[Editors] MIT Research Digest - August 2005

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT Research Digest - August 2005
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For Immediate Release
MONDAY, AUG. 1, 2005
For more information or for available photos contact:
Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
Phone: 617-258-5402
Email: thomson at mit.edu


A monthly tip-sheet for journalists of recent research
advances at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For the latest MIT research news, go to
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html

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IN THIS ISSUE: Monster Hurricanes * Insights into Vision
Anti-Cancer Smart Bomb * Mars: So Cool
Bone Bioreactor * Rare Light Show
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MONSTER HURRICANES
Hurricanes have grown significantly more powerful-and destructive-over the last three decades due in part to global warming, says an MIT professor who warns that this trend could continue. "My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in [these storms'] destructive potential, and-taking into account an increasing coastal population-a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century," reports Kerry Emanuel in the July 31 online edition of the journal Nature. Emanuel is a professor of meteorology in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. The work was supported by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/hurricanes.html

INSIGHTS INTO VISION
When you see a flower, neurons deep inside your brain respond to the flower's color, shape and distance from your eyes, somehow working together to create the flower's image in your mind. The question for neuroscientists is, how do they do that? It is known that neurons in the brain are clustered together according to their ability to detect different properties--such as the vertical edge of an object or the horizontal edge, or whether the object is being seen by the left eye or the right. Recently, neuroscientists at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT explored how these neuron clusters overlap to communicate visual information. They reported their findings in the July 21 issue of Neuron. The evidence suggests that multitasking may be fundamental to the way the brain works. The work was led by Professor Mriganka Sur, head of MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/matrix.html

ANTI-CANCER SMART BOMB
Imagine a cancer drug that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed. MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle to do just that. The dual-chamber, double-acting, drug-packing "nanocell" proved effective and safe, with prolonged survival, against two distinct forms of cancers-melanoma and Lewis lung cancer-in mice. The work was reported in the July 28 issue of Nature. "We brought together three elements: cancer biology, pharmacology and engineering," said Ram Sasisekharan, a professor in MIT's Biological Engineering Division and leader of the research team. 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/nanocell.html

MARS: SO COOL
The current mean temperature on the equator of Mars is a blustery -69 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists have long thought that the Red Planet was once temperate enough for water to have existed on the surface and perhaps for life to have evolved there. But a new study by MIT and Caltech scientists gives this idea the cold shoulder. In the July 22 issue of the journal Science, MIT Assistant Professor Benjamin Weiss of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and California Institute of Technology graduate student David Shuster report that their studies of Martian meteorites demonstrate that at least several rocks originally located near the surface of Mars have been freezing cold for 4 billion years. The evidence suggests that during the last 4 billion years, Mars has never been sufficiently warm for liquid water to have flowed on the surface for extended periods of time. Mars therefore has probably never had an environment hospitable to the evolution of life--unless life got started during the first half-billion years of its existence, when the planet was probably warmer. This work was sponsored by NASA and the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/mars.html

BONE BIOREACTOR
An international team of biomedical engineers including several from MIT has demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to grow healthy new bone reliably in one part of the body and use it to repair damaged bone at a different location. The research, which is based on a dramatic departure from the current practice in tissue engineering, is described in a paper titled "In vivo engineering of organs: The bone bioreactor" published online the week of July 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This research has important implications not only for engineering bone, but for engineering tissues of any kind," said Institute Professor Robert S. Langer, a co-author of the paper. "We have shown that we can grow predictable volumes of bone on demand," said V. Prasad Shastri, the assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who led the effort. "And we did so by persuading the body to do what it already knows how to do." The research was funded by a grant from Smith and Nephew, Endoscopy.

RARE LIGHT SHOW
On a clear summer night, the stars aligned for MIT researchers watching and waiting for one small light in the heavens to be extinguished, just briefly. Thanks to a feat of both astronomical and terrestrial alignment, a group of scientists from MIT and Williams College succeeded in observing distant Pluto's tiny moon, Charon, hide a star. Such an event had been seen only once before, by a single telescope 25 years ago, and then not nearly as well. The MIT-Williams consortium spotted it with four telescopes in Chile on the night of July 10-11. The team expects to use data from this observation to assess whether Charon has an atmosphere, to measure its radius and to determine how round it is. The data and results from the observation will be presented at the 2005 meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Cambridge, England, in September. MIT's James L. Elliot, a professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, led the group at the Clay Telescope in Chile. 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/charon.html

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