<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">======================================</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT Research Digest, Oct. 2008</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">======================================</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">For Immediate Release</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MONDAY, OCT. 6, 2008</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">E: <a href="mailto:thomson@mit.edu">thomson@mit.edu</a>, T: 617-258-5402</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research advances</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Latest research news: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">RSS -- research feed: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/mitresearch-rss.xml">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/mitresearch-rss.xml</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IN THIS ISSUE: Election ‘08: Prioritizing Science * Fuel-Cell Nanoparticles</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Tree Power * Designing a Landfill * Underwater Robot</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Of Worms and Humans * Corn Processing * Robotic Wheelchair</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Insights into Chemo * Toward Better Detectors * Watch & Learn</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Renewable Energy Regulations * Large Hadron Collider * Smell Receptors<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Toward Better Fuel Efficiency *Memory Capacity * Quantum Probe</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Super-Massive Black Hole * Cutting Airline Delays<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Offshore Fish Farming * Malaria & Cells</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">ELECTION ‘08: PRIORITIZING SCIENCE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">In the run-up to the Nov. 4 presidential election, the MIT News Office has asked MIT experts to weigh in on the presidential candidates, their policy ideas and aspects of the campaign. In this installment in the series, members of the MIT community share their thoughts on what should be the next president's top priority in the areas of science and technology.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/election-science-0930.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/election-science-0930.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">FUEL-CELL NANOPARTICLES</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">In a step toward developing better fuel cells for electric cars and more, MIT engineers and colleagues have taken the first images of individual atoms on and near the surface of nanoparticles key to the eco-friendly energy storage devices. Nanoparticles made of platinum and cobalt are known to catalyze some of the chemical reactions behind fuel cells, making those reactions run up to four times faster than if platinum alone is used as the catalyst. No one, however, understands exactly why. That's because "little is known about the nanoparticles' surface atomic structure and chemistry," which are key to the particles' activity, said Yang Shao-Horn, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the Electrochemical Energy Laboratory at MIT. Using a new technique known as aberration-corrected Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy, Shao-Horn's team, in collaboration with Professor Paulo Ferreira of the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Larry Allard of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, identified specific atomic structures near the surface of such a catalyst. That information in hand, the researchers propose a theory for why the material is so active. Perhaps most importantly, "knowing the surface composition will help us design even better catalysts," Shao-Horn said. The work was reported in the Sept. 24 online issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fuel-cell-1002.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fuel-cell-1002.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGE AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">TREE POWER</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest fires. What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees as silent sentinels along the nation's borders to detect potential threats such as smuggled radioactive materials. The U.S. Forest Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools, including remote automated weather stations. But these stations are expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire prediction models and earlier alerts. However, manually recharging or replacing batteries at often very hard-to-reach locations makes this impractical and costly. The new sensor system seeks to avoid this problem by tapping into trees as a self-sustaining power supply. Each sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly recharged using electricity generated by the tree. A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering. The original experiments were funded by MagCap Engineering, LLC, through MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/trees-0923.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/trees-0923.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">PHOTO, GRAPHICS AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">DESIGNING A LANDFILL</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Many architects dream of being given a "tabula rasa" -- a blank slate -- upon which they could let the imagination soar when designing a home, building or other project. A team led by MIT architects Alexander D'Hooghe and Nader Tehrani are working on what could be the largest blank slate in the history of construction. This summer, the MIT team was among the winners of an Urban Design Institute of Korea-sponsored contest to design a mammoth landfill project on South Korea's western coast -- a 401 square kilometer area that will house farms, cities and developments ranging from a spaceport to an amusement park. Intended to fill between the long fingers of land that project into South Korea's Saemangeum Bay, the project could cost billions of dollars and be eight times bigger than the record-breaking Palm Deira landfill development under way in Dubai.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/landfill-0926.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/landfill-0926.