Saturday, November 16, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips Of The Day



Apple takes heat over insensitive dictionary entry for 'gay' – NBC
Devin Coldewey NBC News

Apple's stock Dictionary app is in the spotlight this week after a Massachusetts teen took issue with a derogatory definition of the word "gay." But not every Mac shows the same definition — and, of course, Apple didn't write the entry, it just licensed it.

Becca Gorman, a 15-year-old tenth grader in Sudbury, Mass., was doing research for a paper on gay rights, and had decided to look up the word "gay" in her MacBook Pro's built-in Dictionary application, according to a report in the MetroWest Daily News. To her dismay, among the definitions was the following:
informal foolish; stupid: making students wait for the light is kind of a gay rule
This is, in fact, common usage, but the issue is that it wasn't given the "offensive" or "derogatory" tags found in other places inside the dictionary database. Gorman, struck by this as potentially a tacit endorsement of this sense of the word, took the matter to her parents, who happen to be a lesbian couple. They encouraged her when she decided to write an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook, which read in part:
I assume that you are a pro-gay company, and would never intend for any one of your products to be as offensive as this definition was. Even with your addition of the word informal, this definition normalizes the terrible derogatory twist that many people put on the word “gay”. ... When I look at this definition it makes this hatred filled use of the term as something as okay as “dude”. 

I am asking for you to remove this definition from the Dictionary you are promoting, or to make a significant change to it. I also think it would be a good idea to apologize to the gay community, a good amount of your customers. Thank you for your cooperation, I love your products.

Apple has indeed been quietly but reliably gay-friendly, providing company benefits to same-sex couples and lobbying against California's Proposition 8, among other things.
According to MetroWest, which republished Gorman's letter, an Apple representative called the teen's home just an hour after the email was sent, and told her the company would be looking into it, though nothing official has been announced, nor have any updates been issued.

As the story spread, however, it became clear that not all Macs were giving the same definitions. NBC News checked several Macs, and while some had the definition exactly as quoted by Gorman, some included "offensive" alongside "informal" (Strangely, The Daily Dot found a version where the third sense was just plain omitted.)

Apple doesn't write its own dictionaries; the one used by the Dictionary app in OS X and iOS in the U.S. is the New Oxford American Dictionary. Looking up the word with that dictionary's online tool, the definition provided includes "offensive."
The explanation is likely that the new definition ("foolish; stupid") was added at some point to Oxford's system, and that, along with countless other updates, was sent to Apple for use in their Dictionary app. Some time thereafter, Oxford amended the framing of the definition, adding "offensive," and soon that update too was sent to Apple.

Anyone using an old version of the Dictionary app, for whatever reason, would see the old definition, of course. Just what versions have which definitions isn't clear.
NBC News contacted Apple for comment, and a representative referred us to the Oxford Dictionaries FAQ on its handling of "vulgar and offensive" language. The company's editors are "constantly re-evaluating and improving" such things, and evidently the entry for "gay" was among those that was reassessed; Oxford University Press (which publishes the dictionaries) did not reply immediately to requests for further information.

So Gorman's request that Apple update the definition has, in fact, already been granted: NBC News confirmed that the dictionaries included in the latest versions of Apple's operating system, OS X Mavericks and iOS 7, both label the negative use of the word as "offensive."


I think this use of “gay” is mainly made by young people. I became aware about ten years ago when I was around a teenager a lot that they have a whole language of their own now. Being gay is one of the things that will cause a kid to be bullied and harassed, as it's the age when they all want to “fit in.” It's the time, too, when all children are discovering their sexual impulses and attendant emotions, and it must be hard to adjust their own self-image if their attraction is turning out to be to their own sex.

It's good that Apple reached out immediately to Gorman and is making the change to label the usage as “offensive.” Their explanation as to how it happened to be written that way makes sense, and it seems certain to have been inadvertent. Gorman was very sharp-eyed to notice the lapse. I'll bet she will write a very good paper on gay rights.






Cave women unearth skull of unknown human ancestor – NBC
Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News

See the first hominin fossil retrieved from the Rising Star Cave in South Africa.
An all-woman team of spelunking scientists has retrieved hundreds of fossils from a 100-foot-deep (30-meter-deep) cave in South Africa — including the cranium from what appears to be a prehistoric humanlike creature.

