Jay London

To Replace Needles, Patients Could Turn to Microchips

by Jay London on February 22, 2012

in Design,Health,In the News,Research,Science

Patients looking for relief from medication-via-injection may be in luck, thanks to a microchip that can be implanted in the body and release drugs on command from an external wireless control.

Building on 15 years of work at MIT, the research was published in the February 16 online edition of Science Translational Medicine. Members of MicroCHIPS, Inc., whose research team includes Professors Robert S. Langer and Michael J. Cima, authored the study.

From Fox News:

The study is believed the first attempt at using a wirelessly controlled drug chip in people. If this early-stage testing eventually pans out, the idea is that doctors one day might program dose changes from afar with the push of a button, or time them for when the patient is sleeping to minimize side effects.

“It’s like ‘Star Trek,’” said Langer, who co-authored the study. “Just send a signal over a special radio wave, and out comes the drug.”

Microchips containing 20 doses of the osteoporosis medication teriparatide were implanted in eight Denmark women between 65 and 70 years old during 30-minute, local anesthetic procedures. In seven cases, the device delivered dosages with no negative side effects, and the women reported a preference for microchip delivery over daily injection. (The device did not work in the eighth patient and was removed.)

Implanted medicine can help patients adhere to a strict medication schedule and better deliver those drugs directly to the part of the body needing care. If future trials are successful, the device could be available for clinical use in four years.

Cima and Langer originally conceived the microchip-delivery idea at MIT in the late 1990s and believe the technology could eventually improve the method of delivering multiple or potent drugs.

From WebMD:

“Patient compliance is a big issue, especially when we are asking patients to give themselves daily injections of a drug,” Cima said. “This could take patient compliance completely out of the question.”

And because the devices can be controlled remotely, physicians and patients can change dosing as needed. “You could literally have a pharmacy on a chip,” Langer said.

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Spreading Valentine’s Day love, MIT-style

by Jay London on February 14, 2012

in Alumni Life,Arts,Campus Culture,Design,Modern Geekhood

John's "scientific" category winner (Click to send.)

Last week, the MIT Alumni Association asked for your help in creating a MIT-themed Valentine’s Day e-postcard. We designed the card and needed your MIT-inspired copy. Submissions were judged on creativity, originality, humor, and a connection to MIT.

After a week’s worth of entries, ranging from original poetry to mathematical equations, the Academy of Valentine’s Day Arts & Sciences is happy to announce two winners: John Springsteen in the “scientific” category and Brandy in the “romantic” category.

John’s won for his entry, “01000010 01100101 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01110110 01100001 01101100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100001,” or, translated from binary code, “Be my valentine!”

The code-inspired text topped the list of technical-themed sentiments, which also included:

My x = 16 sin^3 t; y = 13 cos t – 5 cos (2t) – 2 cos (3t) – cos (4t) is yours. [graph translation] – Todd

Brandy's "romantic" category winner (Click to send.)

Brandy’s entry, “You’ve got root access to my heart,” got the nod from the Alumni Association cupids for its touch of romanticism.  Other nerd-quixotic entries included:

I am, I am, I am, I am, I am an engineer
When you and I superimpose, we really interfere
No physicist, a bond like ours, could ever try define
So two weeks after IAP, please be my valentine?
- Murthy

I went to MIT and earned a degree,
I am glad that I met you in 18.03,
but even with all my HASS D,
I am still no good at writing poems.
- John

Will you be my Valentine
At 2.14159?
- George

The winning cards are permanently located in the ePostcards section of the Alumni Association site. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, these cards can be sent to that special Engineer (or non-Engineer) in your life. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Folding Car to Transform Urban Driving…and Make Parallel Parking Obsolete

by Jay London on February 8, 2012

in Alumni Life,Design,Economics,Energy,Engineering,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Research,Transportation

Looking for a parking space in a major city can make public transportation very appealing. The biggest urban driving hassles usually come not with driving itself, but with the stopping, turning, parallel parking, and the can-I-fit-in-this-space challenges that arise when you’ve reached your destination.

