Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 27-30). / In 1984, the FDA approved a medical device called a cochlear implant for adult use in the United States. Unlike assistive hearing technologies that came before it, such as hearing aids, cochlear implants could offer wider access to sound even to the profoundly deaf. Given adult success with the device, the FDA lowered in 1990 the required age for implantation to two years old. The following year the National Association of the Deaf published a position statement on cochlear implants comparing them to "cultural genocide." This thesis explores two parallel stories. Drawing on interviews with implant engineers, surgeons, audiologists, and other specialists, the piece describes how cochlear implants function and how the devices have improved since the 1980s. Equally, the thesis pulls from interviews with bioethicists, deaf and hard of hearing individuals, educators at a signing deaf school, and others in the deaf community to describe the unique attributes and history of deaf culture and the changing and diverse reactions of the deaf community to this medical device. / by Joseph Benjamin Calamia. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-42). / Humans have long been drawn to the study of nonhuman animal cognitive and emotional intelligence, but have long come up short. Cognitive scientists look for signs of a sense of self, the ability to solve problems, and the capacity for communication in a vast array of nonhuman species, from cephalopods to primates. In this particular search, science has been increasingly successful as researchers report that New Caledonian crows can use tools to solve rather complex problems; that dolphins and songbirds can identify themselves in mirrors; and that dogs can "turn off' survival drives in order to engage in play behavior. In fact, nonhuman animal intelligence research is exploding rather wildly onto the scene. Other scientists aren't as fortunate. They have a much more difficult time identifying with any certainty that nonhuman animals experience emotion, but the answers are approaching illumination. Mice show signs of empathy. Rats laugh when they play...and when intrepid researchers tickle them. Anxious dogs respond identically to humans when fed meat-flavored Prozac. No matter what these behaviors look like, however, emotional experience is subjective and thus still just beyond of scientific reach. As long as subjective experience of nonhuman animals is brushed off by science, the search for evidence of cognitive and emotional intelligence in these creatures is at a hard-headed stand-still. Wrought with fears of anthropomorphism and crushed reputations, these research areas are perpetually at risk for withering away into scientific obscurity. A transformation of thought, a readjustment of methods is deeply needed. A revolution is likely close around the corner, and with it will come a move away from anthropocentric science, as well as some difficult ethical and moral questions. / by Kristina Bjoran. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-37). / Human hand transplantation became a medical reality at the turn of the 2 1st century. Often hailed by media and the general public as miraculous, these life-changing surgeries are also highly controversial. Many doctors, ethicists, and medical professionals feel the benefits of having a hand transplant do not outweigh the risks of the immunosuppressive drugs required to keep the complex foreign tissues alive on the bodies of chronically disabled yet otherwise healthy people. Patients' reactions to having the operation, to the drugs, to the physical therapy, and to the psychological consequences of wearing the hand of a dead person range from grateful acceptance to disgust and requested reamputation. This thesis explores the struggles and triumphs of human hand transplants through the stories of several patients and doctors. The rise of hand transplantation as a field, including the ongoing controversy surrounding the first successful human hand transplant, is also related as insight into how doctors and patients in innovative medicine make decisions, and where hand transplantation stands as a technology to benefit both medicine and scientific research. / by Emily Ruppel. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-62). / The modem world is awash in technology, little of which amazes like artificial intelligence. Siri speaks to us out of our iPhones. Google answers our every question. Watson, IBM's Jeopardy!-playing supercomputer, is popularly perceived as a hair's breadth from Arthur C. Clarke's HAL 9000. But the truth of the matter is that all these technologies are far more artificial than they are intelligent. They are designed to give an impression of intelligence, a ruse at which many of them succeed. But none of them begins to approach the all-purpose intelligence of even a human child. Siri and Watson and Google and all other existing AI is what researchers refer to as "narrow" -adept at one task only. But there is a small community of scientists who are working toward "strong" AI: a synthetic intelligence as flexible, as adaptable, and as genuinely intelligent as any human being. Strong AI is an innately interdisciplinary effort at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and computer science, among others. Each of these fields is coming to understand the challenge in its own way, and each has its champions. Little is clear. Few agree on how best to build strong AL, and none can foresee its consequences. But one thing is certain: in constructing this new intelligence we will take our cues from an understanding of the human mind. And so the quest for strong AI ultimately becomes the quest to understand ourselves. / by Stephen Paul Craft. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-47). / Sleep and emotion have been linked since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep sixty years ago. Sleep, in particular REM sleep and the dreams it harbors, seems to modulate mood, restoring stability to the weary mind. Scientists have struggled to understand this link through the biological study of the brain, the psychological study of dreaming, and the clinical study of how sleep is affected by psychiatric illness. This thesis examines the history of sleep research in terms of its relationship to emotional processing, both from the physiological and the psychological perspective. We are introduced to the scientists who discovered REM in 1953, to those who tracked the links between the biochemistry of mood and of sleep, and to contemporary researchers who are exploring the link between sleep and mood using brain-scanners and electrodes to study the dreaming brain, and the sleep and dreaming of patients with mood disorders. On our journey we will experience both the progress sleep research has made this century, and the enduring mystery of why humans sleep and dream. / by Taylor McGowin Beck. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis: S.M. in Science Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 24-29). / Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita was a visionary neuroscientist and an early pioneer of the theory of neuroplasticity. He is the father of sensory substitution, a field which explores how one sensory modality can be transferred to another. This work culminated in the invention of the Brainport, a device that transmits information through electrodes on the tongue. Bach-y- Rita's company, Wicab, developed two versions of the Brainport. One uses visual information to reveal the sighted world to the blind; another uses body alignment information to help "wobblers" (individuals with vestibular conditions) navigate. The author received exclusive access to Bach-y-Rita's unpublished memoirs. These papers-supplemented by visits to Bach-y-Rita's home in Wisconsin and personal interviews with his family and colleagues-help tell the story of a revolutionary technology that failed to reach the public who needed it. / by Aviva Hope Rutkin. / S.M. in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2007. / "September 2007." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-51). / This is the story of the language of eyes - what they say about our emotions, what they reveal about our intentions, how they interact with our face, and how they connect us to one another. The story follows our experience with eyes from infancy when we first learn to connect looking with knowing. This connection forms the foundation of our social understanding and has evolutionary implications. From there the story moves to gaze in love, and other social encounters. I look at the role of eye gaze in the judgments we make about others - the way in which direct eye contact may affect how likable or attractive we find another person. I then turn to these questions: how much of an eye does it take for us to feel watched? Do pictures of eyes affect us? What about the eyes of a robot - do we respond to them as we do to human eyes? I show that for those who have normally functioning eyes, attention to the eye region plays a critical role in how we learn about the social world and our place in it. / by Ada Brunstein. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-31). / A rich body of science has grown up around the art of dance. It includes study of a dancer's relationship to Newtonian physics, dance medicine, the role of the spine in balance, and the emerging study of the neuroscience of dance. The thesis integrates personal narrative and descriptions of dance performances with scientific discussion of the art form. Greater scientific understanding of the art of dance is needed in order to improve teaching practices and decrease injuries to dancers. / by Erica Naone. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 23-25). / A number of research groups worldwide are working on various aspects of the problem of building life from scratch. Jack W. Szostak's lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts is one of the centers of the action. Open a recent news article on some discovery related to synthetic life or life's origins on Earth, and he's likely to be quoted. Szostak fills his lab with ambitious, bright, young people, a few of whom have gone on to found their own labs. His work provides a lens through which to view the contemporary state of progress toward the ancient and ambitious goal to take what was not alive before and make it live. Starting from an initial plan to make a self-assembling, self-replicating membrane containing a self-replicating genetic molecule, the lab has had some striking successes and, off course, some setbacks. Recent breakthroughs suggest that the realization of a wholly human-designed and created life form looms in the foreseeable future. / by MacGregor Campbell. / S.M.in Science Writing

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-37). / Over the past century, the mass spectrometer has become commonplace in scientific fields ranging from chemistry to geology to environmental science. Its ability to identify compounds and determine concentrations of those compounds leads to a wide variety of applications, from environmental monitoring to disease diagnosis. This thesis is meant to familiarize the non-scientist with the mass spectrometer. It illustrates the instrument's basic physical principles and the wide range of research that utilize mass spectrometry. The story discusses the development of the mass spectrometer from the early experiments of JJ Thomson to modern uses in proteomics and attempts to miniaturize the instrument. / by Jordan Calmes. / S.M.in Science Writing