Friday's retrieval of the skull was a climactic moment for the three-week expedition to the Rising Star Cave in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, just 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Johannesburg. 

The Rising Star Expedition, backed by the National Geographic Society, was put together after a pair of recreational cavers came upon the trove of bones last month. They alerted Lee Berger, a paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand who has been behind a long string of significant finds in South Africa and serves as a National Geographic explorer-in-residence.

Berger was excited to hear that the fossilized bones could represent a new group of hominins. ("Hominins" has become the preferred term for humans and our close extinct relatives, such as Neanderthals. Scientists now use the term "hominids" to refer to those species as well as to gorillas and chimpanzees.)

The call went out for scientists to join the expedition. Some of the top experts in paleoanthropology, such as the University of Wisconsin's John Hawks and Duke University's Steven Churchill, joined the team. But the scientists tapped to go into the cave and bring up the fossils were required to have an almost superhuman combination of talents.

They had to have a master's degree or Ph.D. in paleontology, archaeology or an associated field. They had to be experienced cavers. And they had to be able to fit through a 7-inch-wide (18-centimeter-wide) choke point in the passage leading to the chamber. Fifty-seven qualified researchers applied for the job. Six were chosen: Lindsay Eaves, Marina Elliott, Elen Feuerriegel, Alia Gurtov, Hannah Morris and Becca Peixotto.

"It ended up that the most qualified human beings on this planet to do this very dangerous, very remarkable job were young women," Berger said in a video profile of the "underground astronauts."

The project is already paying off big time. "Wonderful fossils coming out now," Berger tweeted from the site on Friday.
The cranium and a hominin jawbone were among the most-prized specimens. "Cuddled the cranium all morning, then made first run carrying fossils entire way. Getting the hang of this!" Gurtov reported.

By the end of the day, a box containing the cranium was carefully handed up from the depths by a human chain. "Lots of celebration out here. Rising moon, beautiful evening, and twenty celebrating people," Hawks wrote. Gurtov exulted over the skull's retrieval. "CRANIUM IS OUT! No revealsies until tomorrow, though," she tweeted. "Needs pampering."

Berger said more than 200 hominin fossils have been brought up so far. After coming up to the surface, the bones are taken into a "SCIENCE" tent where they're compared with replicas of previously found hominin skulls and other bones.
For now, the team is holding back on saying where the Rising Star fossils fit on humanity's evolutionary tree. Berger said he expected a scientific paper on the find would be prepared for publication in late 2014. Meanwhile, National Geographic and the "Nova" science documentary team are working on a TV show about the expedition.
In a National Geographic blog posting, Hawks noted that the Rising Star Expedition was atypical for the usually secretive field of paleoanthropology:


"Why are so many projects so secretive? Discovery is hard work — both in the field and in the laboratory. Other scientists can be brutal critics, pointing out flaws in early interpretations. Sometimes they even steal your work. Our field has historically been a shark tank, and sharing makes the sharks start circling.

"We believe that sharing will make our science better. Rising Star is the most open paleoanthropological project that has ever been attempted. We’re experimenting with new ways of sharing the experience. Lee brought together the team of advance scientists by putting out a call on Facebook. National Geographic has been incredibly supportive, with their crew onsite to share updates and video. The senior scientists are sharing updates on Twitter and Facebook, many events as they are happening — follow @LeeRBerger, @RisingStarExped and @johnhawks.

"This three-week expedition is only the beginning of our innovation. As we analyze the fossils, we are going to continue new experiments with sharing and open access. We’ve got some incredible things planned



http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2011/11/whats-in-a-name-hominid-versus-hominin/
Hominid Hunting

Summarizing this blog article in Smithsonian Magazine, the term “hominidae” was in the past used to refer to humans only, both modern and ancient. It did not include any apes. The current viewpoint on the gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees has been revised to lump them in with the early human ancestors under the term “hominid. That is the family name. All apes were formerly in the family named “Pongidae.” The current naming system now puts humans, gorillas and chimpanzees under the term “Homininae,” with a further division called “Tribe” for human ancestors only under the term “Hominin” – it has not been specified how far back in the human ancestor line the term “Hominin” goes. The description under the term say “close” extinct ancestors. Does it include “Lucy”? It probably does, because she walked upright.

