and its approx. 338 cubic feet.
With your molecular medicine background would you happen to have any
idea as to how much plant foliage would be required to fill this
volume of space with oxygen to the tune of "1 atmosphere" (if that's
the right way to put it)? I suppose that would also depend on the
volume of CO2 provided for intake and how good the cycle was working.

I am not a plant physiologist, but I presume the plants will also
generate CO2 during mitochondrial metabolism. The number of atmospheres
depends on what the starting pressure was. I once experimented with
the output from yeast fermentation (CO2) as a source of CO2 to
grow green algae.



Does the amount of oxygen produced by a plant generally depend on the
surface area of its leaves and are some plants better than others in
their oxygen outputs?

I think it depends on the number of pores and their regulation,
as by hormones. This is covered in great detail in my plant
physiology textbooks at home. I do not work with this, but do have
some books.



Is there a 'best plant' for oxygen output and
does it all depend on temperatures, etc?

The Russians experimented very heavily with algae (maybe
the best of all) and I believe some photosynthetic bacteria.
I think the bacteria where interesting because there was a
mechanism to also extract hydrogen which could be used as
a fuel.


These are some of the Q's I was hoping to get answers to using simple
"hands on" experiments in the facility described on my web page.
NASA research into wheat and soy bean experiments conducted aboard the
ISS must have some of these answers... I just don't know where they
are.


The NASA research on the Space Shuttle has been less than
impressive, given the massive budgets. There is (was) a group
next door in Norway that was working on chambers for such
experiments, and I once had some contact with them about
this. I think the Norwegian group was very progressive and I
should probably try and get in touch with them to see what
they are up to these days...

Dominic