Monday, November 21st, 2016

Time	Event
12:00a	Lauren Uhr: a brain researcher motivated by personal experience Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Lauren Uhr came to MIT for the research. Her first introduction to the Institute came through a research project she worked on in her hometown with John Chen ’84, a thoracic surgeon who studied chemical engineering and biology while at MIT. “Dr. Chen told me about his great experience at MIT and in Boston and encouraged me to apply,” Uhr says. After visiting during the Campus Preview Weekend her senior year of high school, she was convinced. “When I visited, I just saw that everyone was so passionate about what they were doing, and there was such a wide range of interests,” she says. “I also wanted to come to the East Coast for the seasons, and for a change of pace and lifestyle — I sort of regret the season part, especially when rowing on the Charles River in November,” she says, laughing. Throughout her time at MIT, Uhr, now a senior, has pursued brain and cognitive research while working with patients in hospitals and study settings, and fueling her curiosity about global health and anthropology. “I am really interested in the way that culture mediates health and disease, and how one views their own body and own health,” she says. Perhaps not surprisingly, Uhr’s research interests have also been informed by her own life experiences. Motivated research Uhr began at MIT as a biology major, but after taking an introductory psychology course she switched to brain and cognitive sciences. Her personal experience with dyslexia has been a strong source of motivation in her studies. “I was really interested in the brain ever since I was diagnosed with dyslexia,” she says. “I was frustrated that no one really knew, and no one could explain clearly, what was happening in my brain and how to fix it. I think that piqued my curiosity in the brain, and that’s why I decided to major in brain and cognitive sciences. It also pushed me to learn more about reading difficulties through research.” Currently, Uhr is working on the READ Study, a collaboration between the laboratory of John Gabrieli at MIT and the laboratory of Nadine Gaab at Boston Children’s Hospital. The study seeks to establish a link between brain differences in kindergarten and reading difficulties in second grade, through MRI imaging and neurocognitive testing. Dyslexia is usually diagnosed in third grade or later, after students have already experienced difficulty or failed to read. “We are seeing if we can intervene and catch it at an earlier stage when interventions are more effective,” Uhr says. The study has partnered with 19 schools in the Boston area and follows students from kindergarten through second grade. Uhr has helped conduct MRI scans and is working on scoring neurocognitive tests and compiling the data. During these tests, students are asked to circle an inverted letter or number in a list, for example, or to match the spelling of common words such as “T-I-E” or “T-Y-E” with a picture of a necktie. So far, the MRI images have shown a correlation between poor phonological awareness in kindergartners and the size of a brain structure known as the arcuate fasciculus, which connects two language-processing centers. Whether the size of the structure is a result of the environment or of genetics is still unclear, but this brain region nonetheless provides a target for future research and possible intervention. Uhr is also conducting a side project of her own to investigate the effects of early childhood environment — including factors such as socioeconomic status, hours spent reading to a child, and the number of books in a household — on the thickness of the brain’s cortex and children’s later reading development. “What interventions are the most effective, and to whom?” asks Uhr. “This is personally important to me because I have dyslexia. It’s interesting — I have taken the tests that the study participants have, and now I’m on the other side of it.” Uhr, who was diagnosed in middle school, recalls struggling to keep up with reading and academic work, and learning ways to compensate with the support of her parents and teachers. Gaining a global perspective During the Independent Activities Program (IAP) last year, Uhr travelled to Pavia, Italy, with the MISTI Global Teaching Lab. She took an interactive approach to teaching chemistry and biology to high school students. “It was a great experience to share MIT’s approach to STEM education — hands on, experimental — with these students who normally receive a lecture-style education,” says Uhr. She has continued to teach, and is currently a teaching assistant for 9.20 (Animal Behavior). Last spring, Uhr studied abroad at the Institute for Global Health at University College London. She originally discovered global health through her minor in anthropology. Working with MIT Global Education and Career Development, she crafted a study-abroad semester that would allow her to experience the universal health care system of the U.K. firsthand. While in London, Uhr shadowed an infectious disease physician at St. Thomas Hospital. “That was a great experience because we treated everyone from a wealthy British woman to a homeless man with no address or insurance. It was really interesting to see that comprehensive access to medical care, but also at the same time I saw a lot of medical students protesting on the street about low wages and long hours. I really saw the pluses and minuses of the British National Health Service,” Uhr says. Committed to service, research, and medicine At MIT, Uhr has shadowed