Some space-time alone
Want to get away from it all? This week, the European Space Agency said it was looking for 12 volunteer 鈥渁stronauts鈥� to live inside an isolation tank at a Moscow research institute for 17 months 鈥� with only a delayed radio link for contact with the outside world. The agency hopes to simulate what a Mars mission would feel like.
Radical bug zapper
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UK hospitals are to start trials of a device that may reduce hospital superbugs to undetectable levels in air and on surfaces. The Air Disinfector discharges highly reactive hydroxyl radicals which rapidly kill microbes, says its maker, Inov8 Science of Buckingham, UK.
Call for halal vaccines
Muslim nations should come together to develop 鈥渉alal鈥� child vaccines, Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on 14 June. Although the OIC already declares most vaccines halal, Badawi says producing vaccines in Islamic countries might alleviate fears about contamination, such as those that triggered rejection of polio vaccines in Nigeria in 2003.
Coral border for Japan
Japanese authorities have begun planting baby coral on a remote Pacific atoll in an effort to hold on to the country鈥檚 southernmost territory. The rocky isles of Okinotori, 1700 kilometres south of Tokyo, give Japan resource rights inside a 200-nautical-mile 鈥渆xclusive economic zone鈥�, but rising sea levels could soon submerge them, conceding the territory to China.
Spring-loaded spring
The Arctic spring now arrives up to a month earlier than it did a decade ago. It鈥檚 the most spectacular manifestation yet of global warming, say researchers tracking the flowering dates of six plants, nesting times of three birds and emergence dates of 12 arthropods in the Zackenberg, north-east Greenland (Current Biology, vol 17, p R449).