Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Videos. Show all posts
Friday, December 28, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Nato's exit strategy in Afghanistan
Nato's exit strategy in Afghanistan
As Nato prepares to leave Afghanistan in 2014,
questions on how this withdrawal will logistically take place have yet
to be answered.
With the road route through Pakistan blocked, and instability and hostility from neighbouring countries making air and rail exits difficult, will it be possible to transport all the weapons and hardware of nearly 100,000 troops from this landlocked country?
Source
With the road route through Pakistan blocked, and instability and hostility from neighbouring countries making air and rail exits difficult, will it be possible to transport all the weapons and hardware of nearly 100,000 troops from this landlocked country?
Source
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Marty Nemko's Career Tips: Surviving Today's Job Market
Marty Nemko's Career Tips: Surviving Today's Job Market
Marty Nemko's Career Tips: Surviving Today's Job Market from Commonwealth Club and Commonwealth Club on FORA.tv
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Dying Daughter's Health Insurance Cut By Wells Fargo?
Dying Daughter's Health Insurance Cut By Wells Fargo?
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Raspberry Pi computer goes on general sale
The Raspberry Pi computer goes on general sale
A credit-card sized computer designed to help teach children to code has gone on sale for the first time.
The Raspberry Pi is a bare-bones, low-cost computer created by volunteers mostly drawn from academia and the UK tech industry.
Sold uncased without keyboard or monitor, the Pi has drawn interest from educators and enthusiasts.
Supporters hope the machines could help reverse a lack of programming skills in the UK.
"It has been six years in the making; the number of things that had to go right for this to happen is enormous. I couldn't be more pleased," said Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Foundation which is based in Cambridge.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Peter Boughton, 12, from CambridgeshireThat's eight weeks pocket money for me”
Massive demand for the computer has caused the website of one supplier, Leeds-based Premier Farnell, to crash under the weight of heavy traffic.
School toolsThe device's launch comes as the Department for Education considers changes to the teaching of computing in schools, with the aim of placing greater emphasis on skills like programming.
In a speech outlining those changes, Michael Gove mentioned the Pi, suggesting devices like it could play an important role in the kind of computer class the government envisages.
"Initiatives like the Raspberry Pi scheme will give children the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of programming," he said.
"This is a great example of the cutting edge of education technology happening right here in the UK."
Initially the £22 ($35) model of the Pi will be offered for sale. A cheaper £16 ($25) version will go on sale later in the year.
The machine, which runs on open-source operating system Linux, can be hooked up to a typical computer monitor - with additional ports used to attach a keyboard, mouse and other peripherals.
It also features an ethernet port, meaning the device can make use of high-speed internet connectivity.
Supporters hope the thousands-strong community of people that has grown up around the Pi will help develop additional software and suggest uses for the device.
The Pi going on general sale is likely to add to the buzz around the machine, but there are already a number of similar stripped-down computers on the market.
These include devices such as the Beagleboard and the Omnima MiniEMBWiFi.
Bottle-necks banishedThe Raspberry Pi Foundation says it has already produced thousands of the machines, using a Chinese manufacturer.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
The real task, however, is not about getting the Raspberry Pi out to that impatient crowd of enthusiasts. What matters is the kind of reception the device gets when it arrives in schools”
It had originally hoped to produce the devices in the UK - "we want to help bootstrap the UK electronics industry" the group wrote in a blog post - but that turned out not to be possible at the right price.
But while production remains overseas, deals with two distributors, Premier Farnell and RS Components, mean that production volumes will be able to grow much faster than previously thought.
Rather than the foundation having to fund production, distributors have agreed to handle orders and deal with manufacturers paying the foundation a royalty on sales.
Mr Upton says that will help the project grow much more quickly then previously thought.
"We didn't realise how successful this was going to be," he said.
"This means we can scale to volume. Now we can concentrate on teaching people to program."
Google Fiber: Can ultra-fast internet change a city?
Google Fiber: Can ultra-fast internet change a city?
Google is installing super-fast fibre optic internet service in Kansas City. Will it usher in a new era in industry and society - or just enable faster web browsing and media downloads?
For technology consultant Bret Rhodus, Google's newest venture is an amazing business opportunity.
"This can be a game-changer," he says. "The opportunity for entrepreneurs is significant."
For art supply clerk Danni Parelman, however, it's just a chance to download more music.