Enter the Hiriko (the Basque word for “urban”), a new compact vehicle designed by the MIT Media Lab whose first fleet of 20 vehicles will debut in Vitoria Gasteiz, Spain, in 2013.

From the New York Times:

The pod-like electric vehicle, whose battery pack would be leased, is a two-seater with 4-wheel drive and a range in excess of 100 kilometers, or about 60 miles. Because its wheelbase can collapse, a single parking space can accommodate three vehicles. Driver and passenger enter through a windshield that swings upward.

Instead of a single electric engine, each wheel has an independent dedicated engine, which allows for an amazing degree in control in suspension, steering, and turning. Smaller than a Smart Car, the Hiriko spins and rotates on its axis, a technique that MIT researchers call an “O-turn.” It also moves sideways, making parallel parking obsolete.

Professor Kent Larson leads the car’s Media Lab researcher team. A production model was unveiled before the European Union Commission in Brussels last week. In addition to Spain, future trials are planned in Boston, San Francisco, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Malmo, Sweden. Similar to ZipCar in the United States, the cars will be shared by users who will have access for a few hours at a time. Cars may be sold to individuals in the future, with cost estimates currently ranging around $16,000.

In addition to the Hiriko, a Media Lab team led by doctoral candidates Ryan Chin and William Lark has also created a three-wheel electric vehicle prototype that can function as a bicycle and meets all European bike-lane regulations.

For more information and video on Hiriko (formerly the MIT CityCar), visit the “Changing Places” section on the Media Lab site.

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Contest: Help Create an MIT-Inspired Valentine!

by Jay London on February 6, 2012

in Alumni Life,Campus Culture,Design,Events,Modern Geekhood

The MIT Alumni Association is creating a MIT Valentine’s Day postcard and we need your help. We’ve designed the card, and we want you to provide the MIT-inspired copy. (Geeks can be quixotic, too.)

Once the submissions are collected, the Alumni Association, in conjunction with the Academy of Valentine’s Day Arts & Sciences, will review and debate then announce a winner on Monday, February 13.

The winning words will be added to our valentine, which will be permanently located in the ePostcards section of the Alumni Association site. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the card will be available to send to—and warm the heart of—that special Engineer (or non-Engineer) in your life.

This contest is open to all members of the MIT community. The rules are simple: Keep it clean, keep it 200 characters or less, and keep it MIT-inspired.

Original poetry, geeky pickup lines, or even a simple word or two are fair game. Submissions will be judged on creativity, originality, humor, and their connection to MIT. Being romantic never hurts either!

Here’s how it works:

  1. Submit your MIT-inspired copy in the comments section of this post or on the Alumni Association Facebook page.
  2. The deadline to submit is Sunday, February 12.
  3. The Academy of Valentine’s Day Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with Alumni Association cupids, will review the submissions and determine a winner, who will be credited on the ePostcard page.
  4. Visit the Association Facebook page on Monday afternoon, February 13, to view the winner and send out the postcard.

Get romantic, get creative, and get to work!

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Of Sunflowers and Solar Plants

by Jay London on February 1, 2012

in Design,Energy,Engineering,In the News,Learning,Research

When looking for ways to increase solar energy efficiency, MIT researchers simply stopped and smelled the…sunflowers.

Using the flower as inspiration, a team of researchers led by Professor Alexander Mitsos developed a solar panel layout that mimics the arrangement of sunflower florets, a pattern called Fermat’s spiral.

From MIT News:

“The MIT team…looked to nature for inspiration — specifically, to the sunflower. The florets of a sunflower are arranged in a spiraling pattern, known as a Fermat spiral, that appears in many natural objects and has long fascinated mathematicians: The ancient Greeks even applied the patterns to buildings and other architectural structures. Mathematicians have found that each sunflower floret is turned at a ‘golden angle’—about 137 degrees—with respect to its neighboring floret.”

