Ann Tyler Moses – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:58:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Ann Tyler Moses – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Stanford-developed algorithm allows thoughts to control cursor movement https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/30/thoughts-control-cursor-movement-with-new-stanford-developed-algorithm/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/11/30/thoughts-control-cursor-movement-with-new-stanford-developed-algorithm/#respond Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:50:31 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1073522 A silicon chip implanted into the brain can measure signals and pass them through an algorithm designed by Stanford researchers with more speed and accuracy than ever before to control objects outside the body.

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A silicon chip implanted into the brain can measure signals and pass them through an algorithm designed by Stanford researchers with more speed and accuracy than ever before to control objects outside the body.

For example, a brain-implanted rhesus monkey can control a computer cursor with its thoughts. The old algorithm system allowed a monkey to move the cursor to contact a colored ball target 10 times in 21 seconds. With ReFIT, the new, Stanford-developed mathematical algorithm, the monkey’s accuracy more than doubled to 21 targets in 21 seconds.

Electrical engineering, bioengineering and neurobiology professor Krishna Shenoy, research associate Vikash Gilja M.S. ’10 Ph.D. ’10 and bioengineering doctoral candidate Paul Nuyujukian M.D. ’10 M.S. ’11 Ph.D. ’15 developed the new algorithm, which has drastically increased the performance of a system designed to translate the brain’s neural firings into cursor movements.

The system’s eventual goal is the restoration of lost functions to disabled patients through what is known as neural prosthetics. The team’s findings were published in a Nov. 18 article in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

While work in the subject has been ongoing for decades at other universities and hospitals, the Stanford team’s algorithm is a major breakthrough.

ReFIT was developed by Gilja and enables the cursor to be moved with more control and to stop at its destination rather than jerking erratically.

Like previous studies, Gilja’s approach uses a Kalman filter algorithm to interpret the data from the miniscule array of probes implanted into the subject’s brain. A model derived straight from that data produces a path that sees the cursor eventually reach its goal, but not without detours along the way.

According to Gilja, the “noise” in our brains is principally to blame for these detours. During different attempts at the same task, neurons will react in different patterns as determined by the direction and intensity of thought. In a hundred trials of directing the cursor, our thoughts would send it along a hundred slightly different paths.

The new algorithm removes the position-contingent variants, cleaning up the Kalman filter’s estimates by making assumptions of the subject’s intention. Because the researchers know the intended direction of the cursor, they correct each registered point to aim in that direction.

This strategy, which Gilja described as a “nuts and bolts engineering approach,” was able to markedly increase the system’s performance.

He emphasized that an interdisciplinary influence was crucial.

“It’s a rare Stanford opportunity to sit between engineering and more basic science research,” Gilja said. “I got exposed to both.”

Stanford has joined Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital in an upcoming clinical trial of the system, called BrainGate2. The original BrainGate trial was published in 2006.

On a broader scientific level, the experiment is a key step in discovering more about movement and its neural basis.

“Neural prosthetics are a powerful tool to probe these neural dynamics that control movement, because they can act as a more direct proxy to the state of the brain than the arm,” Nuyujukian said.

By working in the field of neural prosthetics, the Stanford researchers can simultaneously examine the neurological basis of movement while pursuing their practical goals of restoring certain abilities to paralyzed patients.

“All of this is part of this huge enterprise in neuroscience that is blossoming everywhere,” Gilja said.

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How Guttentag writes for film https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/10/how-guttentag-writes-for-film/ https://stanforddaily.com/2012/02/10/how-guttentag-writes-for-film/#respond Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:05:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1057837 Two-time Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director Bill Guttentag spoke Thursday evening about his experience writing for film and television in discussion with Stanford English lecturer Hilton Obenzinger.

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Two-time Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director Bill Guttentag spoke Thursday evening about his experience writing for film and television in discussion with Stanford English lecturer Hilton Obenzinger.

 

The Hume Writing Center and Stanford Continuing Studies sponsored the event as an installment of their “How I Write” conversation series.

 

Guttentag discussed the difference between writing for the screen and the page. Guttentag, who published his first novel, Boulevard, in 2010, has worked in both mediums, knowing the demands and advantages that come with each.

How Guttentag writes for film
Award-winning writer, producer and director Bill Guttentag spoke to students Thursday evening, as part of the “How I Write” conversation series, sponsored by Hume Writing Center and Stanford Continuing Studies. (IAN GARCIA-DOTY/The Stanford Daily)

 

In a novel, Guttentag said, one can communicate the contents of a person’s thoughts with far more ease and elegance than through film.

 

“The thing about film is that you can manipulate time, which is really a gift,” Guttentag said.  “It’s the way they look at each other, how long they hold the look before they say the line of dialogue.”

 

Guttentag gave the audience a glimpse at the process by showing a page of a screenplay for his upcoming work Knife Fight. He then treated the audience to a brief clip from the film, which will be released later this year.

 

“Screenplays have to emphasize the external by nature,” Guttentag said.  “You must think, every step of the way, about what is an actable moment.”

 

The writer and filmmaker also stressed the recursive aspect of screenwriting, noting that every film is written three times: as a screenplay, as the film itself and then in the editing process. There are always aspects to fix and improve, he added.

