[Editors] MIT Research Digest, November 2006

[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, November 2006
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For Immediate Release
FRIDAY, NOV. 3, 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.

Latest research news: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/research.html
RSS -- research feed: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/mitresearch-rss.xml

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IN THIS ISSUE: Dough in the Lab * Web Science
Lab on a Chip * Anti-Microbial Grammar
Peering Into a Cell * Toward Artificial Spider Silk
Environmental Survey * Cutting Energy in Manufacturing
Academic Rendezvous * Rapid Learning * Recycling
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DOUGH IN THE LAB
Trevor Shen Kuan Ng rolls dough. He also stretches it like Silly 
Putty, twirls it like taffy and flattens it into rectangles like wide 
fettuccine. Ng, an MIT mechanical engineering graduate student, is 
getting an education in dough. His Ph.D. thesis concerns the 
mechanical properties of matter--in this case, dough--and how it 
behaves when subjected to forces. In engineering-speak, this is 
called rheology, and it provides valuable information for commercial 
bakeries that need accurate, repeatable techniques for measuring the 
properties of dough to ensure the tastiest product. Ng's work is part 
of the non-Newtonian fluid dynamics research group headed by Gareth 
H. McKinley, professor of mechanical engineering. The work is funded 
by Kraft Foods.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/dough.html

WEB SCIENCE
MIT and the University of Southampton announced Nov. 2 the launch of 
a long-term research collaboration that aims to produce the 
fundamental scientific advances necessary to guide the future design 
and use of the World Wide Web. The Web Science Research Initiative 
(WSRI) will generate a research agenda for understanding the 
scientific, technical and social challenges underlying the growth of 
the web. Of particular interest is the volume of information on the 
web that documents more and more aspects of human activity and 
knowledge. WSRI research projects will weigh such questions as: How 
do we access information and assess its reliability? How will we 
preserve the web over time? Commenting on the new initiative, Tim 
Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, a founding director of 
WSRI, and a senior research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and 
Artificial Intelligence Lab said, "As the web celebrates its first 
decade of widespread use, we still know surprisingly little about how 
it evolved, and we have only scratched the surface of what could be 
realized with deeper scientific investigation into its design, 
operation and impact on society.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/wsri.html

LAB ON A CHIP
Testing soldiers to see if they have been exposed to biological or 
chemical weapons could soon be much faster and easier, thanks to MIT 
researchers who are helping to develop a tiny diagnostic device that 
could be carried into battle. By tweaking the design of a tiny pump, 
researchers affiliated with MIT's Institute for Soldier 
Nanotechnologies have taken a major step towards making an existing 
miniature "lab on a chip" fully portable, so the tiny device can 
perform hundreds of chemical experiments in any setting. "In the same 
way that miniaturization led to a revolution in computing, the idea 
is that miniature laboratories of fluid being pumped from one channel 
to another, with reactions going on here and there, can revolutionize 
biology and chemistry," says Martin Bazant, associate professor of 
applied mathematics and leader of the research team. The research was 
funded by the U.S. Army through the Institute for Soldier 
Nanotechnologies.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/micropump.html

ANTI-MICROBIAL 'GRAMMAR'
In most languages, sentences only make sense if the words are placed 
in the right order. Now, MIT researchers and an IBM colleague have 
used grammatical principles to help their search for new 
antimicrobial medicines. After identifying "grammatical" patterns in 
naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides, the researchers 
custom-designed molecules that proved extremely effective in killing 
microbes, including anthrax bacteria. The research could lead to new 
medicines to combat deadly drug-resistant bacteria. "In the last 40 
years, there have been only two new classes of antibiotic drugs 
discovered and brought to the market," said graduate student 
Christopher Loose, lead author of a paper on the work that appears in 
the Oct. 19 issue of Nature. "There is an incredible need to come up 
with new medicines." Loose's colleagues on the work are research 
associate Kyle Jensen and Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos of MIT's 
Department of Chemical Engineering, and Isidore Rigoutsos of IBM 
Research. The research was funded by the Singapore-MIT Alliance, the 
NIH and the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/peptide-grammar.html

PEERING INTO A CELL
For the first time, MIT researchers can see every vibration of a cell 
membrane, using a technique that could one day allow scientists to 
create three-dimensional images of the inner workings of living 
cells. Studying cell membrane dynamics can help scientists gain 
insight into diseases such as sickle cell anemia, malaria and cancer. 
Using a technique known as quantitative phase imaging, researchers at 
MIT's George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory can see cell 
membrane vibrations as tiny as a few tens of nanometers (billionths 
of a meter). But cell membrane dynamics are just the beginning. Soon, 
the researchers hope to extend their view beyond the cell membrane 
into the cell, to create images of what is happening inside living 
cells -- including how cells communicate with each other and what 
causes them to become cancerous. "One of our goals is create 3D 
tomographic images of the internal structure of a cell," said Michael 
Feld, MIT professor of physics and director of the Spectroscopy Lab. 
"The beauty is that with this technique, you can study dynamical 
processes in living cells in real time." This work was funded by the 
NIH and Hamamatsu Photonics.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/cells.html