The new layout takes up to 20 percent less space than Spain’s PS10 Solar Power Plant, Europe’s first concentrated solar power plant, which can covert enough electricity to power 6,000 homes.  Compared with the PS10’s configuration, where mirrors are arranged around in circles and the distance between mirrors akin to the seats in a movie theater, the new layout reduces shading and blocking, and increases total efficiency.

The research team, which includes Corey Noone SM ’11 and Manuel Torrihon of RWTH Aachen University in Germany, found that their new pattern could reduce shadowing and blocking throughout the day. Their findings were published in the journal Solar Energy, and the team has recently filed for patent protection.

From MIT News:

“…the spiral pattern reduced shading and blocking and increased total efficiency compared with PS10’s radially staggered configuration.

Mitsos says arranging a CSP plant in such a spiral pattern could reduce the amount of land and the number of heliostats required to generate an equivalent amount of energy, which could result in significant cost savings.”

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DIY-IAP: What is Your Definition of a Successful Scientist?

by Jay London on January 26, 2012

in IAP,In the News,Science,Student Life

Late last year, Science Magazine invited the “next generation of scientists” to answer the questions, “How will the practice of science change in your lifetime?” and “What will improve and what new challenges will emerge?” The queries kicked off Science Magazine’s new section, NextGen VOICES, and highlighted the need for young scientific voices to address the critical challenges in an increasingly resource-limited world. The top 50 responses were posted in the January 2012 edition, which included four MIT graduate students.

Dianne Kamfonik (Civil and Environmental Engineering): “Science, more than ever, is being bottlenecked by politics. For example, scientists have not only shown that climate change is happening, but they have also already developed many ways to combat it.”

Andrew David Warren (Health Sciences and Technology): “Should researchers be afraid of being replaced? Not for a long time—scientists will continue to provide the creativity. Computers will simply help us identify what we do (and don’t) know.”

Vyas Ramanan (Health Sciences and Technology): “As robotic labor overtakes humans in efficiency across many industries and at many points along the value chain, new types of jobs must be created to ensure stable employment for the working-age population.”

Yiftach Nagar (Sloan School of Management): “Increasing stratification will cause many talented people to give up academic careers for work in rising multinational corporations, which will fund applicative research. As larger data sets become owned by companies, free dissemination and open scrutiny of findings will be challenged.”

Now, it’s your turn. The second NextGen VOICES survey asks, “What is your definition of a successful scientist?” and “How has this definition changed between your mentor’s generation and your own?” The question is open to any young scientists and the deadline is February 17. Click here to post your answers (250 words or less).

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DIY-IAP: Watch a Robotics Tournament…in Space

by Jay London on January 23, 2012

in Campus Culture,Design,Events,IAP,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Research,Science,Space

If you’re feeling spaced out this morning, you’re not alone. Teams of high school students are at MIT today for the finale of the third annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge, a worldwide competition where students program satellites to complete tasks onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics has joined with NASA, Aurora Flight Sciences, TopCoder, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in sponsoring the competition. The finale takes place today at MIT from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Watch it live on NASA TV or the Zero Robotics site.

In the competition, NASA will upload software developed by the high school students onto SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites), basketball-sized satellites created at MIT, aboard the ISS. Students wrote algorithms for the SPHERES satellites, giving them the opportunity the opportunity to act as simulated ground controllers for space research.

The tournament began in September with over 2,000 students from 147 teams creating algorithms and devising codes. The top 27 teams will have their code sent to the space station where, during today’s competition, astronauts in microgravity will command the satellites to execute the teams’ flight programs. The team with the highest software performance over several rounds of the competition wins the challenge.

SPHERES satellites were developed at MIT in 1999 and first used aboard the ISS in 2006. In addition to the competition, the satellites are used inside the space station to conduct formation flight maneuvers for spacecraft guidance navigation, control, and docking, and they can test a wide range of hardware and software at an affordable cost.

