November 2016

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

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The novel “Green Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson was published for the first time in 1994. It won the Hugo and Locus Awards. It’s the second novel in the Mars trilogy and follows “Red Mars”.

In the decades after the 2061 revolution on Mars terraforming operations continue and more and more colonists arrive. The ideas about the future of the planet keep on being different among the surviving First Hundred and even more so with Earth’s interests aimed at the exploitation of local resources.

New generations of real Martians are raised, some of them in hiding like Nirgal’s belongs, which becomes increasingly important. Gradually Mars changes as tensions among various factions increase: the result will determine the future of the planet, which is not so red anymore.

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At the Watson Developer Conference held in San Francisco, IBM announced Project Intu, a new platform designed to make its Watson cognitive computing system accessible from any device. Launched for now in an experimental version, it gives developers who have a Bluemix account to have access to Watson Intu Gateway and create applications using Watson using the SDKs provided as free software through Watson Developer Cloud, Intu Gateway and GitHub.

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An article published in the journal “PLOS Genetics” describes a research on the genes existing in non-African modern humans inherited from Neanderthals. According to a team of researchers led by Ivan Juric of University of California at Davis only a small amount of Neanderthal genes have remained in the DNA of modern humans because natural selection removed a lot of deleterious variants.

The region where Kaikaifilu hervei was found, its reconstruction and the area where the expedition worked (Image courtesy University of Chile)

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An article published in the journal “Cretaceous Research” describes the discovery of a new species of mosasaur, a family of marine reptiles that lived in the Late Cretaceous. Called Kaikaifilu hervei, the animal found was probably long between 12 and 14 meters (39 to 46 feet). The fossils were found in 2010 by a Chilean expedition to Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula in rocks dating back about 66 million years ago.

Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad (Italian edition)

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The novel “Bug Jack Barron” by Norman Spinrad was published for the first time between 1967 and 1968 serialized in the magazine “New Worlds” and in 1969 in a longer version as a book.

“Bug Jack Barron” is a very successful television talk show, with an audience of around a hundred million viewers. Its conductor Jack Barron broadcasts calls from his audience, who can manifest complaints of various kinds. They represent ideas to attack various powerful people, the reason why Barron is generally loved by people and hated by politicians.

Benedict Howards is the owner of a very important company in the field of cryogenics. Jack Barron attacks him because the company offers the possibility of hibernation only to the people who can pay a large sum and is just the start of a clash between the two of them. Howards decides that the best solution is to buy Barron but to succeed he must also reveal to him the secrets of his company.