This change in terminology was based on new DNA studies linking gorillas and chimpanzees more closely with modern humans than with orangutans. All the psychological studies on the intelligence of all three apes certainly fits in with the DNA evidence. The gorillas Koko, who has been taught a large number of hand signs used by the deaf and communicates regularly with her handlers, was given a human IQ test and tested in the low range of human IQs; several chimanzees also use sign language and pass a number of problem solving tests. Orangutans also have tested high, but have not been taught sign language, which is not to say that they couldn't learn it. There will probably be more results from this new set of bones. I'll try to keep up with the studies.




Insurers, state officials say cancellation of health care policies just as they predicted – NBC

By Lisa Myers, Senior Investigative Correspondent

Several insurance industry officials and state insurance commissioners expressed frustration Friday, saying they were “baffled” by President Barack Obama’s assertion that the cancellation of millions of insurance policies occurred because a key provision of the Affordable Care Act didn’t work as expected. The administration was warned three years ago that regulations would have exactly that effect, they said. 

They said the widespread cancellations in the individual health insurance market — roughly 5 million and counting -- are in line with what was projected under regulations drawn up by the administration in 2010, requirements that both insurers and businesses objected to at the time. Cancellations also are occurring in the small group market, which covers businesses with between two and 50 employees, they noted. 


“We have been saying for years that the requirements in the law were going to mean that people couldn't keep their current plans and they were going to have to purchase coverage that was more expensive,” said one high-level heath industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We said these changes would disrupt coverage and increase premiums for consumers. And now everything we said is coming true and people are acting surprised.”


At issue is a so-called “grandfather” clause in the law stating that consumers would have the option of keeping policies in effect as of March 23, 2010,  even if they didn’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed after that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.
The president, in accepting responsibility for Obamacare’s rocky rollout at a news conference Thursday, specifically addressed his repeated pledge that “if you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period.”  

Asked why he continued to say that when estimates from his own administration suggested millions of Americans would not be able to keep their insurance, Obama replied, “There is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate. It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law but it was insufficient." 

To fix the problem, Obama said that he would give health insurance plans the option to keep selling plans that don't comply with Obamacare for one more year, effectively shifting the decision to insurers and state insurance commissioners.


In comments filed in August and December 2010, America’s Health Insurance Plans -- a trade group representing 1,300 insurance plans — urged the administration to “reconsider” grandfathering rules because they were too stringent to allow many to keep their policies.

In mild rebuke to Obama, 39 Democrats vote with GOP on 'Keep Your Plan' bill 
In the first round of comments, AHIP stated that under the administration’s proposed regulations, “The percentage of individual market policies losing grandfathered status … will likely exceed the 40-67 percent range” and warned that could cause “disruptions” for those who wish to keep their policies.

When those proposed rules weren’t changed, AHIP again wrote in December, “We believe that more can and should be done to protect the interests of consumers who wish to maintain their existing coverage.”  

The individual market is made up of approximately 15 million Americans who purchase health insurance on their own. If 40 percent of those consumers lose their policies, that would work out to 6 million cancellations.

“The significance of the AHIP letters is that they show the administration was warned that their proposed grandfather rules were far too stringent for people's plans to survive come 2014,” health care analyst Robert Laszewski, who consults for insurance companies, hospitals and physicians groups, told NBC News. “The industry told the administration that the historic rate at which consumers increase their out-of-pocket costs was far more than the very limited rules the administration ultimately wrote. The only foreseeable outcome would be that most plans would not survive. The administration, knowing that, went ahead with these stringent rules anyway.”


One state insurance commissioner, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said he sympathized with the president’s predicament and the political blowback he is getting. But the official said “the cancellations are consistent with what we expected under the regulations.” He said he didn’t know yet whether his state would or could implement the president’s suggestion that canceled policies be reinstated for a year. “We’re waiting to hear from our insurers and then will decide if it’s feasible or would mean even more chaos.”

