Word: allen
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When you've co-founded the biggest software company in the world, you tend to look for big projects to pique your interest and your pocketbook. That's why Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen gathered a bunch of the country's top neuroscientists back in 2002 and asked how he could help to improve our understanding of how the brain works. "If you come from a background in computer science, it's always fascinating to think about the human brain, and to try to figure out and understand how the brain works," Allen told TIME recently. "It turns out we know...
...What the scientists told Allen was that they really wanted a virtual map for the genes that turn on and off in the brain, akin to the blueprint of the entire human genome that, at that time, was nearing completion. So in 2003, the same year that the Human Genome Project (HGP) was finished, Allen pitched in $41 million and launched the Allen Brain Atlas, an ambitious - and altruistic - indexing of the entire genome of the mouse brain that would be available, free of charge, to researchers on the Web. Why mice? It's impossible to get the live samples...
...WHAT IT HAS ACTUALLY DONE Has run graphic and misleading television ads against Republican Senators George Allen and Rick Santorum, funded with regulated contributions to VoteVets' political-action committee, suggesting their votes against a Democratic funding measure deprived U.S. troops of modern body armor. In fact, the Government Accountability Office found that a lack of money didn't cause the armor shortfall in 2003. Rather, the military's suppliers could not keep up with the sudden surge in demand for the armor...
...they're branching out. Beyond posting exhaustive pieces about bias in Fox News coverage and uploading videos of presidential wannabe George Allen making a fool of himself, they're adopting the old-school tools of electoral politics, like canvassing their neighborhoods and calling their member of Congress. They're getting nitty-gritty in their focus too. The liberal online fund-raising group ActBlue, for instance, is trying to get activists to donate serious money to state-legislature campaigns that bloggers once considered too unsexy to care about. The goal is to put Democrats in control of state governments, where many...
...geography, they have been able to nationalize fund raising for congressional and Senate races more effectively than other groups of their size and relative inexperience. They are also the liberal rival to conservative "noise machines" like the online Drudge Report and talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. When Allen called an opponent's political operative by the racial slur macaca at a recent rally, the blogs touted the video, and the incident became a national story, contributing to a troubled campaign that has shrunk Allen's lead in his Senate race from double digits to 3 points...