The Pentagon is looking to better train its troops — by scanning their minds as they play video games. Adaptive, mind-reading computer systems have been a work-in-progress among military agencies for at least a decade. In 2000, far-out research agency Darpa launched “Augmented Cognition,” a program that sought to develop computers that used EEG scans to adjust how they displayed information — visually, orally, or otherwise — to avoid overtaxing one realm of a troop’s cognition. The Air Force also took up the idea, by trying to use EEGs to “assess the operator’s actual cognitive state”  and “avoid cognitive bottlenecks before they occur.”

Now, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) is soliciting small business proposals for an even more immersive trainer, one that includes voice-recognition technology, and picks up on vocal tone and facial gestures. The game would then react and adapt to a war-fighter’s every action. For example, if a player’s gesture “insults the local tribal leader,” the trainee would “find that future interactions with the population are more difficult and more hostile.” And, most importantly, the new programs would react to the warrior’s own physiological and neurological cues. They’d be monitored using an EEG, eye tracking, heart and respiration rate, and other physiological markers. Based on the metrics, the game would adapt in difficulty and “keep trainees in an optimal state of learning.”

The OSD isn’t ready to use neuro-based systems in the war zone, but the agency does want to capitalize on advances in neuroscience that have assigned meaningful value to intuitive decision-making. As the OSD solicitation points out, troops often need to make fast-paced decisions in high-stress environments, with limited information and context. Well-reasoned, analytic decisions are rarely possible

AutoMap is a text mining tool that enables the extraction of network data from texts. AutoMap can extract content analytic data (words and frequencies), semantic networks, and meta-networks from unstructured texts developed by CASOS at Carnegie Mellon.  Pre-processors for handling pdf’s and other text formats exist.  Post-processors for linking to gazateers and belief inference also exist. The main functions of AutoMap are to extract, analyze, and compare texts in terms of concepts, themes, sentiment, semantic networks and the meta-networks extracted from the texts. AutoMap exports data in DyNetML and can be used interoperably with *ORA. AutoMap uses parts of speech tagging and proximity analysis to do computer-assisted Network Text Analysis (NTA). NTA encodes the links among words in a text and constructs a network of the linked words. AutoMap subsumes classical Content Analysis by analyzing the existence, frequencies, and covariance of terms and themes. AutoMap has been implemented in Java 1.5.0_07. It can operate in both a front end with gui, and backend mode. Main functionalities of AutoMap are: Extract, analyze and compare mental models of individuals and groups. Reveal structure of social and organizational systems from texts. AutoMap also offers a variety of techniques for pre-processing Natural Language: Named-Entity Recognition Stemming (Porter, KStem) Collocation (Bigram) Detection Extraction routines for dates, events, parts of speech Deletion Thesaurus development and application Flexible ontology usage Parts of Speech Tagging

Lawrence Aldrich President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Larry Aldrich is an attorney with over 25 years of proven leadership abilities in diverse business positions. As President and CEO he is responsible for various corporate departments at UPH, including Legal/Risk, Information Systems, Electronic Medical Records, Marketing/Business Development/Contracts Administration and Facilities. Prior to joining UPH, Larry was the founding Chief Operating Officer at The Critical Path Institute (C-Path), a non-profit medical research organization focused on improving the safety and efficacy of the drug development process through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He also served as the president and CEO of Tucson Newspapers. Larry received his law degree from Tulane Law School and his civil engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology.

IIAM one of the largest recovery and placement networks in the world that provides a link between humanity and medical discovery - honoring the wishes of donors and their families wanting to contribute to medical research and education. IIAM provides researchers with the human tissues needed to find cures for disease, improve treatments and techniques, and develop drugs.

Founded in 1967, NDRI is a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge in the areas of drug and alcohol abuse, treatment and recovery; HIV, AIDS and HCV; therapeutic communities; youth at risk; and related areas of public health, mental health, criminal justice, urban problems, prevention and epidemiology.