[Editors] MIT Research Digest - March 2006

Wed Mar 1 12:41:25 EST 2006

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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MIT Research Digest - March 2006
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For Immediate Release
WEDNESDAY, MAR. 1, 2006
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: One Fish, Two Fish * Mad Cow and Stem Cells
Deep-Sea Robots * Battery Alternative? * Viral Images
How Rats Think * New Battery * Toward Safer Metals
Marine Microbes * Returns in Real Estate * Radiation Damage 
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ONE FISH, TWO FISH
MIT researchers have found a new way of looking beneath the ocean surface that could help definitively determine whether fish populations are shrinking. A remote sensor system developed by Professor Nicholas Makris of mechanical engineering, along with others at MIT, Northeastern University and the Naval Research Laboratory, allows scientists to track enormous fish populations, or shoals, as well as small schools, over a 10,000-square-kilometer area - a vast improvement over conventional technology that can survey only about 100 square meters at a time. "We're able to see for the first time what a large group of fish looks like," said Makris, who compared the dramatic improvement to the difference between seeing everything on a television screen and seeing only one pixel. The new sensor system, described in the Feb. 3 issue of Science, was funded by the Office of Naval Research, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, and is a contribution to the Census of Marine Life.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/fish.html

MAD COW AND STEM CELLS
What does mad cow disease have in common with stem cell research? MIT and Whitehead Institute scientists have found that the same protein that causes neurodegenerative conditions such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) is also important for helping certain adult stem cells maintain themselves. "For years we've wondered why evolution has preserved this protein," says MIT professor of biology and Whitehead member Susan Lindquist. "With these findings, we have our first answer." Lindquist, Professor Harvey Lodish (also of MIT and Whitehead), and colleagues are co-authors on a paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Jan. 30. This research was funded by the NSF, the NIH, the Ellison Medical Research Foundation and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/mad-cow.html

DEEP-SEA ROBOTS
Sometime in the fourth century B.C., a Greek merchant ship sank off Chios and the Oinoussai islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. The wooden vessel may have succumbed to a storm or a fire, or maybe rough weather caused the cargo of 400 ceramic jars filled with wine and olive oil to shift without warning. The ship went down in 60 meters (about 200 feet) of water, where it remained unnoticed for centuries. The classical-era ship might never have divulged to archaeologists its clues to ancient Greek culture, except for a research team from MIT, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research. They used a novel autonomous underwater vehicle to make a high-precision photometric survey of the site. The robot accomplished in two days what would have taken divers years of effort. 
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/archaeology.html

BATTERY ALTERNATIVE?
Just about everything that runs on batteries - cell phones, electric cars, missile-guidance systems - would be improved with a better energy supply. But traditional batteries haven't progressed far beyond the basic design developed by Alessandro Volta in the 19th century. Until now. Work at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) holds out the promise of the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than 200 years. Professor Joel Schindall of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and colleagues are using nanotube structures to improve on an energy storage device called an ultracapacitor. This work was funded by the MIT/Industry Consortium on Advanced Automotive Electrical/Electronic Components and Systems and the Ford-MIT Alliance.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/batteries-0208.html

VIRAL IMAGES
Fifty years after MIT researchers pioneered the use of electron microscopy to study viruses, MIT scientists and colleagues have helped produce the most detailed images yet of the tiny infectious agents. The images, which show for the first time a virus poised to inject its genetic material into a host cell, grace the cover of the Feb. 2 issue of Nature. Scientists have known for decades that viruses infect cells by injecting their genetic material, either DNA or RNA, into host cells, but even with electron microscopy, "we could never see the details of that aspect of it," said Jonathan King, an MIT professor of biology and one of the authors of the paper. The work was funded by the NIH and the Robert Welch Foundation. The electron microscope images were taken at Baylor College of Medicine.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/virus.html

