2016

Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad (Italian edition)

1

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.

The tree of life (Image courtesy Banfield Group)

2

An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” describes the diversity of the microbiome in the subsurface. A team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of Berkeley discovered it through the genetic analysis of more than 2,500 microbes found in samples of sediment and groundwater collected in Colorado. They revealed dozens of new branches of the tree of life.

Fossil dinosaur brain (Photo courtesy Jamie Hiscocks)

0

A special publication of the Geological Society of London contains the results of a research into fossil dinosaur brain tissue that probably belonged to a species of the iguanodon group that lived about 133 million years ago. This fossil found more than a decade ago in Sussex by a fossil hunter is the first example of dinosaur fossil brain studied thanks to a research coordinated by Professor Martin Brasier of Oxford University and Dr. David Norman of the University of Cambridge.

A house with a solar roof and in the garage a Tesla electric car and a Powerwall battery system (Image courtesy Tesla Motors. All rights reserved)

1

Last Friday, Tesla Motors and SolarCity’s CEO Elon Musk introduced Solar Roof, the roof with solar panels integrated into roofing tiles. The idea is to go beyond the traditional solar panels to be installed on an existing roof obtaining a result that is good also from an aesthetic point of view. This product can be combined with the Powerwall 2 batteries, the new version of the accumulators announced last year.

Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross

0

The novel “Neptune’s Brood” by Charles Stross was published for the first time in 2013. It’s set in the same fictional universe of “Saturn’s Children”.

Krina Alizond-114 is a scholar of accountancy practice historiography who is supposed to conduct a study with her sister Ana. However, her sister disappeared and Krina can only look for a starship that travels to the planet Shin-Tethys in the hope of being able to find her or at least discover what happened to her.

There are not many starships that travel to Krina’s destination so she must adapt to travel together with the Church of the Fragile, which aims to have humans spread again. Unbeknownst to her, a stalker is following her and even more during the journey the starship is intercepted by pirates who know Ana.