The California internet giant has begun installing fibre optic cable that will give Kansas City residents download speeds of up to 1Gbps - about 100 times faster than the broadband internet service currently available to most Americans.
'The future'?
Danni Parelman says the high speed internet will enable her to download music faster In dozens of interviews in the streets, shops, offices and cafes of Kansas City - a metropolitan area that straddles the Kansas-Missouri state line - residents and business people agreed that the project would be great for the town.
Analysts say the project, called Google Fiber, is the future of the web.
But the speed will be so much faster than what is currently available that even people familiar with the concept have a hard time imaging how it will affect industries and lives.
Although the seeds of the internet germinated in US Department of Defense laboratories and many of the most innovative internet companies are based in the US, Americans have far slower internet than residents of many other industrialised nations.
Continue reading the main story
Google Fiber details
- In March, Google chose the Kansas City metropolitan area from more than 1,100 cities and towns that requested the service
- Google crews have begun hanging fibre lines from utility polls in selected neighbourhoods
- The service will launch in residential neighbourhoods only - no commercial districts - the first half of 2012
- About two million people live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, but Google has not said how many will have access to the service
- Google has not said how much the monthly service will cost, but says it will be "competitive"
Source: BBC research
The average broadband internet speed across the US is 12.84 Mbps, according to Netindex.com. That makes the US 31st in the world (the UK is 32nd with 12.4 Mbps speed).
The ultra-high-speed unleashed by the fibre optic technology is a natural progression in the development of America's telecommunications infrastructure, says Aaron Deacon, a member of the board of the Social Media Club of Kansas City and a technology marketing consultant.
"This is the way the world is heading," he says.
"There are other places around the world that have this kind of connectivity, but around the US adoption has been pretty slow."
Uncertain impactBut what will be super-fast internet's affect on the town in practical terms?
Aaron Deacon says: "Being the first for a new infrastructure is kind of a double-edged sword" At first, the ultra-high-speed could simply mean people use the same web sites and internet services they already do, just faster.
"People say, 'oh it's going to just be faster YouTube'. It's sort of a joke," says Mr Deacon.
"But actually to have fast YouTube and videos with no buffering, and instantaneous downloading of feature movies, is a pretty significant change in the way that video can work."
The high speed will enable small businesses and home-office workers to have high-definition video conferencing without the hiccups, lag-time, and buffering slogs frequently suffered with cable or DSL broadbased.
It will allow greater use of cloud computing by small businesses, for example by allowing them to keep customer databases and accounting systems online instead of in costly local servers.
"Once business people can collaborate and work together and they don't have to worry about lag times - when you're not frustrated with the limitations of internet speeds - things really start jiving and amazing things get done," says Dave Greenbaum owner of a Kansas City computer repair company, who predicts a burst of small business innovation.
Aside from the expected boon to businesses, analysts predict almost every aspect of people's personal lives could be affected.
Having affordable super-fast internet in the home will enable faster and more efficient telecommuting, which could take cars off the roads, analysts say.
Holograms and MRIs Continue reading the main story
Average broadband download speeds, in Mbps
- South Korea: 32.96
- Lithuania: 31.78
- Latvia: 26.78
- Sweden: 25.26
- Romania: 24.80
- Netherlands: 24.61
- Singapore: 22.84
- Bulgaria: 22.26
- US: 12.76
- UK: 12.44
Source: Netindex.com, based on volunteers who have tested their own connections through the speedtest.net
Doctors and hospitals will more easily be able to transmit data-heavy medical images like MRI scans. Businesses or local governments could install "dumb terminals" - computers with little more than a screen, keyboard, mouse and internet connection - across the city.
Communities could establish shared music, film and e-book libraries. High definition - even holographic - video conferencing could enable greater participation in local government: "Town hall in the home" is one catchphrase. Public safety could be improved by higher definition CCTV and video emergency calling.
Elsewhere in the US, an electric power firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee now offers 1Gbps internet to its customers - the broadest community-wide rollout of fiber optic connectivity in the nation.
But with its high cost for residential customers - about $350 (£223) a month - only nine have signed up, says EPB's spokeswoman Danna Bailey.
"It's not going to happen overnight," she says.
"It's a bit of a curiosity."
Google published web videos and a blog promoting its service to Kansas City residents And in Britain, BT says it will begin offering 300Mbps - less than one-third of Google Fiber's advertised speed - in 2013.
