[Editors] MIT Research Digest, June 2008

[Elizabeth Thomson]

For Immediate Release
MONDAY, JUNE 2, 2008
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office -- Phone: 617-258-5402  
-- Email: thomson at mit.edu

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MIT Research Digest, June 2008
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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


IN THIS ISSUE: Slashing Fuel Use * Bird-Beak Mystery
Fuel-Cell Material * Blue Laws: The Cost * Microbe-Fest
'Paper Towel' for Oil * Robotic Training * Microbial Lifestyles
Bacteria-Resistant Films * All-Electric Porsche * Like a Stem Cell
Image-Recognition Software * Pharmaceutical Caution * Runway Safety
Job Testing & Race * Mechanics of Judgment * Tomorrow's Technologies
Commercial Property Market * Low-Tech Solar * Universal Day Care
Repairing Airway Injuries * Babbling Birds * Preventing Stomach Cancer


SLASHING FUEL USE
It is possible to slash fuel use by all vehicles on U.S. roads to  
pre-2000 levels within a few decades, but doing so would require  
immediate action on several challenging fronts, according to a new  
analysis by MIT researchers. Left unchecked, U.S. vehicle fuel use is  
expected to rise to about 765 billion liters of gasoline equivalent  
per year by 2035, up 35 percent from 2005, according to the  
researchers. Their analysis shows, however, that hybrids, plug-in  
hybrids and other advanced vehicle systems could be incorporated into  
America's vehicle fleet rapidly enough to make a significant dent in  
total fuel use by 2035. Reductions would come faster if Americans  
were to start to use technology improvements to make mainstream  
gasoline vehicles more fuel efficient, and to adopt measures to slow  
the growth in demand for vehicles and the distance they travel. “The  
magnitude of the changes required to achieve these reductions is  
daunting, especially as current trends all run counter to those  
changes,” said Anup Bandivadekar, who until recently was a  
postdoctoral associate in the MIT Energy Initiative and is now an  
analyst at the International Council on Clean Transportation. John  
Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of MIT's  
Sloan Automotive Laboratory, Bandivadekar and others developed the  
models key to the study.
GRAPHS, PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fuel-0506.html

BIRD-BEAK MYSTERY
As Charles Darwin showed nearly 150 years ago, bird beaks are  
exquisitely adapted to the birds' feeding strategy. A team of MIT  
researchers has now explained exactly how some shorebirds use their  
long, thin beaks to defy gravity and transport food into their  
mouths. The phalarope, commonly found in western North America, takes  
advantage of surface interactions between its beak and water droplets  
to propel bits of food from the tip of its long beak to its mouth,  
the research team reports in a May issue of Science. These surface  
interactions depend on the chemical properties of the liquid  
involved, so phalaropes and about 20 other birds species that use  
this mechanism are extremely sensitive to anything that contaminates  
the water surface, especially detergents or oil. “Some species rely  
exclusively on this feeding mechanism, and so are extremely  
vulnerable to oil spills,” said John Bush, MIT associate professor of  
applied mathematics and senior author of the paper. The research was  
funded by the NSF, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique  
(France) and MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms.
PHOTOS, VIDEO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/bird-beak-0515.html

FUEL-CELL MATERIAL
MIT engineers have improved the power output of one type of fuel cell  
by more than 50 percent through technology that could help these  
environmentally friendly energy storage devices find a much broader  
market, particularly in portable electronics. The new material key to  
the work is also considerably less expensive than its conventional  
industrial counterpart, among other advantages. “Our goal is to  
replace traditional fuel-cell membranes with these cost-effective,  
highly tunable and better-performing materials,” said Paula Hammond,  
Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research  
team. She noted that the new material also has potential for use in  
other electrochemical systems such as batteries. The work was  
reported in Advanced Materials, and was supported by the DuPont-MIT  
Alliance through 2007. It is currently supported by the NSF.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fuel-cell-0516.html