Emery Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering, who studies the effects of anesthesia on the brain through electroencephalography. She also volunteers in the chemotherapy infusion unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, serving lunches to patients. She works with Partners for Youth with Disabilities and mentors a 12-year-old girl with multiple neurocognitive disabilities. Uhr was also a mentor at the Massachusetts Youth Leadership Forum, a three-day conference for youth with disabilities to gain leadership and advocacy skills that would aid them in their future endeavors. At MIT, Uhr is an officer with MIT Project Connect, an organization that works with youth with disabilities in the community. Working with Boston University and Harvard University, the group hosts a Friday Night Club for children and young adults with disabilities at each of the college campuses — an evening of snacks, activities, and interacting with college students. Uhr is applying to enter medical school in the next year and wants to pursue a specialty related to the brain: either anesthesiology or neurology. But she remains fascinated by the relationship between research and medical care. “I find it interesting how research informs medical practice, and then there are always more uncertainties that come with advancements. That fuels a continual cycle of feedback between research and medical care, and I think that’s what really excites me, especially with the brain, because there are so many unknowns,” says Uhr. “I enjoy teaching and hope to have a career in an academic hospital where I can treat patients, conduct research, and teach aspiring doctors.” (Comment on this)
3:40p	Creating new treatments for amblyopia The visual system can be “rebooted,” offering hope for restoring sight to the visually impaired, according to research at MIT. Amblyopia, also called “lazy eye,” is the most common form of visual disability in children. Human vision is poor at birth, but improves steadily during infancy and childhood as connections between eye and brain mature. But this maturation can go awry when inputs from the two eyes are out of balance; as a result of a cataract in one eye, for example, or a misalignment of the two eyes. When this happens, the connections from one eye fail to form correctly, and vision through that eye is impaired. Even if surgery is carried out to correct the underlying cause, the changes to the brain’s visual system persist. To correct the disorder, ophthalmologists typically apply a patch or a drug called atropine to the stronger eye, forcing the child to use their weaker eye. However, the effectiveness of this procedure is limited by poor compliance and variable outcomes. Additionally, if the amblyopia is severe, this treatment is ineffective if initiated after age 10. This presents a particular problem in developing countries, where there is often little or no early years health screening. Now, in a paper to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers in the Bear Lab at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Canada, describe a novel technique to restore visual acuity in animals with amblyopia, by temporarily inactivating their retinas using an anesthetic. The approach is analogous to restoring proper function to a computer or smartphone by turning it off and letting it “reboot.” The new results show that temporarily turning off input from the eyes allows the brain to reboot, and enables the lazy eye to come back “online.” Once the anesthetic had worn off, the researchers found that visual acuity was restored to the previously deprived eye, without any penalty to the stronger eye. When they subsequently monitored the animals into adulthood, they found that this recovery was permanent, according to lead author Ming-fai Fong, working in the laboratory of Professor Mark Bear at the Picower Institute. “[The treatment] really does seem to be rebooting the visual system to start developing in a way that pays attention to information through that previously deprived eye,” Fong says. In order to determine whether the treatment is suitable for clinical use in humans, the researchers now plan to investigate whether it can be effective in older subjects than conventional eye patches. They also plan to investigate how long the period of retinal inactivation must be to promote recovery. “We have used a minimum of two days (in the experiments), but if we could shorten that period of inactivation to around six hours, it would open the door to an array of anesthetics that are already used in humans,” Fong says. Classically, rehabilitation of deprivation amblyopia due to unilateral dense congenital cataract remains one of the most challenging problems in pediatric ophthalmology, according to Eileen E. Birch, a professor of opthalmology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.  "Failure to detect and remove the cataract by six weeks of age or any failure to achieve consistent optical correction and patching therapy throughout early childhood, even if the failure is temporary, leads to permanent monocular visual impairment," Birch says. In their tour-de-force paper, the researchers have shown us a glimpse of future clinical treatments that may unlock the visual cortex of children, enhance plasticity, and restore vision, she adds.   The exciting study is one of very few so far that offers hope of a novel treatment for amblyopia, and one that might work at ages where conventional treatment is no longer effective, says Frank Sengpiel, a professor of neuroscience at Cardiff University in the U.K. The approach builds on previous research that demonstrated that putting animals in the dark for 10 days triggered recovery from monocular deprivation, he says. “However, the main problem with this potential treatment is that complete darkness is required for quite a long period of time, which is not easy to achieve in human patients,” Sengpiel says. (Comment on this)
