Surfing for Science: A Fin Sensor Is Making Waves
For David Walden, a Southern Californian, surfing is a lifestyle, not a hobby. The 38-year-old works nights at a seafood restaurant to leave his mornings free for surfing.
While the surfers are doing what they love, they are also collecting information that is helping scientists better understand the ocean.
"Once you fall in love with the ocean, you need it like a daily cleanse or refresher," he says. "The positive mental and physical effects of the ocean, the endorphins and dopamine, keep you addicted in a good way."
Given his dedication to surfing, Walden was delighted when he became one of more than 200 surfers last year to test Smartfin, a 5-1/2-inch surfboard fin that contains a circuit board, a rechargeable battery, a GPS device, a sensor that captures temperature to one-hundredth of a degree, and a motion sensor that tracks the movement of the waves. While Walden and his fellow surfers are doing what they love, they are also collecting information that is helping scientists better understand the health of the near-shore ocean and how its chemistry is shifting due to climate change.
"I'm excited to be a part of it," Walden says. "I like to tell people I surf for science."
Back on shore, the surfers download the Smartfin data via a smartphone app so they can be accessed by scientists and other interested parties. (You can see where Smartfin surfers go at this interactive map.)
By putting sensors directly onto surfboards, oceanographers can collect data to help them better understand the global-warming related changes occurring in coastal oceans in temperature, salinity, and pH, all properties that have huge implications for the species that live in near-shore ecosystems.
There is much unknown about coastal waters because it's so difficult to obtain meaningful measurements. Traditional methods to monitor the close shore, such as bottle samples and buoys, are time consuming and expensive and tend to get damaged by the surf.
The Smartfin is the brainchild of Dr. Andy Stern, a retired neurologist. He and his brother-in-law, sculptor and filmmaker Todd McGrain, run The Lost Bird Project, a nonprofit devoted to raising awareness about climate change and other environmental issues. Stern brought his super fin idea to engineer Benjamin Thompson, who spent several years creating a prototype in his garage workshop. Smartfin was further developed by scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego.
"The big challenge was to make a sensor small enough to fit in the fin but still produce good measurements," says Andreas Andersson, an associate professor of geoscience research at Scripps.
The Surfrider Foundation, a surfer-led nonprofit environmental organization, came aboard two years ago to distribute the Smartfin to its San Diego members.
Smartfin has also made a splash with scientists at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland on the eastern coast of Australia. They are using the fin's temperature sensor to better understand how climate change is affecting the movement and distribution of marine life. And at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in Plymouth, United Kingdom, the Smartfin's precise temperature readings of the near-shore ocean's surface are being used to improve the accuracy of satellites that monitor the ocean from hundreds of miles away.
"It's hard to talk about climate change in a way that's not boring or gloomy, but there's nothing gloomy or depressing about surfers and Smartfin."
"The hope is that Smartfin will improve the satellite measurements, which could improve the retrieval of temperature data around the world," says Dr. Phil Bresnahan, Smartfin's lead engineer at Scripps. In the future, the fin will include sensors to measure pH, chlorophyll (algae), dissolved oxygen, and turbidity (water clarity).
Stern envisions a time when thousands of surfers, paddle boarders, and other water enthusiasts worldwide will have Smartfins and be downloading data for scientists and environmentalists. Right now, there are approximately 70 surfers in the San Diego area using Smartfin and an additional 30 globally.
Scientists have plenty of evidence that global warming is largely caused by humans. Now they are trying to figure out what the long-term effects of climate change may be. For example, scientists are trying to predict which sections of coral reef, which house 25 percent of marine species, are most vulnerable so interventions can be developed to save them. Because of its small size, Smartfin is ideal to measure temperature changes in coral reefs.
Smartfin was also intended to be an educational tool. "It's a great way to start a different conversation about climate change," says Stern. "It's hard to talk about climate change in a way that's not boring or gloomy, but there's nothing gloomy or depressing about surfers and Smartfin. People want to hear more."
Turning surfers into citizen scientists makes perfect sense, says David Pasquini, 35, a longtime surfer who works for the British Consulate General's office in Oceanside, Calif. "Anyone who spends a lot of time in the ocean is aware of the changes happening in the ecosystem, the climate," says Pasquini. "Everyone asks, 'What can I do?'" Surfing with Smartfin, Pasquini feels like he is giving back.
"I know the data will be analyzed and eventually used to make a policy that helps with climate change. That's a great feeling--just by surfing, doing something you love, you're contributing."
When doctors couldn’t stop her daughter’s seizures, this mom earned a PhD and found a treatment herself.
Twenty-eight years ago, Tracy Dixon-Salazaar woke to the sound of her daughter, two-year-old Savannah, in the midst of a medical emergency.
“I entered [Savannah’s room] to see her tiny little body jerking about violently in her bed,” Tracy said in an interview. “I thought she was choking.” When she and her husband frantically called 911, the paramedic told them it was likely that Savannah had had a seizure—a term neither Tracy nor her husband had ever heard before.
Over the next several years, Savannah’s seizures continued and worsened. By age five Savannah was having seizures dozens of times each day, and her parents noticed significant developmental delays. Savannah was unable to use the restroom and functioned more like a toddler than a five-year-old.
Doctors were mystified: Tracy and her husband had no family history of seizures, and there was no event—such as an injury or infection—that could have caused them. Doctors were also confused as to why Savannah’s seizures were happening so frequently despite trying different seizure medications.
