October 2018

Christopher Lloyd in 2015

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Christopher Allen Lloyd was born on October 22, 1938 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. Christopher Lloyd began his acting career in the 1960s in stage plays. Especially in the 1970s he worked a lot on Broadway and also started finding roles in television and cinema productions.

Christopher Lloyd started playing Emmett “Doc” Brown, his most iconic movie character in the 1985 film “Back to the Future”. It was his first movie directed by Robert Zemeckis, followed by “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” (1988), “Back to the Future – Part II” (1989) and “Back to the Future – Part III” (1990). An animated TV show was also produced with some parts about Doc Brown with Bill Nye which aired between 1991 and 1992.

Christopher Lloyd is an actor who has an extraordinary amount of roles behind him, but in many ways isn’t appreciated as it deserves. He’s capable of great transformations ranging from a Klingon to Uncle Fester and in general has a great expressiveness and for these reasons his fans adore him.

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey (Italian edition)

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The novel “Cibola Burn” by James S.A. Corey was published for the first time in 2014. It’s the fourth book in the Expanse series and follows “Abaddon’s Gate”.

The portal built by the protomolecul opened a new frontier for human beings and there are those who would like anyone to be free to settle on one of the many potentially habitable planets that have become available. A group of people reach one of them and call it Ilus but some time later another expedition arrives with United Nations support and the situation becomes immediately difficult with some colonists who decide to attack the new arrivals.

To try to avoid further bloodshed, Chrisjen Avasarala and Fred Johnson reach an agreement representing the United Nations and the Outer Planets Alliance choosing Jim Holden as a mediator. When he arrives on the planet with his crew on the spaceship Rocinante, he finds an explosive situation with Adolphus Murtry, the expedition’s chief of the security, ready to kill the colonists. Things get even worse when something very ancient on the planet awakens.

Rhabdastrella globostellata (Photo courtesy Paco Cárdenas)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution” describes the discovery of evidence of the existence of sponges about 630 million years ago, in the Neoproterozoic era. A team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) found a biomarker in a fossil dating back to that era called 26-methylstigmastane or just 26-mes that is produced only by sponges. In general, this is the oldest evidence of animal life and therefore multicellular.

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The short story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse was published for the first time in 2017. It won the Hugo, Nebula, and Apex Magazine Reader’s Choice Awards as the best short story of the year.

Jesse Turnblatt is a particular tourist guide as he offers his agency’s customers virtual tours that provide Native American experiences. A serious problem is that tourists expect what they see in movies and are disappointed if Jesse offers something different, even if more authentic. When you have a wife, a loan to pay and a boss who controls you, you just have to give your customers what they want. One day a customer shows genuine interest but the situation becomes complicated in unexpected ways.

Eastern gray whale (Photo courtesy Anna Brüniche-Olsen. All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Biology Letters” describes a genetic research on the gray whale populations that live in the western and eastern Pacific Ocean to look for clues that help understand the disparity of their populations. Pofessor Andrew DeWoody of Purdue University and his collaborator, postdoctoral researcher Anna Brüniche-Olsen, compared the DNA of 77 western gray whales and 135 eastern gray whales and discovered a genetic divergence between the two populations, however there are some interbreedings and genetic diversity that offers hopes for their future.