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<b>For Immediate Release</b><br>
TUESDAY, JUN. 2, 2009<br>
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MIT Research Digest, June 2009<br>
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A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research advances<br>
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.<br>
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Latest research news: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html<br>
RSS -- research feed: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/mitresearch-rss.xml<br>
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<b>IN THIS ISSUE: Ancient Raft * Bus Stop Of Future * Safer Metal Coatings * Climate Change * Robotic Therapy * Fetal Heartbeat Monitor * Attention: Brain Waves * US Housing Recovery * Targeting Tumors * New Tissue Scaffold * Cells That Count * Electrospun Fibers * Tracking Tumors * Hot Field: Graphene * Microbial Ocean Catch * Alzheimer’s-Like Reversal * Commercial Property Index</b><br>
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<b>ANCIENT RAFT</b><br>
For the first time in nearly 500 years, a full-size balsa-wood raft just like those used in pre-Columbian Pacific trade took to the water last month. Only this time, instead of the Pacific coast between Mexico and Chile where such rafts carried goods between the great civilizations of the Andes and Mesoamerica as long as a millennium ago, the replica raft was floated in the Charles River basin. The faithful reproduction of the ancient sailing craft, built from eight balsa logs brought from Ecuador for the project, was created in less than six weeks by 30 students in the Ancient Materials class taught by Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology Dorothy Hosler of the department of Materials Science and Engineering. The replica was based on an analysis carried out by Hosler and her former student Leslie Dewan '06, which was published last year in the Journal of Anthropological Research.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/hosler-balsa-0512.html<br>
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<b>BUS STOP OF FUTURE</b><br>
Imagine if your local bus stop allowed you to check your e-mail, share community information on a digital message board or monitor the local air quality? And perhaps best of all, what if it could tell you the exact location of that bus that you’re waiting for? MIT architects and engineers just unveiled a design for such a bus stop last month, at the Genio Fiorentino festival in Florence, Italy. (A more formal prototype will be unveiled this October.) Called EyeStop and developed by the MIT SENSEable City Lab, it takes the tedium out of waiting for the bus and showcases the potential of next-generation urban transportation design. “The EyeStop could change the whole experience of urban travel," said Carlo Ratti, Head of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT. "At the touch of a finger, passengers can get the shortest bus route to their destination or the position of all the buses in the city. The EyeStop will also glow at different levels of intensity to signal the distance of an approaching bus."<br>
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<b>SAFER METAL COATINGS</b><br>
Ever since the 1940s, chrome has been used to add a protective coating and shiny luster to a wide range of metal products, from bathroom fixtures to car bumpers. Chrome adds beauty and durability, but those features come at a heavy cost. Though it’s cheap to produce and harmless to consumers, the industrial process to create it is dangerous for workers and pollutes the environment. “People have been trying to replace it for a very long time,” says Christopher Schuh, MIT associate professor of materials science and engineering. “The problem is that it’s the only plated metal coating that has all of these properties — hardness, long-lasting shine and corrosion protection.” Until now, that is. Schuh and his collaborators have developed a new nickel-tungsten alloy that is not only safer than chrome but also more durable. The new coating, which is now being tested on the bumpers of a truck fleet, could also replace chrome in faucet fixtures and engine parts, among other applications. The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/metal-0519.html<br>
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<b>CLIMATE CHANGE</b><br>
The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago — and could be even worse than that. The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well — such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries. Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science,” he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. “In that sense, our work is unique,” he says. The new projections were published in the Journal of Climate.This work was supported in part by the DOE, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. --<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html<br>
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<b>ROBOTIC THERAPY</b><br>
