[Editors] MIT Research Digest, June 2007

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
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MIT Research Digest, June 2007
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For Immediate Release
TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2007
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
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IN THIS ISSUE: Tracking the Flu * Solar Throttle * Eye Imaging
Of Mice and Men * Detecting Damaged Bridges * Hottest Planet
Housing 'Affordability' * Toward Alternative-Fuel Vehicles
New Detector * The Developing Brain * DNA Damage
Scratch * Malaria Mechanism * Bones' Building Blocks
Diabetes Risk Factors * Infectious Protein's Secret
Opossum Decoded * Rehab for Coral Reefs
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TRACKING THE FLU
Nearly 40 years ago, MIT Professor Richard Larson spent a week sick 
in bed with the worst illness he'd ever had--the particularly 
virulent strain of flu that swept the globe in 1968. "That was the 
sickest I'd ever been," Larson recalled. "I really thought that was 
the end." It took him two or three months to recover fully from the 
illness. Known as the Hong Kong flu, the virus killed 750,000 people 
worldwide, the second worst influenza pandemic the world has seen 
since the infamous 1918-1919 epidemic of so-called Spanish flu. Now, 
many experts fear the world is on the brink of another deadly flu 
pandemic. And Larson wants to be sure that people are ready to deal 
with it. To that end, he and colleagues have developed a mathematical 
model to track the progression of a flu outbreak. Their results show 
that the death toll of an epidemic could be greatly reduced by 
minimizing social contacts and practicing good hygiene, such as 
frequent handwashing, as early as possible. The report is published 
in the May-June issue of Operations Research. The work was funded in 
part by an IBM Faculty Research Award.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/influenza-0531.html
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SOLAR THROTTLE
Helium may act as a "throttle" for the solar wind, setting its 
minimum speed, according to new results from an MIT-led team using 
NASA's Wind spacecraft. The solar wind is a diffuse stream of 
electrically conducting gas (plasma) constantly blowing from the sun. 
"This result gives us another clue about how the solar wind is 
accelerated, which may help us better understand space weather," said 
Justin Kasper, a research scientist at MIT's Kavli Institute for 
Astrophysics and Space Research and lead author of a paper on this 
research that appeared in the Astrophysical Journal in May. When 
turbulent solar wind hits Earth's magnetic field, it can cause 
magnetic storms that overload power lines and radiation storms that 
disrupt spacecraft. The new research could also lead to a deeper 
understanding of plasma physics, which is of interest because stars 
are made of plasma and plasma is used in advanced devices like plasma 
TVs and experimental fusion reactors. This work was funded by NASA 
and the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/solar-wind.html
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EYE IMAGING
In work that could improve diagnoses of many eye diseases, MIT 
researchers have developed a new type of laser for taking 
high-resolution, 3-D images of the retina, the part of the eye that 
converts light to electrical signals that travel to the brain. The 
research was presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics 
and the Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference on May 10. 
The new imaging system is based on Optical Coherence Tomography 
(OCT), which uses light to obtain high-resolution, cross-sectional 
images of the eye to visualize subtle changes that occur in retinal 
disease. OCT was developed in the early 1990s by MIT Professor James 
Fujimoto, Eric Swanson at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and collaborators; 
Fujimoto is an author of the report presented in May. The current 
research was sponsored by the NSF, the NIH and the Air Force Office 
of Scientific Research.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/eye-imaging.html
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OF MICE AND MEN
Scientists often study mice as a model for human biology and disease, 
because their basic biological processes are assumed to be 
essentially the same as those of humans. But now, a team of MIT 
researchers has uncovered a surprising difference. In a study of gene 
regulation in mouse and human liver cells, they found that master 
regulatory proteins function in very different ways in mice and 
humans.  "Evolution has discovered several different ways to make a 
liver from the same building blocks," said Ernest Fraenkel, MIT 
assistant professor of biological engineering and leader of the 
research team.  "Comparing these different ways of regulating genes 
may unlock some of nature's most closely guarded secrets." The work, 
published in the May 21 online edition of Nature Genetics, could help 
identify patterns in the extremely complicated control mechanisms 
involved in gene expression. It was funded by the NIH, Cancer 
Research UK and the Whitaker Foundation.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/evolution-0521.html
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DETECTING DAMAGED BRIDGES
Engineers at MIT have developed a new technique for detecting damage 
in concrete bridges and piers that could increase the safety of aging 
infrastructure by allowing easier, more frequent, onsite inspections 
that don't interfere with traffic or service. The technique involves 
use of a hand-held radar device that can "see" through the 
fiberglass-polymer wrapping often used to strengthen aging concrete 
columns to detect damage behind the wrapping not visible to the naked 
eye. Such damage can occur on the concrete itself, or to areas where 
layers of the wrapping have come loose from one another or even 
debonded from the concrete. The new noninvasive technique can be used 
onsite from a distance of more than 10 meters (30 feet) and requires 
no dismantling or obstruction of the infrastructure. It provides 
immediate, onsite feedback. The work was led by Professor Oral 
Buyukozturk of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. 
