In Chinese astrology, rats are said to hunger for power and to be unpredictable, and in 2008 — a Year of the Rat — both those characteristics were clearly in evidence. What with the financial crisis that is changing the established order of things, and the food and fuel crises that have sent shock waves around the world, many people will be only too pleased to see this rattish year end.
As we say sayonara to the rodent for another 11 years, let's look back on what Japanese science has brought us over the last year. Or rather, what I most readily recall from the last year — not necessarily the most important scientific discoveries, but the most memorable moments of what in many ways wasn't such a rattish year after all.
Onward and upward. At the beginning of the year, Japan's space agency announced an astronaut-recruitment campaign, the first for a decade, as the country's space program got back on track.