Cognitive Labs

"Enrich the Soldiers, Despise All Others..."



Septimius Severus' - advice to his son Caracalla, on his deathbed. Echoed by Machiavelli in "The Prince"


With military tours extended to an unprecedented 15 months, the military is under stress to remain an all-volunteer force. The solution in Ancient Rome, vexed as it was from continual warfare starting at the end of the 2nd Century after the "Pax Romana" - was to enroll increasing numbers of foederati, first as auxilaries, then into the Legions. By the 4th century, the "Romans" were a minority in their own Army. At the time of the emperor Constantine, historians estimate the Army at half a million men, compared to 120,000 at the end of Augustus' reign, when many veterans retired, receiving a farm and a lump-sum payment. The need for funds to pay the expanded payrolls led to pressure on the taxpayer, the debasement of the coinage, and the disappearance of a monetary economy.


(AP) The Pentagon poured more than $1 billion into bonuses last year to keep soldiers and Marines in the military in the face of an unpopular war and battlefield deployments that are getting longer and more frequent.

The incentives — including tax-free payments for those who re-enlist while in the war zone — have jumped nearly sixfold since 2003, the year the war in
Iraq began.

"It helps a lot of guys out," said Sgt. 1st Class Richard Doran, who re-enlisted late last year during his tour in Iraq. "And I think it does sway some of the decisions to stay in when guys are on the fence trying to decide."

The size and number of bonuses have grown as officials scrambled to meet the steady demand for troops on the battlefields in Iraq and
Afghanistan and reverse sporadic shortfalls in the number of National Guard and Reserve soldiers willing to sign on for multiple tours.

On Wednesday, officials said the Pentagon is thinking about lengthening tours of duty for all active-duty Army units in Iraq to 15 months instead of 12.

Besides underscoring the extraordinary steps the Pentagon must take to maintain fighting forces, the rise in costs for re-enlistment incentives is putting strains on the defense budget, already strapped by the massive costs of waging war and equipping and caring for a modern military.

The bonuses can range from a few thousand dollars to as much as $150,000 for very senior special forces soldiers who re-enlist for six years. All told, the Army and Marines spent $1.03 billion for re-enlistment payments last year, compared with $174 million in 2003, the year the war in Iraq began.

The Associated Press compiled and analyzed the budget figures from the military services for this story.

"War is expensive," said Col. Mike Jones, who oversees retention issues for the National Guard. "Winning a war, however, is less expensive than losing one."

The soaring budget for re-enlistment bonuses — particularly for the Guard and Reserves, which have seen the most dramatic cost increases — has prompted some observers to question whether the country can still afford its volunteer force.

"I believe the whole issue of the affordability of the volunteer force is something we need to look at," said Arnold Punaro, who heads an independent panel established by Congress to study the National Guard and Reserves.

The higher bonuses come as support for the war continues to wane both in Congress and with the American public. That decline is fueling concerns that more soldiers will leave the military under pressure from families who fear the rising death toll and are weary of the lengthy and repeated overseas deployments. The Iraq war has claimed the lives of at least 3,280 U.S. troops to date.

Using specially designed computer games, researchers probe the behavior of the orange-colored primate at the zoo in Atlanta, GA in an effort to better understand patterns of social behavior...


The AP article:

Four-year-old Bernas isn't the computer wizard his mom is, but he's learning. Just the other day he used his lips and feet to play a game on the touch-screen monitor as his mom, Madu, swung from vines and climbed trees.

The two Sumatran orangutans at Zoo Atlanta are playing computer games while researchers study the cognitive skills of the orange and brown primates.

The best part? Zoo visitors get to watch their every move.

The orangutans use a touch screen built into a tree-like structure that blend in with their zoo habitat. Visitors watch from a video monitor in front of the exhibit.

"That's so cool," Jeri McCarthy told her three daughters as Bernas drew a red, blue and yellow picture on the screen. "He can't get enough!"

Zoo officials hope the exhibit will raise awareness of the rapidly diminishing wild orangutan population, which is on track to completely disappear in the next decade, and potentially provide keys to their survival.

"The more we understand about orangutan's cognitive processes, the more we'll understand about what they need to survive in the wild," said Tara Stoinski, manager of conservation partnerships for the zoo. "It enables us to show the public how smart they are."

In one game, orangutans choose identical photographs or match orangutan sounds with photos of the animals — correct answers are rewarded with food pellets. Another game lets them draw pictures by moving their hands and other body parts around the screen. Printouts of their masterpieces are on display in the zoo.

The computer games, which volunteers from IBM spent nearly 500 hours developing, test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a partner in the project.

The data will help researchers learn about socializing patterns, such as whether they mimic others or learn behavior from scratch through trial and error, said Elliott Albers with the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.

Researchers hope the data can point to new conservation strategies to help the 37,000 orangutans living in the wild on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra.

"Hopefully we can get the animals to find better sources of food more easily," Albers said.

The National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago are also conducting such orangutan research. Visitors can also watch the animals use computers at the National Zoo, Stoinski said.

Labels: ibm, orangutan, science, social