Though such missions have critics on Capitol Hill and in the military itself, a Pentagon draft report says the armed forces should be equipped to take on many more of the two dozen such deployments the United States has mounted since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Such assignments are "just reality," said Lt. Col. Tim Muchmore, an Army staff officer who has been closely involved in the Pentagon's study. "They're out there for us."
The report, due for completion in mid-May, predicts that the Cold War's end has brought a strategic "pause" that will leave the United States an unrivaled superpower until at least 2010. Nonetheless, it calls for the armed forces to master a full range of military roles - what one official called "full spectrum dominance."
As in earlier studies of the military's mission, the Pentagon report calls for the armed forces to be prepared to handle two major regional conflicts - such as those that could explode in such international hot spots as Iraq and Korea - in "close succession."
Supporters say the move would help foster a sense of pride and self-affirmation among the swelling ranks of mixed-race Americans, many of whom feel ignored by the larger society.
But some civil rights advocates worry that the new category would reduce the numbers of blacks and Hispanics recorded in the census, imperiling minority voting districts and financing for minority aid programs.
For Ramona Douglass, a California activist who is of mixed parentage, the issue is simple.
"I don't want to be invisible anymore," said Douglass, president of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans, a San Francisco-based advocacy group for multiethnic and multiracial people.
"The census form allows me to select 'other' as a choice, but I'm not an 'other,"' Douglass said. "I'm a multiracial person and I should be represented."
A preliminary decision on whether the next census will include a new category for multiracial people is expected from the federal Office of Management and Budget in June or July.
In a provocative glimpse into how the brain is shaped by the world around it, a team of Salk researchers in San Diego led by Fred Gage now has demonstrated in laboratory animals that the right kind of mental gymnastics can dramatically increase the number of cells in a key region of the adult brain.