http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/11/the-internet-of-things-bigger/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/internet-of-things

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21606420-perils-connected-devices-home-hacked-home

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/category/internet/internet-of-things/?_r=0

Baptiste PETITJEAN will be a famous scientist!

A burning issue… By Anita VIDAL

California fires are on the increase, why?

I think it is vital to be aware of the causes and effects of climate change…

According to the IPPC EU directive, global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the oceans and the atmosphere on a global scale over several years; since the late nineteenth century, global temperatures have increased by 0.6 °C...

According to a Washington Post journalist, governments think that there should be a slowdown of global warming over the next twenty years. So far, however, it has increased year on year. 2015 was the hottest on record. Climate change has repercussions: natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes. The journalist ends his article by saying that it is not a purely scientific problem but rather a political one.

An article in la.curbed.com discusses the effects of the global rise in temperatures on California. In this State, temperatures can reach  40°C. Fires are becoming more common because of the resulting drought, and pollution has increased. If people do not change their bad habits, the situation can only get worse, though some scientists say it is too late…

Links:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/24/top-scientists-insist-global-warming-really-did-slow-down-in-the-2000s/

http://la.curbed.com/2015/8/26/9926742/the-many-terrifying-ways-global-warming-will-soon-be-ravaging

Anita VIDAL wants to work for an environmental NGO.

The migrant crisis in Europe. By Hugo DOS SANTOS

Testing the limits...

Since 2010, the flow of migrants coming to Europe has kept increasing because of the numerous conflicts. Between January and August 2015, 350,000 people have entered illegaly the Schengen area, and the HCR has counted 437,384 applications for asylum. Countries and politicians seem unable to agree on the way to deal with the problem…

The 26 member states of the Schengen area have no internal borders but reinforced outer borders. The member state which receives an application for asylum has to deal with it; this has been criticized because it gives too much to do to the border countries such as Greece, Italy or Hungary. The EU has had several meetings to try and resolve the problem.

The European Commission has spent over a billion Euros setting up “hotspots” in the countries most involved in the migrants’ arrival.

Some countries want the powers of Frontex, the European borders security organization, to be increased. The European Commissioner Dimitri Avramopoulos wants a coast and border guard system to ensure better control.

The refugee crisis has given rise to many controversies. Countries like Hungary are building fences in order to stop the incoming migrants. Others, like Germany, want the migrants to be distributed, using a quota system, among the EU member states. But the polls show that 56% of Europeans are not convinced by this idea. Public opinion is divided. In Prague and Bratislava, people demonstrated against welcoming migrants. The situation is overwhelming and reveals the shortcomings of the EU...

Sources :

Le JDD.fr

Le Monde 24 Septembre 2015

Alternatives Economiques Hors-séries n°107

The Economist.fr

Libération.fr

Géopolitique de l’Europe, édition Nathan

Hugo DOS SANTOS wants to be a lawyer.

Crisis, what crisis? Should LVMH invest more in France? By Louis TOLEDO

La Fondation Louis Vuitton

LVMH is top dog of the booming luxury sector. Since 1987, this company has continued to prosper, with today more than sixty brands including haute couture, leather goods, wines and spirits, champagnes, watches, jewelry and perfume. It is an empire run by the powerful billionaire Bernard Arnault. Magically, this French multinational has escaped the crisis…

The luxury business, valued at 150 billion euros, traditionally caters to wealthy customers of course, but nowadays it also has “occasional” customers (about 200 million people world-wide). Around 60% of Europeans, Japanese, and Northern Americans, have bought a luxury product at least once.

The shareholders of LVMH put pressure on their Board to increase profits. The result is that goods have to be made more cheaply in developing countries rather than in France. Rising unemployment for us is the result…

One tenth of the active French population has no employment, but Bernard Arnault had a new museum built in Paris, designed by Frank Gehry, costing €500 million… Arnault earned almost €3.5 million in 2014, 200 times more than the basic wage. All this money should surely be better used, namely to employ people in France. But, it is shareholders who decide in private companies, not our government…

Louis TOLEDO wants to work as a manager in international trade...

The urban landscape of Paris needs modernizing! By Louis JANOT

The Tour Triangle, a well-inspired project?

Paris is famous for its historic buildings and monuments; it is a kind of open-air museum. This is obviously an asset for the tourist industry, but it is also a disadvantage because Paris is losing out to rival world cities which are continuously modernizing…

This architectural challenge is in all Parisian architects’ minds; they have to deal with the laws that protect these buildings. While in London, the high-tech “Gherkin,” for one, has become part of the cityscape, Paris is struggling to erect modern constructions, mainly because the city doesn’t want to sacrifice any of its historic sites in the process. It takes years for architects to get their works built. Even if some do succeed in their fight with the authorities and with bureaucracy, like the LVMH Foundation, there are still too few projects. It’s such a shame that Paris is so reactionary regarding urban development...

Jean Nouvel’s Philharmonie de Paris, an amazingly beautiful building, is located to the north-east of the city; there are no recent buildings of any note in the actual centre of Paris.

I took a closer look at those draconian Parisian urban-planning laws and I discovered that most of the regulations concerning for example height and types of materials are almost the same as they were 200 years ago, i.e. they apply to the Haussmann era!

Another obstacle to architectural innovation is the inhabitants themselves. For example: 56% of Parisians disapprove of the Tour Triangle project… This attitude is almost traditional. The Eiffel tower itself was considered by many “a stain” on Paris after its opening! The Pompidou Centre is still disliked by some. Mind you, when you see the ghastly Montparnasse building, you have to admit that not all contemporary architecture is brilliant…

Good news: the Tour Triangle project (180m tall) has finally been approved by the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. She is proud to sponsor “the most ecological building in the world”; at last, a Paris council leader who believes in urban renewal?

Louis JANOT wants to become an architect and town-planner.

One giant leap too far? By Pierre-Etienne PION

Attacking Mars...

JFK said, in 1962: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

In 1969, Neil Armstrong of the Apollo 11 space mission walked on the Moon. It was the outcome of a decade of scientific research and the realization of Kennedy’s dream. But it also put an end to the space race, which brought into competition the United States and the USSR for ten years during the Cold War. It’s mostly because of the space race that Americans did the impossible in only nine years. After this major event, NASA became the first space institution in the world, the emblem of the conquest of space and scientific ambition. So, logically, after the moon, Mars became the next goal…

But, though NASA wants to pursue its objectives, they are dependent on government money, and the interest for space has really waned since Apollo 11. Mars was put on standby by NASA.

But, for the last 5 years, with investments from private companies, the project is back in vogue. In 2015, NASA announced the creation of the JOURNEY TO MARS to pioneer the next steps in space exploration. They have presented to the world the scientist impact of such a journey.

But, the journey is difficult: 500 million kilometres between the Earth and Mars, a 520-day round trip. A Russian mission has simulated 500 days in confinement in a space craft for six people called ‘Mars 500’ to see how the crew reacted to a such long period alone; the results were encouraging. Another difficulty is communication: the crew will receive instructions only 14 minutes after they are sent, and ground control will get the crew's answer 14 minutes later. If an accident were to occur, the communication delay makes emergency communication difficult, so the crew will have to basically manage alone.

From a technological point of view, NASA is ready to send humans to Mars, but the cost of such a long journey is so high that it requires cooperation between many countries and institutions, which is complicated, for political reasons.

The project, announced last year, is ambitious: NASA hopes to put a man on Mars before 2025…

http://www.mars-one.com/mission

https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasas-journey-to-mars

http://www.rdmag.com/articles/2016/01/can-nasa-get-mars-official-report-questions-journey-mars-mission

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nasa-mars-exploration-by-ellen-r--stofan-2016-01

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Mars500

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/mars-article/

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/journey-to-mars-next-steps-20151008_508.pdf

Pierre-Etienne PION has chosen engineering as a career.

How can the world stop the rise of militancy? By André MAXENCE

Drones... A solution to the rise of terrorism?

Since 9/11, there has been an increase in terrorist attacks and indiscriminate violence by Islamist groups such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Boko haram and Al-Qaida. States counter these jihadist attacks with massive spates of bombings…

On the 15^th January 2016, Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants killed at least 28 people in an assault on the Splendid Hotel, a nearby cafe and another hotel, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The attack, which was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), came less than two months after gunmen attacked a hotel in the Malian capital Bamako, killing around 20 people. The Bamako attack was also claimed by AQIM in coordination with Al-Mourabitoun, an Al-Qaeda splinter group led by veteran Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Militancy is going to be a growing threat in the Sahel region, which constitutes of a vast horizontal belt across Africa and includes Burkina Faso and Mali. This radicalization is clearly due to a lack of education and employment opportunities in the region…

I think we have to fix the problem of illiteracy and education of third world nations. But, as is written in The Guardian: “Dozens of US special operations troops will arrive in Syria “very soon,” as promised by President Barack Obama’s administration, a senior official has said.” A wiser reaction would have been to react carefully and peacefully by not dealing with the states that sponsor terrorists. Unfortunately, powerful countries choose to tackle terrorism by violent military counter-terrorism operations, with, for example, drone strikes: “Two drone strikes by two different countries nearly 3,000km apart this week represents the proliferation of Barack Obama’s signature mode of counter-terrorism” (The Guardian).

Operation Barkhane is an ongoing anti-insurgent operation in Africa's Sahel region, which commenced 1 August 2014. It consists of a 3,000-strong French force, which will be permanent and headquartered in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. The operation has been set up in five countries, former French colonies, that span the Sahel: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. These countries are collectively referred to as the "G5 Sahel”.

This is a sad way to react; it only leads to more violence and hatred around the world. Surely, if all countries acted together in complete coordination, terrorism would be eradicated?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/us-special-forces-to-arrive-in-syria-very-soon-as-assad-hails-russian-air-strikes

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/09/obama-drone-strikes-counterterror-uk-pakistan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barkhane

André MAXENCE wants to work in journalism.

Movie actors, victims of their roles? By Eléonore PARADIS

Romy Schneider, playing the victim?

Identity has always been a real problem for actors, especially for the actors who choose to follow the Stanislavski method, which consists in a deep impregnation in a role. Some actors are sometimes too invested in their roles and some roles can be very impressive on a human person. A lot of movie actors who played the role of a psychopath or a tyrant suffered from psychological troubles as a consequence. They can also have physical after-effects because of the changes they imposed on themselves, for example to lose weight and then to put on weight for another film, to work hard on body expression, or to look different from their previous image according to the situation… It is a very tiring job; that’s why a lot of actors die prematurely.

It is the case, for instance, of Romy Schneider who was a victim of her role as a princess when she was sixteen in the film Sissi. The public couldn’t disassociate her from this role and her professional life was consecrated to breaking this reputation; she refused any similar roles and she searched for completely different characters, usually as fragile women. This certainly contributed to her tragic suicide…

It is often difficult for an artist to extricate him or herself from public opinion, or from the label that the spectators put on the actors. The public knows that Daniel Radcliffe “is” Harry Potter, a small wizard with round spectacles and a magic wand, and, in the public mind, he can’t really be anyone else. But an actor isn’t only one character and the public doesn’t give him a chance to express his entire talent.

Many actors are victims of their roles and of the public’s judgement. It affects their career but it can also be dangerous for their lives…

Eléonore PARADIS has chosen film critic as a career.

How to help people like themselves… By Elora MAZZINI

According to a UNICEF survey, 43% of French teenagers are in a state of “psychologic suffering”. That is what Le Monde was telling us in September 2014. A lot of them don’t feel safe in the society in which they grow up, mainly because of the material or social difficulties they often meet, the new ways of living, and also the terrorism threat which is frightening. Even if that global feeling from the youth isn’t always (and for everyone) as dramatic as it looks, it still is one of the reasons why today’s world requires psychologists and people who are interested in human behaviour. They aren’t all practitioners; some of them work as researchers for governmental or non-governmental organisations. We can notice than some of them focus not only on human behaviour but also on animal behaviour.

Psychologists notice many new fears, not only among teenagers: depression, addiction, phobias, anxiety, degenerative brain diseases are some of the various topics they have to study and solve, as a freelancer or in a medical team or a university research team. Moreover, psychologists should have a great knowledge of the functioning of society; they have to keep an eye open on the entire world to help the people targeted to overcome their problems. Actually, I believe that communication with the rest of the world is very important on psychology, contrary to what we may think, the purpose doesn’t consist on focusing on a person to help him, but also on analysing his environment, our world, and how it works. This is a very close to the work of sociologists and even philosophers.

Psychology is an interesting profession in many aspects. Mrs I. K. Louédec explains that the human contact, the satisfaction of helping others, the new knowledge about people’s behaviours are the main reasons why she loves her job. But she also recognizes that it has some bad sides, because sometimes it can be really hard to take over someone’s pain. Personally, I think she is right saying that, but I also think that we must have a very strong ability of reflexion and introspection, and most of all we have to be open-minded to be a psychologist.

Sources and articles for more information:

http://www.lemonde.fr/vous/article/2014/09/23/selon-l-unicef-pres-de-la-moitie-des-ados-francais-sont-en-etat-de-souffrance-psychologique_4492474_3238.html

http://famille.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/09/28/a-propos-de-la-souffrance-psychologique-des-adolescents/

http://sante.lefigaro.fr/actualite/2015/11/23/24333-psys-face-peurs-contemporaines

http://madame.lefigaro.fr/societe/attentats-de-paris-cest-avec-les-ados-quil-faut-en-parler-le-plus-161115-109641

http://www.cpa.ca/public/whatisapsychologist/

http://www.webjunior.net/fiches-metier/devenir-psychologue-18.php

http://www.onisep.fr/Ressources/Univers-Metier/Metiers/psychologue

Elora MAZZINI wants to become a psychologist.

How marketing gets the better of us… By Margaux GUILHEM

Marketing is always trying to satisfy our needs and wants or make us believe we will have a better life by consuming more and more. In the past, TV was one of the only tools which convinced you to buy things by showing you a ton of advertising. But the good thing was that if you were not glued to your TV set, you could resist all that brainwashing.

But today, Marketing has developed other ways to work on people and make them consume. And the worst thing is that you actually can’t see anything!

If you are on social media, you might be under the control of brands and companies without even noticing it. Indeed, social media has become the new place where businesses promote their products. And most of the time, they do it through the other users who send you a comment saying how good this product is, and how much you will appreciate using it if you buy it! Have you never bought a product that someone you like shared on his Facebook profile?

Recent research found that more than 60% of the biggest brands are active on Instagram, a social website where the aim is to share your personal pictures. Youtube has also become a real actor in what we call “e-marketing”: with product placement which is the best way to secretly advertise in music clips or in entertainment videos. The problem is that you don’t even notice what you are watching is a permanent advert, and this is how you become vulnerable and can’t stop consuming…

We can now say that Marketing got us and that consumerism has never been as big in the world than today. Good news for companies, but, for us?

Margaux GUILHEM wants to get ahead in... Marketing!

The nationality forfeiture Act. By Pierre-Dominique ANCEL

The nationality forfeiture Act has created a lot of controversy…

After the Paris attacks on November 13th 2015, the French President decided to deprive people with dual nationality who "flout the soul of France" of their French nationality. But this is not so easy to do...

Articles 23 to 25 of the French Civil Code say that someone born in France can't be deprived of his nationality. And International law forbids states from making people stateless.

The President wants to deprive a person of his nationality if it is proved that that person has committed a "crime or offense constituting an infringement of the fundamental interests of the nation," a terrorist act, a "crime or offense under Chapter 2 of Title III of Book IV of the Criminal Code (espionage, sedition, treason, etc.)," has evaded "his obligations under the Code of National Service," or "committed for a foreign state acts harmful to the interests of France."

The French President said that being born in France would not be a problem in his law: "We need to deprive a person (a dual national), convicted of a violation of the fundamental interests of the nation or of a terrorist act, of his French nationality".

Some people think this law will not work. According to the Ministry of the Interior (November 2014 figures), a quarter of French-born jihadi fighters in Syria are "new converts". They are not recent immigrants, and would not therefore be concerned by this measure since they are French nationals (they do not have dual nationality).

This law has divided the Socialist party. Mme Taubira, the Justice Minister, has had to resign over the issue…

Links :

http://www.lepoint.fr/politique/emmanuel-berretta/hollande-permet-la-decheance-de-nationalite-via-une-loi-23-12-2015-2004842_1897.php

http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2015/12/22/31001-20151222ARTFIG00232-decheance-de-nationalite-decheance-de-christiane-taubira.php

http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/11/16/comment-hollande-souhaite-reformer-la-loi-sur-la-decheance-de-la-nationalite_4811364_4355770.html 

Pierre-Dominique ANCEL wants to become a lawyer and work for an international environmental organization.

French justice... By Thomas LAFONT

Tapie in happier days...

In France, judicial issues are constantly in the news, including business trials. One of them interests me particularly: the trial of Bernard Tapie concerning the Adidas controversy.

Bernard Tapie is a French businessman. He made his fortune by buying up big companies in crisis, downsizing them, making them successful again before selling them on.

Bernard Tapie also wanted to be a politician. He was told that he first needed to put on hold his business dealings, which is what he did. He decided to sell Adidas. He asked his bank, the Crédit Lyonnais, to find a buyer. His bank told him that someone wanted to buy this company for two billion Francs. In fact, it is the bank itself that bought Adidas and then sold it to another businessman, Robert Louis Dreyfus, for 4.4 billion Francs without Tapie's knowledge.