HOW RATS THINK
After running a maze, rats mentally replay their actions - but backward, like a film played in reverse, a researcher at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory reports Feb. 12 in the advance online edition of Nature. In 2001, Matthew Wilson, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, reported that animals have complex dreams and are able to retain and recall long sequences of events while asleep. Like people, rats go through multiple stages of sleep, from slow-wave sleep to REM sleep. Wilson found that during slow-wave sleep, animals replayed spatial experiences in the same order they were experienced. His latest results show that, following a spatial experience such as running laps on a track, the awake animal replays the memory so precisely that its recorded brain activity corresponds exactly to the places it has just been. However, to the researchers' surprise, the episode is replayed in time-reverse order, with the most recent locations first, proceeding sequentially back to the beginning of the task. This work was supported by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/instant-replay.html

NEW BATTERY
MIT researchers have developed a new type of lithium battery that could become a cheaper alternative to the batteries that now power hybrid electric cars. Until now, lithium batteries have not had the rapid charging capability or safety level needed for use in cars. Hybrid cars now run on nickel metal hydride batteries, which power an electric motor and can rapidly recharge while the car is decelerating or standing still.  But lithium nickel manganese oxide, described in a paper in Science on Feb. 17, could revolutionize the hybrid car industry - a sector that has "enormous growth potential," said Gerbrand Ceder, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who led the project. The research was funded by the NSF and the DOE.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/battery-hybrid.html

TOWARD SAFER METALS
MIT researchers have devised a new method for shrinking the size of crystals to make safer metal alloys. The new materials could replace metal coatings such as chromium, which is dangerous for factory workers to produce. The method, developed by Professor Christopher Schuh of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and a colleague, involves making the crystals within an alloy (a combination of two or more metals) smaller and thus harder. The trick is a new twist on electroplating that involves manipulating -- on the nanoscale -- how the nickel and tungsten atoms are laid down as they are plated onto another metal. While so-called hard chromium is used to coat industrial parts and decorative items such as automobile bumpers, the coating process uses a form of chromium that has been linked to cancer and other adverse health effects. The federal government currently is considering tougher safety standards for workers exposed to chromium fumes, which has led companies to look for safer metals. Schuh says the new alloy is one such alternative. An article on the work will appear this summer in the Materials Research Society Proceedings.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/chromium-0215.html

MARINE MICROBES
Using DNA analysis, MIT researchers and colleagues have gained new insight into how marine microbes thrive and survive at different depths of the ocean. "Microbes are the central processors of matter and energy in almost every ecosystem imaginable - especially so in the sea," said MIT Professor Ed DeLong, who led the work. Thousands of different types of microbes, the world's smallest creatures, inhabit every cubic centimeter of seawater. They have huge effects on ocean chemistry and possibly even climate. However, "their complex interactions are really tough to study in natural environments," said DeLong, of MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Biological Engineering Division. "We took a shortcut to understanding their environmental activities by analyzing the DNA from whole communities of microbes." The work, reported in the Jan. 27 issue of Science, was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the NSF, and the DOE.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/microbes.html

RETURNS IN REAL ESTATE
Annual investment returns for U.S. holdings in commercial real estate -- a sector favored by big pension funds -- hit an unprecedented high of 34 percent in 2005, the MIT Center for Real Estate announced Feb. 22. The finding is one of many from a first-of-its-kind index, just unveiled by the center, that tracks the value of commercial real estate, which over the past 30 years has joined stocks and bonds as a major investment vehicle. Historically, it has been difficult to keep current on investment performance in this sector. While the performance of stocks and bonds can be tracked daily because they are publicly traded, holders of commercial real estate don't reveal comparable information. The MIT quarterly index uses statistical techniques and proprietary transactions data provided by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries to create an accessible source for this information.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/realestate.html

RADIATION DAMAGE
MIT researchers have devised a new method for examining how radiation damages normal tissue in the body. The knowledge may make it possible to reduce side effects for cancer patients or to develop treatments for radiation exposure. About 50 percent of all cancer patients are treated with radiation therapy, either alone or in combination with some other type of treatment. Radiation can be very effective in killing tumor cells, but it also kills normal tissues nearby. In the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, this killing of normal cells can cause short- and long-term side effects. "The long-term effects that occur six months to a year or more after exposure aren't reversible like the short-term ones, and they are a big unknown," said Professor Jeffrey Coderre of MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Coderre's team came up with a tool to selectively irradiate blood vessels to study how radiation damages normal tissue over both the short and long term. The work is reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Feb. 27. It was funded by the DOE, the NIH and the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/radiation.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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