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One of humankinds oldest fantasies is being able to control the external world by
thought. That fantasy is now moving toward reality. In St. Louis, where a teenaged
epilepsy patient had an electronic interface placed in his skull to monitor seizures,researchers found that the boy could use the interface to play the video game SpaceInvaders just by thinking about the moves he wanted to make. In a laboratory at the
University of Pittsburgh, a similarly wired monkey moved a robotic arm to reach for food
and feed itself, just by thinking about it.
The research eld is called BCI (for brain-computer interfaces) and one can easily
think of practical uses. Most obviously, people with spinal cord injuries or disabling dis-
eases could someday be tted with systems that give them vastly more capability and
freedom. For many such people, says Carnegie Mellon Professor Jeyanandh Paramesh,
the area of the brain that controls the movement of limbs is still working the brain
is able to say okay, move this hand but the link is broken. The general aim of the
research is to replace that broken pathway.
Paramesh, of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is one of a dozen CIT faculty
afliated with Carnegie Mellons new Center for Implantable Medical Microsystems
(CIMM). The center is already perhaps the largest of its kind at a university without amedical school. CIMM faculty collaborate with medical researchers across Pittsburgh
at Pitt, at West Penn and Allegheny General hospitals and with other researchers at
Carnegie Mellon (for instance, the universitys Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition
is world-renowned in cognitive science).
A key focus area at CIMM is developing the hardware and software needed to
build next-generation brain-computer interfaces and make them more useful. This
research is urgently needed, according to ECE Professor Gary Fedder, who is director of
both CIMM and its parent entity ICES, the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems.
A lot of good work is being done in understanding how the brain and body operate,
Fedder says. Now there have to be more people doing the engineered systems part of
the work, to complement that.
Fedder can draw from top-ight talent and hes been recruiting as well. The stories
of two faculty members, one new and one already on board, illustrate the scope of the
engineering challenges.
Gttig Ito (ad Out o) O HadBrains are much more complex than computers but they are electrical, with specic
neurons ring for specic tasks and neurons for motor activity are in the outer layer,
the cortex. Direct interaction between brains and computer-based machines is thus
possible by capturing and processing the relevant signals. But to do this one must make
sense of the morass of activity generated by a brain, guring out which signals mean
what. That is where Byron Yu comes in.
Yu has joined the ECE faculty after postdoctoral research at Stanford. He explains
that most current studies of brain activity, in both human and animal subjects, are done
by recording from one neuron at a time, using a single electrode in the cortex. You
THInk Of THe
POssIbIlITIesMedical micro-implants
could work wonders.IMM, a new research center,tackles the engineering work.
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can learn some things that way, he goes on. Say you have the subject reach to the
right twenty times, then to the left twenty times. Just by looking at one neuron at a
time you can get the equivalent of yes-no answers: right or left?
In recent years, says Yu, experimenters have begun to use multi-electrode arrays
to monitor tens to hundreds of neurons simultaneously. Now they can look for pat-
terns of neural activity that drive more complex tasks like grasping and manipulating
objects. But the signal-to-noise quality is not as good with the arrays, he notes. And
now we are collecting humongous data sets every day that can be leveraged for fur-
thering our understanding of the brain and ultimately helping human patients. We could
be doing much more with the data than we are; we dont have the mathematical tools
that we had for studying one neuron at a time.
Yus specialty is developing and applying mathematical algorithms for studying
large-scale neural activity. As for why he has come to Carnegie Mellon, he says, This
work is interdisciplinary. It involves neuroscience, signal processing, statistics, machine
learning and other elds. I dont know of any place that has as many experts in each.Brain-computer work will require new hardware, too. Typical electrode arrays have
tiny needles that penetrate into the cortex. Though not directly harmful, they are inva-
sive, and eventually the brain forms scar tissue around them so the signals die out,
says Jeyanandh Paramesh. Thats okay for short-term experiments but not for long-
term therapeutic use. When you put something into a persons skull you want to leave it
there and know its functioning.
