Her alternative to quotas: a broad affirmative-action programme including scholarships and subsidised pre-vestibular courses for blacks and poor whites.
Della Santina is one of a handful of researchers working to develop an implant that restores vestibular system function.
Rubinstein, a surgeon and professor in the otolaryngology department has developed a more simple vestibular implant that doesn't include sensors.
Mr. Dean says the head movement directly impacts the vestibular system, causing the complete balance control scheme to work and adapt.
"When you lose vestibular sensation in both ears every time your heel hits the ground, the world shakes, " says Charles C.
Della Santina, director of the Vestibular Neuroengineering Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
Their vestibular system is still recovering, so their balance is off.
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Della Santina has built a vestibular prosthesis that he hopes can someday be implanted in humans much like cochlear implants are now used to restore hearing.
"Once you have taken away your vision and you are standing on an unstable surface, your vestibular system has to work harder to maintain balance, " he says.
The coming vestibular implant is just one of several new, improving and emerging prosthetic organs, limbs and other body parts that are using ever more sensors, processors and motors--they are becoming more bionic.
The measurements, translated to electrical impulses, would be delivered to the three vestibular nerves that emanate from the three semicircular canals, much like audio signals are delivered to the auditory nerve in cochlear implants.
Mrs Maggie of Rio's Federal University counters with snapshots: she shows visitors group photographs of aspiring university students, all poor enough to have their vestibular fees waived, and asks them to pick out the blacks.
Because each semicircular canal has its own nerve, a vestibular implant may actually be easier to perfect than a cochlear implant, which has to deliver many different sound frequencies to a single, bundled auditory nerve.
This wouldn't be able to replicate the function of the vestibular system, but it could act like a pacemaker for people who have attacks that make the vestibular system go haywire, like sufferers of Meniere's disease.
He successfully implanted his device in normal rhesus monkeys without disturbing their hearing or sense of balance, and he was able to spark the vestibular system so that the monkeys' eyes moved as if they were spinning.
These include the frontal cortex (where decisions are made), the motor cortex (which controls muscle activity), the somatosensory cortex (where the sense of touch is located) and the part of the parietal cortex that regulates kinaesthesia (the sense of bodily motion, which is built up from signals from the muscles and the vestibular systems of the ears).
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