It was funded by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/inspection-0518.html
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HOTTEST PLANET
A team of scientists including one from MIT has measured the hottest 
planet ever at 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2,300 Kelvin. Using 
Spitzer, NASA's infrared space telescope, the scientists observed the 
tiny planet disappear behind its star and reappear. Although the 
planet, known as HD 149026b, cannot be seen separately from the star, 
the dimming of the light that reached Spitzer told the scientists how 
much light the planet emits. From this they deduced the temperature 
on the side of the planet facing its star. "This planet is so 
intriguing that it is changing the way we think about planet 
atmospheres," said Sara Seager, Ellen Swallow Richards Professor with 
appointments in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary 
Sciences and the Department of Physics. The team's findings were 
published in a May issue of Nature.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/hot-planet.html
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HOUSING 'AFFORDABILITY'
Brookline, Massachusetts--town of chic boutiques--an "affordable" 
community? Yes, it is, relatively speaking. That's according to new 
data presented by Henry Pollakowski, principal research associate for 
MIT's Center for Real Estate, and colleagues at the Third Annual 
Housing Affordability Conference on May 22. Pollakowski, along with 
Jeff Zabel of Tufts University, introduced a new index of housing 
affordability weighted to reflect a community's proximity to jobs, 
the quality of its schools and its proportion of publicly accessible 
open spaces. The basic concept is that a house out in the far suburbs 
may be less expensive but will probably require its owner to make a 
long daily commute, given that jobs remain concentrated in the 
central cities. So the affordability of the remote location is offset 
in part by commuting costs. And if poor schools hold down a town's 
housing prices, that affordability will be offset either by private 
school fees or lower earnings over a lifetime by the homeowners' 
children.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/affordable-0529.html
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TOWARD ALTERNATIVE-FUEL VEHICLES
Imagine a vehicle that runs on hydrogen or biofuels and offers the 
same features, performance and price as today's gasoline vehicle. 
Will it capture half the market? Not likely, concludes a new MIT 
analysis of the challenges behind introducing alternative-fuel 
vehicles to the marketplace. Not even if it's three times more 
fuel-efficient. Among the barriers: Until many alternative fuel (AF) 
vehicles are on the road, people won't consider buying one-so there 
won't be many on the road. Catch-22. The researchers' conclusions are 
not all gloomy, though. If policy incentives are kept in place long 
enough, adoption will reach a level at which the market will begin to 
grow on its own. But "long enough" may be a surprisingly long time. 
"The challenge is not just introducing an AF vehicle," said 
postdoctoral associate Jeroen Struben of the Sloan School of 
Management, who has been examining the mechanisms behind such market 
transitions. "Consumer acceptance, the fueling infrastructure and 
manufacturing capability all have to evolve at the same time." 
Struben's colleague on this work is John Sterman, a professor of 
management. This research was supported by the Project on Innovation 
in Markets and Organizations at the MIT Sloan School of Management, 
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Shell Hydrogen.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/alt-fuel-0530.html
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NEW DETECTOR
Detecting the molecular structure of a tiny protein using nuclear 
magnetic resonance (NMR) currently requires two things: a 
million-dollar machine the size of a massive SUV, and a large sample 
of the protein under study. Now, researchers from MIT's Center for 
Bits and Atoms report the development of a radically different 
approach to NMR. The highly sensitive technique, which makes use of a 
microscopic detector, decreases by several orders of magnitude the 
amount of protein needed to measure molecular structure. The 
technology could ultimately lead to the proliferation of tabletop NMR 
devices in every research laboratory and medical office. Among other 
things, such devices could prove invaluable in diagnosing a variety 
of diseases. The research team reports the work in the Proceedings of 
the National Academy of Sciences. Lead author Yael Maguire, a former 
MIT graduate student who earned his Ph.D. for this work, also gave a 
talk on it May 16 at the VII European Protein Symposium in Stockholm. 
