鈥淭he furniture will fly. It will be almost too realistic.鈥�
John van de Lindt of Colorado State University on an experiment that will subject a full-scale replica of a wooden Californian town house weighing 40 tonnes to a simulated earthquake of magnitude 6.7 (LA Times, 13 November)
鈥淭hey鈥檙e going to shift the burden on us.鈥�
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Rajendra Pachauri, India鈥檚 climate change expert and chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on developing countries like China, India, Brazil being asked to curb emissions, while emissions in developed countries continue to rise unabated (The New York Times, 7 November)
鈥淵ou put [Saddam Hussein] on trial for using biological warfare, but in another country where you sprayed chemicals for warfare, you neglect your responsibility.鈥�
Duc Nguyen of Vietnam, who has severe birth defects because of the Agent Orange sprayed by the US, on how the US has not admitted responsibility or compensated victims (The Washington Post, 13 November)
鈥淲e need to determine exactly what is killing the mice.鈥�
Alec Davidson of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, on studies showing that aged mice that endured weekly light-cycle shifts 鈥� similar to those experienced by people during jet-lag or shift work 鈥� had significantly raised death rates (The Daily Telegraph, London, 9 November)
鈥淓ven though their stomachs are filled, they end up starving because there鈥檚 no nutrients in there.鈥�
骋谤别别苍辫别补肠别鈥檚 Steve Smith on albatrosses that eat the plastic trash swirling around in a vast vortex in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Greenpeace says at least 267 species have suffered from eating the debris or getting entangled in it (CNN.com, 6 November)