May 2014

The Book of the River by Ian Watson (Italian edition)

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The novel “The Book of the River” by Ian Watson was published for the first time in 1983. It’s the first book of the Black Current trilogy.

Yaleen fulfilled her dream to join the River Guild. Only women can become sailors because the River allows men to travel only once on its waters and those who try to violate that rule go mad or die. After her initiation, Yaleen is bound to the River and must keep the secrets of her Guild.

The Black Current that is a part of the River prevents from crossing its waters isolating the two coasts. A group of men manages to find a way to get to the west coast and Capsi, the Yaleen’s brother, makes the journey. The experiment succeeds but on the other side of the River live a society of fanatics who burn women to the stake and Capsi ends very bad too. Yaleen ends up involved in events that will change not only her life but also that of the entire planet.

The HDEV experiment (Photo NASA)

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Among the equipment brought to the International Space Station by the Dragon spacecraft there’s the High Definition Viewing Earth (HDEV) experiment, a system consisting of four Commercial HD video cameras. Upon arrival, the crew of the Station quickly installed the equipment on the External Payload Facility, an external platform of ESA’s Columbus module. With these cameras, you can now see the Earth live shot from space on a dedicated Internet channel.

A Neurogrid circuit board (Photo courtesy Stanford University. All rights reserved)

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A group of bioengineers at Stanford University has created Neurogrid, a circuit card containing microchips that work like the human brain. They’re 9,000 times faster and use a much smaller amount of electricity compared to a standard PC. This research can lead to advances in electronics but also in the understanding of brain function combining such different fields.

Doctor Who - The Daemons

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“The Dæmons” is the last adventure of the eighth season of “Doctor Who” classic series, which aired in 1971 featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant. It’s a five parts adventure written by Guy Leopold and directed by Christopher Barry.

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Aerospace companies Orbital Sciences Corporation, one of two private companies that have sent a spacecraft on the International Space Station, and Alliant Techsystems Inc., better known as ATK, announced they have reached an agreement for their merger. This operation will be preceded by an internal reorganization of ATK, which will be split to create a new company from ATK Sporting Group, the division that produces sport weapons. The other two divisions, ATK Aerospace Group and ATK Defense Group, together with Orbital Sciences will form Orbital ATK.