[Editors] MIT Research Digest - February 2004

[MIT News Office]

MIT RESEARCH DIGEST - February 2004

A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research
advances at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Web version: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/rd
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For more information on Research Digest items, contact:
Elizabeth Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: (617) 258-5402  *  mailto:thomson at mit.edu

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IN THIS ISSUE:  Of Mice and Mars  *  Cigarette Study
Nanoruler  *  Most Hated Invention
How Bacteria Clump  *  Combatting Global Poverty
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OF MICE AND MARS
Students and researchers at MIT are designing a space mission to 
learn about the effects of Mars-level gravity using pint-sized 
astronauts. The 15 mouse-tronauts will orbit Earth for five weeks to 
help researchers learn how Martian gravity -- about one-third that of 
Earth -- will affect the mammalian body. The goal of the 
multi-university Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program is to send the 
mice into near-Earth orbit inside a one-meter spaceship simulating 
Mars' gravity, then bring them back to Earth. It won't be the first 
time mice have flown in space, but it will be the first time mammals 
of any kind have lived in partial gravity for an extended period. The 
group, led by MIT and involving the University of Washington at 
Seattle and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, is 
managed by MIT research affiliate Paul Wooster.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/mars-biosatellite.html

CIGARETTE STUDY
The risk of lung cancer is no different in people who smoke 
medium-tar, low-tar or very low-tar cigarettes, concludes a study by 
an MIT-led research team. The study, led by Dr. Jeffrey E. Harris, 
professor in the economics department at MIT and the Harvard-MIT 
Division of Health Sciences and Technology, is the first to compare 
lung cancer risk between smokers of reduced-tar and conventional 
cigarettes. "As a practicing physician, I would advise a smoking 
patient that there is no known benefit if you switch from a regular 
filter brand to a low-tar or ultra-low-tar brand, and that the only 
proven way to reduce risk is to quit as soon as possible," Harris 
said.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2004/jan14/cigarette.html

NANORULER
An MIT device that makes the world's most precise rulers -- with 
"ticks" only a few hundred billionths of a meter apart -- could 
impact fields from the manufacture of computer chips to space 
physics. The Nanoruler is 10 to 1,000 times faster and more precise 
than other methods for patterning parallel lines and spaces (known 
collectively as gratings) across large surfaces over 12 inches in 
diameter. Such large surfaces are key to a number of applications 
involving gratings, such as larger wafers for the production of 
computer chips and higher-resolution space telescopes.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2004/jan28/nanoruler.html

MOST HATED INVENTION
Nearly one in three adults say the cell phone is the invention they 
most hate but cannot live without, according to the eighth annual 
Lemelson-MIT Invention Index study. With its score of 30 percent, the 
cell phone narrowly beat the alarm clock (25 percent) and television 
(23 percent) for the distinction in the survey, which gauges 
Americans' attitudes toward invention. "The Invention Index results 
show that the benefits of an invention sometimes come with a societal 
cost," said Merton Flemings, director of the Lemelson-MIT Program.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2004/lemelson.html

HOW BACTERIA CLUMP
An MIT biophysicist's revelation of how bacteria clump as a defense 
mechanism may one day lead to drugs designed to make the bacteria act 
in ways that would allow us to get rid of them more easily. Through 
exploring how Escherichia coli bacteria "remember" danger signals in 
their environment and interact with fellow organisms, Alexander van 
Oudenaarden, assistant professor of physics at MIT, has described the 
mechanism through which E. coli form clumps when they are threatened. 
Researchers could extrapolate the behavior of these microbes to more 
harmful species such as cholera.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2003/ecoli.html

COMBATTING GLOBAL POVERTY
Engineers from some of the world's top corporations are tackling the 
thorny problem of global poverty as part of an MIT graduate program 
in engineering and management. Mid-career students in MIT's System 
Design and Management (SDM) Program are developing plans for 
addressing endemic poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, as part of a final 
design challenge in the intensive one-month session that kicks off 
the 1 1/2 year program. "We challenge them with something that 
appears unsolvable, and get them thinking about the big picture," 
said Dennis Mahoney, director of the SDM Program. Teams present their 
projects and meet with staff of the international humanitarian agency 
CARE to discuss practical ways their ideas could be implemented in 
Africa.
http://esd.mit.edu/HeadLine/calendar/012704.html

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Published by the News Office  *  Massachusetts Institute of Technology