During the same period, consumer groups complained that the administration’s rules were too lenient and would allow too many Americans to keep substandard policies that didn’t meet the new standards of the Affordable Care Act.
A senior administration official pointed out Friday that beyond suggesting that consumers be allowed to continue policies that were canceled, the president’s latest proposal informs consumers of their options:


Health exchanges slow to attract young and healthy
“Specifically, insurers offering these renewals must inform all consumers who either already have or will receive cancellation letters about the protections their renewed plan will not include and how they can learn about the new options available to them through the marketplaces, which will offer better protections and possible financial assistance,” said the official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Insurance commissioners from California, Florida, Kentucky and North Carolina said Friday they would move quickly to implement the president’s request.  Florida Insurance Commission Kevin McCarty said most insurers in his state already had voluntarily extended coverage for those impacted. Other state insurance officials suggested it may be too late in the game to change the rules.



The hopeful thing in this article seems to be that four state insurance commissioners either have or will “move quickly” to get the coverage continued. The fact that the Department of Health and Human Services rewrote the rule to make it more stringent and then failed to change that when they were warned is a shame, though it was possibly in response to the unnamed “consumer groups” who claimed that the administration's rules were too lenient. They were warned three years ago of the consequences of the amendment to the grandfather clause, and failed to make changes. If the president didn't know about this, he should have. It is really embarrassing, and a major problem to the people whose policies were canceled.




African Migrants Find An Uneasy Asylum In Israel – NPR
by Emily Harris
­The scissors never seem to stop in Sami's barber shop off a pedestrian street in south Tel Aviv.
Fresh out of the barber's chair, Philip Giray says he left Eritrea two years ago. Smugglers helped the 20-year-old cross into Sudan and Egypt. Then he snuck into Israel.

"We come here, we ask asylum here, they doesn't welcome us," Giray says. "They punish us psychological, you know?"

The number of people illegally entering Israel from Africa dropped from almost 10,000 in the first half of 2012 to just three dozen in the first six months of this year. Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, credit a new fence that stretches across the country's southern border.
But Giray and some 60,000 other migrants, almost all from Sudan or Eritrea, are already living in Israel.

Now the government is about to experiment with new policies designed to separate asylum seekers from the rest of Israel.
Giray came before Israel built its fence. As was usual then, the Israeli military picked Giray up, took him to a detention center for a few days, then turned him loose in south Tel Aviv.

"They give us a bus ticket," he says. "I come here. I sleep over there in the park, in the street, for two months more. Then I start to work."

Israel won't deport migrants from Sudan or Eritrea because of continuing violence in the region.

But refugee advocates say the Israeli government has been slow to process applications for asylum. While people wait, the social services normally offered to refugees are unavailable. Their Israeli-issued papers say they cannot work, although the government generally looks the other way.
"Israel is putting all these people in a legal limbo," says Asaf Weitzen, an attorney with the Hotline for Migrant Workers.
Many of the people strolling on the street outside the barber shop are men from Eritrea or Sudan.

May Golan, a young Israeli woman who has lived here her whole life, says crime has risen and the quality of life fallen since the migrants arrived.
"Listen, this was never a perfect place," Golan says. "South Tel Aviv always had problems. But never we were afraid to go out of our house at 5 o'clock in the afternoon to buy milk. Never."
Golan has become politically active because of this issue. She believes nobody is listening to the needs of her neighborhood.

"The Israeli government just sits quietly, holds her ears, her eyes and her mouth," she says. "I don't get (it). What are they waiting for?"

The government has done a few things that May supports. In addition to building the fence across the southern border, Israel's legislature passed a law last year that put new illegal migrants in detention for three years.
But in September, Israel's supreme court overturned that law. Human rights lawyer Weitzen argued the case on behalf of detained migrants.

"The day we received this ruling and read it, we thought it's extremely significant," he says. "Today, almost two months have passed and we are afraid it's less significant than we want it to be."
Now the government is coming up with new plans. According to an adviser to the interior minister, Israel wants to reduce the time any new migrants spend in detention to a year or so, and move the tens of thousands of Eritreans and Sudanese already in the country to new so-called "open" detention centers while they wait for asylum claims to be processed.

Food, health care and training would be provided. People could leave during the day, but would have to sleep in the centers. It's not clear how many years they would stay.
Former lawmaker and former ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon says such an approach would serve two purposes.

