<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, March 2009</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">TUESDAY, MAR. 3, 2009</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: Chameleon Guitar * New Rocket * Genetics Of Autism * Earliest Animal Ancestors * Nano-Origami * Chronic Infection Threat * Power From Potholes * Tiny Twilight Zone * Tracking Tuberculosis * Ovarian Cancer * Novel Washing Machine * Rett Syndrome * Microbes To The Rescue * Tactile Communication * Solar Race Car * Prostate Cancer * Alien Ocean * Parkinson’s Disease * Fighting Bacterial Infections</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">CHAMELEON GUITAR</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">Natural wood, with its unique grain patterns, is what gives traditional acoustic instruments warm and distinctive sounds, while the power of modern electronic processing provides an unlimited degree of control to manipulate the characteristics of an instrument's sound. Now, a guitar built by a student at MIT's Media Lab promises to provide the best of both worlds. The Chameleon Guitar — so named for its ability to mimic different instruments — is an electric guitar whose body has a separate central section that is removable. This inserted section, the soundboard, can be switched with one made of a different kind of wood, or with a different structural support system, or with one made of a different material altogether. Then, the sound generated by the electronic pickups on that board can be manipulated by a computer to produce the effect of a different size or shape of the resonating chamber. Its creator, Media Lab masters student Amit Zoran, explains that each piece of wood is unique and will behave in a different way when it is part of an instrument and begins to vibrate in response to the strings attached to it. Under the direction of Media Lab Associate Professor Pattie Maes, and with help from experienced instrument builder Marco Coppiardi, he built the first proof of concept version last summer, with a variety of removable wooden inserts. The concept worked, so he went on to build a more polished version with an easier quick-change mechanism for switching the inserts providing a variety of sound characteristics, but always leaving the same body, neck and frets so that the instrument always feels the same.</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/2009/chameleon-guitar-0203.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/chameleon-guitar-0203.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 AND 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">NEW ROCKET</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">Satellites orbiting the Earth must occasionally be nudged to stay on the correct path. MIT scientists are developing a new rocket that could make this and other spacecraft maneuvers much less costly, a consideration of growing importance as more private companies start working in space. The new system, called the Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster, is much smaller than other rockets of its kind and runs on gases that are much less expensive than conventional propellants. As a result, it could slash fuel consumption by 10 times that of conventional systems used for the same applications, said Oleg Batishchev, a principal research scientist in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and leader of the work. The propulsion systems currently used for maintaining a satellite’s orbit, pushing a spacecraft from one orbit to another, and otherwise maneuvering in space rely on chemical reactions that occur within the fuel, releasing energy that ultimately propels the object. Although such systems have brought humans to the moon and are regularly used in a variety of other applications, they have limitations. For example, chemical rockets are expensive largely due to the amount of fuel they use. As a result, engineers have been developing alternative, non-chemical rockets. In these, an external source of electrical energy is used to accelerate the propellant that provides the thrust for moving a craft through space.This work was funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory.</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/2009/plasma-rocket-0224.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/plasma-rocket-0224.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 AND 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">GENETICS OF AUTISM</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">By pinpointing two genes that cause autism-like symptoms in mice, researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have shown for the first time that multiple, interacting genetic risk factors may influence the severity of autistic symptoms. The study, reported in a Feb. advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lends support to researchers’ long-suspected belief that in individuals whose autism is genetic in origin, more than one gene is implicated. The work could lead to drugs targeting signaling mechanisms between the two interacting genes responsible for some autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) symptoms. The molecular intersection of the two genes’ pathways in the brain may also serve as a diagnostic target or biomarker for a subset of individuals with ASDs. “We found that two genetic risk factors for ASDs act cooperatively in mice to influence brain size and social behavior, both of which are altered in ASDs,” said Damon T. Page, a Picower Institute postdoctoral fellow and lead investigator of the study. This work was supported by the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, the Simons Foundation and the Autism Consortium.</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/2009/autism-gene-0209.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/autism-gene-0209.