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGES, PHOTOS AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">UNDERWATER ROBOT</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT researchers have designed a new robotic underwater vehicle that can hover in place like a helicopter -- an invaluable tool for deepwater oil explorers, marine archaeologists, oceanographers and others. The new craft, called Odyssey IV, is the latest in a series of small, inexpensive artificially intelligent submarines developed over the last two decades by the MIT Sea Grant College Program's Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory. The Odyssey series revolutionized underwater research in the 1990s by introducing the thrifty and highly capable underwater robots. But the previous Odyssey vehicles still had one significant limitation: Like sharks, they could only operate while continuously moving forward. No more. The new Odyssey IV, which has just completed sea trials off Woods Hole, Mass., can move through the deep ocean, up to 6,000 meters down, stopping anywhere in the water column and constantly correcting for currents and obstacles. Navigating to its preprogrammed destination, it can hover in place, making detailed inspections of the footings of an offshore oil platform, or photographing the flora and fauna around an undersea vent. The work is led by Professor Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis, director of MIT Sea Grant, and Franz Hover, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/odyssey4-0925.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/odyssey4-0925.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">VIDEO, IMAGE AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">OF WORMS AND HUMANS</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">On the surface, the tiny roundworm bears little resemblance to a person. Its nervous system, for example, has just 302 neurons to our 100 billion. Yet it uses many of the same genes and signaling chemicals as the human brain, so studies of its system could have relevance to our own. Now an MIT team has shown that even the simplest worm behaviors can be controlled by multiple signaling pathways. The results might have implications for the treatment of human brain disorders. In the new study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, H. Robert Horvitz and postdoctoral scientist Niels Ringstad investigated neural pathways of a mutant worm strain with defective egg-laying behavior. Horvitz, a Nobel laureate and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and affiliated with the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. The Life Sciences Research Foundation, The Medical Foundation and the NIH supported this study.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/worms-0924.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/worms-0924.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGE AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">CORN PROCESSING</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Across Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, processing the corn harvest is labor intensive: Families and friends gather to spend a day or two filling bags with the dried cobs, beating then to loosen the kernels, and then separating out the kernels from the cobs, or else simply removing the kernels by hand. It would take one person about two weeks to complete the job alone, but thanks to a technology largely developed at MIT, there's a better, faster way. Jodie Wu, an MIT senior in mechanical engineering, spent the summer traveling from village to village in Tanzania to introduce a new system for processing the corn: A simple attachment for a bicycle that makes it possible to remove the kernels quickly and efficiently using pedal power. The device makes processing up to 30 times faster and allows one person to complete the job alone in one day. The basic concept for the maize-sheller was first developed in Guatemala by an NGO called MayaPedal, and then refined by Wu last semester as a class project in D-Lab: Design, a class taught by Department of Mechanical Engineering Senior Lecturer Amy Smith. Now, thanks to Wu's efforts, the technology is beginning to make its way around the world.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/itw-corncob-tt1001.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/itw-corncob-tt1001.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">PHOTO AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">ROBOTIC WHEELCHAIR</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT researchers are developing a new kind of autonomous wheelchair that can learn all about the locations in a given building, and then take its occupant to a given place in response to a verbal command. Just by saying "take me to the cafeteria" or "go to my room," the wheelchair user would be able to avoid the need for controlling every twist and turn of the route and could simply sit back and relax as the chair moves from one place to another based on a map stored in its memory. "It's a system that can learn and adapt to the user," says Nicholas Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and co-developer of the wheelchair. "People have different preferences and different ways of referring" to places and objects, he says, and the aim is to have each wheelchair personalized for its user and the user's environment. Unlike other attempts to program wheelchairs or other mobile devices, which rely on an intensive process of manually capturing a detailed map of a building, the MIT system can learn about its environment in much the same way as a person would: By being taken around once on a guided tour, with important places identified along the way. For example, as the wheelchair is pushed around a nursing home for the first time, the patient or a caregiver would say: "this is my room" or "here we are in the foyer" or "nurse's station." Also collaborating on the project are Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT's AgeLab, and Seth Teller, professor of computer science and engineering. The research has been funded by Nokia and Microsoft.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/wheelchair-0919.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/wheelchair-0919.