David W. Miller, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, and research scientist Alvar Saenz-Otero PhD ’05 serve as principal investigator and co-investigator, respectively, of the challenge.

For more information on SPHERES, watch a 2009 video where the MIT SPHERES Team held a test session with astronauts Michael Barratt and Timothy Kopra aboard the International Space Station set to the score from “An der schönen blauen Donau” (On The Beautiful Blue Danube) by Johann Strauss II.

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DIY-IAP: MIT Basketball Doubleheader, Saturday, January 21

by Jay London on January 20, 2012

in Alumni Life,Athletics,Campus Culture,Events,IAP

Billy Johnson, '09, '10

In 2010, the most popular jobs for new MIT graduates were in consulting and finance, and the most popular locations included Boston and New York City. Nowhere to be found on that list: professional basketball player…in Costa Rica…or Iceland.

But that road was traveled by Willard “Billy” Johnson ’09, ’10, assistant coach for the Engineers Men’s Basketball Team, who play WPI tomorrow in a Men’s/Women’s home doubleheader that begins at 1 p.m. (the women take on Smith). AT MIT, he earned a B.S. in management science with a finance concentration in 2009, and a B.S. in political science with an international studies concentration and minors in economics and theater in 2010. He then spent a year-plus odyssey that included professional stops in Reykjavik and San Ramon. He’s chronicled these adventures on his blog, Ballin’ on a Budget.

“When I graduated, I wanted to keep playing basketball but wasn’t sure if I could play professionally,” he said. “But I learned at MIT to never let unknown variables hold you back. If you have a goal, attack it with tenacity.”

Johnson was tri-captain of the celebrated 2009 team that–despite dressing only nine players–won the school’s first NEWMAC Tournament Championship and first NCAA Division III Tournament victory, and received national media attention from ESPN. Johnson returned as a fifth-year senior in 2010, leading the team to the NEWMAC Conference Championship. He left MIT as the team’s all-time win leader, and finished in the top 10 in three-point percentage, free-throw percentage, and blocked shots.

After graduation, Johnson spent a few months in India performing market research and forecasting, and working in a Leprosy/HIV clinic. He briefly assisted MIT basketball coach Larry Anderson before travelling to Costa Rica and helping lead ARBA-San Ramon to the playoff semifinals. While in Costa Rica, Johnson also worked at Beyond Study Abroad, a non-profit that connects NCAA athletes with children in impoverished parts of the world.

Following the season, he moved to Reykjavik, joining former teammate Jimmy Bartolotta on Íþróttafélag Reykjavíkur (Reykjavik Athletic). He played only six games before sustaining a gruesome finger injury (photos available on his blog). The cut-short season allowed Johnson to rejoin Anderson’s staff shortly before this season.

“The people in Costa Rica and Iceland were amazing but I missed MIT basketball,” he said. “It was tough being away. You learn so much at MIT that isn’t in the classroom, and I realized that when I was gone.”

The undefeated Engineers (15-0) are off to their best start in Engineers history and ranked number three nationally in Division III. The women’s team is 7-5 and poised for NEWMAC tournament run. Johnson says any fans attending Saturday’s doubleheader will not be disappointed.

“There’s a saying in MIT Athletics: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” he said. “When you go to these games, you see the MIT spirit of pushing yourself to the limit, then pushing yourself more, making yourself uncomfortable by working so hard. It’s the embodiment of MIT.”

For more information on Saturday’s doubleheader, visit the MIT Engineers athletics site.

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DIY-IAP: MIT Community Service Day, January 27

by Jay London on January 18, 2012

in Alumni Life,Events,Public Service,Student Life

Benjamin Francis '12 prepares dinner at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church.

The holiday season is behind us and, for many, so is its spirit of giving. But the commodity of community service is always needed, and MIT junior Benjamin Francis is helping address this need.