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">EARLIEST ANIMAL ANCESTORS</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">Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the apparently sudden appearance in the fossil record of a great variety of multicellular creatures — a rapid blossoming known as the Cambrian explosion. Since then, the origin of animals was found to extend back earlier, through a period known as the Ediacarian. Now, evidence found by researchers at MIT, UC Riverside and other institutions shows that the first complex life forms may in fact have appeared much earlier still. Our earliest animal ancestors, it appears, were sponges — multicellular animals that feed by passing seawater though a complex system of internal channels. And these earliest sponges may predate the Ediacarian period by as much as 80 million years, this new evidence shows. Soft-bodied animals such as sponges are very rarely preserved as fossils, so finding evidence of their early appearance required some clever detective work. The key turned out to be an examination of unusual chemicals: steroids of a particular type produced abundantly by sponges but virtually never by simpler organisms. Studying an unusually well preserved long sequence of strata found in Oman, the research team was able to extract these “chemical fossils” from a large number of samples spanning a range of tens of millions of years — before, during and after the Ediacarian period. This provided clear evidence that sponges must have evolved long before the great variety of multicellular organisms that proliferated at the dawn of that period. The new research, which appeared in the journal Nature, was conducted in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, under the direction of Professor of Geobiology Roger Summons. The work was funded by Petroleum Development Oman, NASA, the NSF, and the Agouron 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/2009/nature-sponges-0204.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/nature-sponges-0204.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">NANO-ORIGAMI</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">Folding paper into shapes such as a crane or a butterfly is challenging enough for most people. Now imagine trying to fold something that’s about a hundred times thinner than a human hair and then putting it to use as an electronic device. A team of researchers led by George Barbastathis, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is developing the basic principles of nano-origami, a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures. The tiny folded materials could be used as motors and capacitors, potentially leading to better computer memory storage, faster microprocessors and new nanophotonic devices. Traditional micro- and nano-fabrication techniques such as X-ray lithography and nano-imprinting work beautifully for two-dimensional structures, and are commonly used to build microprocessors and other micro-electrical-mechanical (MEMS) devices. However, they cannot create 3-D structures. “A lot of what’s done now is planar,” says Tony Nichol, a mechanical engineering graduate student working on the project. “We want to take all of the nice tools that have been developed for 2-D and do 3-D things.”</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/2009/nano-origami-0224.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/nano-origami-0224.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 AND 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">CHRONIC INFECTION THREAT</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">Worldwide, nearly 2 million people per year die from diarrhea, the vast majority of them in poor countries in Africa and Asia. The disease accounts for 18 percent of all deaths among children — and yet is almost always preventable with proper treatment. Now, new research from MIT indicates that underlying, low-level undiagnosed infection may greatly add to the severity of a significant number of these cases. This realization could lead to changes in health-care strategies to address the problem. The findings, reported by MIT Professor of Biological Engineering and Comparative Medicine David Schauer, show that these undiagnosed gastrointestinal infections increase the severity of and delay recovery from acute diarrhea, and the analysis provides a model that could allow public health officials to evaluate new preventive strategies or therapeutic treatments. The work grew out of the increasing recognition of the relationship between persistent, chronic infections many people carry and the outcomes of later disease infection. “It seemed likely that persistent enteric infection with bacterial agents would also elicit immune responses that could have similar effects. However, this had not been previously studied,” Schauer says. “We wanted to provide proof of principle, and begin to define the mechanism for such an interaction.” The work was supported by a U.S. Public Health Service grant.</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/2009/diarrhea-0213.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/diarrhea-0213.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">POWER FROM POTHOLES</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 team of MIT undergraduates has invented a shock absorber that harnesses energy from small bumps in the road, generating electricity while it smoothes the ride more effectively than conventional shocks. The students hope to initially find customers among companies that operate large fleets of heavy vehicles. They have already drawn interest from the U.S. military and several truck manufacturers. Senior Shakeel Avadhany and his teammates say they can produce up to a 10 percent improvement in overall vehicle fuel efficiency by using the regenerative shock absorbers. The company that produces Humvees for the army, and is currently working on development of the next-generation version of the all-purpose vehicle, is interested enough to have loaned them a vehicle for testing purposes. The project came about because “we wanted to figure out where energy is being wasted in a vehicle,” senior Zack Anderson explains. Some hybrid cars already do a good job of recovering the energy from braking, so the team looked elsewhere, and quickly homed in on the suspension. They filed for a patent last year and formed a company, called Levant Power Corp., to develop and commercialize the product.</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/2009/shock-absorbers-0209.html*">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/shock-absorbers-0209.