[Editors] MIT Research Digest, May 2007

Tue May 8 16:44:35 EDT 2007

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MIT Research Digest, May 2007
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For Immediate Release
TUESDAY, MAY 8, 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
RSS -- research feed: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/mitresearch-rss.xml

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IN THIS ISSUE: Closer....Closer * Super Cool * Inside the Earth
Brain Development * Assistive Robot * To Weigh a Cell
Surfaces, Surfaces * Toward Recovering Memories
Linguistic Controversy * Physics: Confirmed * Computer Vision
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CLOSER....CLOSER
In a popular children's game, participants stand as close as possible 
without touching. But on a microscopic level, coaxing cells to be 
very, very close without actually touching has been among the most 
frustrating challenges for cell biologists. Now MIT researchers led 
by Sangeeta Bhatia, a professor of electrical engineering and 
computer science at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and 
Technology (HST) and Brigham and Women's Hospital, have solved the 
problem with a novel device. The work, which promises to allow 
researchers to perform cellular experiments that were previously 
impossible, is described in the Proceedings of the National Academy 
of Science. It was supported by the NSF, the NIH, the David and 
Lucile Packard Foundation and a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research 
Service Award.
IMAGES, VIDEO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/cell-control-0404.html

SUPER COOL
Using a laser-cooling technique that could one day allow scientists 
to observe quantum behavior in large objects, MIT researchers have 
cooled a coin-sized object to within one degree of absolute zero. 
This study marks the coldest temperature ever reached by 
laser-cooling of an object of that size, and the technique holds 
promise that it will experimentally confirm, for the first time, that 
large objects obey the laws of quantum mechanics just as atoms do. 
Although the research team has not yet achieved temperatures low 
enough to observe quantum effects, "the most important thing is that 
we have found a technique that could allow us to get (large objects) 
to ultimately show their quantum behavior for the first time," said 
MIT Assistant Professor of Physics Nergis Mavalvala, leader of the 
team. The MIT researchers and colleagues at Caltech and the Albert 
Einstein Institute in Germany reported their findings in Physical 
Review Letters. The research was funded by the NSF and the German 
Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/super-cool.html

INSIDE THE EARTH
High-resolution images that reveal unexpected details of the Earth's 
internal structure are among the results reported by MIT and Purdue 
scientists in a recent issue of Science. The researchers adapted 
technology developed for near-surface exploration of reservoirs of 
oil and gas to image the core-mantle boundary some 2,900 kilometers, 
or 1,800 miles, beneath Central and North America. "Rather than 
depth, it's the resolution and lateral scale that are unique in this 
work," said lead author Rob van der Hilst, professor of earth, 
atmospheric and planetary sciences and director of MIT's Earth 
Resources Laboratory. "This could lead to a new era in seismology and 
all the other deep Earth sciences. In addition, our new expertise may 
be able to improve how we look for oil in or beneath geologically 
complex structures such as the Gulf of Mexico salt domes," he said. 
This work was supported by the NSF.
PHOTO, GRAPHIC AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/mantle.html

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
Large mammals--humans, monkeys, and even cats--have brains with a 
somewhat mysterious feature: The outermost layer has a folded 
surface. Understanding the functional significance of these folds is 
one of the big open questions in neuroscience. Now a team led by MIT, 
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers 
has developed a tool that could aid such studies by helping 
researchers "see" how those folds develop and decay in the cerebral 
cortex. By applying computer graphics techniques to brain images 
collected using magnetic resonance imaging, they have created a set 
of tools for tracking and measuring these folds over time. Their 
resulting model of cortical development may serve as a biomarker, or 
biological indicator, for early diagnosis of neurological disorders 
such as autism. The researchers describe the work in the April issue 
of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. Peng Yu, a graduate student 
in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), 
is first author on the paper. The work was led by Dr. Bruce Fischl of 
Harvard Medical School, the MIT Computer Science and Artificial 
Intelligence Laboratory, HST, and Massachusetts General Hospital. It 
was supported by the National Center for Research Resources, the NIH, 
the Washington University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, and 
the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery (MIND) Institute.
GRAPHICS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/brain-dev.html

ASSISTIVE ROBOT
In the futuristic cartoon series "The Jetsons," a robotic maid named 
Rosie whizzed around the Jetsons' home doing household 
chores--cleaning, cooking and washing dishes. Such a vision of 
robotic housekeeping is likely decades away from becoming reality. 
But at MIT, researchers are working on a very early version of such 
intelligent, robotic helpers--a humanoid called Domo who can grasp 
objects and place them on shelves or counters. A robot like Domo 
could help elderly or wheelchair-bound people with simple household 
tasks like putting away dishes. Other potential applications include 
agriculture, space travel and assisting workers on an assembly line, 
says Aaron Edsinger, an MIT postdoctoral associate who has been 
working on Domo for the last three years. The original work on Domo 
was funded by NASA; the project is now supported by Toyota.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/domo.html