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">PHOTO, VIDEO AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">INSIGHTS INTO CHEMOTHERAPY</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT researchers have shown that cells from different people don't all react the same way when exposed to the same DNA-damaging agent -- a finding that could help clinicians predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy. The research team from MIT's Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) and the Departments of Biological Engineering and Biology, identified a group of 48 genes that can predict how susceptible an individual is to the toxic compound known as MNNG. The work appears in a Sept. online edition of Genes and Development. MNNG, a DNA-damaging compound similar to toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke and in common chemotherapy agents, usually kills cells by inducing irreparable DNA damage. However, the researchers found a wide range of susceptibility among cells taken from healthy people. The work was led by Leona Samson, senior author of the paper, director of CEHS, and an American Cancer Society Research Professor. The research was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/cell-response-0918.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/cell-response-0918.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">TOWARD BETTER DETECTORS</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">A bizarre but well-established aspect of quantum physics could open up a new era of electronic detectors and imaging systems that would be far more efficient than any now in existence, according to new insights by an MIT leader in the field. MIT Professor of Mechanical Engineering Seth Lloyd has found that a peculiar quantum-physics property called entanglement can be harnessed to make detectors--similar in principle to radar systems used to track airplanes in flight or ships at sea--that are as much as a million times more efficient than existing systems. In addition, beams of entangled light could be swept across a scene to reconstruct a detailed image, with a similar improvement in efficiency. The new findings, reported in the journal Science, are purely theoretical, but Lloyd says that laboratory experiments have already proven the feasibility of both the light sources and the detectors needed for such a quantum-based photodetection system, so he anticipates that within a year it should be possible to build a laboratory-scale system to demonstrate the new concept.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/quantum-detect-0911.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/quantum-detect-0911.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">WATCH AND LEARN</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">In work that could aid efforts to develop more brain-like computer vision systems, MIT neuroscientists have tricked the visual brain into confusing one object with another, thereby demonstrating that time teaches us how to recognize objects. It may sound strange, but human eyes never see the same image twice. An object such as a cat can produce innumerable impressions on the retina, depending on the direction of gaze, angle of view, distance and so forth. Every time our eyes move, the pattern of neural activity changes, yet our perception of the cat remains stable. "This stability, which is called 'invariance,' is fundamental to our ability to recognize objects -- it feels effortless, but it is a central challenge for computational neuroscience," explained James DiCarlo of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the senior author of the new study appearing in a Sept. issue of Science. "We want to understand how our brains acquire invariance and how we might incorporate it into computer vision systems." This work was funded by the NIH, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience and a gift from Marjorie and Gerald Burnett.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/neuron-object-0911.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/neuron-object-0911.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">VIDEO, IMAGE AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">RENEWABLE ENERGY REGULATIONS</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Well-intentioned rules passed by many states to combat climate change through the development of renewable energy technologies may not achieve the intended effects and may even be counterproductive, according to research by an MIT graduate student. But the problem is easy to fix: A modified set of regulations could be much more effective, the study found. At least 25 states have enacted renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which require electric utilities to obtain a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources by a certain date (such as "20 percent from renewables by 2020"). But these standards will not achieve the desired effects and may actually end up delaying some of the most promising renewable-energy technologies, the study found. Michael Hogan, the student who carried out the study as part of his master's thesis work in MIT's Environmental Technology and Public Policy Program, says that such standards push investments much too heavily toward technology that is already well proven and close to being economically competitive, especially land-based wind power. In the process, technologies that may have much more potential to replace coal plants in the longer term, such as solar thermal systems and offshore wind, get short shrift.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/renewable-energy-tt1001.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/renewable-energy-tt1001.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">PHOTO AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">LARGE HADRON COLLIDER</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Dozens of MIT physicists are waiting anxiously to sift through data from the world's biggest physics experiment, which officially started in Sept. when scientists sent the first beam of protons zooming at nearly the speed of light around the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. Some 40 MIT researchers are among the thousands of physicists from around the world collaborating on the LHC, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. MIT has the largest American university group working on one of the collider's four detectors, known as the CMS (compact muon solenoid) detector, and a smaller group working on another LHC detector known as ATLAS (a toroidal LHC apparatus). The first circulating beam is a major accomplishment on the way to the ultimate goal: high-energy beams colliding in the centers of the LHC's particle detectors. Scientists participating in these experiments will analyze the collisions in search of extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, the LHC experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they do. They could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter, uncover hidden symmetries of the universe and possibly find extra dimensions of space.