Shift to wifiDespite the overwhelming enthusiasm in Kansas City for Google Fiber, people familiar with it warn of potential pitfalls.
"Being the first for a new infrastructure is kind of a double-edged sword," Mr Deacon says.
"It can be a really great thing, and it can build a leadership position around that, but you're also sort of a guinea pig, so if you're not smart about how you use that opportunity you can be the bad example that somebody else learns from."
Since Google first announced plans to install the fibre network in 2010, internet users' attention has shifted away from desktop internet to mobile internet, as consumers spend more and more time on smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices, says Ed Malecki, a professor of geography at Ohio State University who studies technology and economic development.
As mobile providers tighten up on cellular data use, consumers will have greater need for high-speed wifi where ever they go in their home towns, he says.
Residents said they hoped the project would help Kansas City outgrow its reputation as a "cow town" "If Google wants to make super-fast community wifi, fine," he says. Google fiber is "not going to help anybody unless it's translated into wifi."
Meanwhile, Ms Bailey of EPB notes past world-changing technologies took years to have a broader impact.
"When electric power first became widely available in homes, it was a more convenient, somewhat novel alternative to the oil lamp for lighting," she says.
"At that time, it would have taken an incredible visionary to predict what kind of an impact electric power would have on business and ultimately quality of life."
The cult of the hyperpolyglot
The cult of the hyperpolyglot
Many people want to speak a second language, but for some people two can never be enough. Welcome to the world of the hyperpolyglot.
Ray Gillon speaks 18 languages. To be precise, he only speaks eight fluently. His grasp on the other 10 is merely conversational.
Throw anything at him in Portuguese, Thai, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Bulgarian or Mandarin and he will banter back.
In the UK, where there has been a growing anxiety over the failure to learn additional languages, Gillon might seem to be a bit of an anomaly. More and more children have been giving up languages since the last government made learning foreign languages optional in England from the age of 14.
Publisher HarperCollins has been searching for the UK's most multilingual student, and has discovered a 20-year-old Oxford University undergraduate who can speak 11 languages. And a new book, Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners, by Michael Erard, suggests Gillon is among a set of people who are learning languages for fun.
Ray Gillon says he sees etymology as a sport and he enjoys looking up the origins of words So what makes some people learn language after language?
For self-taught polyglot Gillon, 54, his love affair with language started by accident. He says he first learned French and Latin at the age of 11, and later studied French and German as elective courses while studying for his electronic engineering degree.
"But it wasn't until I got my first job, and was sent to live in the south of France, that I had any real enthusiasm for languages," he says.
It was during this chapter of his life, while designing audio visual systems for a cruise liner, that Gillon was introduced to Italian through colleagues.
Continue reading the main story 
What's that you're saying?
- Up to 7,000 different languages are estimated to be spoken around the world
- Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French are world's most widely spoken languages, according to UNESCO
- Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry
- English is related to German and Dutch, and all are part of Indo-European family of languages
- Also includes French, Spanish and Italian, which come from Latin
- 2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260
Source: BBC Languages
"I went to Italy for a weekend, and fell in love with the language. I bought books and started teaching myself. By the end of my three years in France, I was fluent in both languages," he says.
Gillon's next job took him round the world, and pretty soon he was up to speed on German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish.
He says he used half a dozen languages every day for 10 years and his current job, which involves supervising foreign language versioning of Hollywood movies, means he has to stay on top of his skills.
"I have a massive foreign language book library, so I regularly keep up to date, revising grammar, reading newspapers, watching satellite television.
"My much better half is also Swedish and speaks six languages - we probably speak them all every day," he says.
According to author and linguistics expert Erard, there are not many hyperpolyglots like Gillon in the world. He has identified 11 languages as a significant watershed. Those who speak more than this are very rare.
But he says it is difficult to define hyperpolyglots and polyglots because essentially it has to be about speaking and knowing rather than reading and writing. In some cases literacy is not possible, or a language does not have an alphabet.
He says the question of "how much a language weighs" is also significant in determining how unusual a linguist is.
Continue reading the main story
Rise of the polyglots
"Most people say it's easier to pick up languages when you're younger," says David Green, of University College London, who specialises in bilingualism.
"But people can learn languages at any point in their lives. Being immersed in a language is important. Personality is a contributing factor too - not being able to tolerate feeling foolish from making inevitable errors will make learning a new language a difficult process.
