Stream of Consciousness Web Crawl 13 August 2006

As these things usually begin, I have a topic in mind that I'm curious about. In this case, long-term group isolation. Here's what I found:

The Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) conducted a study of group isolation for 240 days. I'm having trouble finding the results of this study. If anyone has info, or a link, that would be great!

An excellent article [PDF] by Lawrence A. Palinkas that overviews experiences in the Antarctic, MIR, and sea explorations. Essentially, the experiences of people who are in isolated groups depends heavily on the characters in the group, the environment around them, and communication with the outside world. Note that by "isolation", I mean physical isolation. Telephones and e-mail allow a kind of social relation, albeit without face-to-face contact.

I still think that it would behoove NASA, Russia, somebody, to put people in a 900-day long isolation setup. The more set-ups, the better. If there is a "cocktail" of human characteristics that are more likely to bring mission success than not, then that should be known!