Over the past few years, MIT engineers have successfully tested robotic devices to help stroke patients learn to control their arms and legs. Now, they’re building on that work to help children with cerebral palsy. “Robotic therapy can potentially help reduce impairment and facilitate neuro-development of youngsters with cerebral palsy,” says Hermano Igo Krebs, principal research scientist in mechanical engineering and one of the project’s leaders. Krebs and others at MIT, including professor of mechanical engineering Neville Hogan, pioneered the use of robotic therapy in the late 1980s, and since then the field has taken off. “We started with stroke because it’s the biggest elephant in the room, and then started to build it out to other areas, including cerebral palsy as well as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury,” says Krebs. The team’s suite of robots for shoulder-and-elbow, wrist, hand and ankle has been in clinical trials for more than 15 years with more than 400 stroke patients. The Department of Veterans Affairs has just completed a large-scale, randomized, multi-site clinical study with these devices. MIT’s work on robotic therapy devices is funded by CPIRF and the Niarchos Foundation, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the New York State NYSCORE, and the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/robotherapy-0519.html<br>
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<b>FETAL HEARTBEAT MONITOR</b><br>
Tiny fluctuations in a fetus’s heartbeat can indicate distress, but currently there is no way to detect such subtle variations except during labor, when it could be too late to prevent serious or even fatal complications. Now, a new system developed by an MIT scientist and colleagues including an obstetrician could allow much earlier monitoring of the fetal heartbeat. The additional researchers are from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Sharif University, Tufts Medical Center, and E-TROLZ Inc. Among other advantages, the system is expected to be less expensive and easier to use than current technologies. It could also cut the rate of Cesarean deliveries by helping clinicians rule out potential problems that might otherwise prompt the procedure. Finally, the device used today to monitor subtle changes in the fetal heartbeat during labor must be attached to the fetus itself, but the new product would be noninvasive. “Our objective is to make a monitoring system that’s simultaneously cheaper and more effective” than what is currently available, said Gari Clifford, PhD, a principal research scientist at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Clifford expects that the system could be commercially available in two to three years pending FDA approval. Recently, several patent applications on the work were licensed by MindChild Medical Inc. The original development of the device was funded by the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT).<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/fetal-0601.html<br>
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<b>ATTENTION: BRAIN WAVES</b><br>
Just as our world buzzes with distractions — from phone calls to e-mails to tweets — the neurons in our brain are bombarded with messages. Research has shown that when we pay attention, some of these neurons begin firing in unison, like a chorus rising above the noise. Now, a study in the May 29 issue of Science reveals the likely brain center that serves as the conductor of this neural chorus. MIT neuroscientists found that neurons in the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s planning center — fire in unison and send signals to the visual cortex to do the same, generating high-frequency waves that oscillate between these distant brain regions like a vibrating spring. These waves, also known as gamma oscillations, have long been associated with cognitive states such as attention, learning and consciousness. “We are especially interested in gamma oscillations in the prefrontal cortex because it provides top-down influences over other parts of the brain,” explains senior author Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. “We know that the prefrontal cortex is affected in people with schizophrenia, ADHD and many other brain disorders, and that gamma oscillations are also altered in these conditions. Our results suggest that altered neural synchrony in the prefrontal cortex could disrupt communication between this region and other areas of the brain, leading to altered perceptions, thoughts, and emotions.” The NIH supported this research.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/cortex-0528.html<br>
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<b>US HOUSING RECOVERY</b><br>
The slow and painful recovery under way in the beleaguered U.S. housing market probably won't be complete for another two years, says Professor of Economics and Urban Studies William Wheaton, director of MIT's Center for Real Estate. Wheaton blames the housing crisis on two key factors: a "bubble" in the market for second homes and a fundamental expansion in mortgage credit availability. This helped create an unprecedented rise in housing prices between 1998 and 2006, even as the overall economy stalled during the 2001 recession. American home ownership rates, which used to hover at 62 to 64 percent of occupied homes, shot up to more than 69 percent in 2006. Then, as subprime mortgage holders began to default, prices dropped and sales in many regions ground nearly to halt. The home ownership rate is now about 67 percent. Wheaton outlines how first-time home buyers and property investors may be the key to the housing market recovery in a paper co-written with Gleb Nechayev, vice president and senior economist with Torto Wheaton Research, an independent research firm owned by CB Richard Ellis, and where Wheaton is a principal partner. The paper was presented at a housing symposium at the University of California, Irvine, and posted in March on the Social Science Research Network, www.ssrn.com.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/wheatonq&a-0526.html<br>
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<b>TARGETING TUMORS</b><br>
