Design

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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IAP Externships: The Value Proposition for Student and Sponsor

by Amy Marcott on February 12, 2012

in Alumni Life,Design,Energy,IAP,Student Life

This is part of a series of posts from MIT students and alumni who were involved in the 2012 Student/Alumni Externship Program, which connected current students to alumni in workplaces worldwide during MIT’s Independent Activities Period. Alumni, learn how to get involved.

Guest blogger: Stephen J. T. Murphy SM ’87, Principal of Acquisitions, Campanelli Companies (commercial real estate development and construction firm)
Externs: Steve Bonelli and Mike DiMinico, grad students in the Center for Real Estate

MIT externs Steve Bonelli (center) and Mike DiMinico (right) with Partner Steve Murphy and his son, Dylan Murphy (left).

MIT externs Steve Bonelli (center) and Mike DiMinico (right) with Partner Steve Murphy and his son, Dylan Murphy (left).

For several years, Campanelli has participated in the MIT Externship program. Campanelli is the second largest commercial development firm in Massachusetts and this year, we have two exceptional students from the Center for Real Estate spending their time with us: Steve Bonelli and Mike DiMinico.

When we first decided to participate, we knew the potential for real value for both our firm and the students would depend on how focused we could make the students’ experience.  After all, IAP is only about three weeks long, and real estate projects can take years to complete. So how could the students really get a chance to engage?

We realized, however, that there are always many issues that could benefit from a deeper exploration but get left on the sidelines for lack of time or resources.  Yet these same topics, if properly assessed, could help clarify or alter some larger decisions on a project. We decided to take advantage of the research skills and intellectual curiosity of our externs to investigate these topics.

Each year, we design a discreet topic of investigation that can be researched and evaluated within the three-week timeframe.  About a week is devoted to data collection, a week to analysis, and a week to developing conclusions.  Steve and Mike then presented their findings to the firm. In past years, we have covered topics ranging from age-restricted housing to inter-municipal service agreements for projects that straddle community boundaries.  In each case, the topic is directly relevant to a project we are considering or have underway, and the findings have always contributed to our decisions affecting the project.

This approach also gives the externs the opportunity to learn about a topic that is both new to them and relevant in their field of study.  The topics have even served eventually as the bases for student theses.  This year, Steve and Mike collaborated on two somewhat interrelated topics: state and local incentives available to attract industrial enterprises, including those involved in renewable energy, to a particular site in Massachusetts and the incentives available to promote private development of renewable energy installations, such as solar and wind power. Campanelli is committed to exploring sustainable alternatives in their buildings and will utilize this information to pursue installing solar on some of our currently owned properties.

As a sponsor, we see a great value proposition for Campanelli in participating in the externship program.  We get to explore new areas of interest, we get to work with talented young people who bring new ideas and a fresh perspective, and we support the mission of MIT.

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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: 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: Can You Top HelmetHub?

by Amy Marcott on January 12, 2012

in Classroom,Design,Engineering,Student Life

Prototype of HelmetHub

Click the image to view a demo from the student inventors.

Urban bike sharing arrived in Boston last summer to great success. Hubway offered 60 modular solar-powered stations and 600 bikes, which residents and tourists put to good use, logging more than 140,000 trips in four months. But one thing was missing from 70 percent of the riders: helmets. Which, as we all know, save lives.

So some MIT students in the 2.009 Product Engineering Processes class set about finding a solution and developed a prototype of what they call HelmetHub. The solar-powered vending machine, which occupies half the space of soda machine, would offer headgear that adjusts to fit most head sizes.

Urban bike sharing

According to Boston.com, the machines are currently being imagined as both sale and rental kiosks. Hubway users could return an $8 helmet for a partial refund if they desired. The students hope to begin beta testing next summer.

Want to learn more?

Explore prototyping and field implementation in OpenCourseWare’s Prototypes to Products class. Also check out the resources offered by the website for the class textbook, Product Design and Development, by Karl Ulrich and Steven D. Eppinger.

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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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DIY IAP: Say it with a Photo Essay

by Amy Marcott on January 6, 2012

in Campus Culture,Classroom,Design,IAP,Learning,Student Life

Each fall, freshmen involved with the Discover Product Design (DPD) pre-orientation program document their weeklong class experience—of campus lab tours, visits to design firms, and various design exercises and activities—with photo essays. These are intended to teach basic photography, but DPD also shows students how to document work for a design portfolio and conduct ethnographic research for understanding existing behavior to inform the design process.

Take a look at the gallery of each student’s top three photos. During the week, they designed a product for their dorm room (created on a laser cutter in thin acrylic), created posters to encourage student life, and disassembled existing products to learn how they are manufactured.

DPD is run by members of the MIT Ideation Lab, a mechanical engineering research group studying early-stage design processes. Check out some of the designs from the 2010 program.

Want to create your own photo essay? Check out Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry on OpenCourseWare for instruction (including videos) and inspiration, especially the student image galleries that explore things like light, significant detail, and landscape poetics.

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