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">TINY TWILIGHT ZONE</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">Not far beneath the ocean’s surface, tiny phytoplankton swimming upward in a daily commute toward morning light sometimes encounter the watery equivalent of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone: a sharp variation in marine currents that traps billions of these single-celled organisms and sends them tumbling until a shift in wind or tide alters the currents and sets them free. Scientists are aware of these thin layers of single-celled creatures and their enormous ecological ramifications, but until now, they knew little about the mechanisms responsible for their formation. The explanation by researchers in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of how these common, startlingly dense layers of photosynthetic phytoplankton form, moves the scientific community a step closer to being able to predict harmful algal blooms, a well-known example of which is red tide. The work also opens new perspectives on other phenomena, like predatory feeding by larger organisms at these ecological hotspots. “Phytoplankton are incredibly small. You would have to stack about 10 back to back to equal the width of a single human hair,” said PhD student William Durham, co-author on a paper appearing in a Feb. issue of Science. This research was supported by the NSF and the MIT Earth Systems Initiative.</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/2009/algal-blooms-0219.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/algal-blooms-0219.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">GRAPHIC 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">TRACKING TUBERCULOSIS</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">For patients who have drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis, it’s critical to monitor the disease as closely as possible. That means monthly testing throughout a two-year course of powerful antibiotics, with injections six days a week for the first six months. Keeping track of all those test results can be very time-consuming, especially in developing countries where health workers rely on paper copies. That’s why MIT graduate student Joaquin Blaya decided to try out a new tracking method: personal digital assistants. In a project launched in Lima, Peru, the researchers found that equipping health care workers with PDAs to record data dropped the average time for patients’ test results to reach their doctors from 23 days to eight days. “You can monitor patients in a more timely way. It also prevents results from getting lost,” says Blaya, a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Their work was reported in the online edition of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.</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/2009/itw-pda-tt0211.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/itw-pda-tt0211.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">OVARIAN CANCER</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">Small RNA molecules can effectively keep ovarian tumors from growing and spreading in mice, according to a team of researchers from MIT, the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. The findings, reported in a Feb. online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represent a promising new approach to the treatment of ovarian cancer, a disease that affects more than 20,000 women and results in more than 15,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. The work may also hold potential for treating other types of cancer. The researchers used a new approach known as RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi therapeutics target disease by potently silencing specific messenger RNAs (mRNAs), thereby preventing disease-causing proteins from being made. The new results demonstrate that RNAi silencing of the claudin-3 protein using lipid-like formulations of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs, the molecules that mediate RNAi) results in the suppression of ovarian tumor growth and metastases.</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/2009/ovarian-cancer-0209.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/ovarian-cancer-0209.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">NOVEL WASHING MACHINE</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 many developing countries, electricity is unreliable or unavailable and water must be carried by hand, so conventional modern washing machines are not an option. Washing clothes can take up a significant amount of time, and doing laundry in open streams or lakes can add to water pollution, so the availability of a human-powered washing machine could make a big difference to the quality of life. A pedal-powered washing machine that MIT students and staff built mostly from bicycle parts and empty barrels could solve many of these problems, and at the same time could be built locally and thereby create jobs. Under development for almost four years, the new machine — dubbed “bicilavadora,” combining the Spanish words for bicycle and washing machine — got its most rigorous workout last month when a team of MIT students took the latest prototype to an orphanage in the slums called Ventanilla outside Lima, Peru. With 670 resident children, the home generates enough laundry to keep the washer perpetually busy. The machine was designed to be easy and inexpensive to manufacture, mostly using parts and tools that are readily available almost everywhere in the developing 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/2009/itw-bicilavadora-0219.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/itw-bicilavadora-0219.