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At five in the morning, the going gets tough. Heads become heavy and a bed would now be very much preferred to the hard seats in meeting room 110. Last Wednesday, the lights turned on at three o'clock in the morning in the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ offices in Cadarache, just as Principal Deputy Director-General Norbert Holtkamp opened the IO-DA Meeting 16.000 kilometres away in Hefei, China.

At the same time as the video-conference party in room 110 headed into the morning, the group in the US ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ office on the other side of the planet, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, struggled to stay awake as the clock passed midnight US time. And as the IO-DA meeting continued the next day, the remote attendees in East and West convened again in front of the video screens the next morning - or evening, respectively. International collaboration takes its toll from time to time - with or without the inventions of modern communication.