TO WEIGH A CELL
For the first time, MIT researchers have found a way to measure the 
mass of single cells with high accuracy. The new technique, based on 
a micromechanical detector, could allow researchers to develop 
inexpensive, portable diagnostic devices and might also offer a 
unique glimpse into how cells change as they undergo cell division. 
Unlike conventional methods, the MIT technique allows cells to remain 
in fluid while they are being measured, opening up a new realm of 
possible applications, says Scott Manalis, senior author of a paper 
on the work that appeared in the April 26 issue of Nature. Manalis is 
an associate professor in MIT's Departments of Biological Engineering 
and Mechanical Engineering. The research was funded by the National 
Institutes of Health Cell Decision Process Center, the U.S. Army 
Research Office, the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, the NSF 
and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
PHOTO, GRAPHIC AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/nanoparticles.html

SURFACES, SURFACES
Imagine looking at a pool of spilled milk. Your brain knows that it's 
milk and not another white substance like sugar, or cottage cheese, 
but how does it know? MIT researchers and colleagues investigating 
how the brain interprets the appearance of surfaces think they have 
an answer. They have found that the perception of reflectance and 
gloss are correlated with certain statistical properties of the 
image. These properties could be coded by neurons that respond 
differentially to light and dark spots. Studying how the brain 
analyzes surface appearance is not only important to understanding 
the workings of the human brain, but could also help scientists 
develop better visual systems for robots. The work at MIT was led by 
Edward Adelson, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive 
Sciences. The research, a collaboration between MIT and the NTT 
Communication Science Labs in Japan, was reported in the April 18 
online issue of Nature. It was funded by NTT (Nippon Telegraph and 
Telephone Corporation) and the NSF.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/surfaces.html

TOWARD RECOVERING MEMORIES
Mice whose brains had atrophied like those of Alzheimer's disease 
patients regained long-term memories and the ability to learn after 
living in an enriched environment, researchers at MIT's Picower 
Institute for Learning and Memory reported in the April 29 advance 
online publication of Nature. The same results also were achieved 
with a new experimental class of drugs. Professor Li-Huei Tsai of the 
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and colleagues found that 
environmental enrichment for laboratory mice--being exposed to 
stimuli that enhance their physical and psychological 
wellbeing--induced the animals' brain cells to start to sprout new 
connections. "This is exciting because our results show that learning 
ability can be improved and 'lost' long-term memories can be 
recovered even after a significant number of neurons have already 
been lost in the brain," said Tsai, who is also a Howard Hughes 
Medical Institute investigator. "This hints at the possibility that 
cognitive function can be improved even in advanced stages of 
dementia." This work is supported by the NIH.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/alzheimers.html

LINGUISTIC CONTROVERSY
Controversies in the field of linguistics seldom make headlines, 
which is why the current imbroglio over an alleged counterexample to 
Universal Grammar (UG), made famous in the 1960s by MIT Institute 
Professor Noam Chomsky, is so unusual. On one side is Daniel L. 
Everett, a linguist at Illinois State University, who has spent 
several decades studying Pirahã, a language spoken by roughly 350 
indigenous hunter-gatherers in the Amazon rainforest. On the other 
are a number of linguists, including MIT linguistics professor David 
Pesetsky, who have thrown doubt upon many of Everett's claims, both 
cultural and linguistic, about the Pirahã. In a telephone interview, 
Pesetsky said, "What we tried to do in our response was to highlight 
the ways in which we are trying to unravel the system that unites all 
the languages in the world," including Pirahã. The attributes that 
Everett claims are unique to that language are in fact extant in 
other well-documented languages, such as Bengali and even German.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/pesetsky-ling.html

PHYSICS: CONFIRMED
Physicists can rest easy--the Standard Model of Particle Physics is 
still in effect. More than 100 MIT students and professors jammed 
into Room 35-225 April 11 to hear the long-anticipated results of a 
particle detection experiment designed to produce evidence that would 
confirm or reject the model, which outlines the elements of particle 
physics. MIT postdoctoral associate Jocelyn Monroe, who worked on the 
experiment, prolonged the suspense, revealing the results about half 
an hour into her talk. The outcome? The standard model is still safe: 
The experiment confirms the model's prediction that there are only 
three types of neutrinos (tiny elementary particles that are 
components of atoms). The MinibooNE experiment, conducted at the 
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, was designed 
to detect the energy traces left behind when a neutrino collides with 
the nucleus of a carbon atom. The MinibooNE team involved about 70 
researchers from 14 institutions, and was funded by the DOE and the 
NSF.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/neutrino.html

COMPUTER VISION
Computers can usually out-compute the human brain, but there are some 
tasks, such as visual object recognition, that the brain performs 
easily yet are very challenging for computers. To explore this 
phenomenon, neuroscientists have long used rapid categorization 
tasks, in which subjects indicate whether an object from a specific 
class (such as an animal) is present or not in the image. Now, MIT 
researchers report that a computer model designed to mimic the way 
the brain processes visual information performs as well as humans do 
on rapid categorization tasks. The model even tends to make similar 
errors as humans, possibly because it so closely follows the 
organization of the brain's visual system. The work could lead to 
better artificial vision systems and augmented sensory prostheses. 
Led by Professor Tomaso Poggio of the Department of Brain and 
Cognitive Sciences and MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, 
it was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences and supported by the NIH, Defense Advanced Research Projects 
Agency, ONR and NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/vision-0404.html

--MIT-