• Sequester would whack away at science funding

    By Tanya Lewis
    LiveScience

    With the deadline for government-wide spending cuts just hours away, attempts to avert the cuts — which would affect medical research, space exploration and defense spending — have all but failed.

    President Barack Obama must sign the $85 billion in cuts, known as "the sequester," into law by 11:59 p.m. Friday night. The White House Office of Management and Budget estimates an effective 9 percent cut to nondefense programs, including basic science research, and a 13 percent cut to defense programs. The blow to researchers and government workers will be felt widely, experts say.

    The president met this morning with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but no action to avert the cuts was taken. Obama supports a long-term budget deal that would include both spending cuts and tax increases.

    Stinging cuts
    The impact of the spending slash on research will be severe. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) estimates a total research and development cut of $8.6 billion in 2013. This includes a $5.4 billion cut to the Department of Defense, a $1.5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a $283 million cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF). The sequester could also result in significant cuts to NASA.

    Some effects will be immediate: "Federal agencies are going to be either restricting or completely eliminating training and travel for the remainder of 2013," Joanne Carney, director of government relations at AAAS, told LiveScience. "There's going to be an amazing increase in competition" for grants, Carney added, so "universities are going to have to start becoming a bit more strategic, not only in proposals to the federal government, but also in looking for sources of alternative funding." [How the Sequester Will Affect Science]

    Other effects could take weeks or months to set in. Some agencies have warned that employees may face furloughs, or mandatory unpaid leave. But federal agencies are required to give employees 30 days' notice before furloughs can commence, so the soonest they could happen is April.

    Young researchers will likely be some of the hardest hit by the cutbacks. Spencer Diamond is a doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego who is studying photosynthetic bacteria that could be used to produce green fuels and chemicals. Diamond's work is funded completely by the NSF and the NIH.

    "A major loss of government research funding would severely impact most individuals at my university, and would significantly set back the basic scientific research we are doing to help develop alternative fuel sources," Diamond is quoted as saying in a letter Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS, wrote to Obama in December. "This is research on which we can build the foundations of U.S. energy independence," Diamond said.

    The cuts come on top of significant cuts already put in place in the last couple of years, according to Mary Woolley, president of the not-for-profit advocacy group Research!America.

    What happens now
    All agencies will be funded through March 27 through what's known as a continuing resolution, but if Congress fails to pass budget legislation by that date, the government will be shut down, except for essential employees (such as emergency workers). 

    The hope is that Congress might reapportion the cuts to provide flexibility, Carney said. "Some agencies may see more in funds, and some may see less," but it would be a more balanced approach than across-the-board reductions, she said.

    The sequester was designed as a last-ditch measure in case Congress couldn't reach a deal to reduce the deficit. It was scheduled to take effect Jan. 2, 2013 — the so-called "fiscal cliff" — but was delayed until March 1.

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  • How neuroscientists are hacking into brain waves to open new frontiers

    This video provides an introduction to the infrared-sensing rat experiment. Check the Web page at http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=345 for the full series of videos, as well as background about the experiment,

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    BOSTON — Neuroscientists are following through on the promise of artificially enhanced bodies by creating the ability to "feel" flashes of light in invisible wavelengths, or building an entire virtual body that can be controlled via brain waves.

    "Things that we used to think were hoaxes or science fiction are fast becoming reality," said Todd Coleman, a bioengineering professor at the University of California at San Diego. Coleman and other researchers surveyed the rapidly developing field of neuroprosthetics in Boston this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

    One advance came to light just in the past week, when researchers reported that they successfully wired up rats to sense infrared light and move toward the signals to get a reward. "This was the first attempt … not to restore a function but to augment the range of sensory experience," said Duke University neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis, the research team's leader.

    The project, detailed in the journal Nature Communications, involved training rats to recognize a visible light source and poke at the source with its nose to get a sip of water. Then electrodes were implanted in a region of the rats' brains that is associated with whisker-touching. The electrodes were connected to an infrared sensor on the rats' heads, which stimulated the target neurons when the rat was facing the source of an infrared beam. Then the visible lights in the test cage were replaced by infrared lights.

    It typically took about four weeks of practice for the rats to figure out how to use their new infrared sensory system, but eventually the rats could respond to the invisible light as well as they responded to the visible light. Presumably, they could "feel" where the infrared flash was coming from, as part of their whisker-touching sense.

    Nicolelis said the experiment showed that the brain is "much more plastic than we thought" when it comes to adapting to new stimuli.

    That plasticity is the key to another set of experiments he and his colleagues have been conducting with rhesus monkeys, in which the monkeys learn to use their brain waves to control robotic arms or manipulate virtual objects on a computer screen. Over the years, Nicolelis' research team has developed a brain-cap system for monkeys that can pick up neural signals in almost 2,000 channels simultaneously, and send them wirelessly to a computer for processing. Nicolelis indicated that he was closing in on the goal of creating a system that could control a full-body exoskeleton.