BLUE LAWS: THE COST
Repealing America's blue laws not only decreased church attendance,  
donations and spending, but also led to a rise in alcohol and drug  
use among people who had been religious, according to a new study by  
economists Jonathan Gruber of MIT and Daniel Hungerman of the  
University of Notre Dame. Blue laws, or Sunday closing laws, refer to  
statutes that restrict certain activities on the Christian Sabbath.  
By the end of the 19th century, nearly every state had at least some  
law prohibiting certain activities on Sunday. The 1960s saw the  
beginning of a push to repeal these laws in favor of commerce,  
although a few still remain on the books. In their study, which  
appears in the May 2008 edition of The Quarterly Journal of  
Economics, Gruber and Hungerman show what happens when religious  
services must compete with shopping, hobbies and other activities.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/bluelaws-tt0521.html

MICROBE-FEST
A sea-dwelling microbe of global importance discovered only 20 years  
ago by researchers including one at MIT was the focus of a two-day  
“party” of sorts at MIT. The ProchlorococcusFest featured a range of  
talks highlighting past, current and future research on the smallest  
--and most abundant -- photosynthetic organism in the oceans. “It's  
been a really exciting ride,” said MIT Professor Penny Chisholm,  
commenting on what's been learned about Prochlorococcus since it was  
first identified. The tiny cells -- there are 100 million in a quart  
of seawater -- are now known to play a key role in the ocean carbon  
cycle, which is important in climate regulation. Chisholm, the Lee  
and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology,  
was on the team that discovered the microbe and first described it in  
the journal Nature. Among other important Prochlorococcus research  
advances, scientists have sequenced the genomes of 12 different  
strains of the microbe. “If we can understand how this one cell  
evolved and assembles into these rich communities, we'll better  
understand microbial diversity in general,” said Chisholm.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/microbe-fest-tt0521.html

'PAPER TOWEL' FOR OIL
A mat of nanowires with the touch and feel of paper could be an  
important new tool in the cleanup of oil and other organic  
pollutants, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the May 30  
online issue of Nature Nanotechnology. The scientists say they have  
created a membrane that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil,  
and can be recycled many times for future use. The oil itself can  
also be recovered. Some 200,000 tons of oil have already been spilled  
at sea since the start of the decade. “What we found is that we can  
make 'paper' from an interwoven mesh of nanowires that is able to  
selectively absorb hydrophobic liquids -- oil-like liquids -- from  
water,” said Francesco Stellacci, an associate professor in the  
Department of Materials Science and Engineering and leader of the  
work. In addition to its environmental applications, the nanowire  
paper could also impact filtering and the purification of water, said  
Jing Kong, an assistant professor of electrical engineering in the  
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and one of  
Stellacci's colleagues on the work. She noted that it could also be  
inexpensive to produce because the nanowires of which it is composed  
can be fabricated in larger quantities than other nanomaterials. This  
work was primarily funded by the Deshpande Center for Technological  
Innovation at MIT.
PHOTOS, VIDEO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/oil-paper-0530.html

ROBOTIC TRAINING
The space shuttle's 45-foot robotic arm may look simple and automatic  
as it gracefully lifts a multi-ton satellite from the cargo bay and  
lets it drift off into space. Far from it. Controlling the spindly  
arm is a delicate process of manipulating multi-axis joysticks with  
both hands simultaneously. For years, NASA trainers have given  
astronauts a series of tests before teaching them to control the  
multi-jointed arm. But it turns out they've never checked to see how  
those test scores relate to the training's outcome. MIT researchers  
have started to remedy that, by doing a systematic evaluation of the  
effectiveness of the tests in predicting performance. As they  
continue a four-year project funded by NASA's National Space  
Biomedical Research Institute, they will see whether other tests  
could do better. Andrew Liu, a research scientist in MIT's Man  
Vehicle Laboratory, presented the first report on the research on May  
13 at the Aerospace Medical Association meeting.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/robot-arm-0528.html