A long trial took place, including at the court of appeal of Douai. After several long years, Christine Lagarde, the Finance Minister, decided in 2008 that arbitration was necessary. It led to a compensation of 404 million Euros for Tapie by the Finance Ministry. At the end of 2015, Bernard Tapie was told to repay the money that he had received…

He announced after this that he wanted to get back into politics once again to fight against unemployment; he even said that he would run for the French presidency in 2017.

Will another trial take place? Will his comeback in politics be a success? That's what we'll find out in the following months...

Thomas LAFONT wants to become a business lawyer.

The refugee crisis. By Jean GENES

“The migrants coming from Syria look more like fighters than refugees… This resembles an army!” This sentence, pronounced by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on October the 2nd 2015, is indicative of the malaise over the migrant situation all over the EU. Many people in other member states share his thoughts and the east European country’s barbed wire fence has met wide-spread approval throughout the continent; many frontiers have now been closed, such as the one between Austria and Slovenia.

European cooperation cannot really be deemed a success and it will now, without doubt, be even harder to find a way to prevent the euro-sceptics from accelerating the collapse of the EU...

According to the newspaper “Le Monde”, the country that has received the most refugees, not only Syrians, but also Iraqis and Eritreans, is Germany, with a million people asking to stay in the country under the Geneva Convention in 2015, which means a 500% growth over  a year.

More than urgent, the situation seems uncontrollable for the authorities, as the repartition plan has not been accepted and the “hotspots” set up in Greece to control the migrants’ flow are inefficient.

As Croatia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia have refused to accept the quotas imposed by the EU, new solutions have to be found... The newspaper “20 minutes” proposed to send back in their respective countries, mostly to Africa, all the migrants who arrived for economic reasons. I personally disagree with this proposition, as I think this will only take too much time, a time that could be better used to build the necessary infrastructures for all these war refugees fleeing from their countries.

Jean GENES wants to be a journalist.

What is ethnography? By Amélie Murray

An ethnographer on a field trip...

Levi Strauss wrote: « L’ethnographie est le recueil des données sur le terrain principalement. L'ethnologie est l'analyse de ces données, et l'anthropologie est un travail comparatif. »

Ethnography is the study of peoples and cultures. In ethnology, you do not have to travel to faraway places, you mostly study books or reports other people have compiled from their ethnographic field work.

Ethnographers try to understand the people they are studying by adopting what may be called “the insider’s eye or point of view”, which means a long term engagement with an ethnic group, its culture; this is also called “participant observation” because the ethnographer must blend in, learn their culture, almost become one of them and observe. This can be one of the good sides of ethnography, because you spend months, even years, with a population group, you create bonds, and learn so much about a new culture. It could also be viewed as somewhat nefarious, voyeuristic, an intrusion into their private life. Also in quite a few cases it has been reported that the ethnographer creates such strong bonds with the ethnic group he is studying that he or she ends up staying with them, losing sight of his or her initial objectives…

Being an ethnographer can also be very dangerous; depending on the ethnic group studied, some populations can be uncooperative and even unwelcoming because they refuse the intrusion, want to remain unknown, or untouched; others can be aggressive, or simply not understand your intentions, and believe you are an enemy and even kill you… you might end up in the cooking pot, so to speak! It all depends on which ethnic group is being studied, and their willingness to share their culture.

Another negative side to this type of work is that you are far from your family, your usual living space, for a long period of time.

To face another society, another culture, can be very disconcerting, but it can also make people’s opinions change, make you question the way you have been living up to this point, your society, even your humanity; and that is the fascinating side of ethnography.

Amélie wants to become a social anthropologist.

When will we find another Earth-like planet? By Quentin CLAIRET

Are we alone in the Universe? This is surely one of mankind’s oldest questions. Over the centuries, explorers like Christopher Columbus and James Cook discovered new shores and civilisations. Scientists today, in their quest for knowledge and in their effort to understand Nature, also discover new territories, but in outer space…

Ancient Greek scholars knew of the existence of Venus and of Mercury just by looking up at the night sky. Today we know more about how the Universe is organised and our knowledge of our solar system is very precise, made of the Sun and eight planets. But our blue planet, the Earth, is the only one to host life and moreover intelligent life. Scientists think they are now able to explain why this life appeared and what is required to maintain it.

In 1995, the first exoplanet (one outside our solar system with similar characteristics to our own) was discovered. Since then, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered, including potentially “inhabitable” ones, thanks mostly to the Kepler space telescope sent into space in 2009.

