Balance problems? Step into the iShoe

MIT grad student's invention could one day prevent falls

Your grandmother might have little in common with an astronaut, but both could benefit from a new device an MIT graduate student is designing to test balancing ability.

The iShoe insole could help doctors detect balance problems before a catastrophic fall occurs, says Erez Lieberman, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology who developed the technology as an intern at NASA.

Falls among the elderly are common and can be deadly: In 2005, nearly 300,000 Americans suffered hip fractures after a fall, and an average of 24 percent of hip-fracture patients aged 50 and over die in the year following their fracture, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation.

Lieberman is now testing the iShoe technology in a small group of patients. The current model is equipped to diagnose balance problems, but future versions could help correct such problems, by providing sensory stimulation to the feet when the wearer is off-kilter.

"By doing that we can replace the sense and thus improve people's balance," Lieberman says.

Lieberman and other iShoe team members have applied for a patent on the technology, to be jointly held by MIT, Harvard and NASA. In April, the company won a $50,000 grant from the Lunar Ventures Competition to help with start-up costs.

Lieberman originally developed the technology to help NASA monitor balance problems in astronauts returning from space.

Zero gravity environments wreak havoc on the vestibular system, one of three body systems that control balance. (The others are vision and sensory receptors called proprioceptors, which tell you where your body parts are in relation to other body parts and the outside world.)

"The change in gravity really screws with their sense of balance. They're falling all over the place," says Lieberman, who is a Hertz Fellow and also receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Department of Defense.

The effect usually lasts about 10 days, but NASA tests astronauts' balance for 16 days after their return. Astronauts go into a phone-booth-like box, where they undergo a series of balance tests such as platform shifts and wall shifts.

While at NASA, Lieberman developed a new system for gathering data and an algorithm to analyze the data.

"We've developed the first algorithm that is really capable of not just looking at the pressure distribution of proprioceptors on the feet but also analyzing what that's saying," he says.

Lieberman soon realized that the technology could reach a wider audience than just astronauts. His own grandmother suffered a bad fall several years ago, and he theorized that a balance diagnostic could help doctors catch balance problems before such a fall occurs.

"You have a gradual progression of loss of balance, osteoporosis, and other factors that can lead to the fall," Lieberman says.

The iShoe insole would measure and analyze the pressure distribution of the patient's foot and report back to their doctor. The device could also be outfitted with an alarm that would alert family members when a fall has occurred.

Lieberman and his colleagues are now testing the device in about 60 people, hoping to generate data that will help them create a model to predict the risk of a fall.

Other members of the iShoe team are Katherine Forth, a former NASA postdoctoral associate; Ricardo Piedrahita, a graduate of University of California at San Diego; and Qian Yang, a Harvard undergraduate

High-tech cowboy calls the cattle home

Why did the farmer put a Walkman on his cow?

Because an MIT professor told him to.

In a research project aimed at helping cattle farmers corral their herds more efficiently, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the US Department of Agriculture has devised a way to remotely issue commands to cows.

The researchers are still experimenting with exactly what sound will best lead a cow home, but they've tested annoying horns, helicopters, and crooning cowboys.

The "Ear-A-Round" device, which looks like a solar-powered Walkman, allows scientists to track an animal's location and movements. It also keeps information about the cow's body orientation - how its head moves, for example - to understand how it travels individually and with the herd.

"First you have to know what the cow is naturally inclined to do, and then the system is more likely to work," said researcher Daniela Rus, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. "You learn what not to do and what the animals dislike and what goes against their nature."

Rus first got the idea when she went to visit a friend in Australia who owns 500,000 cattle over two ranches. The herds are so big, ranchers have to corral the cows by helicopter to move them to better grazing lands or bring them home. Her friend complained that it was incredibly expensive and time consuming to repair and maintain fences on the ranches, and hard to keep track of the animals. He asked if Rus, a robotics expert, could help.

In August, the researchers will conduct a field test in the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range in Las Cruces, N.M., using cows that USDA scientist Dean M. Anderson has been training.

"Come on in, girls," he croons in their ears during the training. When they start moving, he stops talking. If they pause for three or four seconds, his voice starts up again. The challenge is whether they can be gathered just by the sound of his voice.