Paramesh is working with scientists at Pitt who have a planar array that would
go under the skull, but sit on the surface of the brain. He is developing the hardware
to go with it. The challenges are many, he says, because for long-term use the whole
implanted unit has to run wirelessly: You dont want wires sticking through your head.
Power is one problem, since onboard batteries would run down. So the implant will use
a method called resonant inductive coupling. On the outside of the patients head, a
tiny power unit would carry the primary coil of a micro-transformer. The secondary coil
(which picks up induced voltage from the primary) would reside on the implant.Then comes transmitting the neural signals gathered by the electrodes. Short-
range wireless transmission may seem no big deal. But here again the amount of signal
data is huge, and as Paramesh notes, you cant simply pump it all out to be processed
externally. It would take too much bandwidth. It would consume too much power and
create heat; the temperature rise would damage brain tissue. Circuitry is needed to
compress and condition data before sending, Paramesh says. He has now designed
a system that can sample and process data from any four of the arrays 32 electrodes
at once. Hes trying to push that limit while balancing a host of further design problems,
from keeping the overall form-factor tight to dealing with fabrication issues.
Work of this type is incredibly complex. It will tax many skills, such as Carnegie
Mellons well-known strengths in MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems, the manu-
facture of innitesimal on-chip components) and yet, the work is moving forward.
What li AhadGary Fedder says that all biomedical engineering at CIMM has three goals: Make
things small. Make them near-zero-invasive. And focus on modular engineering so we
have pieces we can re-use and dont have to build a custom solution for every medical
need.
Looking ahead he sees myriad benets owing from CIMMs research. Some of
the brain-computer work, for instance, could also be applied for inputting signals to the
brain: to suppress tremors and seizures in people with neural disorders to improve the
now-primitive retinal implant systems for giving sight to the blind.
Or someday, maybe I could just think about this story and a computer would
write it, Fedder smiles. But these things are far down the road. We are in seed stage,
and were building.
L, L-TIMN BIBL
mong the coolest items in development at
IMM is a temperature sensor the size of
a grain of uncooked rice. Its for use with
crosurger, the injection of a super-cold
uid such as liquid nitrogen to kill tumors or
unwanted tissue.
Prostate cancer is often treated b crosur-
ger. It has been successful, but there can
be ver bad outcomes if ou freeze more
tissue than ou wanted, or freeze the wrong
tissue. educing that risk is the goal, sas
IMM irector ar Fedder, a co-PI on the
project. urrentl, surgeons insert croprobe
needles and appl the coolant with the aid of
ultrasound imaging. What could help, Fedder
sas, is a sstem for more precise feedback
on the spread of the freeze front.
Mech Professor yoed abin, an expert in
croengineering, came up with the idea
of the mini-sensors. Twent or so would
be implanted in and around the prostate
before surger. The would then sense and
wirelessl transmit the temperatures of
nearb tissue, to help assure that tumors are
eliminated while vital functions are not.
fter surger the sensors would biodegrade,
leaving just harmless traces of micro-electronic components. In fact, research on
biodegradable implants is a eld of its own
at IMM. The work here is led b Lee Weiss
and Phil ampbell, both of Biomedical ngi-
neering and omputer Science; one applica-
tion there pursuing is an implant to induce
bone regeneration after severe injuries.
Meanwhile, research scientist lan
osenbloom is looking into other tpes of
micro-sensing. If ou are a patient in a
critical care unit, some of our vital signs,
such as heart rate, can and will be monitored
constantl. But others can onl be checkedb drawing periodic samples notabl
glucose level in the blood, which must be in
the normal range to avoid glcemic shock.
So osenbloom is working on a real-time
sensing device (technicall, a microdial-
sis device) that can be inserted into the
bloodstream on a needlepoint. The ultimate
vision is having such sensors implanted
long term in outpatients, to monitor not onl
blood sugar but the immune agents called
ctokines. Which might pa big dividends:
ctokine levels can be earl markers of
cancer.
