Comment by erlehmann_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erlehmann_ | Hacker News Reader

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> As part of her work, Zhang researched the root cause of tremors. She spent six months, off and on, building prototypes. She sometimes worked in her London home, soldering wires to PC boards and tinkering with coin cell motors to create vibrations. She tested early versions with four other people with Parkinson’s, producing promising results for three, spurring the idea forward, she says.

This paragraph reads like the solution is not as simple as strapping a vibrator to a wristband. So where are those results documented? Does anyone have an idea where the source code and schematics are for the singular Emma device prototype?

Edit: I have not been able to find source code yet. A reddit thread about the device [1] from December 2016 links to a screenshot [2] of a BBC documentary from which one can infer that Zhang used six motors for the Emma device and timed them in a specific way.

Edit 2: I noticed that my other HN comment [3] asking if this article is a PR submarine was first upvoted until it was shown at the top of the thread. It was then downvoted until it moved to the bottom of the thread. If a HN mod is reading this: Does that voting pattern seem normal?

Edit 3: Now this comment is also receiving downvotes?

Edit 4: The BBC has a GitHub repository containing other code related to the documentary. There has been an issue opened in January 2017 [4] from a person who wants to help his father who has Parkinson's. No source code seems to have been released since then.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Parkinsons/comments/5hh2fx/emmas_wa...

[2] http://i.imgur.com/0q0QHsj.png

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14388178

[4] https://github.com/bbc/MiD/issues/3

I have a nagging feeling about this project as well. It is simply too good to be true: first we see a lone engineer fiddling with some wires on a prototyping board, and a few months later poof the girl can write again.

She is defying years and years of experience by a large number of experts in the field, this just does not sound realistic.

Why is this 'breakthrough' presented as the effort of an individual? The only reason I can think of is that MS is trying to show the world what Good People they are, and showing the long and hard work of a large team of engineers is just not sexy.

Zhang was at Lift when she saw that they invented the spoon that compensates for Parkinson tremor during eating. That's where she got the idea. The wrist device was built by electrical engineers, not her.

AFAIK the way this magic device works is if you vibrate the wrists for some reason that makes the tremors go away. not sure how that works. But it is most definitely not related to the parkinsons spoon, because all that thing is a spoon with active stabilization.

Frankly weird that if this simple technique has already bee n discovered, i don't see why this tech hasn't been mass-produced already. seems like a no-brainer.

It sounds like active noise canceling technology that you get in Bose and other expensive headphones, but instead of audible noise, it's tremors that are being canceled. When I saw EMMA, it made me think of the spoon, so it makes sense that she saw it too.

I understand your frustration as I too was looking for what series of hypotheses her journey of discovery took her through. Alas, this was a (good) human interest piece so that was not the focus.

Assuming this device works, it is fun to think about why this might be. All I could extract from the article is that it sends vibrations and fails for some, requires randomness in others and works at a specific pattern for Lawton.

I am not an expert but what I do know is that Parkinson's can be viewed as a breakdown in the proper transmission of feedback from erroneous predictions. In planning movements, the brain is constantly making and correcting its predictions, sufficient damage to part of this circuit would result in improper gain modulation and ineffective dampening to prevent overshoots. Improper cost predictions might even affect motivation to perform a movement in the first place.

It's not clear how a pattern of vibration might lead to a reduction in symptoms. My best guess is that it's related to stochastic resonance. The noise or pattern from the vibrations, and that the population of neurons responding to the vibrations are different enough might be such that, whatever weak signal there is carrying the proper feedback is now more readily decoded. Whether or not this device works will likely be highly variable, dependent on the state of degradation and particulars of the erroneous feedback control.

TIL about Stochastic resonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance

One thing that is virtually guaranteed to get you downvotes is complaining about downvotes. Which you do twice in this comment.

It was not my intention to complain, as I neither feel pain, dissatisfaction or resentment against those who downvote me. I wanted to point out that my comment asking if this is PR was downvoted to the bottom. I remember such a voting pattern from only one other thread on HN. I just looked for it and it was also on a thread about Microsoft [1]. I can not remember such voting patterns for any comment not about Microsoft.

I will probably not respond to further comments about those downvotes, as it seems off-topic; dang has already commented extensively regarding previous astroturfing accusations against Microsoft [2]:

> If MS "infiltrated" HN, it's news to me and I'd like to know about it. If anybody did anything to HN that could fairly be described as "infiltration", we'd be pissed. It's our job to protect the integrity of this place for the community and we take it seriously. When we see gaming and manipulation we crack down on it hard. But actually the BigCos aren't the ones who do such things, probably because they're (rightly) too risk-averse.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319829

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844253

> dang has already commented extensively regarding previous astroturfing accusations against Microsoft

dang has also commented that there is no special status for Microsoft on HN.

