“So far, nobody has been able to make space sushi. I think shelf life may be a problem.”
Japan space agency official Yoshinori Miyazawa on the gastronomic sacrifices made by Japanese astronauts (The Japan Times, 9 December)
“It is probably the single strongest library for space science and engineering in the universe.”
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Nobel laureate astrophysicist John Mather on the proposed closure of the NASA library in Greenbelt, Maryland (Los Angeles Times, 8 December)
“What if it turns out you’re really Siberian and then, oops, your healthcare is gone?”
David Barrett of the Alaska Area Institutional Review Board on a National Geographic Society project to collect DNA from indigenous groups, some of whom are worried that the findings could jeopardise land rights and other benefits based on the notion that they have lived in a place “since the beginning of time” (The New York Times, 10 December)
“The ice pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very rapid losses in the near future.”
Ice expert Mark Serreze of the University of Colorado at Boulder, on how thawing Arctic ice exposes more of the sea to the sun, setting up a positive feedback loop with worrying implications for the entire region (BBC online, 12 December)
“As the supply of foreign patients grows, so does our ability to care for domestic patients.”
Ashok Ananthram, president of Apollo Hospitals in Chennai, India, is optimistic that the influx of rich western “medical refugees” will benefit poor Indians (Wired News, 12 December)
