Somewhere toward the middle of that spectrum are Claude Debussy's two books of Etudes, for solo piano.

NPR: Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Art of the Etude

Aimard's recording of the Etudes was nominated for a Grammy in 2005.

NPR: Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Art of the Etude

"Everything we do with wild animals has an impact, " said Dr Yves Cherel of the Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chize in Villiers en Bois, France.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Penguin-cam snaps amazing images

Solange Guo Chatelard is a PhD candidate at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and an associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany.

BBC: Viewpoint: Africa must do more to profit from China

The energetic Jean-Yves Empereur, who runs the French-funded Centre d'Etudes Alexandrines on a shoestring, has managed to juggle several salvage excavations in the city with underwater work offshore.

ECONOMIST: Alexandria

Patrick Messerlin, an economist at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, estimates that, because of this pro-cartel effect, anti-dumping duties are generally twice as costly to the economy as equivalent import tariffs.

ECONOMIST: Unfair protection

Dana Diminescu, of France's Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, recently discovered that 11 villages in the Oas region of northern Romania, a poor farming area of about 70, 000 people, had generated a regular pattern of illegal migrants to Paris, almost all of whom eventually went back home.

ECONOMIST: A continent on the move