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Margaux Héritier

Senior Scientific Editor

About Margaux

Margaux’s early interest in health and how drugs work led her to a degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences. She’s currently pursuing a PhD using computational tools to design new drugs and study structural biology. She soon realised while practicing as a pharmacist how important science communication is when health professionals communicate with their patients, as this can have a significant impact on how they perceive and follow their treatment. She thinks Science provides an infinite source of wonder, and aims at sparking curiosity for interesting scientific stories thanks to breakers.

Margaux is the editor of 12 Breaks:

The missing galaxies in the early universe

Faraway galaxies are hard to detect, not only because they appear fainter, but also because the light that we detect from them is infrared. Many of these objects were invisible to us until the James Webb Space Telescope was launched. With this new telescope, scientists discovered 33 new galaxies in the early universe. This opens the door for James Webb to find many new galaxies.

May 29, 2023 | 4 min read
Marsquakes redefine what we tought about a quiet Mars

Analyzing seismic waveforms recorded by the InSight mission seismometer, we discovered and documented 47 marsquakes in the Cerberus Fossae region of Mars. Their repetitive nature at all times of the Martian day tells a story of their likely volcanic origin and of a mobile Martian mantle. Mars harbours a liquid core, and it remains to be understood why the Martian geodynamic field ceased to exist.

Feb 13, 2023 | 4 min read
The Light of Earendel – The Most Distant Star Yet Observed

The gravity of massive objects can magnify background objects, making them appear larger and brighter. Precise alignment between a background star and a foreground lens leads to extreme magnifications, allowing individual stars to be detected at great distances. This technique has recently revealed the most distant star yet observed, which existed when the universe was only 900 million years old.

Feb 8, 2023 | 3.5 min read
Increases in vegetation influenced past temperatures

Better representation of Northern Hemisphere vegetation may resolve a scientific debate over how global temperatures changed during the past 12,000 years. Our new climate model experiments that include these vegetation changes exhibit a peak in global temperature around 6,000 years ago. This peak agrees well with previous studies using paleoclimate archives to reconstruct past temperatures.

Feb 3, 2023 | 3 min read
The Dark Side of Nudges

Among other methods, governments use highway message signs to encourage responsible driving. We find that displaying year-to-day roadside fatality counts leads to an immediate increase in traffic crashes. We argue that the statistics distract drivers at precisely the moments when they should focus on the road.

Sep 30, 2022 | 3 min read
Using ants to sniff out cancer?

Has it ever crossed your mind that ants could detect cancer? A French team of scientists may have discovered a new non-invasive method for cancer screening using the ants’ sense of smell. Their ants could represent an alternative to other expensive and invasive detection methods like mammograms or MRIs in this major challenge for public health.

Sep 21, 2022 | 3.5 min read