The Massachusetts Institute of Technology brain sciences department and, separately, a group of some 200 neuroscientists from around the world have written letters to The New York Times claiming that a book excerpt in the newspaper's Sunday magazine this week contains important errors, misinterpretations of scientific disputes, and unfair characterizations of an MIT neuroscientist who did groundbreaking research on human memory. In particular, the excerpt contains a 36-volley verbatim exchange between author Luke Dittrich and MIT's Suzanne Corkin in which she says that key documents from historic experiments were "shredded." "Most of it has gone, is in the trash, was shredded," Corkin is quoted as telling Dittrich before she died in May, explaining, "there's no place to preserve it." Destroying files related to historic scientific research would raise eyebrows, but Corkin's colleagues say it never happened. "We believe that no records were destroyed and, to the contrary, that professor Corkin worked in her final days to organize and preserve all records," said the letter that Dr. James DiCarlo, head of the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, sent to the Times late Tuesday.

Can training to become ambidextrous improve brain function? Although teaching people to become ambidextrous has been popular for centuries, this practice does not appear to improve brain function, and it may even harm our neural development. Calls for ambidexterity were especially prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For instance, in the early 20th century English propagandist John Jackson established the Ambidextral Culture Society in pursuit of universal ambidexterity and "two-brainedness" for the betterment of society. This hype died down in the mid-20th century as benefits of being ambidextrous failed to materialize.

The brain performs its canonical task -- learning -- by tweaking its myriad connections according to a secret set of rules. To unlock these secrets, scientists 30 years ago began developing computer models that try to replicate the learning process. Now, a growing number of experiments are revealing that these models behave strikingly similar to actual brains when performing certain tasks. Researchers say the similarities suggest a basic correspondence between the brains' and computers' underlying learning algorithms. The algorithm used by a computer model called the Boltzmann machine, invented by Geoffrey Hinton and Terry Sejnowski in 1983, appears particularly promising as a simple theoretical explanation of a number of brain processes, including development, memory formation, object and sound recognition, and the sleep-wake cycle.

We've long been fans of the self-sustaining, wave-powered Waveglider, a maritime robot that can harvest propulsion energy from the rolling motion of ocean waves to operate far from shores indefinitely--or at least until something breaks down. Durability, then, is key to Waveglider's seafaring success, and this this year it proved its hardiness several times over. First, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began custom-fitting the Waveglider to be a long-endurance weather monitoring platform capable of staying at sea for many months at a time to intercept hurricanes and other storms gathering far from shore--a major vote of confidence for the technology. Then we learned in early November that one of NOAA's Wavegliders had deployed (and survived) off the coast of New Jersey during Hurricane Sandy, withstanding the full brunt of her destructive power as she came ashore (while beaming reams of valuable data to meteorologist back onshore). And finally, we learned that the first of four Wavegliders that set off from San Francisco last year on a trans-Pacific crossing had reached Australia, proving these robots are ready for long-duration science missions at sea with virtually no human help or interference.

How do you use a scientific method to measure the intelligence of a human being, an animal, a machine or an extra-terrestrial? So far this has not been possible, but a team of Spanish and Australian researchers have taken a first step towards this by presenting the foundations to be used as a basis for this method in the journal Artificial Intelligence, and have also put forward a new intelligence test. "We have developed an'anytime' intelligence test, in other words a test that can be interrupted at any time, but that gives a more accurate idea of the intelligence of the test subject if there is a longer time available in which to carry it out", José Hernández-Orallo, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), tells SINC. This is just one of the many determining factors of the universal intelligence test. "The others are that it can be applied to any subject whether biological or not at any point in its development (child or adult, for example), for any system now or in the future, and with any level of intelligence or speed", points out Hernández-Orallo.

Carnegie Mellon's teams now compete against Georgia Tech and the University of Texas at Austin in the four-legged robot league, and against Texas in the simulation league. Georgia Tech's team is led by Veloso's former post-doctoral researcher, Tucker Balch, and the Texas teams are led by Veloso's former graduate student Peter Stone. At the international level, Veloso's former graduate student, Will Uther, participates on the team from the University of New South Wales in Australia, which finished second to Carnegie Mellon in the four-legged robot league at RoboCup 2002.

A REVOLUTIONARY hearing aid was just one of a number of new technological exhibits on show at the Men's Health Expo in Tamworth yesterday to coincide with Men's Health Week. A REVOLUTIONARY hearing aid was just one of a number of new technological exhibits on show at the Men's Health Expo in Tamworth yesterday to coincide with Men's Health Week. The hearing aid allows the person wearing it to focus on a specific conversation more clearly while drowning out any other noises in the room. It has been designed to select the best speech over noise using parallel processing through a new concept called syncro. Spokesman James Battersby for Oticon, which manufactures the hearing aid, said already the revolutionary device was a big hit in Australia after only being launched three weeks ago.

Fortunately, in the real world, it's pretty hard to overthrow a democracy and introduce a totalitarian regime, just to see what happens. But that's not to say sociologists, anthropologists and economists wouldn't like to try. And that's why the rapid growth of virtual worlds, from Second Life to World of Warcraft (see image, left), is such an exciting prospect for researchers in these fields. For those who normally have to rely on time-consuming fieldwork, small-scale laboratory experiments, or the lessons of history, virtual worlds offer the tantalising prospect of a real sociological laboratory. This prospect is explored in some detail in an interesting review paper in last week's Science.

Fraud punished A Parkinson's disease researcher in Australia pleaded guilty to research fraud and was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence by a court in Brisbane on 31 March. Bruce Murdoch, formerly of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, was found to have falsified results published in the European Journal of Neurology in 2011; three of his papers have been retracted. In a statement to the blog Retraction Watch, University of Queensland vice-chancellor Peter Høj said that the university had reimbursed around Aus$175,000 (US$132,000) to funding bodies associated with Murdoch's work. Ice wall to stem Fukushima leak The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) on 31 March began freezing the soil surrounding reactors 1 to 4 of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A refrigeration system (pictured) is creating a 30-metre deep, 1.5-kilometre-long wall of frozen ground that aims to stop groundwater from flowing under the plant and carrying radioactive isotopes into the sea.

Thanks to some clever technology, which Sonico suggests is "sophisticated voice recognition and machine translation software," users can communicate clearly and precisely by simply talking into their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Interestingly, it's revealed in the credits to be Nuance and Microsoft Translator powering the app. A simple interface, rather bare on the iPad, shows two button shaped microphones, each with the flag of the country you want to translate from and too. Tap to speak, tap the button again when you stop speaking, and both a written version of your speech and translation quickly appears, along with an audio translation, complete with convincing accent. It's all very simple, mostly accurate and greatly impressive, not least as iTranslate Voice can currently be had for as little as $0.99, an absolute bargain.