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TOKYO (AP) ? Amid growing dissatisfaction with the slow pace of recovery, Japan marked the second anniversary Monday of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left nearly 19,000 people dead or missing and has displaced more than 300,000.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that the government intends to make "visible" reconstruction progress and accelerate resettlement of those left homeless by streamlining legal and administrative procedures many blame for the delays.
"I pray that the peaceful lives of those affected can resume as soon as possible," Emperor Akihito said at a somber memorial service at Tokyo's National Theater.
At observances in Tokyo and in still barren towns along the northeastern coast, those gathered bowed their heads in a moment of silence marking the moment, at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, when the magnitude 9.0 earthquake ? the strongest recorded in Japan's history ? struck off the coast.
Japan has struggled to rebuild communities and to clean up radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, whose reactors melted down after its cooling systems were disabled by the tsunami. The government has yet to devise a new energy strategy ? a central issue for its struggling economy with all but two of the country's nuclear reactors offline.
About half of those displaced are evacuees from areas near the nuclear plant. Hundreds of them filed a lawsuit Monday demanding compensation from the government and the now-defunct plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, for their suffering and losses.
"Two years after the disasters, neither the government nor TEPCO has clearly acknowledged their responsibility, nor have they provided sufficient support to cover the damages," said Izutaro Managi, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
Throughout the disaster zone, the tens of thousands of survivors living in temporary housing are impatient to get resettled, a process that could take up to a decade, officials say.
"What I really want is to once again have a 'my home,' " said Migaku Suzuki, a 69-year-old farm worker in Rikuzentakata, who lost the house he had just finished building in the disaster. Suzuki also lost a son in the tsunami, which obliterated much of the city.
Further south, in Fukushima prefecture, some 160,000 evacuees are uncertain if they will ever be able to return to homes around the nuclear power plant, where the meltdowns in three reactors spewed radiation into the surrounding soil and water.
The lawsuit filed by a group of 800 people in Fukushima demands an apology payment of 50,000 yen ($625) a month for each victim until all radiation from the accident is wiped out, a process that could take decades. Another 900 plan similar cases in Tokyo and elsewhere. Managi said he and fellow lawyers hope to get 10,000 to join the lawsuits.
Evacuees are anxious to return home but worried about the potential, still uncertain risks from exposure to the radiation from the disaster, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.
While there have been no clear cases of cancer linked to radiation from the plant, the upheaval in people's lives, uncertainty about the future and long-term health concerns, especially for children, have taken an immense psychological toll on thousands of residents.
"I don't trust the government on anything related to health anymore," said Masaaki Watanabe, 42, who fled the nearby town of Minami-Soma and doesn't plan to return.
Yuko Endo, village chief in Kawauchi, said many residents might not go back if they are kept waiting too long. Restrictions on access are gradually being lifted as workers remove debris and wipe down roofs by hand.
"If I were told to wait for two more years, I might explode," said Endo, who is determined to revive his town of mostly empty houses and overgrown fields.
A change of government late last year has raised hopes that authorities might move more quickly with the cleanup and reconstruction.
Since taking office in late December, Abe has made a point of frequently visiting the disaster zone, promising faster action and plans to raise the long-term reconstruction budget to 25 trillion yen ($262 billion) from 19 trillion yen (about $200 billion).
"We cannot turn away from the harsh reality of the affected areas. The Great East Japan Earthquake still is an ongoing event," Abe said at the memorial gathering in Tokyo. "Many of those hit by the disaster are still facing uncertainty over their futures."
The struggles to rebuild and to cope with the nuclear disaster are only the most immediate issues Japan is grappling with as it searches for new drivers for growth as its export manufacturing lags, its society ages and its huge national debt grows ever bigger.
Those broader issues are also hindering the reconstruction. Towns want to rebuild, but they face the stark reality of dwindling, aging populations that are shrinking further as residents give up on ever finding new jobs. The tsunami and nuclear crisis devastated local fish processing and tourism industries, accelerating a decline that began decades before.
Meanwhile, the costly decommissioning the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant could take 40 years as its operator works on finding and removing melted nuclear fuel from inside, disposing the spent fuel rods and treating the many tons of contaminated wastewater used to cool the reactors.
Following the Fukushima disaster, Japan's 50 still viable nuclear reactors were shut down for regular inspections and then for special tests to check their disaster preparedness. Two were restarted last summer to help meet power shortages, but most Japanese remain opposed to restarting more plants.
The government, though, looks likely to back away from a decision to phase out nuclear power by the 2030s. Abe says it may take a decade to decide on what Japan's energy mix should be.
___
Associated Press writers Malcolm Foster and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Emily Wang in Kesennuma, Japan, contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/recovery-slow-japan-marks-2-years-since-tsunami-062833461.html
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Fig.1: Can the complexity of a human brain be captured by computers? (Source: Saad Faruque on Flickr)
The human brain is beautifully complex. And frustrating. Our understanding of it is fragmented, and hindered because, except rarely, we can?t get inside and look around while it is still functioning. Computers offer promise; if we could build an artificial brain that behaves likes a real one, maybe we could pick it apart to see how it works. This is the concept behind the Human Brain Project, recently awarded 1 billion euros by the European Commission as one of two Future and Emerging Technologies Flagships Initiatives. HBP?s co-director, Dr. Henry Markram, says they can realistically simulate a human brain within 10 years. But many neuroscientists argue we don?t know enough about the brain to model it. Where are the gaps in our knowledge and why might they present problems?
