Bacteria are unicellular micro-organisms whose size is measured in micrometres. Their genetic information is contained in a liquid called cytoplasm which is surrounded by a membrane and a wall. The wall is an essential part of the bacterium. There are two types of walls: thick and dense, and thin and soft. This difference led to the classification of bacteria into two major groups: the thick-walled Gram-positive (Gram is a bacterial pigmentation technique), and the thin-walled Gram-negative.

It is impossible to know precisely how many varieties of bacteria there are. Many are probably still unknown. They may be found in all mediums and most have no effect on man. However, some do have harmful effects, such as the pneumococci (we use the common names here and in what follows) which may cause pneumonias, gonorrheas (certain sexually transmitted diseases), Koch's bacillus (tuberculosis), Hansen's bacillus (leprosy), and those responsible for tetanus, botulism, gangrene and other infections. This does not mean, however, that all bacteria are harmful. One needs only think of lactobacillus that is found in yogurts, or antibiotics that many of them produce.

A Russian literary historian and theorist, he was also interested in psychoanalysis, aesthetics and ethics, and was a precursor of sociolinguistics. It is nonetheless for his work on literature, and more particularly on the novel, that he is known today.

A French writer, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and journalist of the first half of the nineteenth century.He is considered one of the greatest French novelists in the field of realism. But it is difficult to place him in one category or another, his whole work covering such a vast range. Critics of the day did not spare him but he is today acknowledged as an author of the highest order, leaving behind him a monumental oeuvre, painting in words the society of his day, and succeeding in this to the extent that the French dictionary of great French writers, Le Robert, says that he realised the dream of every ambitious novelist: ‘_Creating the illusion that what he invents is real’_.

He produced an outstanding body of work, The Human Comedy, a sequence of several dozen novels whose ambition was to describe in a quasi-exhaustive way the French society of his times. Amongst his novels one could cite Le Colonel Chabert (1835), Le Père Goriot (1835) and Les Chouans (1829).

An artistic style born in Italy close on the heels of the Catholic Reformation. It was particularly dynamic in the 17th and 18th centuries. Since the end of the 18th century the term ‘baroque’ – whose etymology is uncertain – has been traditionally used to designate an artistic style marked by its exuberance and extravagance. After many debates on the subject certain contemporary historians go as far as to use the term in contexts beyond the fine arts: theatre, religion, and politics can also be given the epithet ‘baroque’. This then essentially designates a method of communication which in a flamboyant way plays tricks on and dupes reason in order to talk to the heart, light up the senses and to encourage emotional and intuitive knowledge.

Set of nuclei or deep cellular clusters organized in complex networks between the cortex and the cerebral trunk/spinal cord.

Special extracellular matrixes that support the layers of epithelial cells.

Thin layers made up essentially of laminine, collagen and fibronectin and found at the surface of the epithelial and vascular structures. They form a barrier with the connective tissues and constitute the first line of defence against tumoral invasion.

An order founded by Adam Weishaupt at Ingolstadt in Bavière in 1776. Its believers advocate the equality of rights amongst human beings and the development of a global and fraternal society and, to reach its objectives, fight against patriotism, religion, superstition, squabbling and despotism. Many of them are also freemasons.

This German sociologist was interested in the consequences of changes brought about by industrial and technological development. Beck was a theoretician of the paradigm of the society of risks, and can be considered as a scholar whose interests are equally divided between the academic and the political world. He was at one and the same time a professor of sociology at the University of Munich and an essayist involved in movements dedicated to the protection of the environment. Ulrich Beck was also a public intellectual who regularly wrote articles for major German newspapers. He was a scientist who went out of his way to encounter the reality of nonscientists, and functioned as a political actor as a result.

This wall – in fact a complex system of defensive elements (wall, barbed wire, watchtowers, etc.) – was erected on the night of the 12th and 13th of August 1961 under the orders of the authorities of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It thus completely isolated West Berlin (the French, English and American sectors of the old German capital) from the rest of the GDR. The decision to build it was taken to try to stem the haemorrhage of the population registered in the GDR: it is in effect estimated that between 1949 and 1961 around 3 million inhabitants left the GDR for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), mainly through East Berlin. Following the decision of the East German authorities to allow its nationals to travel without any restrictions, the crowds hurried to the foot of the Wall on the night of 9th and 10th November 1989. Overwhelmed, the border guards, who had received no instructions, let the crowd pass: it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the prelude to German reunification.