"Polyglots are definitely on the rise worldwide predominantly because of migration. In 10 years' time, it is estimated that 50% of America will be Spanish-speaking. Many of these people will speak both English and Spanish."
"If the languages are English, French, Mandarin, Japanese, Hindi and Russian - that would be more significant from a learner's perspective than 11 Romance languages such as Italian, French and Spanish," he says.
People who are gifted linguists also often have to make the choice between getting very highly developed skills in a smaller number of languages, or focusing on one aspect like the oral language, he says.
For language-lover Matt Withers, 32, who speaks German, Portuguese, Luxembourgish, French and Welsh, it is not his vocation, but a fascination with language and the world that fuels his hobby.
But rather than relying solely on books, he also signed up to a series of courses.
"When I lived in Germany, I shared a house with three Brazilians, so I did an evening course in Portuguese to converse with them - it was interesting trying to learn Portuguese through the medium of German," he laughs.
Continue reading the main story 
Which words come easily?
- Usually easier when second language is close to learner's native tongue in terms of vocabulary, sounds or sentence structure
- So Polish speakers find it easier to learn Slavic languages like Czech rather than Asian ones
- And Japanese speakers will find it easier to learn Mandarin than Polish
- Easiest language for native English speakers to learn is said to be Dutch
- Five most difficult languages for native English speakers are Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean
Source: BBC Languages
"For the past few years, I've been living in Wales - I share an office with predominantly native Welsh speakers, so I've been learning Welsh."
Withers thinks that fluency in one language allows people to accumulate others more easily.
"Most monoglots in this country aren't really able to explain English in terms such as the perfect past tense and past tense. When you learn about cases and tenses and grammatical formations, I think the tool box is there for other languages," he says.
But he concedes it is not always the case, "as Welsh isn't like any other major European language, in terms of the way it is constructed, and is incredibly different".
So what enables hyperpolyglots to seemingly pick up a new language at the push of a button?
Erard says it is hard to explain, but whatever an individual's biographical reasons are, he believes there is something that distinguishes hyperpolyglots neurologically.
"They have a neurological hardware that responds to the world, that's fed by the world, that is suited to a pattern that is recognition-heavy, sound-heavy and memory-heavy - that is very structured, and also very sociable.
Manuel probably spoke three languages - Basil Fawlty just the one "They have an ability to switch between languages very easily, and that involves cognitive skills which are often heritable," he adds.
But Gillon says he has no idea what the secret to his success is.
He says some "blocks" - Germanic, Slavic, Latin - make it "easier to go with the flow, and language becomes intuitive". He agrees that by the third or fourth language, it also gets easier to assimilate vocabulary and grammar much more quickly.
"Etymology is a sport for me. I enjoy looking up the origin of words and seeing which particular invasion was responsible for bringing that word into our vocabulary. I am immersed in it for my work and it will continue to intrigue me for every day of my life."
But he concludes: "I can't explain it - if I could, I would bottle and sell it."
Thursday, February 23, 2012
How do you become fluent in 11 languages?
How do you become fluent in 11 languages?
Twenty-year-old Alex Rawlings has won a national competition to find the UK's most multi-lingual student.
The Oxford University undergraduate can currently speak 11 languages - English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian.
Entrants in the competition run by the publishers Collins had to be aged between 16 and 22 and conversant in multiple languages.
Alex drew on all his skills to tell BBC News about his passion for learning languages and how he came to speak so many.
Sweden snow: Man 'survives two months trapped in car'
Sweden snow: Man 'survives two months trapped in car'
Survival expert Dale Collett explains how, in theory, somebody could survive for two months with hardly any food or water
A Swedish man has survived being trapped in his snow-covered car for two months without food, police say.
The car was found on Friday at the end of a forest track more than 1 km (0.6 miles) from a main road in northern Sweden.
Police say the temperature in the area had recently dropped to -30C (-22F).
The man, who was too weak to utter more than a few words, said he had been inside since 19 December. He may have survived by drinking melted snow.
Police say they have no reason to doubt his story.
Sleeping bagThe man, who has not been named, is recovering at Umea University Hospital - where staff say he is doing well considering the circumstances.
The 45-year-old was discovered by snowmobilers who initially assumed the car was a wreck until they dug their way to a window and saw movement inside, reported the Vasterbotten Courier newspaper.
The man was huddled in a sleeping bag on the back seat, said policeman Ebbe Nyberg.
"He was in a very poor state. Poor condition. He said he'd been there for a long time and had survived on a little snow.