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 AND 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">RETT SYNDROME</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 molecule that promotes brain development could serve as a possible treatment for Rett syndrome, the most common form of autism in girls, according to researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The researchers found that injecting the molecule into mice that have an equivalent of Rett syndrome helped the animals' faulty brain cells develop normally and reversed some of the disorder's symptoms. The work, reported in a Feb. online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is expected to lead to new human clinical trials for a derivative of growth factor-1 (IGF-1), currently used to treat growth disorders and control blood glucose. The MIT study indicates that IGF-1 could potentially lessen the severity of symptoms of Rett syndrome. "We demonstrate that a major underlying mechanism behind Rett syndrome in mice is that synapses in the brain remain immature and show persistent, abnormal plasticity into adulthood," said Daniela Tropea, a postdoctoral fellow at the Picower Institute and lead author of the study. "We also propose that a therapeutic based on this mechanism would be directly applicable to humans." This work is supported by the Rett Syndrome Research Foundation, the NIH, the Simons Foundation, the Marcus Family Foundation and the Autism Consortium.</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/2009/rett-0209.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/rett-0209.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">MICROBES TO THE RESCUE</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 search for answers to the planet’s biggest challenges, some MIT researchers are turning to its tiniest organisms: bacteria. The idea of exploiting microbial products is not new: Humans have long enlisted bacteria and yeast to make bread, wine and cheese, and more recently discovered antibiotics that help fight disease. Now, researchers in the growing field of metabolic engineering are trying to manipulate bacteria’s unique abilities to help generate energy and clean up Earth’s atmosphere. MIT chemical engineer Kristala Jones Prather sees bacteria as diverse and complex “chemical factories” that can potentially build better biofuels as well as biodegradable plastics and textiles. “We’re trying to ask what kinds of things should we be trying to make, and looking for potential routes in nature to make them,” says Prather, the Joseph R. Mares (1924) Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering. She and Gregory Stephanopoulos, the W.H. Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, are trying to create bacteria that make biofuels and other compounds more efficiently, while chemistry professor Catherine Drennan hopes bacteria can one day help soak up pollutants such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere.</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/2009/bacteria-energy-0217.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/bacteria-energy-0217.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 AND GRAPHIC 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">TACTILE COMMUNICATION</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">Lip reading is a critical means of communication for many deaf people, but it has a drawback: Certain consonants (for example, p and b) can be nearly impossible to distinguish by sight alone. Tactile devices, which translate sound waves into vibrations that can be felt by the skin, can help overcome that obstacle by conveying nuances of speech that can’t be gleaned from lip reading. Researchers in MIT’s Sensory Communication Group are working on a new generation of such devices, which could be an important tool for deaf people who rely on lip reading and can’t use or can’t afford cochlear implants. The cost of the device and the surgery make cochlear implants prohibitive for many people, especially in developing countries. “Most deaf people will not have access to that technology in our lifetime,” said Ted Moallem, a graduate student working on the project. “Tactile devices can be several orders of magnitude cheaper than cochlear implants.” Moallem and Charlotte Reed, senior research scientist in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and leader of the project, say the software they are developing could be compatible with current smart phones, allowing such devices to be transformed into unobtrusive tactile aids for the deaf. This research is funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.</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/2009/deaf-touch-0226.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/deaf-touch-0226.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">SOLAR RACE CAR</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's Solar Electric Vehicle Team has unveiled its newest race car, Eleanor, to the public. With six square meters of monocrystalline silicon solar cells and improved electronic systems and design, the car can run all day on a sunny day at a steady cruising speed of 55 mph. The car will be competing in October in the World Solar Challenge race across Australia, and in preparation for that the team plans to drive the car across the United States over the summer. The new vehicle is equipped with wireless links so that the lead and chase vehicles during the race will be able to monitor every aspect of the car's electrical performance in real time. Its batteries have enough energy, when fully charged, to get the car from Boston to New York City without need of sunlight. David Sanchez, a senior in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the aerodynamics lead for the team, has been working on the project for more than two years. "There's no better project for a young guy who wants to do aerodynamics, all the way from conception to design to construction," he says.</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/2009/solar-car-adv-0225.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/solar-car-adv-0225.