On the night of the 2nd to 3rd December, 1984, a factory manufacturing pesticides and which belonged to the American Union Carbide group, released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate into the skies over the town of Bhopal, the capital of the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Breathing in the gas caused the immediate death of over 3,500 inhabitants and several thousand more over the months and years which followed. Around 100,000 people have been affected to various degrees (cancers, blindness, breathing difficulties). The juridical follow-up lasted for over a quarter of a century, from the Indian Supreme Federal Court sentencing Union Carbide to pay 470 million dollars in February 1989, to the sentencing by the Bhopal tribunal, on June 7, 2010, of eight of the business company’s local executives to two years in prison and a fine of 2,100 dollars. The business company’s ex director has for his part never been extradited from the United States and was declared to be ‘on the run’ by the same tribunal.

Political and religious leader born in Riyadh in 1957. The offspring of a rich Saudi family, Osama Bin Laden rallied around Islamism and fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and founded the al-Qaeda movement. He is suspected of having perpetrated and commanded numerous attacks, including those against the World Trade Centre’s towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11th in 2001.

Ethanol is ethylized alcohol (the same alcohol found in all alcoholic drinks) which has a biological and agricultural origin. The prefix bio- does not mean, as it is often thought, that the name came from biological agriculture; it simply means the substance is produced from vegetable material. Bioethanol is used as a substitute for gasoline in gasoline engines. The terms bio-fuel or agro-fuel are also used.

Research which aims at producing plant varieties enriched in nutriments (notably in iron, zinc and vitamin A) in order to improve their nutritional quality.

A form of transport and cyclic transformation of an element or chemical compound between the geosphere, the atmosphere, the biosphere and the hydrosphere. The most significant cycles are those of nitrogen, carbon, water, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus and sulphur.

Consists of using the natural predators of crop ravagers to eliminate them, or to at least reduce their numbers.

The production and emission of light by a living organism resulting from a chemical reaction over the course of which chemical energy is converted into light energy.

The total quantity of matter (mass) of all the living species found in a given natural environment.

A term which designates the transfer of nutritional or chemical elements by living beings within a section of the ecosystem. The active mixing of ground or aquatic layers by living beings, more particularly animals (earthworms, zooplankton, etc).

Among other constituents, blood is made up of white and red blood cells. The white ones are called leucocytes. They attach themselves to the different tissues in the body where they play a defensive role by attacking and killing foreign microorganisms. The red blood cells, or erythrocytes, are the cells without a nucleus in the shape of a lentil that can be distorted. They can therefore easily circulate in all the small vessels. Their role is to transport oxygen. Men have approximately 5 million per square millimetre and women approximately 4.5 million. Our bodies are constantly making new ones (their lifetime is approximately 120 days) since they have no nucleus and cannot reproduce.

A mossy plant organism, saturated with water, and without roots, which is at the origin of bog moss formation. Peat mosses grow rapidly, continued at their extremities even whilst they die at the base, thus accumulating in this way the organic matter that constitutes bog. Peat moss can stock up to 90% of its weight in water.

The BOLD Signal (Blood-Oxygen-Level Dependent) in functional magnetic resonance imaging reflects variations in the amount of oxygen transported by haemoglobin according to the brain’s neuronal activity.

A French sociologist born in 1940, he was the Director of the Post-Graduate School of Social Sciences. He began his career under the supervision of Raymond Aron and Pierre Bourdieu.

A political ideology originating in France, inspired by the actions of Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonapartists believe in a centralised authoritarian state, but one which is based on popular support.

A depletion or sideration of the bone marrow which ends up in a drying up of blood corpuscles, which the marrow stops manufacturing.

A technique for measuring bone density through evaluating the mineral content of bones, above all calcium. Bone density increases up until the age of 40 and then diminishes. A low density (osteoporosis) is an indicator of a risk of incurring fractures. To measure it, a photon source is directed at the bone, which absorbs a part of it and then the outgoing flow is measured. The denser the bone the more it absorbs the photons.

The bone is a living tissue which rebuilds itself constantly throughout a lifetime. The new bone tissues are formed by osteoblasts which secrete the organic matrix in which phosphate and calcium will be deposited. On the other hand osteoclasts are other bone cells charged with the disintegration of the bone, for example in response to physical attacks. They thus allow the bone to remodel itself.

A book of hours, which was first called as such in the fourteenth century because its reader had to use it seven times a day during the canonical hours, is a liturgical book used by lay people. It in general opens up to a calendar whose every month occupies a page illustrated by a scene which evokes a human activity characteristic of the month. It includes the lunar cycle, the solstices and equinoxes, but also prayers celebrating the key events in the life of Christ, the Virgin, the saints and the religious festivals. Whilst each book of hours is unique, every one nonetheless contains a collection of texts, prayers and psalms with corresponding illustrations and constitutes a basic anthology for practicing the Catholic religion.