5:00p	MIT Lincoln Laboratory garners six 2016 R&D 100 Awards On Nov. 3 at the honors banquet of the 2016 R&D 100 Conference, MIT Lincoln Laboratory accepted awards for six technologies developed either solely by laboratory researchers or collaboratively with scientists from partner organizations. Presented annually since 1962, the R&D 100 Awards recognize the 100 technology products judged by a panel of R&D Magazine editors and outside experts to be the most significant new developments of the year. "This was a very strong year for research and development across various markets, led by many outstanding technologies that broadened the scope of innovation," said R&D Magazine editor Anna Spiewak. "The R&D 100 Awards highlight MIT Lincoln Laboratory's strong technology development and transition role. Having so many projects recognized over the years is a great credit to everyone involved," said Eric Evans, director of Lincoln Laboratory. Three of Lincoln Laboratory's 2016 award-winning technologies address challenges in air traffic safety: Airborne Collision Avoidance System for Unmanned Aircraft, a system that processes multisensor data to allow unpiloted aircraft to detect and track nearby aircraft and to enable ground operators to direct safe separation between unpiloted vehicles and other air traffic; Offshore Precipitation Capability, a system that provides weather information for air traffic controllers by generating "radar-like" depictions of storms in offshore regions that are outside radar coverage; and Small Airport Surveillance Sensor, a low-cost secondary surveillance system that provides airport tower controllers with situational awareness of aircraft on the airport surface and in nearby airspace. Two winners offer innovative technology for improving health care: EnteroPhone, a wireless, ingestible device that monitors heart and breathing rates by listening to the body's sounds and that senses core temperature, all from within the gastrointestinal tract; and Laserscope, a tool set that offers surgical navigation and precise laser targeting within the spinal cavity to enable treatment of back pain with an outpatient procedure instead of with open back surgery. The sixth awardee expands the functionality and efficiency of current magnetometers: Broadband Magnetometry and Temperature Sensing with a Light-Trapping Diamond Waveguide, an ultrasensitive magnetic-field detector and temperature sensor that is 1,000 times more energy-efficient than previous diamond-based magnetometers. All six winners employ innovative solutions to difficult problems, may yield significant impacts on current practices, or will advance the state of the art in their fields. Making the skies safe for unpiloted aircraft The Airborne Collision Avoidance System for Unmanned Aircraft (ACAS Xu) is an automated collision avoidance tool for unpiloted aerial systems. The system relies on significant advances in dynamic programming, automated tuning, and parallel computing to enable unpiloted aircraft to detect and track nearby aircraft. Using the detection and tracking information, ACAS Xu provides ground operators or the vehicle’s automation with safety alerts that help them maintain separation and prevent midair collisions between unpiloted air vehicles and between piloted and unpiloted aircraft. The system is designed to coordinate maneuvers and interoperate with collision avoidance systems on all other piloted and unpiloted aircraft. ACAS Xu receives sensor measurements from onboard surveillance systems and uses advanced tracking algorithms to estimate the relative position and velocity of nearby aircraft. These estimates are used in the threat logic to provide guidance, if necessary, to avoid a potential midair collision. ACAS Xu's modular architecture has two main components: a surveillance and tracking module (STM) and a threat resolution module (TRM). The STM takes in surveillance information (position, velocity, and altitude) from multiple sources — for example, GPS, transponders, and radar systems — to detect and track nearby aircraft. Then, the STM correlates the data from each surveillance source and passes the best-quality information to the TRM. The TRM's numeric lookup table recommends to both the unpiloted system and ground operators the optimal action, given the relative position and velocity of nearby aircraft. Typically, no action is necessary, but if nearby aircraft pose a collision risk, the TRM selects and relays the optimal advisory, suggesting a climb, descent, or turn to maintain safe separation.  "This system provides an effective solution to the demand for expanded operation of unmanned aircraft in civil airspace," said Wes Olson, a principal investigator on the ACAS Xu development team. "ACAS Xu has been demonstrated to be over 40 percent safer than the existing transponder-based collision avoidance system, and it can also detect and avoid aircraft not equipped with transponders. No other current or proposed system provides this capability," he added. ACAS Xu was developed by a team that included representatives from Lincoln Laboratory, the Federal Aviation Administration, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Stanford University, and the MITRE Corporation. Expanding the picture of offshore weather The Offshore Precipitation Capability (OPC), developed by the laboratory in conjunction with the Federal Aviation Administration, is a system that supplies air traffic controllers with weather information that enables them to safely reroute aircraft around storms that may cause hail, turbulence, icing, and other hazardous conditions. The OPC generates "radar-like" depictions of precipitation intensity and storm height in offshore regions where weather radar coverage is incomplete or unavailable. A supervised machine learning methodology applies advanced analytics and machine learning to fuse multiple heterogeneous datasets and create the radar-like proxy that displays weather information for shoreline areas. OPC creates its weather "picture" by merging information from various available non-radar data sources: lightning detections, information from geostationary satellites, and outputs from numerical weather prediction models. Lightning is a strong indicator of convective weather — that is, weather capable of generating the powerful updrafts that can cause severe turbulence and other safety hazards like severe hail. Geostationary satellites positioned around the globe provide visible and infrared imagery of much of the Earth on a fairly regular basis. The numerical weather prediction models simulate many meteorological measurements, including environmental temperature, pressure, and humidity, and other relevant parameters, such as radar reflectivity, rain rate, and convective cloud-top height. Results from the OPC data fusion are blended with outputs from existing radar-based systems to create seamless mosaics of weather systems that extend into offshore and oceanic regions. OPC applies a motion-tracking algorithm to estimate storm motion so that the features obtained from satellite imagery and numerical models can be spatially shifted to keep the mosaics up to date. "By including high-resolution inputs, such as visible satellite imagery and lightning density, OPC is able to resolve some finer-resolution storm characteristics that are missed by systems that rely only on infrared satellite or lightning data," said Mark Veillette, a lead researcher on the development team. "The OPC framework provides users with weather analyses that are more accurate than those than those conducted with data from single-source systems." Affordable radar surveillance for small airports The Small Airport Surveillance Sensor (SASS) is an inexpensive surveillance system that provides airport tower controllers with situational awareness of aircraft on the airport surface and in nearby airspace under all visibility conditions, including nighttime and inclement weather. The SASS system consists of a master unit and two sensor units. The sensor units are located near the ends of the longest runway, and the master unit is located in the airport control tower. The sensor units listen for spontaneous replies from nearby aircraft equipped with Mode S beacon transponders. At least one of the sensors can also issue interrogations to aircraft with legacy transponders that do not spontaneously generate replies. Each sensor uses a novel eight-element phased array antenna to make high-accuracy azimuth measurements of the replies and uses GPS to precisely record the time of arrival of the replies. The replies from the nearby aircraft pass to the master unit that computes the geographic location of surface and airborne targets, such as vehicles and aircraft. The target locations are passed to a fusion tracker that combines geographic location data with external information to produce tracks (smoothed geolocations indicating a predicted path of movement). Tracks can also be input to safety logic, providing visual and audible alarms to tower controllers and pilots. Because only two sensors are needed on the airport surface, the purchase, installation, and maintenance costs of the system are affordable for small airports, which typically that lack a robust radar surveillance capability but instead rely on tower controllers to visually scan the airport surface and immediate airspace for situational awareness. "SASS will improve safety and efficiency at hundreds of small towered airports across the country," said Steven Campbell, technical lead of the Lincoln Laboratory team that developed SASS. Listening to the body's vital signs EnteroPhone is a tiny, wireless, ingestible device developed by Lincoln Laboratory and MIT researchers. It monitors heart and breathing rates by listening to the body's sounds, and it senses core temperature, all from within the gastrointestinal tract. EnteroPhone's ability to reliably monitor those key vital signs gives physicians, physical therapists, and athletic trainers a tool that obviates the need for the superficial attachment of obtrusive sensors or the surgical implantation of internal sensors. Body-worn devices may aggravate injuries or cause skin irritation, for example, in burn victims, or hinder athletic performance by being uncomfortable during vigorous activity. Furthermore, no wearable sensor can collect core body temperature, a critical physiological parameter; skin temperature as collected by current external devices is a poor predictor of core temperature, particularly if a person is running a fever or engaging in physical activity. Medical devices that remain in the body until surgically removed can prevent physicians from employing certain diagnostic procedures, such as MRI; this limitation encourages device transience, which EnteroPhone offers. Other current physiological sensors can only produce one measurement at a time and often do not measure vital signs per se. EnteroPhone — a capsule about the size of a multivitamin pill — overcomes these limitations by using a single piezoelectric