Gizmorama - March 26, 2014

Good Morning,

"The world's first bionic brain" sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but it's actually a research project that Australian scientists need $250 million and over 10 years to develop.

Learn about this interesting story and more from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Report: Australia should set goal of creating first bionic brain --*
CANBERRA, Australia - Australian scientists should be funded with $250 million over 10 years with the goal of developing the world's first bionic brain, a thank tank report says. The report was prepared by a new Australian brain initiative, dubbed AusBrain, to coordinate brain research efforts. The goal of developing a bionic brain should be considered a kind of Apollo mission for Australian science, with the equivalent urgency of the 1960s space race, the report said, citing massive investment in brain research in the United States and Europe, with "China waiting in the wings." It was Australian scientists who pioneered the bionic ear and the bionic eye, geneticist Bob Williams, who headed the report team, said. "So we have a great deal of experience in what one might think of as outsourcing brain functions to computer chips," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper. "It's obvious that the next development will be to work out ways for the brain to control the movement of an arm or leg," he said, predicting such an accomplishment was achievable withing five to 10 years. The task will be difficult, he acknowledged, but said the research could have results to help in the prevention and treatment of illnesses such as Alzheimer's, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism and schizophrenia. "Therefore there's every reason to think that as we understand the architecture of the brain better at the cell by cell level, we're going to get a greater understanding of what's going on at the metabolic level, that's causing a mental illness," Williams said.


*-- Hawking claims bet victory after gravitational wave discovery --*
CAMBRIDGE, England - Professor Stephen Hawking of Britain's University of Cambridge is claiming victory in a bet following the discovery of gravitational waves in space. Hawking said the discovery of the gravitational waves rippling through the universe, which were discovered by Harvard Smithsonian Center scientists working with NASA and U.S. National Science Foundation researchers using the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole, supports his theory of the early universe's "inflation," the Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday. Hawking said the discovery means he has won a bet with Professor Neil Turok, whose wager involved a theory of multiple Big Bangs in a cyclic universe. "The cyclic universe theory predicts no gravitational waves from the early universe," Hawking said. However, Turok said the bet was based on a different experiment and he finds the recent discovery to be "not entirely convincing." "Verification is very important, and it's wise to be a little bit skeptical at the moment when there is no confirmation, and the experiment was extremely difficult, and they don't entirely explain why they are so convinced of what they claim," Turok said.

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