It has long been known that heat is an effective weapon against tumor cells. However, it’s difficult to heat patients’ tumors without damaging nearby tissues. Now, MIT researchers have developed tiny gold particles that can home in on tumors, and then, by absorbing energy from near-infrared light and emitting it as heat, destroy tumors with minimal side effects. Such particles, known as gold nanorods, could diagnose as well as treat tumors, says MIT graduate student Geoffrey von Maltzahn, who developed the tumor-homing particles with Sangeeta Bhatia, professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Von Maltzahn and Bhatia describe their gold nanorods in two papers in Cancer Research and Advanced Materials. The research was funded by the NIH, the Whitaker Foundation and the NSF. Nanopartz Inc. supplied gold nanoparticles, gold nanowires and the precursor gold nanorods used in this work.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/gold-cancer-0504.html<br>
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<b>NEW TISSUE SCAFFOLD</b><br>
MIT engineers and colleagues have built a new tissue scaffold that can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into the knees and other joints. The scaffold could offer a potential new treatment for sports injuries and other cartilage damage, such as arthritis, says Lorna Gibson, the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and co-leader of the research team with Professor William Bonfield of Cambridge University. “If someone had a damaged region in the cartilage, you could remove the cartilage and the bone below it and put our scaffold in the hole,” said Gibson. The researchers describe their scaffold in a recent series of articles in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. The technology has been licensed to Orthomimetics, a British company launched by one of Gibson’s collaborators, Andrew Lynn of Cambridge University. The company recently started clinical trials in Europe. The research was funded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute, the Whitaker-MIT Health Science Fund, Universities UK, Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and St. John’s College Cambridge.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/cartilage-0511.html<br>
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<b>CELLS THAT COUNT</b><br>
MIT and Boston University engineers have designed cells that can count and “remember” cellular events, using simple circuits in which a series of genes are activated in a specific order. Such circuits, which mimic those found on computer chips, could be used to count the number of times a cell divides, or to study a sequence of developmental stages. They could also serve as biosensors that count exposures to different toxins. The team developed two types of cellular counters, both described in the May 29 issue of Science. Though the cellular circuits resemble computer circuits, the researchers are not trying to create tiny living computers. “I don’t think computational circuits in biology will ever match what we can do with a computer,” said Timothy Lu, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and one of two lead authors of the paper. Performing very elaborate computing inside cells would be extremely difficult because living cells are much harder to control than silicon chips. Instead, the researchers are focusing on designing small circuit components to accomplish specific tasks. “Our goal is to build simple design tools that perform some aspect of cellular function,” said Lu. Ari Friedland, a graduate student at Boston University, is also a lead author of the Science paper. The research was funded by the NIH, the NSF, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/counting-0528.html<br>
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<b>ELECTROSPUN FIBERS</b><br>
In his office, MIT Professor of Chemical Engineering Gregory Rutledge keeps a small piece of fabric that at first glance resembles a Kleenex. This tissue-like material, softer than silk, is composed of fibers that are a thousand times thinner than a human hair and holds promise for a wide range of applications including protective clothing, drug delivery and tissue engineering. Such materials are produced by electrospinning, a technique that has taken off in the past 10 years, though the original technology was patented more than a century ago. In Rutledge’s lab, researchers are exploring new ways to create electrospun fibers, often incorporating materials that add novel features such as the ability to kill bacteria. “We’re still in the Wild West mode of discovery,” says Rutledge. “People are hypothesizing almost anything and giving it a try. We’re still trying to figure out which ones are the payoff applications.” Rutledge has been one of the pioneers of electrospinning nanofibers since the nanotechnology boom of the late 1990s. He and his colleagues have demonstrated a number of ways to create electrospun membranes with new and useful traits.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/electrospun-fibers-0505.html<br>
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<b>TRACKING TUMORS</b><br>
Surgical removal of a tissue sample is now the standard for diagnosing cancer. Such procedures, known as biopsies, are accurate but only offer a snapshot of the tumor at a single moment in time. Monitoring a tumor for weeks or months after the biopsy, tracking its growth and how it responds to treatment, would be much more valuable, says Michael Cima, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who has developed the first implantable device that can do just that. Cima and his colleagues recently reported that their device successfully tracked a tumor marker in mice for one month. The work is described in a paper published online in the journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics. Such implants could one day provide up-to-the-minute information about what a tumor is doing — whether it is growing or shrinking, how it’s responding to treatment, and whether it has metastasized or is about to do so. “What this does is basically take the lab and put it in the patient,” said Cima, who is also an investigator at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Other authors are from MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence and the NSF.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/cancer-detect-0512.html<br>
