[Editors] MIT Research Digest - February 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 - February 2005
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For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, FEB. 3, 2005
For more information or for available photos contact:
Elizabeth Thomson, MIT News Office
617-258-5402, 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: Restoring Limb Function *  Labor Landscape
Spacetime Wave  *  Tropical Seesaw *  Engine Tweaks 
Monitoring Pollution with Plastic  * Cerebral Mechanisms
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RESTORING LIMB FUNCTION
An MIT professor and colleagues from Brown University and the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center have begun a five-year, multidisciplinary research project to restore arm and leg function to amputees. The work will receive $7.2 million in funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs. At the end of the project, the scientists hope to have created "biohybrid" limbs that will use regenerated tissue, lengthened bone, titanium prosthetics and implantable sensors that allow an amputee to use nerves and brain signals to move the arm or leg. The MIT research, led by Professor Hugh Herr, is aimed at making artificial legs perform like biologicial ones. He and his colleagues will focus on creating active knees and ankles controlled by an amputee's own nervous system and powered by muscle-like devices. Herr has appointments in the Media Lab and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/limbloss.html

LABOR LANDSCAPE
A new book by MIT Economics Professor Frank Levy and Richard Murnane of Harvard portrays the current unsettled American labor landscape with its widening gap between high- and low-skill level jobs, offers suggestions for how to use education to prepare students and workers for employment, and gives a success story from a Boston elementary school. "The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Changing the Job Market," published by Princeton University Press, is an outgrowth of work Levy and Murnane did with David Autor, associate professor of economics at MIT. According to Levy, the best way to understand the current stark trend is not to look offshore to developing countries where teleworkers are employed, but to look more closely at the domestic economy, where new technology is causing more dislocation than international trade. At the core of the "New Division" is an irony: the best way for humans to keep from being replaced by computers is to be, well, more human.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/work.html

SPACETIME WAVE
Astronomers from MIT and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have seen evidence of hot iron gas riding a ripple in spacetime around a black hole. This spacetime wave, if confirmed, would represent a new phenomenon that goes beyond Einstein's general relativity. These observations, presented Jan. 10 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, confirm one important theory about how a black hole's extreme gravity can stretch light. The data also paint an intriguing image of how a spinning black hole can drag the very fabric of space around with it, creating a choppy spacetime sea that distorts everything falling into the black hole. Jon Miller of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Jeroen Homan of MIT's Center for Space Research observed the phenomenon with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/spacetime.html

TROPICAL SEESAW
When the Pacific talks, the global climate listens in the phenomenon known as the El Nino southern oscillation that receives ample scrutiny by researchers and rapt attention from the public. Now MIT scientists have learned that a similar climatic conversation occurs between the world's two largest tropical river basins: the Amazon in South America and the Congo in Africa. When the Amazon river basin floods, the Congo basin dries up, and vice versa. MIT Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Elfatih Eltahir calls this previously undocumented pattern a seesaw oscillation. He and his research team described their discovery in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters. 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/rivers.html

ENGINE TWEAKS
Design changes to an engine commonly used to power factories and residential buildings will result in increased fuel efficiency and reduced emissions, according to MIT researchers. Using a new computer model and experiments in a full-scale engine, the researchers identified subtle design changes that can reduce friction in a type of large, natural gas-fired engine capable of providing electricity to a large building. Given the widespread use and continuous operation of this type of engine, the researchers anticipate significant fuel savings and emissions reductions. "These engines generally run continuously, so making them more efficient will save a lot of fuel over time," said Victor Wong, a principal research scientist at MIT affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Sloan Automotive Laboratory and the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment This work is sponsored by the DOE.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/gasengine.html

MONITORING POLLUTION WITH PLASTIC
When Phil Gschwend exclaims "plastics!" it's hard not to think of the career advice given to Dustin Hoffman's character in "The Graduate." But Gschwend's enthusiasm for the material isn't about financial profit; he's using plastics to better understand chemicals in the environment. Specifically, the professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is using plastic to collect data on levels of organic pollutants in Boston Harbor waters and sediments. The data can be used to determine which areas pose risks to the animals living there--and the humans who eat them--and to make decisions about which areas should be targeted for cleanup efforts. The work is funded by MIT Sea Grant, the German Academic Exchange Service, the EPA, and the Hudson River Foundation.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/plastics-0112.html

CEREBRAL MECHANISMS
Researchers at MIT's Picower Center for Learning and Memory have uncovered an important new way that the brain performs complex functions such as pattern recognition. The work, led by Mriganka Sur, head of MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, has implications for understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying many higher level functions, including consciousness. Within the visual cortex, brain cells work together in localized circuits on tasks such as pattern recognition. At a molecular level, this involves matching the correct positive, or excitatory wires, with the correct negative, or inhibitory wires. An exquisite balance in the interplay between plus and minus inputs on individual neurons is essential to stabilize and shape circuits of thousands of cells. "We describe a key principle by which neuronal networks in the brain compute new properties from simple inputs," Sur said. The study, in the Feb. 1 issue of Nature Neuroscience, was supported by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/brain.html

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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Assistant Director, Science & Engineering News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu> 

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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