April 2020

Robert J. Sawyer in 2005

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Robert James Sawyer was born on April 29, 1960 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Robert J. Sawyer earned a Master of Arts degree from Ryerson University in Toronto in 1982, but by then he had already started his career as a science fiction writer with the publication of the short story “If I’m Here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage.” in the magazine “The Village Voice: The Weekly Newspaper of New York” in 1981. That activity became really important since the 1990s, when he started publishing novels.

Thanks to his experience, Robert J. Sawyer has also been taught science fiction in various universities. His novels are not long by today’s standards and are written in a linear style, but offer food for thought on technical-scientific progress and on various ethical and moral problems. For these reasons he has many fans and over the years he won several awards.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

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The novel “I Am Legend” by Richard Matheson was published for the first time in 1954.

Robert Neville’s days are spent looking for the vampires who live in the area around his home hiding from the sunlight to go out after sunset. He tries to find and kill as many of them as possible, knowing that at night they will come looking for him to convince him to go out, sometimes attempting an attack to break into his house.

The situation for Robert Neville is difficult because, as far as he knows, he’s the last man left on Earth after a pandemic turned everyone else into vampires. He struggles to remain lucid and all too often gets drunk to escape the despair caused by that situation. He tries to understand the origin and characteristics of vampirism hoping to improve his defenses, but he always risks making fatal mistakes.

Phylogenetic relationships of the archaic fragments sequenced in Icelanders

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An article published in the journal “Nature” reports a genetic study carried out using data obtained from 27,566 Icelanders to understand which parts of modern humans’ genome contain genes inherited from Neanderthals following interbreedings, and what role it plays in modern humans. A team of researchers performed a comparative analysis with hominin genomes sequenced at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, finding many different genes scattered in the Icelandic genomes. By putting them together, they reconstructed at least 38% of the Neanderthal genome using 14 million fragments. A surprise came from the discovery of Denisovans genes, usually present in Asian populations, but it’s possible that they too were inherited from Neanderthals who descended from interbreedings with Denisova.

Ethanoperedens thermophilum in red and its symbiote Desulfofervidus auxilii in green

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An article published in the journal “mBio” reports the discovery of an archaeon that feeds on ethane in hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Guaymas Basin, in the central area of ​​the Gulf of California. A team of researchers led by Gunter Wegener of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology proposed the name Ethanoperedens thermophilum for this archaeon that lives in symbiosis with a bacterium already known for which Wegener and his collaborators proposed the name Desulfofervidus auxilii. The interest in these microorganisms goes beyond biological curiosity because the metabolic process that degrade ethane is reversible, and this means that other similar archaea could transform carbon dioxide into ethane. This would lead to their use for the production of ethane, the second most common component of natural gas after methane with 15%.

Creatures of the Abyss by Murray Leinster (Italian edition)

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The novel “Creatures of the Abyss” by Murray Leinster was published for the first time in 1961.

Terry Holt has been running a shop in Manila for a long time and his electronics skills allowed him to do good business until his partner caused a lot of trouble for the business. He’s about to leave the Philippines when he receives a very important offer that leads him to join a scientific expedition led by Dr. Morton.

His ability to create high-level radar systems takes Terry Holt into the ocean for a research on the mystery related to strange marine phenomena. What fishermen call las orejas de ello are considered only a legend, but certain events convinced someone that it’s the type of legend that has a basis in fact.