July 2016

Way of Water, Virtually Yours and The Story of Water by Nina Munteanu

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The short story “The Way of Water” by Nina Munteanu was published for the first time in 2016.

Hilda goes to the public water tap but when at last it’s her turn, after an hour of waiting, her Water Card gets rejected. Hilda just has some sad memories of the past and above her mother’s stories when she explained how water was managed before climate change and before it became a Canada Corp’s property.

“The Way of Water” is set in a near future in which Canada has to deal with both climate and geo-political changes. The nation got involved in the USA decay when it was basically bought by China. The story is focused on the problem of water, which has become private property of a company called Canada Corp so citizens must pay its use and can’t pick it up, even rainwater.

“The Way of Water” is a story of the kind you hope is science fiction but you fear is not. Those who think that Nina Munteanu’s future vision is exaggerated can read her essay “The Story of Water”, which contains a number of ideas that inspired the short story.

Masayoshi Son in 2008

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The Japanese telecommunications holding SoftBank Group Corp. has reached an agreement to buy the British microprocessors company ARM Holdings Plc for 24.3 billion pounds, equivalent to about $32 billion or 29 billion Euros that will be paid in cash. The offer was announced yesterday and after some hours came the confirmation that it was accepted.

From Time to Time by Jack Finney

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The illustrated novel “From Time to Time” by Jack Finney was published for the first time in 1995. It’s the sequel to “Time and Again”.

Simon “Si” Morley decided to stay in 1882 after his journey through time and married Julia. However, after some time he feels the need to return to his original time to see what happened to the time travel government project. There he gets involved in a mission very different from the original one.

John McNaughton kept the memories of the project after Si Morley’s interference because he’s a time traveler as well. Back to his time, he finds out what happened and can intervene to restore the old timeline. Interfering in history becomes a new foundation in the project and when Si Morley returns to the 20th century, he’s proposed to try to prevent the outbreak of World War I.

The Yellowstone spring and the archaea that live in it (Image courtesy Mircea Podar et al.)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” describes the discovery of a microorganism called Nanopusillus acidilobi in an acidic hot spring in Yellowstone National Park, in the USA, along with a host organism belonging to the genus Acidilobus. Both bodies are archaea, which means that they belong to a domain other than that of plants, animals and any other eukaryote.

Some ASICs (Image NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng)

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NASA has developed a series of microchips designed to be used on space probes. That’s the family of ASICs, consisting of chips designed to be small and at the same time resistant to the radiation present in the space and in particular in certain regions. They were used in the Juno space probe that on July 4 entered the orbit of Jupiter, a planet with a very powerful electromagnetic field.