Playing Catch Up.

I don't know how all you bloggers out there do it. My kids won't let me touch the computer all day, and once they're asleep I'm too tired to do anything but the bare essentials (if that).



So out of sheer embarrassment, I'm forgoing sleep at the moment to finally catch up a bit on this blog. Here's how we spent much of August--driving:

To continue our adventures at the Charles Family Reunion, a group of us went to the Biltmore Estate, which is the country's "biggest house" built at the turn of the century and patterned after some of my favorite French chateaux. Benjamin loved the bowling alley in the basement!

On the porch at Biltmore:

The landscape was amazing!

We saw the little farm on the estate and also ate an amazingly fancy meal. The kids were surprisingly well-behaved at the restaurant and even tried new foods like catfish.

We had a magnificent talent show. Here's Amelia leading us in a revealing game of "Guess which Charles sibling . . ."

Grossmama (aka Mother Earth) led the children in a beautiful play about the seasons:

Ben was very brave in the canoe with Steven.

Cousins Sam and Amelia went out on their own.

And even Jacob asked if he could take me out on a canoe ride. What a gentleman.

On Family Picture Day, you'd never guess it was over 100 degrees and as humid as could be!

Here's the whole group, and amazingly coordinated, too.

Grossmama spent a long time getting these T-shirt colors chosen and ordered. My amazing sister-in-law Liz designed the T-shirts and even took the black-and-white picture at the bottom. Next time, we won't even need the professional photographer. (The only trouble is, how do we get Liz to take the picture AND be in it at the same time?)

Thank you, Grossmama and Grosspapa, for a wonderful family reunion!

Just You Wait

New Post Coming Soon . . .

But while you wait, here's some of our favorite traveling music. Keep in mind that we only have a tape player in our car, so everything comes from the 80's and early 90's. Isn't that rad?

Don't Spit into a Tornado

Well, after a whirlwind series of move-outs, car trips, reunions, airplane trips, weddings, more reunions, 80th birthday parties, more reunions, and finally almost-move-ins, I finally stole the laptop from my husband (who's been finishing his final thesis revisions) and found a way to get on the internet (thank you, Baltimore neighbor with a dangerously-unsecured wireless connection!). So sorry, all you bored readers out there, but we've been having way too much fun to stop and share any of our adventures until now. : )

Since it'll take me too long to go through all the details of the last month (and since I'm not sure how much you care anyway), I'll just start with the first few highlights and add more later. I only have access to the pictures on my camera since our possessions won't arrive until later this week and/or never.

Here is our last beautiful sunset from our apartment in Cambridge.

What a going-away present!

After finally moving out of our Cambridge apartment and driving 8 hours through the night to Baltimore and spending half a day to find a place to live (which we miraculously did), we stayed the night with my brother Rob and wife Erin who just moved to D.C. (family nearby us--woohoo! and they just announced they're expecting a baby--double woohoo!), and then drove another 9 hours to get to the Charles Family Reunion on a beautiful lake near Asheville, North Carolina.

Here are the Charles cousins swarming their beloved Aunt Celina when she arrived. Clearly they are overjoyed that she survived all those years as the only girl with 6 brothers. : )

We put on a Family Home Evening where Ben got to put on the "whole armor of God" (made by the resident engineer, of course) including such items as the Helmet of Salvation, the Sword of the Spirit, the Breastplate of Righteousness, and the Shield of Faith.

This was the first time the Charles parents and their seven children had all been in the same place at the same time since 1992! And now there's a whole plethora of grandkids to add to the bunch. Thank you, Grossmama and Grosspapa for putting on this reunion!

Here are the cousins "mining" for gemstones by taking a prepaid bucket of sand and then panning for the stones in the water. Everyone found a lot of great gems, and according to the eccentric, mullet-sporting, tank-top wearing, cross-eyed mine owner (I am not making this up), Sammy found the jackpot--a giant rose quartz crystal.

More to come in a later post . . .