The research was funded by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/microdetector.html
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THE DEVELOPING BRAIN
Scientists are keenly studying how neurons form synapses--the 
physical and chemical connections between neurons--and the "pruning" 
of neural circuits during development, not least because synaptic 
abnormalities may partially underlie many developmental and 
neurodegenerative diseases. Several key molecules are involved in 
normal synaptic formation, but their interactions are not well 
understood. Now MIT neuroscientists have taken an important step 
toward solving this challenging jigsaw puzzle. They have pieced 
together a direct linear pathway connecting three molecules involved 
in synaptic formation, as reported in the May 21 advance online 
publication of Nature Neuroscience. "We haven't solved the whole 
puzzle yet," cautions Martha Constantine-Paton, a developmental 
neuroscientist in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, 
professor in the Department of Biology and senior author of the 
paper. "But we do now have a broader view of what happens in synaptic 
plasticity (adaptability)." This work was funded by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/development-0521.html
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DNA DAMAGE
In the daunting marathon that leads to successful drugs, promising 
drug candidates must pass toxicity tests before entering clinical 
trials. Researchers from MIT and the Whitehead Institute have 
developed a cell culture test for assessing a compound's genetic 
toxicity that may prove dramatically cheaper than existing animal 
tests. This assay would allow genetic toxicity to be examined far 
earlier in the drug development process, making it much more 
efficient. Like the current FDA-approved test, the new test looks for 
DNA damage in red blood cells formed in the bone marrow of mice. Joe 
Shuga, the graduate student in chemical engineering who developed the 
assay, is in the unusual position of being a graduate student in 
three labs, those of Professors Linda Griffith, Harvey Lodish (a 
Whitehead member) and Leona Samson. "We're all faculty in the 
biological engineering department, and collaborative projects like 
this are what the department was intended to do," says Griffith, 
senior author of a paper on the work published in the Proceedings of 
the National Academy of Science. This work was funded by the 
Cambridge-MIT Institute, Amgen, the NIH and the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/dna-damage.html
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SCRATCH
A new programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab turns kids 
from media consumers into media producers, enabling them to create 
their own interactive stories, games, music, and animation for the 
Web. With this new software, called Scratch, kids can program 
interactive creations by simply snapping together graphical blocks, 
without any of the obscure punctuation and syntax of traditional 
programming languages. Children can then share their interactive 
stories and games on the Web, the same way they share videos on 
YouTube, engaging with other kids in an online community that 
provides inspiration and feedback. "Until now, only expert 
programmers could make interactive creations for the Web. Scratch 
opens the gates for everyone," said Mitchel Resnick, Professor of 
Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab and head of the Scratch 
development team.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/resnick-scratch.html
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MALARIA MECHANISM
During the first 24 hours of invasion by the malaria-inducing 
parasite Plasmodium falciparum, red blood cells start to lose their 
ability to squeeze through tiny blood vessels--one of the hallmarks 
of the deadly disease that infects nearly 400 million people each 
year. Now, an international team of researchers led by an MIT 
professor has demonstrated just why that happens. By knocking out the 
gene for a parasite protein called RESA (ring-infected erythrocyte 
surface antigen), the researchers found that the protein, transferred 
from the parasite to the cell's interior molecular network, causes 
red blood cells to become less deformable. "This is the first time a 
particular protein has been shown to have such a large effect on red 
blood cell deformability," said Subra Suresh, a professor of 
engineering and senior author of a paper on the work appearing in the 
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was 
funded by GEM4 (Global Enterprise for MicroMechanics and Molecular 
Medicine), the Pasteur Institut, Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le 
Sida, the National University of Singapore and the Computational 
Systems Biology Program of the Singapore-MIT Alliance.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/malaria-0521.html
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BONES' BUILDING BLOCKS
In work that could lead to more effective diagnoses and treatments of 
bone diseases using only a pinhead-sized sample of a patient's bone, 
MIT researchers report a first-of-its-kind analysis of bone's 
mechanical properties. The work, reported in the May 21 advance 
online edition of Nature Materials, sheds new light on how bone 
absorbs energy. The researchers' up-close-and-personal look at bone 
probes its fundamental building block--a corkscrew-shaped protein 
called collagen embedded with tiny nanoparticles of mineral--at the 
level of tens of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. A human hair, 
by comparison, is 80,000 nanometers in diameter. The study was led by 
Christine Ortiz, associate professor of materials science and 
engineering. It was supported by the Whitaker Foundation, the U.S. 
