Life cycle analysis (LCA) is increasingly common, in particular for eco-design or to obtain a label. It is used to assess the environmental footprint of a product or service by taking into account as many sources as possible. In the following interview, Miguel Lopez-Ferber, a researcher in environmental assessment at IMT Mines Alès, offers insights about the benefits and complexity …

How can we make our smartphone batteries last longer? For Maurice Gagnaire, a researcher at Télécom ParisTech, the solution could come through mobile cloud computing. If computations currently performed by our devices could be offloaded to local servers, their batteries would have to work less. This could extend the battery life for one charge by several hours. This solution was …

Benoît Demil, I-site Université Lille Nord Europe (ULNE) and Geoffrey Leuridan, IMT Atlantique – Institut Mines-Télécom The Covid-19 crisis has put lasting strain on the health care system, in France and around the world. Hospital staff have had to deal with increasing numbers of patients, often in challenging conditions in terms of equipment and space: a shortage of masks and …

Thibaut Lalire, IMT Mines Alès – Institut Mines-Télécom “Material of the 21st century,” a “revolutionary material”: these are some of the ways graphene has been described since it was discovered in 2004 by Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim. The two scientists’ research on graphene won them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. But how do things stand today – seventeen …

Frédéric Thévenet, IMT Lille Douai – Institut Mines-Télécom We spend 80% of our lives in enclosed spaces, whether at home, at work or in transit. We are therefore very exposed to this air, which is often more polluted than outdoor air. The issue of health in indoor environments is thus associated with chronic exposure to pollutants and to volatile organic …

The world of healthcare has extensive databases that are just waiting to be used. This is one of the issues Benjamin Dalmas, a data science researcher at Mines Saint-Étienne, is exploring in his work. His main objective is to understand the origin of this data to use it more effectively. As such, he is working with players from the public …

Stéphane Safin, Télécom Paris – Institut Mines-Télécom The lockdown has upended the ways we communicate and maintain social connections. It has forced us to rethink our social habits and to create new ones. The use of video conference systems has become widespread. But is this technology designed to facilitate work as effective when it comes to socializing on a personal …

In this time of crisis, solidarity has been widely called for in response to the risk posed by the epidemic. In this article, Sophie Bretesché explores the historic origins of solidarity as a societal value. A sociologist at IMT Atlantique, she specializes in issues of risk and memory in relation to organizational change. In light of past epidemics and their …

Fabrice Flipo, Institut Mines-Télécom Business School Covid-19, an anthropocene disease? This is how professor Philippe Sansonetti sees the crisis we are experiencing. As a reminder, this concept proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 refers to the present geological time interval, in which “conditions and processes on Earth are profoundly affected by human impact”. This period has not yet …

Why is an old country farmhouse more pleasant in summer than a modern city building? Traditional building materials and natural stone provide old buildings with better thermal and hygrometric properties. Unfortunately, they often lack the technical characterizations they need to find their place in the construction industry. The European regional development project OEHM has set out to resolve this problem. …