2022

Superworm (Zophobas morio) larva

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An article published in the journal “Microbial Genomics” reports the results of a study of the ability to digest polystyrene by the larvae of beetles belonging to the species Zophobas morio, commonly known as superworms, kingworms, or morio worms. A team of researchers from the Australian University of Queensland led by Chris Rinke used a metagenomic technique to analyze these larvae’s gut microbiome to find which microorganisms and in particular which genes are responsible for the digestion of polystyrene. The idea is to produce the enzymes needed to destroy the polystyrene waste in an ecological way.

Provenance by Ann Leckie

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The novel “Provenance” by Ann Leckie was published for the first time in 2017.

Ingray Aughskold spent all of her money to get Pahlad Budrakim out of the prison planet where he was exiled from Hwae and for the journey on Captain Tic Uisine’s spaceship to bring them home with a fake ID for Pahlad. Her plan is to find the precious vestiges whose replacement with fakes doomed Pahlad.

When Ingray Aughskold awakens Pahlad Budrakim from the cryogenic sleep he was put into after his breakout, she gets a nasty surprise when the person she was handed over claims to be someone else. Ingray has no choice but to heavily rethink her plans because failure would mean losing any hope of succeeding her adoptive mother in her political office. When they arrive on Hwae, however, things just start getting complicated.

Some cabinets of the Frontier supercomputer (Photo courtesy Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy)

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The American Frontier supercomputer has been crowned the new king of the Top 500 ranking. It has a speed that is more than twice that of the Japanese Fugaku, the previous king. This is the first exascale supercomputer, which means that it’s capable of exceeding the calculation capacity of 1 exaflop with 10^18 floating point operations per second. Frontier reaches 1.102 exaflops per second.

And All the Stars a Stage by James Blish

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The novel “And All the Stars a Stage” by James Blish was published for the first time in 1960 serialized in the magazine “Amazing Science Fiction” and in 1971 as a book.

Jorn Birn does not have many prospects in a world where there’s a strong predominance of men and an equally strong competition for the favors of the small minority of women. One possibility comes from a space program that aims to test faster-than-light propulsion. Jorn is selected to be trained as a navigator and accepts knowing that the mission will be experimental and very risky.

Everything changes when the study of anomalies detected in solar activity leads to the conclusion that the Sun will explode within a few years. Even by concentrating all the efforts of the world, only a small percentage of human beings can survive and the selection of the crews of the available spaceships is very strict. Jorn Birn will fly one of them in search of a habitable planet.

Hock E. Tan (Photo courtesy Broadcom)

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Semiconductor giant Broadcom Inc. announced that it has reached an agreement to buy virtualization and cloud software maker VMware in a deal worth approximately $61 billion that will be paid partly in cash and partly in shares. Broadcom takes over VMware’s debts, which amount to approximately $8 billion. Broadcom Software Group, the software subsidiary, will be integrated into VMware. With this acquisition, Broadcom can extend its business solutions offering.