May 2020

Kampecaris obanensis

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An article published in the journal “Historical Biology” reports a dating of sediments in three British sites where the oldest millipede fossils were found conducted by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin. The result is that the site on the Scottish island of Kerrera is the oldest, 425 million years old, making Kampecaris obanensis the oldest known millipede. This result is important not only for establishing which millipedes among the various British sites are the oldest but in general for the evolution of arthropod groups which include myriapods, insects, and arachnids, linked to that of plants. Their evolution appears to have been faster than previously thought, arriving at complex ecosystems from simple communities in 40 million years.

GW-BASIC

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Microsoft has announced the release of the sources of GW-BASIC, the programming language that was part of the MS-DOS operating system up to version 4. They were made available on the GitHub website under the free / open source MIT license. Microsoft will not accept requests for changes sent through the GitHub system, but anyone can freely not only go to read the assembly code but also experiment with it, probably using a virtual machine. The published sources date back to February 10, 1983, and, as for versions 1.25 and 2.0 of the MS-DOS operating system released in September 2018, this was done for historical and educational reasons.

The End of All Things by John Scalzi

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The novel “The End of All Things” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2015 putting together some novellas published previously. It’s part of the “Old Man’s War” series and follows “The Human Division”.

Rafe Daquin has just found an assignment as a pilot on a merchant starship, but during the first journey it’s boarded by the Rraey, who work with the Colonial Union Deputy Secretary of State Tyson Ocampo, who is officially on board for a vacation. The other crew members are killed while Rafe’s brain gets extracted from his body and connected to equipment that allows him to communicate with the outside world.

Convinced to collaborate with the promise of a new body, Rafe Daquin is trained to control the starship with his mind. Thanks to his experience as a computer engineer, he manages to penetrate and take control of the on-board systems, but before trying to free himself from his captors he must look for information on what’s happening to him and to the Colonial Union.

Great white shark jaws and fossil teeth

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An article published in the journal “Scientific Reports” describes an analysis of fossil teeth of great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) discovered in various locations, including what used to be a nursery in today’s Chile where there were mostly very young individuals. A team of researchers led by Jaime A. Villafaña of the Institute of Paleontology of the Austrian University of Vienna analyzed the fossils of individuals of various ages including the ones discovered in Peru and another location in Chile concluding that great white sharks used some areas as nurseries for millions of years. This behavior stresses the importance of certain habitats for the survival of a species known among today’s top predators and yet considered endangered, above all because of humans.

Risk Assessment by James Goss

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The novel “Risk Assessment” by James Goss was published for the first time in 2010.

For Captain Jack Harkness’s team the situation seems normal at a time when the only Rift activity is the arrival of coffins containing bodies of aliens from who knows where. The task of collecting them and preventing someone else from getting their hands on them seems trivial, but for the moment there’s nothing else to do until an extraordinary event.

When Agnes Havisham awakens from her cryogenic sleep, it’s only the fourth time that that happened within a century. Torchwood’s systems only awakens her in the most catastrophic moments, but there seems to be no danger threatening the world. Jack Harkness has seen those past moments and, even though he and his team have overcome various crises, the possibility that something even worse might come upsets him deeply.