I don't think the poster is complaining about the downvotes. He's just trying to understand if there's an unnatural pattern in all these things.

This is a PR piece, and it's very interesting. Seems like we're all in such a hurry to de-bunk it, demanding scientific details and open source. If Apple published this, would the reaction be as cynical?

I don't have an issue with it being a PR piece, but I think it's a shame that an actual discussion of the tech is basically non-existent.

Other controversial opinion: I've seen several examples of tech projects led by women where the reporting is couched much more from the human interest angle than a tech angle, and worst, questioning the tech in question can be met with accusations of sexism. I think this does a great disservice to women in tech by assuming a less critical bar.

As for examples, Elizabeth Holmes is probably the most well known one, but another one that was kind of fascinating to me at the time was Grace Choi and her "Mink" make-up printer. The printer as advertised was basically non-existent, but articles were universally laudatory and many lambasted men who questioned the tech for "just not getting it." I'm not arguing that is going on here, but without an explanation of what's actually going on, and comparisons to other similar technologies, this is just a puff piece.

Oh come on. The Apple glucose monitor thread has one poster criticising Apple for a cynical money grab because what they should really have done is cure diabetes completely and the only reason they didn't is commercial gain. Honestly, go look. Post by Xoros. There are other cynical takes, one calls Apple's strategy 'cute', but Xoros takes the biscuit.

If Apple had published this, it'd be on the market within a few days / months.

No, I think your other comment was getting downvoted because it didn't really make any sense and people disagreed with it. No conspiracy there.

This placement/voting pattern is not abnormal, IME - particularly as different child comments are left.

New comments always start at the top

Not always. I've had new top-level comments get placed below an already highly upvoted top comment.

Yeah, I will say that I downvoted you. Your expectations (source code, that the results would be documented to your satisfaction after a trial of size N=1) seem unreasonable to me, to the extent that I personally think it is downvote worthy. I don't think, "where's the source code," contributes to the site, especially in situations where one would not reasonably expect to have access to it.

----

I have definitely seen the pattern where something I say initially gets downvoted, or upvoted, then the reverse happens later. It seems at a minimum that there might be a difference between the populations of people who read a story soon after it's posted and long after it's posted. It wouldn't surprise me if different sorts of comments appeal to these different groups, and that's ignoring the content of replies.

Personally I would suggest not worrying about it too much, and doing your best to make comments that seem good to you. For a long time, I actually had a userscript that eliminated the fading style that gets applied to comments, and also hid karma and points. In some ways, that makes using the site a little less stressful, because you can worry a bit less about what others think.

Edit: this comment is a good example of one that initially received several upvotes, but is now negative. ;)

In the article, Hayan Zhang is described as a researcher. She (claims to have) created a device that improves the quality of life of people who have Parkinson's. The device seems to have been built with easily obtainable components. Similar effects to the one she exploits have been described scientifically [0], although it seems questionable if the result comes from the vibration [1].

Expecting publication of source code from a researcher seems appropriate to me. From another article about the “Emma device” [2]:

> Haiyan has no plans to commercialize the technology, but hopes other researchers will take on the project and run with it. “I think it warrants more trials,” she noted. “It definitely works for Emma. I’m amazed how well it works for her.”

How can others improve on her work when it is not published? To me it looks like this invention is milked for PR as much as possible, while details about implementation are scarce. That device helps only one person right now, while potential is there to help a lot of people.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20037223

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23939405

[2] https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-researcher-creates-wearabl...

I can see where you got your expectations from. You should reach out to the researcher. Maybe they can tell you why it's not OSS. I'd not be surprised if it was some mix of medical devices being a special case, and the IP being owned by Microsoft.

I wrote Hayan Zhang the following Email with the subject line “Source code & schematics for Parkinson's device?”:

Hello Hayan Zhang,

I have read several articles about the “Emma device” you have built, but could not find any details. Have you published source code & schematics?

The BBC has a GitHub repository for code related to the documentary. The one open issue on it is from a person who wants to help their father who has been affected by Parkinson's <https://github.com/bbc/MiD/issues/3>:

> I am hoping to design a similar item to help my father with both > writing, and potentially in continuing other activities that his > Parkinson's is starting to inhibit, and while the Big Life Fix episode > covering it gave some hints at the details, there wasn't that much > concrete information.

In a Reddit thread, other people also want to know how the “Emma device” works and built it for their relatives who are afflicted by Parkinson's: <https://www.reddit.com/r/Parkinsons/comments/5hh2fx/emmas_wa...

Since you seem to have zero interest in commercializing your findings, I do not understand why the information on the details seems hard to find. Have you published something (like a scientific article) on the subject?

Greetings,

No answer. I wrote to Hayan Zhang <haiyan@gmail.com> btw.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com