A British mathematician and philosopher, Boole is the creator of modern logic which allows ideas and concepts to be represented as equations. To do so he created a binary algebra in which only two values were accepted, 0 and 1.

The Boolean calculus or algebra is the field of mathematics which deals with operations and functions concerning on binary logic variables. It is used in logic and in electronics. Invented by the mathematician George Boole it allows logical reasoning to be rationalised. A Boolean variable is a two value type of variable (true-false; yes-no; open-closed). A number of Boolean operators exist, including AND, OR, and eXclusive OR (XOR).

Infectious disease of bacterial origin transmitted to humans by ticks or lice. In Europe one of its forms is becoming more common: Lyme disease, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. The other form includes types of tropical Borreliosis that have long been recognized under the name of recurrent fevers.

French writer and essayist. In his youth he frequented the Paris poetry circles and from within the Vivants group wrote in the ‘Zutic’ album. He later considered literature as a serious science and became a great French novelist.

A Belgian poet, singer, actor and director, born in Brussels. Jacques Brel began his career in 1951 at the La Rose Noire cabaret in Brussels; he recorded his first record and then tried his luck in Paris, at the Trois Baudets. His second record passed as unnoticed as his first. It was only from 1958 onwards that he really tasted success: a concert at the Olympia, tours throughout France, record success, etc. The texts of his songs, which he wrote himself, reflect the different aspects of his universe: love, tenderness, the landscapes of Flanders and the North Sea, a horror of stupidity, etc. In 1966 he stopped touring and committed himself more to cinema. He acted in Cayatte’s Les Risques du Métier, Carné’s Les Assasins de l'ordre and Molinaro’s L'Emmerdeur. He also directed two films, Frantz (1971) and Le Far West (1973). We also owe to him a musical comedy on the theme of Don Quixote.

With Catholic petit bourgeois origins in a Parisian suburb, André Breton had a ‘modern’ education (in other words without either Greek or Latin) which designated him for a scientific career. He in effect finished his studies in medicine but practically never practiced it. He published his first poems in a neo-Symbolist review (La Phalange) during the First World War and in 1919 founded, along with Aragona and Soupault, the journal Littérature, which gathered underneath the banner of the Dada movement. In 1924 he published his The Surrealist Manifesto, initially the preface for a book (Soluble Fish) which gathered together texts written through the automatic writing technique. It is the first theoretical work initiating the Surrealist movement, which Breton described in the following way: ‘Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, and exempt from any aesthetic or moral concerns. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association which have been neglected up until now, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested play of thought.’ He joined the Communist Party in 1927. In The Second Surrealist Manifesto, which appeared in 1929, he tried to relaunch the movement by reconciling Freud and Marx in order to serve the proletariat. For him literature was none other than a form of action: in 1930 he moreover founded a periodical entitled Surrealism in the Service of the Revolution, nonetheless never hesitating to criticise Communist leaders and Stalinism in particular. During the Second World War he went into self imposed exile in the United States. After the war, he continued to write numerous texts on literature and above all championed the concept of ‘primitive art.’

Myopathy (muscle weakness) that is transmitted in various ways, generally in an autosomal dominant (only one parent transmitting the genetic anomaly will cause the progeny to be affected) or recessive manner (both parents must transmit the anomaly for it to cause the disease in the progeny).

Brody’s disease is the result of a deficiency of calcium ATPase, which causes the animal to suffer poor absorption of calcium by the muscles.This disease is diagnosed by stiffening, weakness when trying to exercise muscles, and difficulties in stopping muscular effort, which leads to more or less intense twitching or writhing.

A brown dwarf is an intermediary between a planet and a star. On the one hand it is not sufficiently massive to sustain hydrogen fusion within itself and thus shine like a star. On the other hand it is more massive than a planet. The criteria usually accepted to be a planet includes being incapable of burning deuterium, and thus having a mass lower than 13 times the mass of Jupiter.

According to Lentic, the Laboratory for the Study of New Technologies for Information, Innovation and Change at the University of Liege, a business network is a particular form of organisation which serves to connect together different organisations (thanks to technologies of information and communication) in an effort to produce goods or provide services cooperatively. Industrial organization is evolving toward the business network, which is characterised by a reduction in the size of large enterprises, a tendency to outsource certain functions and activities, and decentralisation and growth in independent activities. The forces motivating these changes are the search for organisational flexibility, improvement in quality, reduction of costs, and renewed emphasis on core skills and capabilities.