"First of all to deter other illegal work-seekers to come to Israel," Ayalon says. "And secondly to deal with those who did infiltrate in a humane way and prepare them to go back to the countries of origins, provided of course there is no life-threatening situation for them going back."

The United Nations refugee agency is advising Israel on its next steps. U.N. guidelines allow the kind of centers Israel describes, if certain rights are met.
The Israeli government is also looking for a third country to take migrants, and offering $5,000 to asylum seekers who are willing to leave.

Yair Sheleg, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, says one reason the government doesn't want to absorb migrants from Africa is that they're not Jewish, and thus could change the country's demographics.
"The Jewish people learned two important lessons from the Holocaust," Sheleg says. "On the one hand we learned the lesson (that) we should be moral, we should act morally, we should act by a universal code. The other lesson is that we have to strengthen our own national state."


The US has usually accepted immigrants until recent decades and simply allowed “our demographics” to change with the times. The large number of illegal immigrants from Mexico and beyond have changed that mindset. We don't have any “open detention centers,” and many of our illegal immigrants are barely making a living, if at all. I can't quite picture an “open” detention center, but as long as they are temporary it may be a solution to the problem. I wonder if the detention here of the Japanese during World War II would have qualified as “open.” I hope the Israelis don't develop a policy of discriminating against them because they have black skin, as well as because they aren't Jewish. That would be a shame, given the history of the Jews.




­
Internal Emails Reveal Warnings HealthCare.gov Wasn't Ready – NPR
by Elise Hu
­ HealthCare.gov could barely function on the day the health insurance marketplace debuted, and internal emails show at least some top health officials could see the failure coming.

In emails from July, released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Obama administration officials write of unskilled developers and a series of missed deadlines. One email said the "entire build is in jeopardy." But when the administration's top people in charge of the implementation testified before the committee in the months leading up to the site launch, they said just the opposite — that they were ready.

"Administration officials looked us in the eye and told us everything was 'on track' but when we pull back the curtain now, the mess is disturbing," committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement.

You can read the full email exchanges at the committee site. But here are the most dire warnings detailed in the emails between Henry Chao, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project manager in charge of HealthCare.gov, and other officials:
Three months before launch, only 10 developers from contractor CGI Federal were working on a crucial part of the site — the marketplace for choosing plans — and of those, only one was "at a high enough skill level."

Coordination issues between two main contractors — CGI Federal and QSSI. In all, HealthCare.gov has at least 47 different federal contractors involved, but CGI and QSSI won the big contracts for major chunks of the build. It seems QSSI and CGI couldn't seem to work smoothly together. At one point, Centers and Medicare and Medicaid Services' Henry Chao wrote of the contractors, "I just need to feel more confident they are not going to crash the plane at take-off." Today, QSSI is the "lead contractor" in charge of getting everyone on the same page.

The only developer who was working on the payment pages for enrollment quit CGI without programming the 10 key user interface pieces of the transaction part. "Needless to say it is in jeopardy," wrote CMS' Jeffrey Grant.
The part of the system that does monthly payment calculation of insurance plans did not get priority by the contractor, who called it "not an October 1 item." (The health care insurance website launched Oct. 1.)

"Seriously substandard staffing," is how Grant described its contractor's people power. The key contractor, CGI, missed deadlines due to "insufficient" programmer resources. A month from testing certain parts of the system, no development work had even started. CGI Federal got at least $93.7 million to build HealthCare.gov.
­
Interestingly, Chao, who took the brunt of tongue-lashings from lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee this week, comes out in the emails as a decent public servant who took seriously his promises that HealthCare.gov would work, only to wind up the pilot of an exploding plane. With a July email sharing a video link to his summer testimony assuring lawmakers the site would work on time, he urges his team not to fall short, writing:
" 'I wanted to share this with you so you can see and hear that ... I under oath stated we are going to make Oct. 1,' Chao wrote. 'I would like you (to) put yourself in my shoes standing before Congress, which in essence is standing before the American public, and know that you speak the tongue of not necessarily just past truths but the truth that you will make happen.' "

The other key takeaway may not surprise those of you who have been following this saga closely. The contractors, namely CGI Federal, were woefully understaffed and underprepared despite their multimillion-dollar federal contract. Its track record with similar IT projects isn't great. The Washington Examiner reported that CGI's performance on Ontario, Canada's health care medical registry for diabetes sufferers was so poor that officials ditched the $46.2 million contract after three years of missed deadlines.