"He said himself he hadn't eaten anything since December," Mr Nyberg said.
Doctors at the Umea University Hospital said they would normally expect a person to survive without food for around four weeks, said the Vasterbotten Courier.
One doctor told the newspaper that the man might have survived so long by going into a kind of hibernation.
How to get America to walk
How to get America to walk
US cities built in the 20th Century have long catered for a population that prefers to take the car to shop, dine and work. But an ageing population and a young professional workforce looking for an urban lifestyle have forced city planners to reconsider the existing road and pavement infrastructure.
But how do you remake a city into a pedestrian dream, and how do you re-educate the public about its transportation choices?
The BBC's Franz Strasser went to Raleigh, North Carolina, where an unsanctioned street sign campaign called Walk Raleigh caught the attention of city officials and pedestrians alike.
Night video courtesy of Matt Tomasulo.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Masdar - the carbon neutral city
Masdar - the carbon neutral city
Powered by the sun, cooled by wind, the car-free environment of Masdar is working to become the world's first carbon neutral city in the United Arab Emirates.
Fiona Foster investigates whether the city is a model for the future or just a green mirage.
Get in touch with Fast Track via email or Facebook.
Watch Fast Track on the BBC World News channel on Saturdays at 04:30, 13:30 and 19:30 GMT or Sundays at 06:30 GMT.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Poor America: 'Some kids are making ketchup soup'
Poor America: 'Some kids are making ketchup soup'
Panorama's Hilary Andersson travelled to Whitney Elementary School in Las Vegas to meet some of America's youngest poor.
Children told of going to bed hungry and worrying about their families, while school officials said some children were resorting to eating "ketchup soup".
Panorama: Poor America, BBC One, Monday, 13 February at 20:30 GMT then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Ape versus machine: Do primates enjoy computer games?
Ape versus machine: Do primates enjoy computer games?
Liz Bonin witnesses Ayumu's incredible skill
A chimp genius can complete a computer memory test in less time than it takes the average person to blink - and much faster than any human rival. But do the world's cleverest animals enjoy these cognitive tasks?
Ayumu, who was born and raised in Japan's Kyoto University, can remember the location and order of a set of numbers in record time. Sixty milliseconds to be precise.
Of course, it is not "natural" behaviour for a chimp to interact with a computer screen, but scientists suggest this type of task could be good for captive apes.
Ayumu's record stands at 60 milliseconds "Unfortunately, captive great apes often exhibit behavioural signs of boredom, frustration and stress," says Fay Clark from the Royal Veterinary College's Centre for Animal Welfare.
Working with the Zoological Society of London, Ms Clark has recently published a review of research investigating whether challenges that get captive apes thinking can enhance their well-being.
"If an ape does not receive enough cognitive challenge in life, this can lead to abnormal behaviours or a lack of interest in the environment," she tells BBC Nature.
"The key is for scientists to develop challenges which are relevant, motivating, and ultimately solvable if they are going to be used as enrichment."
Chimp's challenge Continue reading the main story 
Intelligent animals:
Killer whale: Different pods have developed unique "dialects". A killer whale calf is most likely to learn a dialect from its mother.
Chimp: Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other.
Octopus: The creatures have been filmed scooping up halved coconut shells and using them as shelters.
Carrion crow: Drop hard nuts on to roads and collect the food after passing cars have cracked them.
Dolphin: Dolphins often make "play" activities more challenging for themselves as time goes on, research suggests.
Otters: Pass down shell-cracking skills to their young. It can take a pup six months to learn how to crack a shell against a stone rested on its belly.
Sumatran orangutan: Observed using objects as tools, including leaves as "toilet paper", large leaves as "umbrellas" and modifying sticks to gather insects.
As one of the world's longest-running laboratory-based studies of chimpanzees, the Ai Project has been investigating chimp intelligence for over 30 years.
Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa began his research with a one-year-old female chimp Ai, the namesake of the project, in 1977.
Over the years the team investigated Ai's brain power by observing her as she learned to complete tasks including number and object recognition.
In 2000, Ai gave birth to a son, Ayumu, who has since become the number-crunching star of the study, and features in the series Super Smart Animals, for BBC One and the Discovery Channel.
Ayumu's daily routine resembles that of many 11-year-olds: sleep, eat, play and learn.
During his "study sessions" he receives a treat every time he correctly remembers the location of the numbers on screen and selects them in order.