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/lhc-0910.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/lhc-0910.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">SMELL RECEPTORS</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT biological engineers have found a way to mass-produce smell receptors in the laboratory, an advance that paves the way for "artificial noses" to be created and used in a variety of settings. The work could also allow scientists to unlock the mystery of how the sense of smell can recognize a seemingly infinite range of odors. "Smell is perhaps one of the oldest and most primitive senses, but nobody really understands how it works. It still remains a tantalizing enigma," said Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a paper on the work appearing online the week of Sept. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Artificial noses could one day replace drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs, and could have numerous medical applications, according to Zhang and colleagues. DARPA recently approved funding for the team's MIT (microfluidic-integrated transduction) RealNose project. The research was funded by the ROHM Corporation (Japan), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Joyce and Roger Kiley provided pure odorants.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/smell-0929.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/smell-0929.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">TOWARD BETTER FUEL EFFICIENCY</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">As a car accelerates up and down a hill then slows to follow a hairpin turn, the airflow around it cannot keep up and detaches from the vehicle. This aerodynamic separation creates additional drag that slows the car and forces the engine to work harder. The same phenomenon affects airplanes, boats, submarines, and even your golf ball. Now, in work that could lead to ways of controlling the effect with potential impacts on fuel efficiency and more, MIT scientists and colleagues have reported new mathematical and experimental work for predicting where that aerodynamic separation will occur. The research solves "a century-old problem in the field of fluid mechanics," or the study of how fluids -- which for scientists include gases and liquids -- move, said George Haller, a visiting professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Haller's group developed the new theory, while Thomas Peacock, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor in the same department, led the experimental effort. Papers on the experiments and theory were published in Sept. issues of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the Physics of Fluids. The research was initially supported by the MIT Ferry Fund. Currently the work is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the NSF.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fluid-flow-0924.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fluid-flow-0924.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">PHOTO, VIDEO, IMAGES AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MEMORY CAPACITY</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">In recent years, demonstrations of memory's failures have convinced many scientists that human memory does not store the details of our experiences. However, a new study from MIT cognitive neuroscientists may overturn this widespread belief: They have shown that given the right setting, the human brain can record an amazing amount of information. In the study, the results of which could have implications for artificial intelligence and for understanding memory disorders, people viewed thousands of objects over five hours. Remarkably, afterward they were able to remember each object in great detail. "Visual long-term memory capacity is much higher than previously believed and shown," said Aude Oliva, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and senior author of a paper describing the work, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Sept. The research was funded by the NSF, the NIH, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and a National Research Service Award.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/vision-memory-0908.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/vision-memory-0908.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">PHOTO, IMAGES AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">QUANTUM PROBE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT researchers may have found a way to overcome a key barrier to the advent of super-fast quantum computers, which could be powerful tools for applications such as code breaking. Ever since Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman first proposed the theory of quantum computing more than two decades ago, researchers have been working to build such a device. One approach involves superconducting devices that, when cooled to temperatures of nearly absolute zero (-459 degrees F, -273 degrees C), can be made to behave like artificial atoms -- nanometer-scale "boxes" in which the electrons are forced to exist at specific, discrete energy levels (picture an elevator that can stop at the floors of a building but not in between). But traditional scientific techniques for characterizing -- and therefore better understanding -- atoms and molecules do not necessarily translate easily to artificial atoms, said William Oliver of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Analog Device Technology Group and MIT's Research Laboratory for Electronics. In a Sept.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>issue of Nature, Oliver and colleagues report a technique that could fill that gap. This work was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, the DOD, and the US government.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/artificial-atom-0903.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/artificial-atom-0903.