TOWARD ARTIFICIAL SPIDER SILK
MIT engineers have identified two key physical processes that lend 
spider silk its unrivaled strength and durability, bringing closer to 
reality the long-sought goal of spinning artificial spider silk. 
Manufactured spider silk could be used for artificial tendons and 
ligaments, sutures, parachutes and bulletproof vests. But engineers 
have not managed to do what spiders do effortlessly. In a study 
published in the November issue of the Journal of Experimental 
Biology, Gareth McKinley, professor of mechanical engineering, and 
colleagues examined how spiders spin their native silk fibers, with 
hopes of ultimately reproducing the process artificially. Spider silk 
is a protein solution that undergoes pronounced changes as part of 
the spinning process. Much as egg whites change from a watery gel to 
a rubbery solid when heated, spider silk, it turns out, undergoes 
similar irreversible physical changes. This work was supported by 
NASA, the DuPont-MIT Alliance and the MIT Institute for Soldier 
Nanotechnologies.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/spider.html

ENVIRONMENTAL SURVEY
According to a recent MIT survey, Americans now rank climate change 
as the country's most pressing environmental problem--a dramatic 
shift from three years ago, when they ranked climate change sixth out 
of 10 environmental concerns. Almost three-quarters of the 
respondents felt the government should do more to deal with global 
warming, and individuals were willing to spend their own money to 
help. "While terrorism and the war in Iraq are the main issues of 
national concern, there's been a remarkable increase in the American 
public's recognition of global warming and their willingness to do 
something about it," said Stephen Ansolabehere, an MIT professor of 
political science. The survey results were released Oct. 31 at the 
seventh annual Carbon Sequestration Forum, an international meeting 
held at MIT that focuses on methods of capturing and storing 
emissions of carbon dioxide--a major contributor to climate change.
GRAPHS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/survey.html

CUTTING ENERGY IN MANUFACTURING
Timothy Gutowski's mission is to help the manufacturing industry 
lighten up, energy-wise. With a grant from the National Science 
Foundation, the MIT professor of mechanical engineering is reviewing 
energy use in manufacturing processes such as machining, grinding, 
injection molding, advanced machining methods and microelectronics 
fabrication methods. The goal is to compare the environmental 
performance of traditional methods to alternative processes, 
alternative product designs and proposed new processes. The work is 
important because manufacturing plays a big role in U.S. energy use. 
Industry accounts for around 30 percent of the total, and 
manufacturing is responsible for around 80 percent of industrial use. 
In addition, the manufacturing industry designs and builds all of the 
equipment used in the other major energy use sectors.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/manufacturing-1101.html

ACADEMIC RENDEZVOUS
French-language students at MIT are benefiting from a new method of 
instruction developed by Senior Lecturer Gilberte Furstenberg and 
colleagues. Working in parallel with English classes at institutions 
of higher learning in France, the MIT students are using Internet 
forums to explore issues of cultural difference that lie deep beneath 
the surface of language. As Furstenberg explained in a talk given on 
Oct. 20, "Learning entails not just facts and knowledge but building 
understanding of another culture, a journey of exploration and 
discovery." Furstenberg's innovative National Endowment for the 
Humanities-funded program, Cultura--"where the Pont Neuf meets the 
Brooklyn Bridge"--was specifically designed to facilitate cultural 
exchange rather than merely build vocabulary or reinforce grammar.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/furstenberg.html

RAPID LEARNING
MIT researchers have provided the first two-pronged evidence--based 
on both behavior and physiology--that a specific juncture in the 
memory center of the brain is crucial for rapid learning. The work, 
presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, helps explain 
how injury or Alzheimer's disease result in loss of the ability to 
form new memories of facts and events. The researchers, led by Thomas 
McHugh, research scientist at the Picower Institute for Learning and 
Memory, engineered a mouse lacking a receptor for a key 
neurotransmitter in the dentate gyrus. This serrated strip of gray 
matter is wrapped around and within the seahorse-shaped hippocampus, 
which is crucial in memory formation. Information arriving at the 
hippocampus first travels through the dentate gyrus. "While it has 
long been known that damage to this region of the hippocampus affects 
short-term memory formation, little is understood about how each type 
of neuron-to-neuron connection contributes to memory in this 
circuit," McHugh said. This work was supported by the NIH and 
MIT-RIKEN.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/learning.html

RECYCLING
It's easy to feel virtuous about tossing a newspaper or soda can into 
the recycling bin. But is all our recycling actually helping the 
environment? Timothy Gutowski, professor of mechanical engineering at 
MIT, says not necessarily. Paper deposited in recycling bins, for 
instance, might end up in a landfill, or might be burned in 
incinerators. Gutowski wants to develop a quantitative way to assess 
the recycling potential of a product and develop a model that can be 
used for a variety of products. With the support of the National 
Science Foundation, Gutowski is part of a team working toward 
sustainable materials use by identifying, quantifying and 
facilitating the use of product design parameters that control 
product recycling. The goal is to evaluate product designs for their 
ease of recovering materials and to understand the relationship 
between product design and various material recycling systems.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/recycling.html

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