Constructing the building blocks
An artificial brain must start with good building blocks. Real neurons are diverse. They extend short and long processes, which branch out in different patterns. These shapes are not just for show; neurons process signals differently depending on their structure. One of HBP?s goals is to model neurons as 3-dimensionally detailed cells.
Neurons can be visualized under microscopes and reconstructed using computer programs. But the structure we can recreate in models is an approximation of the real one. It is difficult to mathematically represent all branches, or their turns and tapers. A greater challenge is ascribing functional properties. In many neurons, it is not clear exactly where in the structure signals from other cells are received, or how signals arriving in different branches are combined.
Neurons are also not static. Their extensions reach out or retract due to development, learning, and injury. Knowledge of how this happens is incomplete. How will modelers decide what rules to implement?
Equipping the building blocks
Fig.2: Neurons have diverse structures. (Source: Ramon y Cajal, ca. 1905)
The building blocks of an artificial brain must also respond and send signals. Real neurons are populated with many different proteins. For example, channel proteins allow charged molecules, ions, to cross the membrane and generate electrical activity. While many types of ion channel have been characterized, many remain to be studied. In most neurons, the complete population of proteins present, or how they all contribute to signaling, is not known. The number and type of proteins in a neuron also changes under a variety of conditions and the mechanisms are poorly understood. Which proteins should be put into different model neurons? And when should protein expression be turned on, off, up, or down?
Finally, where should proteins be placed? Some channels are present only in cell bodies, while others are found in the extensions. The distribution of channels affects the way neurons receive and sends signals, but often isn?t known. How will morphology be coupled with function?
Building small networks
If challenges in modeling single neurons are overcome, the next step is to connect them. Communication between neurons occurs at specialized contacts. We know a lot about the composition of these contacts and the general rules of signal transmission. But important details are missing. Who is connected to whom? Where in single neurons are contacts located? What are the strengths of the connections, and how do strengths change under different conditions? For most neurons, we have limited information, such as potential partners and estimates of connection strengths. Testing all possible pairs of neurons, even within a small region of brain, is not feasible. How will we connect a network of neurons and be sure that the partners, locations, and strengths are correct? Even if the model is built such that connections and strengths can evolve, what will be the rules of evolution? These details will have profound effects on the model?s output.
Connecting across multiple levels
Fig.3: How should a model brain be connected? (Source: Li et al. 2009, PLoS Comp. Biol. 5(5):e1000395)
Many networks must be connected to form a complete brain. Although we know in general terms which brain regions talk to others, we are ignorant as to many of the details of this communication. Which neurons in which regions are connected? What are the feedback loops by which signals travels from one region to another and back again? It is also not clear how information across multiple levels of organization (molecular, cellular) and processed over multiple time scales (seconds, minutes) is integrated. How should the model be bound together?
What will a model brain do?
If all these challenges are surmounted and a human brain simulated, what might the model do? Will it reproduce behaviors that so impress us about real brains? It?s possible. Beyond a certain level of complexity, a model can do many impressive things. But the focus should be on whether we will understand how and why behaviors emerge. We want mechanisms.
The advantage of a model is that the pieces comprising it are known, and if it is sufficiently simple, pieces can be removed to examine their role. But with the level of complexity required for the proposed model, removing one component at a time would not only be extremely cumbersome, it is questionable whether it would increase our understanding. Complex behaviors, if they arise, will likely result from the interaction of many model components. Could we test all the potential contributing interactions?
Building understanding
HBP researchers are right: we cannot continue to study tiny pieces of the brain in isolation and hope to understand how it works. Their goal to integrate information from experiments and computer modeling is a good one. But we must build upon a solid foundation of knowledge. Markram and associated researchers have spent
the last two decades characterizing cells and mapping connections within cortex. The foundation is growing. Yet, large gaps remain. Will they be fatal to the project? Or, will HBP, as proposed, help us fill them? Neuroscientists will have to wait and see.
Recommended reading
1. ?Will we ever?simulate a human brain?? by Ed Yong. BBC Future, 8 February 2013.
2. ?Computer modelling: Brain in a box? by M. Mitchell Waldrop. Nature, 22 February 2012.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Marco Herrera Valdez for feedback on earlier drafts, and Ed Yong, John Hewitt, Zen Faulkes, Philippe
Desjardins-Proulx, and Nathan Insel for valuable discussions.
Images: Fig. 1: From Saad Faruque on Flickr (license CC-BY-SA); Fig. 2: From Cajal on Tumblr (or via various sources; image in public domain); Image credit: Santiago Ram?n y Cajal, ca. 1905; Fig. 3: Modified from doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000395 (original Fig. 3, license CC-BY); Image credit: Li et al. (2009), PLoS Comp. Biol., 5(5): e1000395.
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