Army Research Office, the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies 
and the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/bone-0524.html
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DIABETES RISK FACTORS
Scientists have discovered three unsuspected regions of human DNA 
that contain clear genetic risk factors for type 2 diabetes, and 
another that is associated with elevated blood triglycerides. The 
findings stem from the work of the Diabetes Genetics Initiative 
(DGI), a public-private partnership between the Broad Institute of 
MIT and Harvard, Novartis and Lund University, and they also reflect 
a close partnership with two other diabetes research groups. The 
three groups' studies, which appeared together in a recent advance 
online edition of Science, are among the first to apply a suite of 
genomic resources to clinical research. "For the first time, it is 
possible to look across the human genome and discover new clues about 
the root causes of common, devastating diseases that arise from a 
combination of genes, environment and behavior," said senior author 
David Altshuler, a principal investigator of DGI, director of the 
Broad Institute's program in medical and population genetics and a 
professor at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical 
School.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/diabetes-gene.html

INFECTIOUS PROTEIN'S SECRET
Researchers have known for decades that certain neurodegenerative 
diseases, such as mad cow disease or its human equivalent, 
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, result from a kind of infectious protein 
called a prion. Remarkably, in recent years researchers have 
discovered not only non-pathogenic prions that play beneficial roles 
in biology, but they have also found that prions may even act as 
essential elements in learning and memory. Although prions have 
received a great deal of scrutiny, scientists still don't understand 
many of the most fundamental mechanisms of how prions form, replicate 
and cross from one species to another. Now, through studying nontoxic 
yeast prions, scientists at MIT and the Whitehead Institute have 
discovered small but critical regions within prions that determine 
much of their behavior. "These findings provide a new framework for 
us to begin exploring properties of prion biology that, up until now, 
have proven difficult to investigate," says Whitehead member and MIT 
biology professor Susan Lindquist, senior author of a paper that 
appeared in a May issue of Nature. This research was supported by the 
American Cancer Society, the DuPont-MIT Alliance and the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/prions.html
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OPOSSUM DECODED
The human genome is littered with so-called junk DNA, relics of 
"jumping genes" that hopped about chromosomes for more than a billion 
years. Although these jumping genes have been widely regarded as 
parasites, concerned only with self-propagation, a new study suggests 
they in fact played a creative role in evolution--spreading key 
genetic innovations across the genome. This insight emerges from the 
work of an international research team led by scientists at the Broad 
Institute of MIT and Harvard, which has completed a high-quality 
genome sequence of the opossum, the first marsupial to have its DNA 
decoded. The work, which appeared in a May issue of Nature, provides 
a fresh look at the evolutionary origins of the human genome. It also 
sheds light on the genetic differences between placental mammals 
(including humans, mice and dogs) and marsupial mammals, such as 
opossums and kangaroos.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/opossum.html

REHAB FOR CORAL REEFS
Gerardo Jose la O' left the Philippines almost 10 years ago to attend 
Berkeley and then graduate school at MIT. Visits home included 
lounging on the white sand beaches where he swam, snorkeled and scuba 
dived as a youth. Even before he left for college, la O' had noticed 
something new about the coral reefs: You had to swim farther out to 
find the reefs and their 1,000-plus species of spectacularly colored 
fish. La O' wasn't the only one who had noticed a change. In Sagay 
City, a major fishing area, three decades of dynamite fishing had 
decimated coral formations. The habitat for one of the highest 
concentrations of biodiversity in the world was being destroyed. When 
la O' steps off a plane in Manila these days, it's not just an escape 
from New England weather. He's on a mission to save the coral. With 
fellowships from MIT's Graduate Student Council and the MIT Public 
Service Center, la O' and other MIT students launched First-Step 
Coral. The students coupled their science and engineering skills with 
a new technology to promote a low-cost, environmentally friendly way 
to regrow the Philippine coral reefs.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/biorock.html
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--MIT--