    "We can get animals to control the whole body now, when you get to the 1,000-neuron margin," he said.

    Such work feeds into the Walk Again Project, a multinational effort to develop next-generation, full-body prosthetics for people with disabilities. Nicolelis wants to have an experimental brain-controlled exoskeleton ready in time to make its debut at next year's World Cup soccer finals, which are to be hosted by Brazil, Nicolelis' native country.

    "We hope we will open the World Cup with a paraplegic young adult walking onto the field," he said.

    Coleman, meanwhile, is working on ways to make brain-control devices less obtrusive. He is among several researchers who have been developing stamp-sized wireless sensors that can be worn like temporary tattoos. Such sensors can be used to monitor a person's medical signs — but if they're worn on the head, it's possible to pick up brain waves. In fact, Coleman found that the wireless tattoo sensors worked as well as the conventional, wired stick-on electrodes.

    Todd Coleman, a bioengineering professor at the University of California at San Diego, demonstrates how his "wireless tattoos" make monitoring bodily functions much easier.

    The results suggest that someday, it might be possible to develop a computer program to read the brain-wave patterns sent in by a tattoo on your forehead, and then fine-tune a virtual character to respond as if it was reading your thoughts.

    The tattoos could have more down-to-earth applications in the medical field: In the future, such sensors could be used to monitor a newborn's brain for any signs of abnormality, or an older person's brain for signs of cognitive impairment.

    "As we age, our ability to respond, or to modulate our attention to different new types of inputs, will start to slow down," Coleman said in a video interview distributed by AAAS. "Imagine if we could ... mount a sticker to the forehead that can provide quantitative outputs — measurements of that."

    Does all this sound like a dream come true for the disabled, or a nightmare for folks worried about mind-reading robots? Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts in the comment section below.

    More about the brain:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Uncertainty hangs over science after the fiscal deal in Congress

    NASA

    Budget cuts for science agencies mean less money to spend on equipment, facilities or research. For NASA, for example, this could mean cutbacks in missions. (Here, an illustration of NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission.)

     

    By Wynne Parry
    LiveScience

    The deal that lawmakers and the White House finalized late Tuesday to avert going over the fiscal cliff leaves science agencies in limbo, delaying a decision on budget cuts for two more months.

    The agreement does, however, reduce the potential impact of these cuts.

    "I am hopeful they will find a deal that spares the worst of these cuts, that takes a much more balanced approach," said Matt Hourihan of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Tuesday's tax deal, he said, "is a step in that direction."

    The mandatory cuts would affect the current year's budget as well as future ones, leaving agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, NASA and the National Science Foundation in limbo.

    "This deal doesn't change that at all, it just extends that condition of uncertainty into the next couple of months," said Hourihan, director of the AAAS research and development budget and policy program.

    Had no deal been reached as the New Year began, Hourihan estimates that mandatory across-the-board cuts to research and development, both in defense and elsewhere, would have come to about 9 percent.

    Negotiators managed to knock off about one-fifth of that cut for this year, then kicked the can down the road by delaying the deadline until March 1. [ 7 Great Dramas in Congressional History ]

    These budget cuts, mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and known as sequestration, were an important element of what is known as the fiscal cliff. Politicians struggled to address the fiscal cliff, which also involved the expiration of tax cuts.

    The highest-profile element of Tuesday's deal —income tax increases on those making $400,000 per year or couples making $450,000 or more — was separate from sequestration. It does not affect the prospect of mandatory spending cuts.

    For this fiscal year, the mandatory cuts would have reduced federal spending by $109 billion. But the deal made changes to rules regarding retirement accounts, with the intent of raising $12 billion. It also trades one type of cut for another. Congress has agreed to make $12 billion in cuts, divided between this year and next.

    Under sequestration, the Office of Management and Budget must allocate the cuts as mandated by the law. However, the $12 billion in cuts made as part of the deal are different. This time, Congress will have the power to pick and choose the areas that lose funding, Hourihan said.

    This means science agencies may or may not be affected by the $12 billion in cuts.

    The deal reduces the potential cuts to this year's budget to $85 billion, but potential cuts for future years remain unaffected, according to an analysis by the AAAS.

    Budget cuts for science agencies mean less money to spend on equipment, facilities or research. For NASA, for example, this could mean cuts in missions, Hourihan said.

    For the NIH or the NSF, both of which provide funding to the academic community, cuts could mean fewer and smaller grants and, as a result, less support for graduate students and others becoming established as scientists, he said.

    Prior to the deal, NIH Director Francis Collins told a congressional subcommittee that sequestration would require the NIH to award 2,300 fewer grants.

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