MICROBIAL LIFESTYLES
Marine bacteria in the wild organize into professions or lifestyle  
groups that partition many resources, rather than competing for them,  
so that microbes with one lifestyle, such as free-floating cells,  
flourish in proximity with closely related microbes that may spend  
life attached to zooplankton or algae. This new information about  
microbial groups and the methodology behind it could change the way  
scientists approach the classification of microbes by making it  
possible to determine on a large scale, relatively speaking, the  
genetic basis for ecological niches. Microbes drive almost all  
chemical reactions in the ocean; it's important to identify the  
specific professions held by different groups. "This is the first  
method to accurately differentiate the ecological niche or profession  
among large groups of microbes in the ocean," said Professor Martin  
Polz of MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He  
and Professor Eric Alm published a paper on the research in Science.  
The work was funded by the NSF, the DOE, the Moore Foundation, and  
the Woods Hole Center for Ocean and Human Health.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/lifestyle-0522.html

BACTERIA-RESISTANT FILMS
Having found that whether bacteria stick to surfaces depends partly  
on how stiff those surfaces are, MIT engineers have created ultrathin  
films made of polymers that could be applied to medical devices and  
other surfaces to control microbe accumulation. The inexpensive, easy- 
to-produce films could provide a valuable layer of protection for the  
health care industry by helping to reduce the spread of hospital- 
acquired infections, which take the lives of 100,000 people and cost  
the United States an estimated $4.5 billion annually. The  
researchers, who describe their work in the journal  
Biomacromolecules, found they could control the extent of bacterial  
adhesion to surfaces by manipulating the mechanical stiffness of  
polymer films called polyelectrolyte multilayers. Thus, the films  
could be designed to prevent accumulation of hazardous bacteria or  
promote growth of desirable bacteria. “All other factors being equal,  
mechanical stiffness of material surfaces increases bacterial  
adhesion,” said Krystyn Van Vliet, the Thomas Lord Assistant  
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and the paper's anchor  
author. The research was funded by the NSF, NIH and the Arnold and  
Mabel Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Program.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/surfaces-0516.html

ALL-ELECTRIC PORSCHE
With a click and a hum, the sleek Porsche 914 pulled away from the  
curb while onlookers watched anxiously and the passenger gazed down  
at a laptop plugged into the dashboard. Why the drama? Once powered  
by a conventional gasoline engine, the 1976 Porsche now operates on  
18 high-tech batteries--the result of work by dedicated MIT students  
and their mentors. Converting the car to an advanced electric vehicle  
is an achievement in itself and serves to demonstrate the viability  
of the technology. But for the students, the real fun starts now.  
Said mechanical engineering graduate student Craig Wildman, "Now we  
get to take data while we're driving. We can record everything that  
happens on a laptop, come back and change parameters, and test drive  
it again." With the Porsche as a test platform, the students can  
monitor conditions in the car while looking for ways to increase  
efficiency, performance and range, and to bring down costs. The  
Porsche was donated two years ago by Professor Yang Shao-Horn of  
mechanical engineering and the Electrochemical Energy Laboratory, who  
with her husband bought it on eBay and made it available to students  
interested in converting it to electric power. In addition to  
providing an unusual opportunity for hands-on learning, the project  
will ultimately yield information valuable to Shao-Horn's research on  
advanced batteries.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/porsche-tt0521.html

LIKE A STEM CELL
Studies of how cancer cells spread have led to a surprising discovery  
about the creation of cells with adult stem-cell characteristics,  
offering potentially major implications for regenerative medicine and  
for cancer treatment. Some cancer cells acquire the ability to  
migrate through the body by re-activating biological programs that  
have lain dormant since the embryo stage, as the lab of Robert  
Weinberg, a member of the MIT-affiliated Whitehead Institute for  
Biomedical Research, has helped to demonstrate. