The brain: the next big challenge for the American science

U.S. President Barack Obama presented yesterday the BRAIN Initiative ("Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies"), a fifteen-year research project whose goal is to draw the map of the activity and functions of the human brain, the organ hitherto unknown.

Its results are expected to be crucial for research on Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other mental illnesses, and to contribute also to the field of artificial intelligence. 

The project,  also commonly referred to as the Brain Activity Map Project, will start in 2014 with an initial investment of 100 million dollars (77 million euros). According to “The New York Times”, this figure will rise to 3,000 million dollars (2,300 million euros) for the whole period. Obama's announcement comes two months after the European Union decided to invest 1,000 million euros in the Human Brain Project. 

This multi-billion dollar U.S. investment has placed the BRAIN project as the most ambitious scientific research since United States launched the Human Genome Project, in which the American government invested 3.800 million dollars between 1990 and 2003. The profit generated by this research has risen to 800.000 million dollars so far. 

With over 100,000 million neurons, the brain remains a challenge for the XXI century scientific research. In the last decades, the study techniques were still too invasive and the neuronal tissue rots quickly and it is complex to dissect. 

However, BRAIN's team, led by the Spanish scientist Rafael Yuste, consider that current technology already allows researchers to study of the organ without interfering too much into it. 

"Ours is a nation of dreamers, of people who take risks," Obama said at one press conference held at the White House on April 2 to launch the project. 

"Now is the time to reach a level of research and development that has not been seen since the most intense times of the space race," said the U.S. president, to an audience of scientists and entrepreneurs. 

"As humans we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than the atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the 3lb of matter that sits between our ears, which hosts 100,000 million neurons with billions of connections," Obama continued.

The brain, target of other large research initiatives

The study of the brain has fascinated researchers since ancient times. Over 2,000 years ago, the Athenian philosopher Aristotle established that the brain was less important than the heart or the liver, despite being the largest organ of the nervous system. However, the brain regained its prominence in the Middle Ages, when Christian and Muslim scholars set the memory and intellect in it, two aspects that BRAIN project now hopes to study further. 

In late January, the European Commission selected the human brain and the graphene as the two objects of research in which the European Union will focus until 2020. This institution said it would invest 1,000 million euros in the Human Brain Project, with the participation of scientists from at least 15 EU countries led by Henry Markram (Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland). They will study the brain activity and possible treatments for mental illness using the world's largest brain experimental laboratory, to be built soon.

Tags: Brain, Health, Neuroscience, Research

Loopholes denounced in the EU law against testing cosmetics on animals

In mid-March the European Union implemented its long-awaited ban on animal testing for both finished cosmetic products and their components, and on marketing of cosmetics that have been tested on animals. A few days after this new Directive came into force, the British activist Michelle Thew went to Brussels to demand greater control by the EU and to denounce “loopholes” in the legislation. 

Thew, on behalf of the European Coalition to End Animal Experiments (ECEAE), urged the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament to do more to eliminate those loopholes that still allow tests of this kind to be carried out within the EU, mainly destined for third countries. 

"We want our companies to stop animal testing on products for third countries, including China," said Thew to the MEPs. 

The activist, CEO of "Cruelty Free International", also stressed that the current legislation only prohibits the testing of chemicals that are present exclusively in cosmetics. This, explained, produces "loopholes" that allow laboratories to test substances in cosmetics but also in other types of products. According to Thew, the EU should play a more active role in this issue. 

To strengthen its petition, the ECEAE -which comprises 24 organizations in favour of animal welfare from 22 Member States- submitted over 220,000 signatures. 

Following Thew's intervention, British MEP Keith Taylor, a member of the Greens/EFA parliamentary group, called the European Commission to find ways to prevent these loopholes and to encourage non EU countries to join the ban on animal testing. 

"No animal has to suffer so that we can have a new face cream or another lipstick," said. 

Prior to this Directive, cosmetics tested on animals were of all kinds, from colonies desodorodantes, shampoos or gels, to mouthwash, shaving creams, eye shadows, bath salts or tanning creams. The aim of these tests was finding out if any of the chemicals involved was toxic, carcinogenic or promoter of side effects such as skin irritation or genetic alterations.