"Ayumu and others can do the task with social praise. Food reward is not the essential matter," Prof Matsuzawa says.
He says the chimps all go to the testing room of their own free will, and "they love to do so".
"It is not only Ayumu but also the other young ones who have the better memory than naive human adults," he says.
Because great apes are "highly individual", it is important to tailor challenges to them, says Ms Clark.
"Some will not be motivated to interact with computer screens," she says. "Some are highly motivated by food rewards; some by human contact."
Ayumu completes his tasks for food but also social praise, says Prof Matsuzawa At Zoo Atlanta in Georgia, US, a group of orangutans are being closely watched. In 2007, a touch screen cunningly disguised in a tree was installed in their enclosure.
"We have specific programmes to look at how they learn," says Dr Tara Stoinski, who leads the study. "They are not games, [the orangutans] are doing problem-solving."
The apes currently have the opportunity to match symbols to photographs on the screen and their moves are studied by researchers at Emory University.
When they correctly categorise a photograph they are rewarded with a small pellet of food.
"It's not like they're getting jackpot of sweets," says Dr Stoinski, who explains that the orangutans are content to interact with the screen even when the dispenser runs out of pellets.
"For some of them it is inherently rewarding," she tells BBC Nature.
The research team say they have made careful observations to ensure the apes are not negatively influenced by the presence of the "learning tree".
Orangutans at Zoo Atlanta continue problem solving even when food rewards run out "We were aware that introducing the tasks could cause competition in the group which could have negative effects - it could create some tension.
"So we evaluated it from that standpoint but we didn't find that.
"Our animals they seem to be very happy with the division of labour."
In contrast to the "undercover" enrichment in Atlanta, orangutans in Milwaukee County Zoo, Wisconsin have been presented with the latest in modern technology.
Apes with iPadsLast Christmas, charity Orangutan Outreach began trialling iPad interaction with the apes.
"They've been using the paint application, they love watching videos on them but they haven't really played many complex games," says Richard Zimmerman.
Zoo keepers want to build reinforced tablets so they can leave the orangutans to play without human help It is early days for the project yet but Mr Zimmerman tells BBC Nature that researchers at Toronto Zoo are now helping to quantify how the apes are interacting with the tablets.
"It's not really toy-like because they are engaging with them as devices... it's definitely going in the cognitive direction."
As a conservation charity, Mr Zimmerman says Orangutan Outreach's key concern is enrichment and helping to raise people's awareness of the animal's plight in the wild.
But by introducing devices to more research-focused centres, including Zoo Atlanta, they hope they will provide more scientific insights.
Orangutans are clearly fascinated by unfamiliar objects but does it matter that these tasks do not mirror natural challenges?
"Tasks do not need to be 'naturalistic', by resembling a tree or a fruit, to be effective," says Ms Clark.
"Research suggests that in terms of animal welfare, it's more important for tasks to be motivating and 'functional' rather than looking natural."
Joystick gamesWe share 97% of our DNA with orangutans and 99% with chimpanzees so it is perhaps unsurprising that we have common interests.
But it is not just the great apes getting in on the interaction.
Professor John David Smith, from State University of New York at Buffalo and Michael Beran, from Georgia State University have trained macaque monkeys to use a joystick-based computer game.
When uncertain of the correct answer, macaques choose to skip the question and continue the game
To indicate whether the density of a pixel box that appeared at the top of the screen was either sparse or dense the monkeys had to simply move the cursor towards a letter S or a letter D.
"Rhesus monkeys can be trained to use joysticks to complete a variety of computer 'games' or tasks, and the animals readily and freely engage with these tasks for many hours of the day," explains Dr Beran.
"A number of studies suggest that the monkeys come to prefer having the computer apparatus available, to not having it available, even when the alternative is free food."
For Dr Beran, the computer games do not just enrich the lives of the monkeys, they can offer other important insights.
"In our lab perhaps the clearest indicator to us of impending illness or psychological distress in a monkey is a drop in his performance or in his production on his computer games," he explains.
Professor Smith adds: "In a sense, I think, the tasks are their 'Sudoku'.
"I have the impression that our tasks are appropriate and positive aspects of our animals' lives."
As advances in technology improve our lives they are also providing opportunities for us to learn more about our primate cousins, and enrich the experiences of those we study.
Ayumu the chimp features in Super Smart Animals on Wednesday 8 February, 20:00 GMT on BBC One.
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