November 2014

The home page of the Assassin's Creed: Unity official website

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On November 11, 2014 the videogame “Assassin’s Creed Unity” was released to the market. It’s one of the most anticipated titles of the year, with the launch in North America first and in the following days in the other continents. This new chapter in a series developed by Ubisoft and began in 2007 is set in Paris during the French Revolution and includes new expected features but also various problems that angered many fans. The discontent was such that apologies and promises of compensation came from Ubisoft.

Section of the van Allen Belts (Image NASA/Goddard/Scientific Visualization Studio)

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An article just published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of a kind of barrier placed in the Van Allen belts, about 11,600 km (aboyt 7,200 miles) above the surface, which prevents very high speed and energy electrons from reaching the Earth. This discovery was made using the Van Allen space probes, launched in August 2012 precisely to study those belts.

Stardance by Spider and Jeanne Robinson

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The novel “Stardance” by Spider and Jeanne Robinson was published for the first time in 1979.

Shara Drummond wanted be a dancer. She’s very talented but dancers must be petite and thin and Shara is neither. Her dream seems vanished, instead she decides to create the Stardance, a new form of dance in weightlessness and truly three-dimensional.

In order to develop her idea, Shara does everything to be able to work on a space station. There, the microgravity allows her to try movements totally impossible on Earth. However, her prolonged efforts in that environment cause serious risks to her health but they become unimportant when aliens are spotted.

Map of the ocean currents created using data from the GOCE satellite (Image ESA/CNES/CLS)

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This week at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France, the 5th International GOCE User Workshop is being held. It aims to present and discuss the findings made by ESA’s GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) satellite. In particular, there was a presentation of a new ocean currents model, the most accurate ever produced.

Glen Beck and Betty Snyder workin on ENIAC

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Part of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), considered for decades the first electronic computer, has been put on public display at the Fort Sill Field Artillery Museum in Oklahoma, in the USA, after a restoration. The project began during World War II to solve computational ballistic problems related to the launch of artillery shells but was activated only in 1946.