hydrophone assembly to listen to heart and lung sounds to determine respiratory and heart rate. Also on board is a thermistor to measure true body core temperature, an accelerometer to measure activity, and a barometer to measure gastrointestinal (GI) pressure for a medical testing technique called manometry (currently used to evaluate how well smooth muscle along the GI tract is working). These measurements are then transmitted wirelessly from inside the body to a processor that separates background noise from the GI tract before converting the feedback to reliable, useful information about a patient's heart and breathing rates. EnteroPhone has a transmission range of approximately 20 feet. "EnteroPhone has the capability to significantly aid telemedicine; optimize performance monitoring and safety of athletes, military service members, and first-responders; and provide an easy method for rapid clinical evaluation and triage," said Albert Swiston, the principal researcher on the EnteroPhone project. Revolutionizing back surgery Under development by staff at Lincoln Laboratory in collaboration with a neurosurgeon from the Massachusetts General Hospital, Laserscope will enable a surgeon to perform very precise endoscopic surgery within the spinal canal via a naturally existing access port near the base of the sacrum. This tool is being developed to treat lumbar spinal stenosis, which is a leading cause of back and leg pain and is due to the narrowing of the spinal canal from normal aging, severe trauma, or repeated spinal trauma. With Laserscope, a surgeon will be able to decompress the spinal canal in a minimally invasive outpatient procedure, providing an alternative to open back surgery. Laserscope will enable minimally invasive access to the spinal canal, the ability to visually identify the compressive tissue, and the laser energy necessary to remove this compressive tissue. The curved 3-mm diameter Laserscope conforms to the shape of the spinal canal, allowing the surgeon to smoothly ascend the spinal canal and thereby maneuver to the compressive tissue. The device incorporates a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor with advanced image processing to deliver a high-fidelity video visualization of the tissue to be removed. Laserscope is also designed with "petals" that, when expanded within the canal, allow the surgeon an open, clear view of the target area. Using a system of concentric nitinol tubes, Laserscope will permit the surgeon to precisely steer the laser fiber anywhere within the CMOS sensor's field of view, allowing for targeted ablation of compressive tissue with minimal damage to surrounding tissue. "For the half-million Americans who suffer from lumbar stenosis, Laserscope will enable an approach that significantly reduces surgical costs, hospital stays, and painful rehabilitation," said Matt Johnson, principal investigator on Laserscope's development. Enabling ultrasensitive magnetic-field detection Broadband Magnetometry and Temperature Sensing with a Light-Trapping Diamond Waveguide, developed by scientists from Lincoln Laboratory and MIT, can measure small changes in magnetic field that permeate the universe. From permanent dipole moments of metal objects, to currents flowing in biological organs such as the brain or heart, or even to natural phenomena, such as solar flares or ocean tides, the ubiquity of the magnetic field gives details about the object itself. To sense these subtle changes in magnetic fields, this sensor leverages an ensemble of quantum systems, called nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers, composed of a nitrogen atom paired with a missing atom in an otherwise pure carbon lattice of diamond. Each NV center has a magnetic moment whose interaction with local magnetic fields can be quantified and tied to physical constants. The minimum field detectable by the NV ensemble is enhanced by addressing a large number of NV centers, measuring the external magnetic field via probing the NV with green laser excitation and microwave radiation. The light-trapping diamond waveguide is formed by adding a prism facet to the diamond for laser excitation. Capitalizing on the high index of refraction of diamond, total internal reflection keeps light contained inside the diamond much like a multimode optical fiber. The trapped laser excitation addresses a large ensemble of NV centers, thereby enabling 1,000 times the energy efficiency in excitation and higher sensitivity in measurement.    "Our sensor has demonstrated ultrasensitive detection of magnetic fields, and it brings quantum stability to vector magnetometry. A diamond chip much smaller than a thumbnail can be engineered with trillions of nitrogen vacancies, each capable of performing its own magnetic-field measurement with diamond vector axes and quantum stability. This new class of magnetometer could lead to miniaturized devices for medical and materials imaging, contraband detection, and the study of Earth's magnetic field," said Danielle Braje, lead scientist on this research effort. Lincoln Laboratory's R&D 100 history Since 2010, Lincoln Laboratory has received 26 R&D 100 Awards, including two R&D 100 Editor's Choice Awards, which are given to the top three technologies from among the year's 100 selected by R&D Magazine. In addition, Lincoln Laboratory received two earlier R&D 100 Awards: one in 1998 jointly with Cyra Technologies and the Los Alamos National Laboratory for a three-dimensional laser mapping and imaging system; the other in 1995 for a technology that determines a plane's position by using GPS. (Comment on this)

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