2021

Engines of War by George Mann

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The novel “Engines of War” by George Mann was published for the first time in 2014.

The War Doctor is involved in a Time Lords attack on a Dalek stronghold but the target is revealed to be an ambush. The consequence is that the Battle Tardis fleet is destroyed by superior enemy forces while the Doctor’s Tardis is damaged and crashes on the planet Moldox.

There is still a human population on the planet and the Doctor knows this means that the Daleks need slaves to work for them or to use for some experiment. The encounter with Cinder, a girl who lives on the planet, leads him to discover a terrible new Dalek weapon. Warning the Time Lords of the new danger is crucial, but when Rassilon decides measures that will have an enormous cost in terms of lives, the Doctor must turn against his people.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

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The novel “Ubik” by Philip K. Dick was published for the first time in 1969.

Glen Runciter is the owner of an agency that offers the services of inertials, people who can neutralize psi powers and thus prevent them from gaining access to business secrets. His wife Ella helps him even though she’s been dead for a long time because she’s kept in half-life in a so-called moratorium. Unfortunately, her conscience was attacked by the one from a boy in half-life whose mental signals are very strong.

Joe Chip, a technician employed by Glen Runciter, meets Pat Conley, who has the power to change the past. The agency receives an request for inertials from a company based on the Moon and Runciter decides to include Pat as well in the intervention team. The job on the Moon turns out to be a trap but it’s only the beginning of a series of strange events.

A schematic of how the system called genomatnn recognizes adaptive introgression

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An article published in the journal “eLife” reports the development of an approach based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to identify genes inherited from other species such as Neanderthals that brought positive effects. A team of researchers led by Graham Gower of the Danish University of Copenhagen developed this deep learning technique to examine genomes of modern humans for examples of what is technically called introgression, which means genes that a hybrid between two species brought into one of his parents’ species. Various possible examples have been found, for example, genes inherited from Denisovans have been found in Melanesians that affect various metabolic and disease-related traits.

Microbiota and the Masses: A Love Story" by S.B. Divya

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The short story “Microbiota and the Masses: A Love Story” by S.B. Divya was published for the first time in 2017.

Moena Sivaram lives in an airtight house where she created an isolated domestic biome that allows her to live without having to fear for her health. The price is the considerable difficulty for her in getting out of that house so as not to risk getting sick from some of the pollutants that infest Bangalore.

One day, a malfunction in the windows forces Moena to call a technician to fix the computer system that controls them. Rahul answers the call and, when she discovers that he’s a volunteer with an ecological group, Moena is strongly attracted to him but she knows very well that starting a relationship would mean exposing herself to serious dangers for her health.

Terran Tomorrow by Nancy Kress

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The novel “Terran Tomorrow” by Nancy Kress was published for the first time in 2018. It’s the third book in the Yesterday’s Kin trilogy and follows “If Tomorrow Comes”.

The spaceship Return brings the Earthlings back to their planet along with some inhabitants of World. However, due to the time dilation that happens during the trips, at their arrival, twenty-eight years have passed since their departure. During those years, things on Earth have changed more than the travelers could have imagined.

A bacteriological war waged by ecological extremists caused the death of 96% of human beings. The survivors are still at war and Dr. Marianne Jenner discovers that her grandson Jason Jenner is a colonel in command of one of the rare military bases in what used to be the USA. The arrival of the spaceship could affect an already unstable situation.