Not totally relevant to the article, but:

> Modha said his team’s goal is to build a “brain in a shoebox,” with over 10 billion synapses, consuming less than 1 kilowatt hour of power—the minuscule amount of power the human brain requires to work.

Can anyone even guess what information they're trying to convey here? On the face of it, it makes no sense - it's like saying the brain consumes 90000 kcal, but over what period? A day? A month? A lifetime?

But I can't even figure what they're trying to say. The human brain consumes about 20W (certainly not 1 kW!), so it would take about two days to use up 1 kWh of energy. I don't think that's what they're going for, but I can't think of any other reading of it that doesn't amount to basically a guess.