These documents call into question whether contractors can fix the website as promised by the end of November.
The HealthCare.gov wreckage highlights the systemic issues with federal IT purchasing: Contractors with serious technical chops often don't compete for these bids. Contractors experienced at navigating the complex world of winning contracts win bids. President Obama reiterated his calls for systemic federal procurement reform in remarks to the press on Thursday.


These problems are getting downright scary. I'm afraid the Affordable Care Act is doomed. I'll try to keep up with the developments as time goes on. Maybe they will get the programming fixed after all.




­
Federal Brain Science Project Aims To Restore Soldiers' Memory – NPR
by Jon Hamilton
­ When President Obama announced his plan to explore the mysteries of the human brain seven months ago, it was long on ambition and short on details.
Now some of the details are being sketched in.

The BRAIN Initiative will include efforts to restore lost memories in war veterans, create tools that let scientists study individual brain circuits and map the nervous system of the fruit fly.

The Defense Advanced Projects Agency, or DARPA, which has committed more than $50 million to the effort, offered the clearest plan. The agency wants to focus on treatments for the sort of brain disorders affecting soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Dr. Geoffrey Ling, deputy director of DARPA. "That is our constituency," Ling said at a news conference at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.

Shots - Health News
Obama's Plan To Explore The Brain: A 'Most Audacious' Project
So DARPA will be working on problems including PTSD and traumatic brain injuries, Ling says. In particular, the agency wants to help the soldier who has "a terribly damaged brain and has lost a significant amount of declarative memory," Ling said. "We would like to restore that memory."

DARPA hopes to do that with an implanted device that will take over some functions of the brain's hippocampus, an area that's important to memory. The agency has already used a device that does this in rodents, Ling said, and the goal is to move on to people quickly.

The agency plans to use the same approach that created a better prosthetic arm in record time, Ling said. "We went from idea to prototype in 18 months," he says.

Research News
Parkinson's Treatment Could Work For OCD, Too
The National Institutes of Health plans to invest $40 million in the BRAIN Initiative over the next year. One major goal is to create new tools that will allow scientists to see how specific brain circuits function, according to Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
"We believe that the tools and technologies that will come from this initiative will actually enable all brain scientists to do their work better, faster and with more impact," Landis said at the news conference.

That could lead to better treatments for people with brain a disease such as Parkinson's, Landis says. For several years now, people with Parkinson's have been able to reduce their tremors with a treatment known as deep brain stimulation.
"While it works, it's incredibly crude," Landis said. "Imagine if we knew exactly how that circuitry worked. You could design a much better way to do deep brain stimulation."

Can Hacking The Brain Make You Healthier?
But Dr. Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said it's important to remember that the immediate goal of the BRAIN Initiative isn't developing treatments, but understanding the inner workings of the most complex system in the universe.

Much of the early work will involve animals, not people, Insel said. And some of it will be done not by the NIH, but by private research organizations that have agreed to take on some major portions of the BRAIN initiative.

For example, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, based in Maryland, is working to map the entire nervous system of a fruit fly. And the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle is studying how a mouse brain processes visual information.
Even though this sort of research is not aimed at curing Alzheimer's or epilepsy, Insel said, it should be of great interest to the public. "They're interested in the brain as a way to understand who we are, what makes us different and what is special about the human brain."

The president has asked for an extra $100 million in federal money to help fund the BRAIN Initiative in the next year. But scientists say the effort will accomplish a lot even if that money doesn't materialize.


The Senate and Congress may be slow to give $100 million to map the nervous system of a fruit fly after the expensive mismanagement of the Affordable Care computer program. The implanted device to aid in memory function has, at least, already been tested in rodents. If the research does develop “new tools and technologies” as a spinoff, it would certainly be useful to brain scientists and probably produce better treatments. It's another big project for pure science, though, and even I would like to see treatments of brain injuries improve as a result of it if it is funded.