Pentagon’s Brain-Powered Videogames Might Treat PTSD

Soldiers and veterans looking to alleviate the devastating symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder might soon have a new way to help themselves. Strangely, it involves using their gray matter to control a videogame.

The process is known as neurofeedback, or NF, and it’s the latest in a long, increasingly out-there list of potential PTSD remedies — from neck injections to memory-zapping drugs — being studied by military researchers. This week, scientists at San Diego’s Naval Medical Center announced plans for a clinical trial on 80 patients, designed to compare neurofeedback with a sham control procedure. The trial, the first of its kind, is meant to determine whether or not NF can avail soldiers of symptoms like nightmares, anxiety attacks and flashbacks.

“The proposed study could expand treatment alternatives for servicemen with PTSD,” the announcement reads. “If [neurofeedback] is shown to improve symptom reduction [...] it would offer a non-pharmacological intervention that would avoid undesirable side effects, and accelerate recovery.”

While the idea sounds pretty odd, the process of neurofeedback isn’t so intimidating (and I would know, having undergone the procedure myself for The Daily last year). A clinician affixes EEG electrodes to specific regions on a patient’s scalp, designed to read the output of the patient’s brain activity. Then, as the clinician monitors those brain waves from a computer console, the patient controls the key element of a videogame — like a car racing through a winding tunnel — using nothing more than their mind.

If a patient’s brain activity remains calm and steady, the videogame responds with enhanced performance — the car moves more quickly and navigates smoothly. If activity is wonkier and less controlled, that race car will veer out of control and, say, smash into a brick wall. Game over.

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Feds Look to Fight Leaks With ‘Fog of Disinformation’

Air Force One waits for U.S. President Barack Obama in the fog at London’s Stansted Airport, Friday, April 3, 2009. Photo: AP / Kirsty Wigglesworth

Pentagon-funded researchers have come up with a new plan for busting leakers: Spot them by how they search, and then entice the secret-spillers with decoy documents that will give them away.

Computer scientists call it it “Fog Computing” — a play on today’s cloud computing craze. And in a recent paper for Darpa, the Pentagon’s premiere research arm, researchers say they’ve built “a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believable misinformation … and then tracking access and attempted misuse of it. We call this ‘disinformation technology.’”

Two small problems: Some of the researchers’ techniques are barely distinguishable from spammers’ tricks. And they could wind up undermining trust among the nation’s secret-keepers, rather than restoring it.

The Fog Computing project is part of a broader assault on so-called “insider threats,” launched by Darpa in 2010 after the WikiLeaks imbroglio. Today, Washington is gripped by another frenzy over leaks — this time over disclosures about U.S. cyber sabotage and drone warfare programs. But the reactions to these leaks has been schizophrenic, to put it generously. The nation’s top spy says America’s intelligence agencies will be strapping suspected leakers to lie detectors — even though the polygraph machines are famously flawed. An investigation into who spilled secrets about the Stuxnet cyber weapon and the drone “kill list” has already ensnared hundreds of officials — even though the reporters who disclosed the info patrolled the halls of power with the White House’s blessing.

That leaves electronic tracking as the best means of shutting leakers down. And while you can be sure that counterintelligence and Justice Department officials are going through the e-mails and phone calls of suspected leakers, such methods have their limitations. Hence the interest in Fog Computing.

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Belarus Dictator Says He’s Totally Not Building a Dynasty

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and his 7-year-old son, Nikolai, during an official visit to Caracas in June. Photo: Office of the President of Venezuela

Dictatorship is a hereditary business, because in a dictatorship, it’s all about you. And if you can’t succeed yourself, at least some of your DNA can, which can work out pretty great for your kinfolk — though that doesn’t always play well with the peasants.

That’s probably why Belarus’ authoritarian president wants you to know he’s totally not serious about statements he made regarding handing over power to his 7-year-old son Nikolai.

“I’m more and more surprised to read and hear about Lukashenko being meant to stay forever and ever,” Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said Monday, according to Russia news wire RIA Novosti. He added that his kids have grown weary of this whole presidency-for-life thing. “I repeat for the umpteenth time, without making apologies: My children have had more than their fair share of presidency under their father. There cannot be any hereditary transfer of power.”

The 57-year-old potentate — also commonly referred to as “Europe’s last dictator” — denied a statement made last week during a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Accompanied by Nikolai, Lukashenko reportedly said to Chávez: “You’re correct in pointing out that my kid is here alongside us. This shows that we have seriously and lastingly established the foundation for our cooperation, and that in 20 to 25 years there will be someone to take over the reins of this cooperation.”

Nikolai, also known as Kolya, frequently appears at public events with his father. He’s met with the Pope, appeared at military events in a camouflage mini-uniform while carrying a gold-plated pistol, and delivered flowers to the scene of a deadly April 2011 bombing at a Minsk subway station. He has also accompanied his daddy to the ballot box. For the record: Belarus’ last presidential election was rigged, and pro-democracy protesters were beaten by police. International observers and human rights groups later alleged widespread use of torture against political dissidents during the December 2011 crackdown.

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Gallery: The Tattooed, Undead Planes of the Air Force ‘Boneyard’

Where do Air Force planes go when they die? To a scrap-metal cemetery in Arizona. But before they fade away completely, some of them decide they need some new ink.

Near the Air Force’s so-called “Boneyard,” a stockade of retired planes on a base outside Tucson, is the Pima Air & Space Museum. It recently hosted an exhibit called Art from The Boneyard, in which artists got to use Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators and other World War II-era aircraft as their canvases.

But don’t go expecting gauzy, patriotic imagery. These old planes look like they just came out of a Tijuana tattoo parlor. Usually it’s people getting tats of planes. Not this time.

And wow, do these photos accentuate the seediness of the artwork. A friend took them, ran them through his Instagram filters, and posted them to his account. He asked to be identified only by his Twitter handle, @meekwire. “A great collision of three things I’m interested in: art, aviation and military history,” he says.

Here are some of our favorite @meekwire photos from the Boneyard exhibit. There may be more canvases to come: The Air Force is set to retire hundreds of planes under a new budget plan, including all of the C-27J transport planes that trafficked cargo in Iraq and Afghanistan. Take a shot of whiskey if you need it, but getting inked is less painful than a bee sting, and you’re a war veteran.

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25 Percent of Troop Deaths Were ‘Potentially Survivable,’ Study Says

Bone Cement for Traumatic Wound Repair. Photo: Pulse Lavage

With better medical care and equipment, one in every four troops who died of their wounds in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars could have been saved, according to an unpublished study from the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research.

“This study does not imply we are leaving our warriors on the battlefield languishing,” the study’s author, trauma surgeon Col. Brian Eastridge, tells Army Times. ” ‘Potentially survivable’ implies there are potential improvements.”

Simply put, the military needs to focus on improving its immediate response to injuries — and get better at treating wounds in the field. Troops are now rushed into trauma care faster than ever before, thanks to improvements in military medicine and rescue operations. But another speed increase could means hundreds more lives saved. The study reveals that 90 percent of the 4,596 deaths happened before the wounded servicemember reached a medical facility. Only 506 made it to a medical center before dying. All of these numbers were presented by Col. Eastridge to the Defense Health Board on June 25.

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