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGE AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">SUPER-MASSIVE BLACK HOLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The astronomers linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a virtual telescope more than 2,800 miles across that is capable of seeing details more than 1,000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. The cosmic target of the observations was the source known as Sagittarius A* ("A-star"), long thought to mark the position of a black hole whose mass is 4 million times that of the sun. Though Sagittarius A* was discovered three decades ago, the new observations for the first time have an angular resolution, or ability to observe small details, that is matched to the size of the black hole "event horizon" -- the region inside of which nothing, including light, can ever escape. The concept of black holes, objects so dense that their gravitational pull prevents anything including light itself from ever escaping their grasp, has long been hypothesized, but their existence has not yet been proved conclusively. Astronomers study black holes by detecting the light emitted by matter that heats up as it is pulled closer to the event horizon. By measuring the size of this glowing region at the Milky Way center, the new observations have revealed the highest density yet for the concentration of matter at the center of our galaxy, which "is important new evidence supporting the existence of black holes," said Sheperd Doeleman of MIT, lead author of the study that was published in Nature. This work was funded by the NSF.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/blackhole-view-0903.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/blackhole-view-0903.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGES AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">CUTTING AIRLINE DELAYS</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MIT researchers are working toward a computer tool that could reduce airline flight delays due to weather. Already, they have found that a prototype deployed in the New York City region cut delays last year by 2,300 hours, saving the equivalent of some $7.5 million in operating costs. The team, led by Richard DeLaura of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Weather Sensing Group, estimates that fully implementing the Route Availability Planning Tool (RAPT) in the New York region alone could save 8,800 hours per year, or $28 million. Deploying RAPT at other key spots all over the country could reduce delays at both large and small airports, DeLaura says. Lincoln Laboratory studies suggest that getting even two or three additional flights per hour out of airports during thunderstorms in highly congested areas can significantly reduce the weather-related delays that ripple across the nation's air travel system. RAPT gives air traffic managers assistance in deciding whether to allow planes to take off during inclement weather, increasing the odds of sneaking a few jets out between thunderheads. The computerized tool takes weather information from satellites and radar systems, makes predictions about whether a pilot would choose to fly through such conditions, and displays the information graphically to enable an air traffic controller to make a quick decision. A prototype of the system has been used in the New York City region -- including LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports -- for about four years, with modest funding from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. This past year, the FAA began funding RAPT.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/air-traffic-0903.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/air-traffic-0903.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGE AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">OFFSHORE FISH FARMING</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">A self-propelling underwater cage developed and recently tested by an MIT researcher could not only cut costs for offshore ocean-based fish farms but also aid the movement of such operations into the high seas, avoiding the user conflicts and compromised water quality of coastal zones. Fish farms account for more than half of the seafood produced globally; 40 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is farmed in other countries and imported. However, very little of that comes from ocean-based farms. In conventional offshore fish farming, cages are routinely repositioned to control disease. Stout towboats haul the enormous cages to another site, and both the cage size and typical propulsive inefficiency of boats make such movements very energy-intensive events. Cliff Goudey, director of MIT Sea Grant's Offshore Aquaculture Engineering Center, is exploring a different approach to moving the cages. By placing large, slow-turning propellers directly on a cage, Goudey frees it from the normal constraints of a boat. His system uses a pair of eight-foot diameter, electrically powered propellers, with 6.2-horsepower underwater motors. The motors are powered through tethers to the surface attached to a diesel generator and a pair of motor controllers mounted on a small boat.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/aquaculture-0902.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/aquaculture-0902.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">VIDEO AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MALARIA & CELLS</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">In work that could lead to new ways of detecting and treating malaria, MIT researchers have used two advanced microscopy techniques to show in unprecedented detail how the malaria parasite attacks red blood cells. The researchers' images show red blood cell membranes becoming less flexible, which causes the cells to clump as they try to navigate tiny blood vessels. They also show the destruction of hemoglobin, the critical molecule that red blood cells use to carry oxygen. The images are made possible by microscopy techniques that reveal tiny vibrations in red blood cell membranes. "By studying the way the cell membrane vibrations progressively change as the malaria parasite matures inside the cell, we can study the changes in its mechanical, elastic and dynamic properties," said Michael Feld, director of MIT's George Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory and a professor of physics. Feld and Subra Suresh, dean of MIT's School of Engineering, are senior authors of a paper on the work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Sept. The study establishes the first experimental connection between cell membrane vibration and the pathological state of a living cell. This work was funded by the National Center for Research Resources of NIH, the NSF, and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Center.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">MORE: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/blood-cell-0901.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/blood-cell-0901.html</a></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">IMAGES, PHOTO AVAILABLE</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">--END--</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> </div></body></html>