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There is a growing consensus that the weak-
est link in computer and Internet security is not
vulnerable software, but user behavior. Every year,
according to various surveys, surprising numbers
of users still fall for phishing scams. Others down-
load things they shouldnt or disregard the most
basic good practices, often wreaking havoc across their employers networks.
Where Lorrie Cranor differs from many experts is in refusing to believe that user
lapses are inevitable by-products of the ignorance of the masses. Most security
breaches can be attributed to human error, she says, then quickly adds the punch line:
which means they come from the failure of systems designers to meet human needs
and accommodate human capacities and limitations.
Cranor is one of the founders of an emerging research eld called usable privacy
and security. At Carnegie Mellon where she holds cross-appointments in Computer
science and Engineering and Public Policy she directs one of the few comprehensiveresearch centers in the eld, CUPS: the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory.
Now she and her colleagues are building the worlds rst usable privacy and security
Ph.D. program.
The CUPS Doctoral Training Program is being launched with a ve-year, $3 million
grant from the National Science Foundation. A charter class of six students enrolled in
the fall of 09 and the program will take about 10 more each year. To grasp what stu-
dents learn and do in this little-known eld, lets join Lorrie Cranor for a whirlwind intro.
Ua Priva ad surit 101Privacy and security are related but distinct issues. Clearly a website or computer must
be secure (safe from malicious hackers) in order to give you privacy (control over what
others can learn about you). On the other hand, Cranor points out, a site that you visit
may have good security yet offer little privacy. The sites owners might be selling cus-
tomer data to telemarketers, for instance.Research has shown that most users want privacy and security but arent sure
how to get either. The goal of usability work, in a nutshell, is to maximize their chances.
Cranor says there are three main strategies for doing so, one being to take obvious
DOnT blAMeTHe UseRs
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A Ph.D. STUDENT STAKES OUT THE HOME FRONT
In the newly launched Ph.D. program or usable privacy
and security, Michelle Mazurek is the Home Storage
Student. She is working with partners including her
aculty advisors, ECE proessors Lujo Bauer and Greg
Ganger, on new systems or managing digital storagein households.
That is a growing problem. As Mazurek notes, many o
us have text and multimedia fles scattered across a
multitude o devices at home: desktop PCs and laptops, video
and music players and more. The project assumes that all de-
vices can be wirelessly linked, and one nity eature, Mazurek
says, is a fle-tagging system or seeing that all fles go where
theyre supposed to be, regardless o where theyre created.
For instance, you can speciy that all my work fles go on the
laptop in addition to the desktop.
In a distributed environment o this type, privacy and security
concerns loom large. Mazureks role is to address these, help-
ing to develop methods to let each user in the home speciy
who can have access to what, under which conditions. As a
frst step, she and team members interviewed sample house-
holds to learn about needs and desires. Among the fndings,
Mazurek says, are that presence matters: people eel morecomortable with others seeing their fles i they can be pres-
ent to monitor it. And people want the ability to make ad-hoc
access decisions instead o just setting policies a priori.
Mazurek also learned that some people have strange habits.
For instance, they try to hide sensitive fles by giving them
unny flenames; burying them in sub-olders. Its like burying
valuables in the bottom o a drawer. The downside, o course,
is that you can orget where you hid the gold watch and a per-
sistent thie can still fnd it. But to Mazurek such things are
more than amusing tidbits. What were seeing are unmet
needs, or imperectly met needs, or privacy and security,
she says. Our job is to fnd better ways.
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decisions out of peoples hands by automating them. As she noted in a research paper,
early antivirus programs prompted users to make a decision about every detected
virus, whereas today the common default mode is to just delete or quarantine infected
les. But many choices arent so conducive to automation. That leaves the other two
approaches: designing features so theyre intuitive and easy to use and educating the
users.