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 AND 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">PROSTATE CANCER</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">Blocking a specific protein complex prevents the formation of tumors in mice genetically predisposed to develop prostate cancer, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have found. Interestingly, inhibiting this protein complex in non-cancer cells appears to have no impact, suggesting that the protein complex may represent a promising target for drug development. Prostate cancer, the second-most common cancer among men in the United States, can be caused by mutation of a known tumor suppressor gene that restrains abnormal cell growth. Studies have shown that an estimated 70 percent of men with prostate cancer have a deletion of this gene, known as PTEN. "PTEN is probably the second-most common tumor suppressor loss that causes cancer -- after p53 -- so it's a 'big deal' tumor suppressor," says Whitehead Member David Sabatini, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of biology at MIT. In prostate cells where PTEN is absent, no mechanism exists to prevent the cells from dividing and growing uncontrollably. In a new study appearing in a Feb. edition of Cancer Cell, researchers in Sabatini's lab found that prostate cells also require the mTORC2 protein complex to form tumors. In a mouse model of human prostate cancer, the PTEN gene is deleted, causing prostate tumors to form. By switching off a protein known as RICTOR, one of the proteins comprising the mTORC2 protein complex, Whitehead researchers found that tumor formation could be blocked and prostate cancer development inhibited in study mice -- despite the PTEN deletion. This research was supported by the NIH and the Keck Foundation.</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/2009/prostate-protein-0202.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/prostate-protein-0202.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">GRAPHIC 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">ALIEN OCEAN</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">When MIT Professor of Anthropology Stefan Helmreich set out to examine the world of marine microbiologists for a new book, his research took an unexpected twist. Helmreich, who has been recognized for his innovative cultural anthropology work, had decided to study scientists who chase some of the world's smallest creatures in some of the world's most forbidding places. So he spent long hours interviewing microbial biologists such as Penny Chisholm, the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies at MIT, and Edward DeLong, professor in MIT's Department of Biological Engineering and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an associate member at the Broad Institute. He wanted to understand not only how they went about their research, but also what sentiments and belief systems guided them as they scrutinized microbes like Prochlorococcus, a sea-dwelling microbe of global importance that Chisholm co-discovered in 1986. But during the years of Helmreich's research, the entire field shifted gears. By the time he finished his book, "Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas," published in early 2009 by University of California Press, marine microbiologists were calling their discipline "microbial oceanography" -- a reflection that they were not just studying individual single-celled creatures in the ocean, but the ocean itself.</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/2009/alien-ocean-0205.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/alien-ocean-0205.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 AND 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">PARKINSON’S DISEASE</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">Scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have demonstrated one of the first links between genetic and environmental causes of Parkinson's disease. Researchers have long known that Parkinson's can be caused by faulty genes or environmental factors. But a new study by Whitehead and MIT scientists found that a single gene, known as PARK9, protects cells from manganese toxicity and rescues neurons from over-expression of the protein alpha-synuclein. Misfolded alpha-synuclein is the hallmark of the debilitating neurological disorder. "This is one of the first connections between Parkinson's disease genetics and the environment," says Aaron Gitler, one of the co-authors of a paper published online in a Feb. edition of Nature Genetics. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by tremors, muscle rigidity, and slowed movements. This work was funded by the Life Sciences Research Foundation's Lilly Fellowship and the NIH.</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/2009/parkinsons-gene-0201.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/parkinsons-gene-0201.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">FIGHTING BACTERIAL INFECTIONS</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 new approach to fighting bacterial infections, developed at MIT and Boston University, could help prevent bacteria from developing antibiotic resistance and help kill those that have already become resistant. Researchers from both schools have engineered a virus that knocks out bacterial defense systems, enhancing the effectiveness of antibiotics. The work is reported in the March 2 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a serious and growing health risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the antibiotic-resistant bacterium MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, causes approximately 94,000 infections and contributes to 19,000 deaths annually in the United States, through contact that can occur in a variety of locations, including schools, hospitals and homes. New drugs are needed to combat these superbugs, but very few new antibiotics have been developed in the past few decades. “There are a lot of targets to go after, but people haven’t been able to find the drugs,” said Timothy Lu, lead author of the paper and an MD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Lu and James Collins, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and professor of biomedical engineering at BU, took a new approach: engineering existing bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) to attack specific targets. This work was funded by the NIH and the Howard Hughes Medical 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/2009/antibiotic-resistance-0302.html">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/antibiotic-resistance-0302.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">--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 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>