A computer simulation could eventually allow neuroscience to be carried out in silico.

An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone. Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade.

"What we're doing is reverse-engineering the brain," says Henry Markram, codirector of the Brain Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, who led the work, called the Blue Brain project, which began in 2005. (See "IBM: The Computer Brain.") 

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In 2004 Chris Anderson wrote an influential book called The Long Tail. In it, he argued that the future of business is to sell less of more. The main premise is that collectively, things that are in rather low demand can amount to quite large volumes. This is because there is a large number of people who belong to the long tail and they encompass a wide rage of tastes.

In a recent post here, we examined the reasons that people feel compelled to blog. From the post and the comments it received, it became clear that quite a few people are blogging to make money. The blogs that they started live in the long tail of the blogosphere, however, and the reality is that it is difficult to make money in the long tail - Anderson's point was that the money is to be made by selling to the long tail, not so much by existing in it. In this post we examine why that is and look at other aspects of long tail economics.

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As Republican presidential contenders brace for Wednesday's CNN-YouTube debate, the executive in charge of the event is unapologetic about his decision to put mainstream journalists in charge of deciding which user-contributed YouTube videos the candidates will actually face on the air.

For all the talk about online voter empowerment, the web is still too immature a medium to set an agenda for a national debate, says CNN senior vice president David Bohrman.

"If you would have taken the most-viewed questions last time, the top question would have been whether Arnold Schwarzenegger was a cyborg sent to save the planet Earth," says Bohrman, the debate's executive producer. "The second-most-viewed video question was: Will you a convene a national meeting on UFOs?"

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