Research by Cranor et al has shown that a great deal of confusion reigns. Many
people conate privacy and security. Some claim to be militant about privacy rights
(theyre known as privacy fundamentalists), yet in experiments they will enter more
personal data than needed for an online transaction. We all judge by appearances,
and many judge a website to be trustworthy if it looks professionally done. The list
goes on; solutions are needed.
fih stori ad nutritio la
Solution-wise, the CUPS research group has made perhaps its biggest splash thusfar in user education. Have you seen Anti-Phishing Phil? Hes a cartoon character, a
young sh, who was created by recent EPP Ph.D. graduate Steve Sheng and former
Communication Design student Bryant Magnien.
Phil and an older and wiser sh named PhishGuru star in an interactive, online
game that teaches players how to recognize phishy emails and avoid getting hooked.
Better still, Phil and PhishGuru are now being bundled into training programs for rms
and organizations. Some organizations like to warn their members about phishing by the
use of simulated phishing scams. (In one case, the U.S. Military Academy sent cadets
an email signed by a ctitious colonel, asking for sensitive information. About 80 percent
dutifully took the bait.) So Cranor and other CUPS faculty through a spinout company
called Wombat Security Technologies are offering an added wrinkle: theyll write the
simulated email, and rig it so that if you click on the baited link, you get an instant lesson
from PhishGuru.
Its taking advantage of a teachable moment, Cranor says. People are more likelyto be receptive to teaching when they realize they just fell for an attack.
Other projects now in the works at CUPS have to do with usable design. A survey
of location-sharing services, with which you can use your GPS cell phone or Wi-Fi laptop
to let people know where you are, found that systems on the market tend to lack good
privacy-preference settings. Some leave you open to anyone who comes looking while
others are confusing or dont give meaningful control. CUPS is piloting a system called
Locaccino which, Cranor says, makes it easy to set up privacy rules. For instance, my
students can access my location only while Im on campus on weekdays, but close
friends and family any time, anywhere. (This too looks to be the basis of a spinout
company.)
And speaking of confusion: most public websites have privacy policies but its often
hard to nd them or gure out what they really mean. Thus Cranor and the CUPS team
hope to create the equivalent of a nutrition label for privacy. Just as the labels on food
products list the key ingredients in a standard format to help you comparison shop, theenvisioned system would link with search engines to display various websites privacy
policies in a uniform fashion. The CUPS team operates a search engine called Privacy
Finder, which demonstrates the privacy nutrition label concept.
The unifying theme in all CUPS projects is enabling people to make more informed
choices more easily. This has been done in other areas; Cranor sees no reason it cant
be done in online privacy and security. Weve already had faculty and students from
many disciplines doing research, she says, and the students in the new Ph.D. program
are going to help us develop new methodologies. Visit the CUPS website for more
information about the CUPS Ph.D. program and CUPS research projects and to try out
Anti-Phishing Phil, Locaccino and Privacy Finder, http://cups.cs.cmu.edu.
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Most people dont know how to reduce energy costs in their homes. Sure, you canreplace traditional light bulbs with energy-efcient ones or adjust the thermostat a
few degrees, but it is difcult to quantify how these changes will reduce your power
bill. However, in the not-too-distant future this may no longer be the case. A team of
Carnegie Mellon researchers, lead by professors Lucio Soibelman, H. Scott Matthews
and Jos M. F. Moura, received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Founda-
tion to track energy consumption in buildings.
Soibelman says that their research relies on inexpensive sensor technology to
track and quantify power consumption and it will ultimately teach people how to be
more intelligent when they try to save energy. He compares energy consumption to
grocery shopping. He explains that when you buy groceries, you get a receipt listing
each item purchased. To save money the next time you shop, you can review the re-
ceipt and make decisions on how to cut expenses. Perhaps youll buy more chicken and
less beef or substitute an off-brand cereal for a name brand. With electricity, we dont
have that option. At the end of the month, the utility company sends a bill listing thetotal amount of power used and thats it. Consumers have no way of knowing how their
energy habits or appliances impact their bills.