Good Morning, Baltimore!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davies/5047790/



We are overjoyed to announce that Steven has accepted a position as a postdoc at



Johns Hopkins University



in Baltimore, Maryland. Hooray! He will be working with:



Dr. Allison Okamura and Dr. Amy Bastian



His future lab is called the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics and he will be working on a project in rehabilitation robotics that combines mechanical engineering with neuroscience--Steven's two professional loves. To get technical, he will use "a planar robotic exoskeleton device to collect behavioral data and form computational models of upper limb movement in neurologically intact and cerebellar subjects. The long term goal is to identify the neural deficiencies in upper limb reaching movements in cerebellar patients and design therapies and devices for assisting them in rehabilitation." And if you can believe it, to Steven this sounds like the funnest thing in the world. : )




We are very excited to be moving to Baltimore, and not just because it's a little cheaper and warmer than Boston. We will certainly miss our good friends in Cambridge (and everywhere else, of course), but we have felt very guided by God throughout this whole process, and are sure this is the place for us. What a relief to have this decision finally made (and with even one week to spare before we have to move out!).




We're grateful for all your support, dear friends and family. We would love to have you come visit (and we'll finally have room to host you--hooray!). We'll be less than an hour and a half from Washington, DC, so we expect you to do your civic duty and see the nation's capital while you stay with us!

Piled Higher and Deeper

I'm pleased to announce that Dr. Steven Knight Charles successfully defended his PhD Thesis today with a time of 6 years 10 months and 6 days (including the 3 years he spent "training" during his Master's work). At the finish line he was rewarded with an aluminum foil PhD medal, a warming blanket, and banana, apple, and water to help him regain the vitamins and hydration he lost during this mega-marathon. As you can see, a PhD is well worth it!

Here are the members of Steven's committee (from left to right). Don't let their congenial smiles fool you--they made sure to put Steven sufficiently through the ringer. Seriously, we are very grateful for their support and attention.

Thesis Advisor and Committee Chairman:Neville Hogan, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

Committee Members:Emilio Bizzi, Institute Professor, MITRobert Howe, Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard UniversityPeter L. Strick, Professor, Neurobiology, Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh

Steven's labmates were extremely kind and even brought doughnuts and coffee to the defense to keep the committee members at bay. : ) Here's how we party at MIT--it's not a celebration unless you're surrounded by machines and lab equipment

Thanks for the cake, Newman Lab. We couldn't be more proud of Dr. Charles!

And for the nerd in you, we present Steven's abstract:

Thesis Defense:

It’s All in the Wrist: A Quantitative Characterization of Human Wrist Control

Steven Charles
MIT Miller Room (1-114)
Thursday, July 10th, 10 am

Over the past three decades, much research in motor neuroscience has focused on understanding how humans make coordinated reaching movements, yielding valuable insight into the planning and control of reaching movements, and establishing a foundation for robot-assisted rehabilitation. The goal of my doctoral research has been to provide a quantitative characterization of humans’ wrist rotations, paving the way for intelligent robot-assisted wrist rehabilitation. More specifically, my research has characterized the kinematics and dynamics of wrist rotations, and discussed implications for planning and control.

Kinematics: It has long been known that humans tend to make relatively straight reaching movements, suggesting that reaching movements are primarily under kinematic control of hand position. Are wrist rotations also under kinematic control of the hand? Using a motion capture system, it was found that wrist rotations exhibit a pattern with significantly more path curvature and variability than reaching movements (p ≤ 0.001). While the increased path curvature could lead one to believe that wrist rotations may not be under kinematic control of hand position, this work provides evidence that the curvature is instead due to imperfect peripheral execution.

Dynamics: In order to determine the exact cause of path curvature, an anatomically accurate, mathematical model of the wrist was developed, including recent measurements of passive wrist stiffness. Combining experimentally measured kinematics from human subjects with the wrist model revealed that moderately-sized wrist rotations can be approximated by a very simple model with virtually no loss in accuracy. Interaction torques, for which the nervous system compensates in reaching movements, are present but negligible in wrist rotations. Rather, wrist rotation dynamics are dominated by stiffness, which was shown to be the likely cause of path curvature.