Doctors eventually diagnosed Savannah with Lennox-Gaustaut Syndrome, or LGS, an epilepsy disorder with no cure and a poor prognosis. People with LGS are often resistant to several kinds of anti-seizure medications, and often suffer from developmental delays and behavioral problems. People with LGS also have a higher chance of injury as well as a higher chance of sudden unexpected death (SUDEP) due to the frequent seizures. In about 70 percent of cases, LGS has an identifiable cause such as a brain injury or genetic syndrome. In about 30 percent of cases, however, the cause is unknown.
Watching her daughter struggle through repeated seizures was devastating to Tracy and the rest of the family.
“This disease, it comes into your life. It’s uninvited. It’s unannounced and it takes over every aspect of your daily life,” said Tracy in an interview with Today.com. “Plus it’s attacking the thing that is most precious to you—your kid.”
Desperate to find some answers, Tracy began combing the medical literature for information about epilepsy and LGS. She enrolled in college courses to better understand the papers she was reading.
“Ironically, I thought I needed to go to college to take English classes to understand these papers—but soon learned it wasn’t English classes I needed, It was science,” Tracy said. When she took her first college science course, Tracy says, she “fell in love with the subject.”
Tracy was now a caregiver to Savannah, who continued to have hundreds of seizures a month, as well as a full-time student, studying late into the night and while her kids were at school, using classwork as “an outlet for the pain.”
“I couldn’t help my daughter,” Tracy said. “Studying was something I could do.”
Twelve years later, Tracy had earned a PhD in neurobiology.
After her post-doctoral training, Tracy started working at a lab that explored the genetics of epilepsy. Savannah’s doctors hadn’t found a genetic cause for her seizures, so Tracy decided to sequence her genome again to check for other abnormalities—and what she found was life-changing.
Tracy discovered that Savannah had a calcium channel mutation, meaning that too much calcium was passing through Savannah’s neural pathways, leading to seizures. The information made sense to Tracy: Anti-seizure medications often leech calcium from a person’s bones. When doctors had prescribed Savannah calcium supplements in the past to counteract these effects, her seizures had gotten worse every time she took the medication. Tracy took her discovery to Savannah’s doctor, who agreed to prescribe her a calcium blocker.
The change in Savannah was almost immediate.
Within two weeks, Savannah’s seizures had decreased by 95 percent. Once on a daily seven-drug regimen, she was soon weaned to just four, and then three. Amazingly, Tracy started to notice changes in Savannah’s personality and development, too.
“She just exploded in her personality and her talking and her walking and her potty training and oh my gosh she is just so sassy,” Tracy said in an interview.
Since starting the calcium blocker eleven years ago, Savannah has continued to make enormous strides. Though still unable to read or write, Savannah enjoys puzzles and social media. She’s “obsessed” with boys, says Tracy. And while Tracy suspects she’ll never be able to live independently, she and her daughter can now share more “normal” moments—something she never anticipated at the start of Savannah’s journey with LGS. While preparing for an event, Savannah helped Tracy get ready.
“We picked out a dress and it was the first time in our lives that we did something normal as a mother and a daughter,” she said. “It was pretty cool.”
A sleek, four-foot tall white robot glides across a cafe storefront in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, holding a two-tiered serving tray full of tea sandwiches and pastries. The cafe’s patrons smile and say thanks as they take the tray—but it’s not the robot they’re thanking. Instead, the patrons are talking to the person controlling the robot—a restaurant employee who operates the avatar from the comfort of their home.
It’s a typical scene at DAWN, short for Diverse Avatar Working Network—a cafe that launched in Tokyo six years ago as an experimental pop-up and quickly became an overnight success. Today, the cafe is a permanent fixture in Nihonbashi, staffing roughly 60 remote workers who control the robots remotely and communicate to customers via a built-in microphone.
More than just a creative idea, however, DAWN is being hailed as a life-changing opportunity. The workers who control the robots remotely (known as “pilots”) all have disabilities that limit their ability to move around freely and travel outside their homes. Worldwide, an estimated 16 percent of the global population lives with a significant disability—and according to the World Health Organization, these disabilities give rise to other problems, such as exclusion from education, unemployment, and poverty.
These are all problems that Kentaro Yoshifuji, founder and CEO of Ory Laboratory, which supplies the robot servers at DAWN, is looking to correct. Yoshifuji, who was bedridden for several years in high school due to an undisclosed health problem, launched the company to help enable people who are house-bound or bedridden to more fully participate in society, as well as end the loneliness, isolation, and feelings of worthlessness that can sometimes go hand-in-hand with being disabled.
“It’s heartbreaking to think that [people with disabilities] feel they are a burden to society, or that they fear their families suffer by caring for them,” said Yoshifuji in an interview in 2020. “We are dedicating ourselves to providing workable, technology-based solutions. That is our purpose.”
Shota Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy. Ory Labs, Inc.
Wanting to connect with others and feel useful is a common sentiment that’s shared by the workers at DAWN. Marianne, a mother of two who lives near Mt. Fuji, Japan, is functionally disabled due to chronic pain and fatigue. Working at DAWN has allowed Marianne to provide for her family as well as help alleviate her loneliness and grief.Shota, Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy, agrees. "There are many difficulties in my daily life, but I believe my life has a purpose and is not being wasted," he says. "Being useful, able to help other people, even feeling needed by others, is so motivational."