JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Agency, has announced plans to have established a Lunar base by 2030, which is a slight step back from their previous target of 2025. They don’t seem to have any clear and definite plans as to how they’ll do it, either, so maybe more collaboration is on the cards in the near future.

It’s no surprise to find that a country that gets as much sun as Australia is keen to start using solar sources of renewable energy. Way out in the outback, a tower half a kilometer high will be built, surrounded by a two-mile-diameter canopy. The canopy will superheat the air, which will then flow up towards the lower pressure area of the tower and drive turbines. No fuels required, totally pollution free – and a great use for otherwise desolate land.

This story was floating around early this year, but appears to have resurfaced again, despite its classic science fiction vibes – a Californian scientist believes that cultural shifts in human behaviour could be due to the presence of a cat parasite called Toxoplasma. Toxoplasma makes its hosts, usually rats, more active and less cautious and hence more likely to be eaten by a cat, where it can complete its lifecycle. Could it be that dormant Toxoplasma trapped in the dead-end host of a human body still creates a change in behaviour, leading to changes in human culture such as an increase in neurotic behaviours?

Many Russians can’t afford a luxurious adventure holiday abroad, which may be why Persey Tours’ original business model failed. But they soon struck on a better idea – instead of selling you a holiday, they sell you the mementos and paraphenalia that you would have picked up on the holiday, at a fraction of the cost. They have even supplied a fuel-station owner with keepsakes from a fictional ride to the moon on a non-existant Russian space-shuttle.

Sometimes, Mother Nature comes up with a great solution that takes human technology thousands of years to replicate. A new breed of artificial lens is controlled in much the same may as a human eye, by an artificial muscle that squeezes it into different configurations. The ability to focus a lens in this way, without direct control by electronics, will enable them to be deployed in situations where current solutions are no use – for instance, biosensors and medical imaging equipment.