U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made a historic move today when he informed the governors of Colorado and Washington that the federal government would not interfere with their states’ laws allowing for the legal use of marijuana.

For years federal agents have stormed and raided marijuana dispensaries in states like California where medical use has been legal for decades, but this unprecedented decision steers federal priority away from the longstanding, reactionary U.S. war on drugs.

In last November’s election Colorado and Washington voters chose to legalize marijuana use for adults in their states. The legalization of pot blatantly contradicts the federal government’s classification of marijuana as an illegal Schedule I substance ‘considered the most dangerous class of drugs with a high potential for abuse and potentially severe psychological and/or physical dependence.

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Two weeks ago, Professor Rajesh Rao sat in his lab at the University of Washington wearing a cap studded with blue and green electrodes. He thought about pressing the spacebar on his computer keyboard to fire a cannon in a video game. And as he thought that, Andrea Stocco, a colleague sitting in another lab on the university’s campus, involuntarily pressed his own keyboard’s space bar.

A video of example trials from a pilot study of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans conducted by Rajesh Rao, Andrea Stocco, and colleagues at the U of Washington, Seattle.

Dr. Rao and Dr. Stocco have created what is believed to be the world’s first noninvasive human brain interface, which uses existing, but still cutting-edge, technology in a novel application. The experiment represents what the scientists call a forward movement in a fast accelerating field that aims to help us manipulate the world with just our brains.

‘We wanted to show proof of concept,’ says Stocco, referring to the idea that it is possible for one human mind to connect to and instruct another. ‘We’re not aware that anyone else has made a noninvasive brain interface between humans.’

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WASHINGTON — New data compiled by a coalition of top scientific and medical research groups show that a large majority of scientists are receiving less federal help than they were three years ago, despite spending far more time writing grants in search of it. Nearly one-fifth of scientists are considering going overseas to continue their research because of the poor funding climate in America.

The study, which was spearheaded by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and will be formally released next week, is the latest to highlight the extent to which years of stagnant or declining budgets, made worse by sequestration, have damaged the world of science.

More than 3,700 scientists from all 50 states participated in the study, offering online responses in June and July 2013. They offered sobering assessments of the state of their profession. Eighty percent said they were spending more of their time writing grants now than in 2010, while 67 percent said they were receiving less grant money now than they were back then. Only two percent of respondents said they had received money from their employers — predominantly academic institutions — to make up for the loss of federal funds.

The drying up […]

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Scientists have grown miniature human brains in test tubes, creating a ‘tool’ that will allow them to watch how the organs develop in the womb and, they hope, increase their understanding of neurological and mental problems.

Just a few millimetres across, the ‘cerebral organoids’ are built up of layers of brain cells with defined regions that resemble those seen in immature, embryonic brains.

The scientists say the organoids will be useful for biologists who want to analyse how conditions such as schizophrenia or autism occur in the brain. Though these are usually diagnosed in older people some of the underlying defects occur during the brain’s early development.

The organoids are also expected to be useful in the development and testing of drugs. At present this is done using laboratory animals or isolated human cells; the new organoids could allow pharmacologists to test drugs in more human-like settings.

Scientists have previously made models of other human organs in the lab, including eyes, pituitary glands and livers.

In the latest work researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna started with stem cells and grew them into brain cells in a nourishing gel-like matrix that recreated conditions similar to those inside the human womb. After several […]

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In a huge victory for the grassroots movement for a green-powered Earth, Entergy has announced it will shut its Vermont Yankee reactor by the end of next year.

‘It’s fantastic,

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