 

Sometimes mistakes have proven valuable, Guttentag said, such as when he chose not to correct a historical flub in a line he wrote that was then delivered by actress Eva Mendes, or when he instructed his crew to intentionally let a microphone drop into the frame on a faux-documentary-style project — something his veteran producer amusedly told him he had certainly never seen before.

 

Guttentag also spoke extensively about the commercial aspect of filmmaking.

 

“Film is a business, in addition to an art form,” he said.  “It’s not called show show, it’s called show business — nor is it called business business, for that matter.”

 

Guttentag spoke of a conversation filmed for his recent work Nanking in which translators suddenly cease speaking and begin to cry — and said that the entire crew soon broke down into tears. He said his goal is to somehow capture moments like that and then communicate them to an audience in a theater.

 

“There’s a universality to it, and that’s what you’re looking for,” he said.

 

Perhaps the most memorable moment in the conversation was Guttentag’s recollection of a movie he had seen, which featured a talking monkey. At one particularly clunky line, he found himself thinking, “The monkey wouldn’t say that!”

 

The fact that he had skipped over the impossibility of a monkey speaking at all was, Guttentag said, a testament to the film’s power to immerse the viewer in a different world.

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Special fees affect student group spending decisions https://stanforddaily.com/2011/12/07/special-fees/ https://stanforddaily.com/2011/12/07/special-fees/#respond Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:04:46 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1053339 Last spring's special fees election results have resulted in budgeting changes for several student groups, including those whose petitions were not approved.

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Last spring’s special fees election resultshave resulted in budgeting changes for several student groups, including those whose petitions were not approved.

Special fees affect student group spending decisions
(SERENITY NGUYEN/The Stanford Daily)

 

Most student groups are funded by ASSU General Fees, collected from all students and appropriated by the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council. Special fees, decided by the student body in annual spring elections, give groups additional ability to impact the student body.

 

Alternative Spring Break (ASB) received $14.61 per student this year, a relatively high amount. The group’s Executive Director Sarah Hennessy ‘12 says ASB “wouldn’t exist” without special fees.

 

“We’re thinking about trying to expand the number of participants per trip, because the school and the student body have been so generous in giving us enough money to fund the program,” she said.

 

ASB also plans to use this year’s special fees to enact a mini-grant program for participants after their trips are finished, so as to have a greater impact on the student body at large.

 

“We want to bring this to the Stanford campus in a bigger way, because we have to limit our participation so much based on logistics,” Hennessy said.

 

Jaslyn Law ‘11, Co-Editor in Chief of the Leland Quarterly, said special fees have given the group a “lot more leeway” than last year, when the group did not secure special fees because of its own administrative mishap.

 

“It was really awful not to have them,” Law said.

 

The organization was forced to halve the number of issues it printed and spent all of its funds on printing costs. Though the group scraped by last year, their leadership noted that their $2.22 per student in special fees this year enables them to go beyond the bare minimum.

 

“We can do a lot more with our fees, like marketing and having more events like release parties that celebrate the contributors and the staff and increase our visibility on campus,” she said.

 

FLiCKS, on the other hand, did not receive special fees this year, because of its failure to secure a high enough percentage of the graduate student vote. According to Assistant Director Rex Kirshner ‘13, Flicks has had to deplete nearly all of the funds it kept in reserve and shelve some of the new projects it had hoped to implement.

 

“It has meant that we haven’t been able to do a lot of cool initiatives that we wanted to, like outdoor screenings or double features,” he said. “We’re surviving, but it’s less fun than it could be, and we’ve learned that we need to be much more careful with special fees.”

 

Flicks Financial Officer Paul Ferrell ‘13 said he regrets the loss of their fees and stressed the necessity of obtaining them for next year.

 

“[Flicks is] a huge bonus to the campus,” he said. “It’s been around forever, and there’s no way it can exist without special fees.”

 

Groups have also been affected by the fact that special fees can be retracted by students who choose to request refunds. According to ASSU Funding Coordinator Daniel Lynch ’12, the ASSU recently passed a bill making available to organizations the names of students who submit refunds in order to prevent abuse of the system.

 

“The waiver process is a very good idea in that it allows people to not have to pay for things that they don’t believe in,” Lynch said.

 

Since ASB receives a relatively large amount of special fees per student, it is one of the more commonly refunded groups, according to Hennessy. She said the group plans to use the new ASSU bill to determine whether students who have been accepted into an ASB trip have requested refunds.

 

“It’s not really fair if you turn around and want to participate in a trip and have the rest of the student body paying for your experience,” she said. “It’s a good way to keep students responsible in the way the student body and ASSU is using our money.”

 

Lynch also responded to student criticism after The Stanford Flipside‘s petition for special fees to purchase a segway was approved.

 

“The process was made how it is so that if the students expressed interest in getting that–which they did by petitioning and subsequently voting for it–it could happen,” he said.

 

Hennessy echoed these sentiments.

 

“I like the fact that if enough of the student body thinks it’s a good idea, and we can vote on it, then they get to do it, rather than the money just being divvied up by some algorithm to every group,” she said.

 

“It’s hard to come up with a perfect system,” Lynch said. “The way that it is enacted is to try to best represent what the students want.”

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