Tags: Animals, Biodiversity, Biology, Chemistry, Environment, Research

The most surprising discoveries of the last decade

The Science Museum of London harbours some of the most important scientific and technological advances in the last centuries. Recently, it also displayed Rex, the first prototype of a bionic man, worth over a million euros and the cutting-edge of prosthetics and artificial organs -despite missing some core like the brain. However, will Rex figure in the ranking of the top ten scientific discoveries of the last decade? 

Some candidates to take into consideration could be: 

Mars' surface

- The discovery of water on Mars: the topography of the Martian surface leaded scientists to think that in the past Mars had large amounts of liquid water. However, in June 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lander went further and found ice under a thin layer of dust. The researchers do not rule out that there is still a small amount of water under the ice caps, which would increase the chances of finding microscopic life. 

- Deciphering the Human Genome: The Human Genome Project, one of the most ambitious research in the history of science, led by Craig Venter and Francis Collins, gave birth to the first draft of the human genome in 2003. In these ten years, scientists have sequenced the genomes of many other species and have greatly accelerated the process. In addition to revolutionizing biology, DNA sequencing is already being used for diagnostic purposes and will open the door to numerous advances in the coming years, especially in the field of personalized medicine. 

- The ENCODE project: linked to the Human Genome Project, an international team of 442 scientists, found that 80% of the DNA chain -considered so far "junk DNA"- contains important instructions for life and acts as a large control panel with millions of switches that regulate the activity of our genes. These fragments could yield new information about heart disease, multiple sclerosis or Crohn's disease. 

- The Higgs boson: in March 2013, scientists at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) presented new results confirming that the tiny particle discovered in July 2012 is the Higgs boson, but it remains to determine what subtype it is. Confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson within the Standard Model of particle physics would mean to have understood the mechanism by which particles acquire mass. 

Higgs boson

- The age of the universe: in March 2010, an international team of researchers estimated the age of the universe at 13.75 billion years, thanks to the measurements taken by NASA's Hubble telescope and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The American agency has also also disclosed the proportion of ingredients of the universe: a 5% is ordinary matter, 23% accounts for dark matter and 72% is dark energy, a force that speed up the expansion of the cosmos. 

- Demonstration of the Poincaré conjecture: known as the greatest mathematical puzzle of the twentieth century and one of the Seven Millennium Problems posed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. The Russian mathematician Grygori Perelman announced its resolution in 2003, although the peer review was delayed until 2006. That year, Perelman declined the invitation to collect in Madrid the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel of Mathematics, to avoid becoming a "pet" of the mathematical world. 

- Gene therapy: in 2007 scientist succeed to insert a gene into a patient in order to cure a disease, namely, a type of blindness called Leber congenital amaurosis, which is caused by mutations in the RPE65 gene and is hereditary. Patients undergoing therapy experienced improvement in their vision and suffered no side effects, so it is considered the first test conducted successfully. Since then, gene therapy trials have been carried out in a large number of diseases, particularly cancers and those included within the group of monogenic diseases, caused by a single gene disorder. 

British researcher John B. Gurdon

- The cellular reprogramming: John B. Gurdon (United Kingdom) and Shinya Yamanaka (Japan) received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2012 after discovering that specialized mature cells can be reprogrammed to develop into mature cells in all kind of tissues of the body. Gurdon had discovered in 1962 that the specialization of cells was reversible. In 2006, Yamanaka got mice reprogrammed mature cells into pluripotent stem cells, namely, immature cells capable of developing into any type of cell in the body. Their discovery is a major step in the field of regenerative medicine. 

- The graphene revolution: the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 recognized the work of the Russian scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, "for his innovative experiments with graphene in two dimensions", a transparent material, very flexible, with excellent thermal and electrical conduction, sturdy and lightweight. Although already known for over half a century, graphene went unnoticed for decades. Now it is considered the material of the future, with a large number of applications in various fields, mainly technology (faster microprocessors, resilient electrical devices, electronic paper...).

Tags: Discoveries, Genetics, Genome, Mathemathics, Research, Space, Technology