Can anyone recommend a replacement? Maybe a lightweight app?

What next? Will they try to ban cats as well? I say we have to draw a line in the sand now!

There is already no shortage of foreign CEOs in Swiss companies. The proportion of foreigners working in the country in high-paid jobs is really high.

As for perceived disasters, I don't know where they got that idea as the Swiss economy is thriving compared to the rest of the western world right now. The last catastrophe was the bankruptcy of Swissair and that was back in 2002. Plus the company was immediately reborn as a new airline (Swiss) with very little disruption of operations. Banks have had a hard time but I don't think that this is registered in the mind of people as being a problem coming from board members. If anything ticked the balance towards a yes to this initiative, that was Daniel Vasela, ex-CEO of Novartis, receiving a 72M CHF (about 76M USD) severance package as he left the company a mere two weeks before the vote (he later declined it).

It is surprising that they admit it after he killed himself. They could just have denied it. Nobody who cares would have been fooled but it was "plausibly" deniable.

If reality TV has demonstrated anything, it is that being recorded 24/7 and peered at by millions of people makes you less adventurous, more respectful and more caring of others.

I think that the critics believe: [1] that such a large amount of money given to "neuroscience" (in quotes as it is more of a computer science than a fundamental neuroscience project) will hurt their chances to get funding in other EU and national calls (like: "hey neuroscience has its billion already, let's fund cardiology and oncology instead") and [2] that the project over-promises and won't deliver, ultimately hurting the credibility of the field as a whole.

I think that both concerns are grounded. The resource money is limited and as the project only get matching funds, they are currently trying to get money from national bodies. Every € that goes to the HBP will be taken from neuroscience budgets and the project if I am not mistaken plans to act as a kind of a special funding body offering fellowships and grants but it will of course push its agenda. As for over-promising, it is unfortunate that the head of the project as made quite inflated claims. He pretends that he has been misreported by journalists. You can find claims about understanding consciousness, neural coding and solving brain pathologies which obviously is going to be impossible in a decade given how much we don't know about the brain in general and about cell types other than neurons specifically.

I believe that what they receive is actually up to 0.5 B€ in matching funds, meaning that for every 1 € they get from other sources (private persons, foundations, national funding bodies, etc...), they will get another 1 € from the EU, up to 0.5 B€ for a total of about 1 B€. Also this is granted under the EU Framework Program 7 which ends soon. So really what they got so far is 54 M€ for 30 months and the rest will come after that under the new EU program/package (Horizon 2020) which is currently being negotiated. Given the financial health of EU countries right now, there is a chance that the overall envelope is cut down and it is not clear how much funds they will get from national bodies in the first place.

The EU is also funding under the same initiative another B€ project about graphene.

The Human Brain Project promises a lot (AI, curing neurodegenerative diseases, understanding the brain and consciousness, limiting animal experimentation, etc...) and it is the opinion of most neuroscientists in the US and in Europe that it won't deliver. If you google it, you will find many interviews from neuroscientists who are very critical of it. It is difficult to evaluate what really will come out of it.

I find the arguments put forward by the authors of the study rather unconvincing. Once you have an opposable thumb, pretty much anything you can grab on the ground is a better weapon that your fist. Rock anyone?

Maybe they can start by not copying user data to other sites.

I use one everyday in the lab and I never had any of the problems you have. It might be a bit thicker than 0.4 mm though http://www.amazon.com/Caran-Dache-Ballpoint-Metal-Black/dp/B000WFXTI8.

PET requires a radiotracer that is impossible to load into dead fixed tissue (by fixed I mean that it has been bathed into a fixative solution for long-term preservation). MRI is possible in dead tissue but does not offer the resolution that can be achieved by more classical optical methods, you won't see individual cells or anything smaller than that. The best you can do is probably to distinguish between macroscopic structures although I am not a specialist of this technique. Slices are the best solution if you want to see individual cells and their processes. Slices are also quite popular as they allow to use immunohistochemistry to label cells, structures or proteins of interest with fluorescent tagged molecules allowing all kinds of fluorescent imaging investigations of the tissue. I doubt this has been done with his brain though.

Wired had an article running about it already last year http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/ff_indiaid/all/1.

Dresden was bombed in February 1945. Two months later the Russians would take Berlin ending the war on that front. The war was lost for Germany after the battle of Kursk in summer 1943. Everybody knew it. After Kursk they kept falling back and losing battles. So yes it would have been bad if Germany won the war but incinerating thousands of civilians mere weeks before the end of the conflict is simply unjustifiable. Yes, wars are cruel, usually led by the same morons on each side.

Total wars are first and foremost full of poor Joe Sixpacks sent to the front from each side for the love of God and country. Didn't ask to go but were not given any choice. Not worse or better on any side of the frontline. Your neighbor, your cousin, your colleagues, your barista... Anyway, it is comforting to realize via the slashdot crowd that modern and moderate views will prevent war crimes and atrocities from being committed again in the future.

Well, you can create your own profile and curate your own publications. And it does a decent work at doing it automatically in the first place. They also index way more publications than WOK or Scopus, yielding a more accurate citation count in certain fields where, for instance, people publish in books, proceedings and journals.