"Animals have very astute hearing," he said. "I had a cat that when you opened a can of pop, it didn't show up, but when you opened up a can of cat food, it was right there."

In an earlier test, the cows did

move when sounds were transmitted into their ears, but a guy in an all-terrain vehicle had to steer them in the right direction.

Although they expect most cows will respond to the sounds, an electric shock can be administered - like a dog's electric fence - if they don't act. Then they learn that they'd better respond to that first command, Rus said.

"The cows do have leaders, so if you instruct the leaders what to do, the herd will follow," said Rus.

Dreamworks approaches Eros for stake sale

Hollywood celebrity director Steven Spielberg, who is reportedly in talks for a two-billion-dollar deal with Indian billionaire Anil Ambani, has also approached a UK-listed bollywood distribution and production firm for a possible stake sale.

In an interview to The Times newspaper published today, Chief executive of Eros International Kishore Lulla revealed that he was recently approached by a banker to know whether he would consider buying a stake in Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio.

"Lulla says there are no plans for acquisitions, despite revealing that a banker recently asked if he would consider buying a stake in Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio, currently the subject of talks with Indian billionaire Anil Ambani's Reliance Group," the newspaper said in an article published in its online edition.

Noting that the plans are for organic growth, the daily said that while Lulla may want to build a studio on the Hollywood model, he is worried about making the investment.
"Getting too involved with Hollywood is risky at the moment," he was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Lulla has a family fortune worth 206 million pounds.

In 2007, Lulla joined hands with Sony Pictures to co-produce films and the pair have held meetings with artists and writers in an effort to a new superhero.

"They are planning to create a Spider-Man-type character in Hindi and have hired Charles Darby and a top visual effects team. Darby is the renowned matte artist who has worked on dozens of films from Waterworld to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," The Times said.

MIT reports finer lines for microchips

***Advance could lead to next-generation computer chips, solar cells, more***

MIT researchers have achieved a significant advance in nanoscale lithographic technology, used in the manufacture of computer chips and other electronic devices, to make finer patterns of lines over larger areas than have been possible with other methods.

Their new technique could pave the way for next-generation computer memory and integrated-circuit chips, as well as advanced solar cells and other devices.

The team has created lines about 25 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide separated by 25 nm spaces. For comparison, the most advanced commercially available computer chips today have a minimum feature size of 65 nm. Intel recently announced that it will start manufacturing at the 32 nm minimum line-width scale in 2009, and the industry roadmap calls for 25 nm features in the 2013-2015 time frame.

The MIT technique could also be economically attractive because it works without the chemically amplified resists, immersion lithography techniques and expensive lithography tools that are widely considered essential to work at this scale with optical lithography. Periodic patterns at the nanoscale, while having many important scientific and commercial applications, are notoriously difficult to produce with low cost and high yield. The new method could make possible the commercialization of many new nanotechnology inventions that have languished in laboratories due to the lack of a viable manufacturing method.

The MIT team includes Mark Schattenburg and Ralf Heilmann of the MIT Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research and graduate students Chih-Hao Chang and Yong Zhao of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Their results have been accepted for publication in the journal Optics Letters and were recently presented at the 52nd International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication in Portland, Ore.

Schattenburg and colleagues used a technique known as interference lithography (IL) to generate the patterns, but they did so using a tool called the nanoruler--built by MIT graduate students--that is designed to perform a particularly high precision variant of IL called scanning-beam interference lithography, or SBIL. This recently developed technique uses 100 MHz sound waves, controlled by custom high-speed electronics, to diffract and frequency-shift the laser light, resulting in rapid patterning of large areas with unprecedented control over feature geometry.

While IL has been around for a long time, the SBIL technique has enabled, for the first time, the precise and repeatable pattern registration and overlay over large areas, thanks to a new high-precision phase detection algorithm developed by Zhao and a novel image reversal process developed by Chang.

According to Schattenburg, "What we're finding is that control of the lithographic imaging process is no longer the limiting step. Material issues such as line sidewall roughness are now a major barrier to still-finer length scales. However, there are several new technologies on the horizon that have the potential for alleviating these problems. These results demonstrate that there's still a lot of room left for scale shrinkage in optical lithography. We don't see any insurmountable roadblocks just yet."

The MIT team performed the research in the Space Nanotechnology Laboratory of the MIT Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research, with financial support from NASA and NSF.