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<b>HOT FIELD: GRAPHENE</b><br>
In a blown-up image from a scanning tunneling microscope, it looks just like an endless sheet of chicken wire: a simple flat sheet made up of a lattice of hexagons. But this nanoscopic material called graphene, first generally acknowledged to exist just five years ago, turns out to have a variety of unique, and potentially very useful, characteristics — ones several MIT researchers are actively trying to better understand and turn into real-world applications. For starters, its unique electrical characteristics could make graphene the successor to silicon in a whole new generation of microchips, surmounting basic physical constraints limiting the further development of ever-smaller, ever-faster silicon chips. MIT has become a major center of work on this hot topic, with several different research groups pursuing various aspects — including physical, chemical, electronic and engineering — of the novel material. Eight MIT researchers, along with colleagues at Harvard and Boston University, have just received a U.S. DOD grant for graphene research.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/graphene-feature-0504.html<br>
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<b>MICROBIAL OCEAN CATCH</b><br>
An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes’ natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs — snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in these single-celled creatures. Before now, small RNA could only be studied in lab-cultured microorganisms; the discovery of its presence in a natural setting may make it possible finally to learn on a broad scale how microbial communities living at different ocean depths and regions respond to environmental stimuli. “Microbes are exquisite biosensors,” said Edward Delong, a professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) and biological engineering. “We had developed this methodology to look at protein-encoding genes, because if we know which proteins the microbes are expressing under what conditions, we can learn about the environmental conditions and how these microbes influence those. The unexpected presence and abundance of these small RNAs, which can act as switches to regulate gene expression, will allow us to get an even deeper view of gene expression and microbial response to environmental changes.” DeLong and co-authors Yanmei Shi, a graduate student in CEE, and postdoctoral associate Gene Tyson describe this work in Nature. This work was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the NSF and the DOE.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/smallRNA-0514.html<br>
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<b>ALZHEIMER’S-LIKE REVERSAL</b><br>
A team led by researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has now pinpointed the exact gene responsible for a 2007 breakthrough in which mice with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease regained long-term memories and the ability to learn. In the latest development, reported in Nature, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience, and colleagues found that drugs that work on the gene HDAC2 reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s and boost cognitive function in mice. “This gene and its protein are promising targets for treating memory impairment,” Tsai said. “HDAC2 regulates the expression of a plethora of genes implicated in plasticity — the brain’s ability to change in response to experience — and memory formation. “It brings about long-lasting changes in how other genes are expressed, which is probably necessary to increase numbers of synapses and restructure neural circuits, thereby enhancing memory,” she said. Tsai’s co-authors are from MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and the Netherlands Cancer Institute. This work is supported by the NIH, the Stanley Center for Psychiatric research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, the NARSAD, the Damon-Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the Dutch Cancer Society, and the Robert A. and Renee E. Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/alzheimers.html<br>
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<b>COMMERCIAL PROPERTY INDEX</b><br>
Transaction prices of commercial property sold by major institutional investors fell by almost 6 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to an index developed and published by the MIT Center for Real Estate. The 5.8 percent drop in the transactions-based index (TBI) for the first quarter is the fourth consecutive quarterly drop and the sixth in the past seven quarters. The index is now 21 percent below where it was a year ago and 26 percent below its mid-2007 peak — comparable to the 27 percent drop the index experienced in the previous major commercial property downturn in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “It’s possible that the first quarter of 2009 was the nadir in market sentiment,” said Professor David Geltner, director of research at the MIT Center for Real Estate. “Sales volume is down almost to nothing, as reflected in our demand index. The prices buyers are willing to pay fell a record 12 percent in the first quarter and is now 28 percent below a year ago and 39 percent below its mid-2007 peak,” Geltner noted.<br>
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/tbi-0512.html<br>
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