scienceStechnology
Tuesday. March 21.2000
Computer chip helps
man take first steps
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — Ten years after a car crash paralyzed him
from the waist down, an implanted computer chip is helping Marc Merger re
gain the ability to walk.
The 39-year-old financial consultant from France is the first patient to un
dergo the implant procedure, which was developed by a consortium of Euro
pean researchers to help people who have lost the use of their legs.
Last December, surgeons implanted 15 electrodes on nerves and muscles in
Merger’s legs, connecting them with wires to a computer chip embedded in his
abdomen. The procedure had to be repeated in February after problems arose.
Merger was able to stand up by himself in early March, and he took his first
steps last Friday.
“There are a whole lot of people like me who need this,” Merger said dur
ing a news conference at European Union headquarters Monday. “It's hard to
imagine not being able to walk.”
Professor Pierre Rabischong of Montpellier University in France, a project
coordinator, said the implanted chip allows Merger to create artificial muscle
movement.
“We are trying to reproduce what happens in the brain ... with electrodes
to nerves and muscles,” said Rabischong. “We are not working miracles here,
but allowing patients to stand up using their own muscles.”
Eventually, scientists hope patients will be able to control their movements
by pressing buttons on a walking cane now under development that will act as
a remote control.
For now, scientists transmit instructions to the chip via computer. The sig
nals are transmitted to the electrodes in the legs and converted into muscle
movement.
“We are by no means at the end of the road. A lot of work is still required,”
Rabischong said.
Merger was living proof of that Monday. A demonstration of him walking
at EU headquarters had to be postponed because a computer glitch failed to
communicate commands to the computer chip, meaning he could not walk.
Gabrielle Tronconi, 23, is one of six people due to receive implants later
this year.
“1 hope I will be able to reduce my disability and to be able to do more
things than 1 can do right now,” the 23-year-old Italian said. “I hope to walk
because of the research developments,” he said.
Rabischong said that there are more than 300,000 people in Europe with
paralysis of the lower limbs. Their average age is 31, he said.
The European Union and six governments — France, the Netherlands, Ger
many, Denmark. Italy, and Britain — have been working on developing the
'technology since 1996.
Previous electronic systems have allowed paralyzed people to stand and
walk with a walker, sometimes for more than a mile, said Naomi Kleitman, di
rector of education at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of
Miami School of Medicine. Those systems use electrodes taped on the skin.
Systems that implant computer-controlled electrodes have tested in the lab
for many years as well, she said. They may allow more sophisticated control
over leg nerves and muscles, although there has been some problems with long
term maintenance of the implanted electrodes, she said.
Kleitman said she couldn’t comment directly on the European system with
out knowing more details.
THE BATTALION
Research Week presenters
compete for scholarships
BY YOLANDA LUKASZEWSKI
AND SCOTT JENKINS
The Battalion
Student Research Week opened
Monday with a reception to honor the
almost 200 undergraduate and gradu
ate students competing in the poster
session.
Students will present their research
today in Rudder Exhibit Hall from 9
a.m. until 3 p.m. and compete for
$ 10,000 in scholarships . Winners will
be honored on March 27.
Two of the projects are featured here.
Touchy-feely
drug design
Designing new drugs may be
come a more touchy-feely experi
ence with research aimed at adding a
sense of “touch” to studies on how
drugs and proteins interact on the
molecular level.
Senior biochemistry major Jo-
cylin Williams and a group from the
biographies laboratory seek to en
hance current computer modeling
by adding a tactile feedback mech
anism to give scientists more infor
mation about intermolecular forces
that come into play in drug-protein
interactions.
The project combines computer
models of drug and protein molecules
with a so-called “haptic device” that
can provide the user with tactile infor
mation about an environment.
Today’s faster, more powerful com
puters are now making this approach
practical.
Williams, working with biochem
istry professors Dr. Stanley Swanson
and research group leader Dr. Edgar
Meyer, has developed computer pro
grams to model intermolecular forces
like the attraction and repulsion of pos
itive and negative charges, as well as
fleeting attractive forces based on
shifting electron clouds, called Van der
Waals interactions.
Information about these molecular
forces would be fed back to drug de
signers as they manipulate the com
puter-generated molecules, helping
them determine which types of mol
ecules would be most effective at fit
ting together with the protein in the
desired way.
“The user could ‘feel’ how an
untested [chemical] inhibitor might fit
into an active site of a protein,"
Williams said.
The additional information ob
tained by applying haptic devices to
molecular modeling can save time and
money in laboratory work by ruling
out possibilities for drugs that do not
look promising and focusing attention
on those that do, Williams said.
The role of rice wetlands for
migrating birds
The rice field is a fiat, silvery sheet
when the sun hits it.
From overhead, birds recognize the
field as a place to rest and eat before
continuing their migration south along
the Gulf Coast.
April Conkey is studying the rela
tionship between rice acreage and the
numbers of resident and migratory
birds using Texas rice fields.
A doctoral student in the Depart
ment of Wildlife and Fisheries Sci
ences, she compared the number of
birds seen in rice fields with rice
acreage, and found that as rice
Student Week co-chair Robert Kennedy, vice-president for research and
associate provost for graduate studies talks with crowd at a
day reception to open Research Week. Research week is sponsorec
by the Graduate Student Council, the Office of the Vice President
for Research and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies and the
Department of Student Life.
acreage decreased, waterfowl popu
lations declined slightly, migratory
bird populations remained stable, and
ground bird populations increased.
Although rice fields are artificial
wetlands, they constitute 30 percent
of wetlands in Texas, and might serve
some of the same functions as natur
al wetlands.
Many animals, including the migra
tory birds that stop over on their way to
South America, use rice fields as habitat.
Rice farming in Texas is not very
profitable, and landowners can make
more money by selling their
developers.
If this were to happen, Conkey said
Texas could lose up to 30 percentofit>
wetlands. Conkey wants to study tk
wetland functions of rice fields as
next step in her project.
“If rice fields provide wetland fu»
lions and supplement the loss of natnrl ie L 0 ^ s j ail [
wetlands, then we need to preserve ns m \{\y g ame
agriculture and recognize and compen
sate the farmer, the landowner, and
general public for this conservation
fort,” Conkey said.
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