Since October, Francis has lead a group of students in founding a soup kitchen that helps the homeless and hungry in the Cambridge area. MIT Hillel, Professor Jeffrey Ravel, and Central Square’s St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church support the project. The kitchen operates every Wednesday evening, when no other community meals are served in the area.

From MIT News:

There are approximately 40 volunteers on the project, consisting of students from MIT Hillel, three MIT fraternities (Zeta Psi, Sigma Nu, and Phi Kappa Sigma), and others who joined after hearing about the project by word of mouth. At any given time on a Wednesday evening, 10 to 15 volunteers operate the soup kitchen. They cook, serve food, clean, and talk with many of the people who come in for dinner.

That group’s work personifies MIT’s spirit of giving, which will be on full display during MIT’s IAP Community Service Day on January 27. Open to all members of the MIT Community, volunteers can spend the day working with three local organizations: the Greater Boston Food Bank, where volunteers will inspect, sort, and repack grocery products to be distributed to hunger-relief agencies; the Salvation Army, where volunteers will help paint the group’s Harbor Light Center; and People Making a Difference, MIT, which was founded by Lori Tsuruda ’89 and promotes volunteerism in one-time projects that meet local needs. Volunteers will assemble Legos into DNA models that will be used by schools in the Boston area and across the country. (Register by January 23th and contact serviceday@mit.edu for more information.)

MIT-related volunteer efforts beyond the IAP period can be found at the Institute’s Public Service Center, which has a broad range of public service that suit the interests and abilities of the larger MIT community.

Volunteer opportunities for non-Cambridge-based alums are also available. The IDEAS Global Challenge is an annual invention competition that relies on volunteers to help organize events, work with teams, and reach out to new audiences. Many alumni can also volunteer through their Alumni Association connections, which includes serving as an Institute Career Assistance Network (ICAN) advisor and getting involved in MIT clubs in your region.

Editor’s note: In honor of MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January, Slice is focusing on activities you can do yourself and on the experiences of students serving this month as externs with alumni in their workplaces. Stay tuned!

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DIY IAP: Build an Electric Unicycle (Or Just Watch the Video)!

by Jay London on January 11, 2012

in Design,Engineering,IAP,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Research,Student Life,Transportation

Photo Credit: Stephan Boyer, Double Dispatch blog

Recent data shows that thousands of commuters in Boston-Cambridge area ride their bicycle to work, with ridership more the doubling since 2007. But unicycle ridership? Not current data exists.

Meet Stephan Boyer, a third-year student in the School of Engineering who has created The Bullet, a sort of unicycle-meets-Segway device that can hit 15 miles per hour and can travel for five miles on a single charge.

The Bullet, an electric unicycle with a safety kill switch, does some self-balancing, with components that help prevent the device from falling forward or backward (good luck if you’re falling left or right!). Boyer uses the Bullet to travel around campus, even relying on semantics to travel inside.

Boyer writes on his Double Dispatch blog:

“Bullet is the primary way I navigate MIT and the surrounding Cambridge area. I often zoom past students, faculty, custodians, and tourists, with generally positive reactions from everyone. I’ve been told one can be fined for riding a scooter in the Infinite Corridor. Fortunately, Bullet ain’t no scooter.”

Boyer currently has no plan to market the Bullet for commercial use, but estimates the device cost only a few hundred dollars to build. Boyer (and Slice) urges caution to any burgeoning uni-enthusiasts and likens navigating the Bullet to learning to ride a bike with no hands.

“Unfortunately, one cannot simply pick up a self-balancing unicycle and ride it with ease. It took me several hours to be able to ride in a straight line without crashing, and it took several days to learn how to turn in a controlled manner. Many of my friends have tried riding it, usually with little success (including some actual unicyclers).”

For more information on how the Bullet was assembled, including its kit list and software, and some helpful riding tips, visit Boyer’s Double Dispatch blog entry.

Editor’s note: In honor of MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January, Slice is focusing on activities you can do yourself and on the experiences of students serving this month as externs with alumni in their workplaces. Stay tuned!

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