[Editors] MIT Research Digest - June 2005

Tue May 31 13:20:31 EDT 2005

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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MIT Research Digest - June 2005
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For Immediate Release
TUESDAY, MAY 31, 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: Tsunami Relief Logistics * Explosives Detection 
Tparty * Affordable Housing Myths * New Himalayan Fault
Mozambique Outreach * The Brain and Waldo
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TSUNAMI RELIEF LOGISTICS
The devastation caused by last December's tsunami prompted an unprecedented outpouring of global aid that presented disaster relief providers with innumerable logistical challenges. Now an MIT graduate student has teamed up with an international humanitarian organization to draw logistical lessons from the relief effort and create a supply chain framework to deal with future disasters. Tim Russell, a graduate student in MIT's Master of Engineering in Logistics Program, has been collaborating with the Fritz Institute, whose mission is to improve the efficiency of disaster relief efforts through logistics practices and technology solutions. The Fritz Institute carried out a survey of almost 40 organizations that were providing on-site relief to tsunami victims in Southeast Asia and East Africa. More than 100 people from 18 international aid organizations replied. Russell is analyzing the data. Initial results were presented in late April at the Humanitarian Logistics Conference in Geneva. The full study will be released around June 14.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/logistics-0511.html

EXPLOSIVES DETECTION
MIT researchers have announced an innovation that could greatly improve explosives detection for military and civilian security applications. Scientists have developed a new polymer that greatly increases the sensitivity of chemical detection systems for explosives such as TNT (trinitrotoluene). In an issue of the journal Nature, they describe a polymer that undergoes lasing action at lower operating powers than previously observed, and they demonstrate that the stimulated light emission from the lasing modes of the polymer displays inherently greater sensitivity to explosives vapors. MIT Professors Tim Swager (chemistry) and Vladimir Bulovic (electrical engineering and computer science) led the team. The work is sponsored by MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/sensing.html

TPARTY
MIT and Quanta Computer, Inc. have announced a five-year, $20M joint research collaboration project ("TParty") aimed at developing the next generation of platforms for computing and communication beyond personal computers. TParty will address one of the most frustrating aspects of today's computing landscape: More than three decades after the emergence of personal computers, we are increasingly relying on "smart" portable devices to deliver much of the information and services that we need in our daily lives. Unfortunately, in the current device-centric world, each one of us is responsible for integrating these new devices into our personal information environment. As a result, users are forced to manage information transfers, security, maintenance, upgrades, backups, and more. The goal of TParty is to create new systems for the development and seamless delivery of information services in a world of smart devices and sensors. 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/tparty.html

AFFORDABLE HOUSING MYTHS
The one thing that everybody close to Boston talks about--besides the Red Sox--is the high cost of housing. But affordable housing can be an even more controversial subject than the Sox. Fortunately, one point of contention has now been authoritatively resolved. A report from MIT's Center for Real Estate (MIT/CRE) debunks the notion that affordable housing developments depress the values of nearby single-family dwellings. MIT/CRE researchers completed a painstaking study of seven affordable housing projects in six towns in suburban Boston and found that these mixed-income, high-density rental developments--so-called 40B developments--have no adverse effects on nearby property values. The projects studied--two in Littleton and one each in Mansfield, Norwood, Randolph, Wilmington and Woburn--were deliberately chosen because they included "suburbanites' worst nightmares," some of the most dense and controversial 40B projects completed in Massachusetts between 1980 and 2000.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/housing.html

NEW HIMALAYAN FAULT
MIT and Dartmouth scientists have identified a previously unrecognized, active fault in the Nepalese Himalayas. The discovery, published in Nature, provides new insights into how the mountains evolved and helps explain why the transition between the high Himalayan Ranges and their gently sloping foothills is so abrupt. "This project started with the simple observation that the landscape of the central Nepalese Himalaya seems to be telling us something about deformation at depth in the Earth's crust," said Cameron Wobus, lead author on the paper and a graduate student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. The work was funded principally by the National Science Foundation's Tectonics program, with additional funds from the NSF's Continental Dynamics program.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/himalayas-0511.html

MOZAMBIQUE OUTREACH
Many people in Mozambique still lack access to clean water and basic sanitation, but a group of MIT students is working hard to change all that. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Assistant Professor Jennifer Davis and a team of 10 MIT planning and engineering graduate students are going to Mozambique this summer to try to assess what communities there need most. Working with a Mozambican nonprofit called Estamos-Organizacao Comunitaria and with the international nongovernmental organization WaterAid, the group hopes to help low-income communities plan improvements. The idea is to find solutions that work within the culture, Davis said. "We have to think about options outside our comfort zone," she said. "Of course everyone aspires to having a water supply and sewer connection in the home, but for many households in Maputo [the capital of Mozambique] this won't happen in the foreseeable future. Our challenge is to identify other types of service that will still represent a vast improvement for households that rely on crowded public taps, or that have no sanitation option other than open defecation." 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/mozambique.html

THE BRAIN AND WALDO
At any given moment, the world bombards the senses with more information than the brain can process, and for more than a century scientists and psychologists have debated how the brain filters out distractions and focuses attention on the things that matter. Using the visual system as a model, Professor Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and colleagues show that neurons synchronize their signals to command attention, like a chorus rising above the din of noisy chatter in a crowded room. "We think that synchronizing signals could be a general way the brain focuses on what's important," says Desimone, who also holds an appointment through MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "Attention is a general problem for the brain, and maybe it has a general solution." This new study, published in a recent issue of Science, addresses a central question that anyone who has tackled a "Where's Waldo?" book can appreciate. When looking for Waldo on the crowded page, does the brain scan the page spatially, like a mental spotlight moving across an otherwise dark page? Or does the brain take in the whole page at once and gradually zoom in on relevant features such as color and shape? The work was sponsored by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/waldo.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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