Around four years ago, Soibelman, Matthews and Mario Berges, a Ph.D. student,
set out to track energy consumption in buildings. Their rst experiments took place in
Porter Hall. They put sensors on all the buildings circuit breakers to collect data. The
team realized this would be too expensive for home use. In a house, you have ap-
proximately 30 breakers. You would have to wire the sensors and do circuit tracing to
determine what is feeding what, says Soibelman. It would cost approximately $10,000
to wire a typical house. If your power bill is $100 a month, it would be illogical to spend
$10,000 to save $120 to $240 a year on electricity.
Determined to nd a cheaper way to track power usage, the team decided to apply
non-intrusive load monitoring technology. The idea here is to have one sensor in the
house that traces energy consumption. This sensor would monitor a matrix of data, i.e.
watts, current, etc., as it passes through the wire and feed the data into complex com-puter algorithms for analysis. Soibelman explains that when you turn a light on or off,
you get a bump in the graph or a transient that indicates a change from one state to
another. We want to nd specic characteristics in those transients that you could call
signatures for each appliance, he says. Our long-term goal is to have a system in the
house that could learn the patterns of how people use electricity and how to optimize
electricity use.
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He envisions a system that relies on human-computer interaction. For example,
a person would tell the power tracking system that they want to spend $100 a month
for electricity. A couple of days later, the system would send back a message, predicting
that the bill will be $150 if the consumer does not change his behavior. The system
analyzes one or two days worth of energy usage in the home and then extrapolates
data for the rest of the month. By understanding the homeowners behavior and having
quantitative data on the amount of power each appliance uses, the system could then
offer the consumer suggestions on how to cut costs.
In 2007 the team consulted with researchers from Bosch Research and Technology
Center North America, and together, with Bosch funding, they built the rst prototype.
The prototype proved feasible, and the team applied for a patent, but there were short-
comings. It takes a great deal of signal processing to accurately detect transients. We
have 100% accuracy detecting heavy appliances and light loads. With medium usage,
its hard to detect if a light is on in the bathroom or bedroom, says Soibelman. When
Carnegie Mellon and Bosch applied for the NSF grant, CITs Jos Moura and YuanweiJin from University of Maryland Eastern Shore, both experts in signal processing, were
added to the team.
While the team is in place, Soibelman explains, It is not enough to have over-
whelming amounts of data. We have to change how consumers use electricity. The
role of human-computer interaction cannot be understated in this work, and that is
why the Pittsburgh-based team is working with researchers from the Carnegie Mellon-
Portugal Information and Communication Technologies Institute (ICTI), and in particular
researchers from the University of Madeira. We are planning to install prototypes in 100
houses in Madeira, and the Portuguese team will track user behavior, says Soibelman.
Mario Berges, who has worked on this project since its inception, explains, We
know the technology, we know how to desegregate the data, and we even know what
is consuming the energy in your house. But our Portuguese counterparts have the
challenge of getting the data to the users and making users change their behavior. The
Portuguese team will design an interface with the intention of changing user behaviorfor the long term. (This part of the research is not funded by the NSF. Instead, it is part of
a project called SINAIS that is sponsored by the Portuguese National Science Foundation
under the framework of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program.)
While work is planned for Portugal, here in the Pittsburgh area, the sensor
technology that CIT and Bosch developed is being tested for other purposes as well. In
the city of McKeesport, Blueroof Technologies has built a number of high-tech cottages
for elderly and disabled people. These homes are outtted with advanced robotic and
electronic devices, which have been designed by local universities and this includes CITs
sensor technology.
We have ideas that go beyond saving energy, says Soibelman.
He and Berges explain that while it is not yet part of the plan,
tracking systems could be developed to diagnose problems
with appliances. Expanding on commercial applications,
energy suppliers could benet from tracking systems, as well.Surprisingly, utility companies dont have a lot of granular data
on consumer behavior. These systems and the data they
provide could help utility companies determine on- and off-
peak rates, which could thwart blackouts. In turn, consumers
could benet because tracking systems would tell them
the cheapest time of day to run major appliances. Financial
incentives would certainly hasten the development of tracking
technology, but understanding how we use energy and
learning how to change our long-term behavior is critical if
we are to someday achieve sustainable energy.
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