NASA created media frenzy when it found Kepler452-b. This exoplanet is the same size as our Earth and its star is the same type as our Sun, a first. However, lots of information remains to be confirmed before being able to declare it “Earth 2.0”...

Both NASA (USA) and ESA (Europe) are working on new exoplanet seeker telescopes like TESS (for 2017) and PLATO (for 2024) which will work with the Earth Observatory to get new information like planet mass, atmosphere, and composition, which will help us better determine whether a planet can host life or not.

Considering the number of galaxies, and the number of solar systems in each galaxy, it is sure that other intelligent life forms exist in the Universe, but where? When will we find them? Are they advanced enough to communicate with us across distant space? Will we be advanced enough to understand their call, if and when it comes?

We have already learnt so many incredible things, but there are still so many marvellous discoveries to be made!

Webography :

http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/07/23/la-nasa-annonce-la-decouverte-d-une-exoplanete-semblable-a-la-terre_4695926_1650684.html

http://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2015/10/06/exoplanetes-2-000-decouvertes-en-vingt-ans_4783480_1650684.html

http://exoplanet.eu/meetings/all/

http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBU1yFbGHB8

Plus:

Science et Vie Junior #310: Can we find better than Earth?

Quentin wants to be an astronaut when he grows up!

The expansion of the hotel and tourism industry in Dubai. By Océanne RAVET

The Burj-al-Arab hotel

Dubai, which covers 4000 km² (three times smaller than the Île-de-France area) has more than one hundred 5 star hotels (eighth position in the 2015 trivago.fr “world city with the most 5 star hotels” rankings). It has more than three hundred hotels in all categories.

Dubai is famous for its excessiveness: the Burj-al-Arab hotel, for example, is a self-proclaimed “7 star” hotel, based on an artificial island. It is 321 meters tall! The website hotel.com notes that their cheapest rooms cost €1800 a night...

Dubai is also about tourism: 13.2 million tourists in 2014, up 8.2% in a year, according to the Emirates Tourism Department. This expansion can be explained by, of course, the luxury of the city, but also, in the context of Middle East instability, the fact that Dubai offers relative security for tourists and businessmen. Dubai hopes to welcome more than 20 million foreign tourists to the 2020 World Fair it is organizing.

But, does all this excess hide a more sinister side? Michel Duchaine, a social activist, considers Dubai a city “of sexual and employee slavery". He has collected damning testimonies from numerous Pakistanis who left their country to live their "Emirates dream" (the United Arab Emirates has one of the highest immigration rates in the world). Once immigrants arrive at the airport, the Emirati take their passports, and then make them do menial jobs (even if they are skilled workers) for very low wages (€2,85 a day) in extremely poor conditions (50°C in the shade…). Their activities outside work are also controlled. humanite.fr lists the numerous suicides and rapes of these foreign workers. This modern slavery is the hidden side of the city…

As a hotel manager, I would refuse to use slave labour. A luxury hotel can be run without mistreatment of its employees...

Océanne would like to work in the hotel industry.

Security breaches in US airports... By Julie Spadin

I plan on working in an airport. I've always loved traveling and, growing up, I moved everywhere, so airports are familiar to me.

This is why I chose to talk about the airport security. Millions of people use airports so, in order to prevent terrorist attacks and other crimes, airports have tight security systems. In every airport, there are policemen and police dogs (for explosives and drug detection), soldiers and security guards. There are metal detectors that screen the passengers for object that could be used as a weapon. For finding explosives, there are X-ray machines. These are the main big security systems but there are many more.

The TSA (Transportation Security Administration) is an agency of the US Homeland Security. It is responsible for the security of travelers in the United States. It carries out regular airport security inspections. In June 2015, the Red Team agents of Homeland Security investigated the security of a dozen US airports at checkpoints. Their investigation showed that there were many breaches in airport security. Agents disguised themselves as simple passengers and hid explosives and banned weapons in their luggage or under their clothes to see if they were detected. Out of 70 tests, 67 failed! This provoked a huge scandal. As a consequence, the director of the TSA was reassigned to another job and the TSA is working on improving its security systems in airports. These kinds of tests were also carried out in 2013; an undercover agent had managed to pass all the checkpoints with a fake bomb…

The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, as well as the recent terrorist attacks show that the security systems in airports, but also elsewhere, have many breaches and need to be more secure. Security is what keeps the world going. Airports being one of the most important ways of traveling have to be really secure in order to guarantee the security of the passengers as well as the countries.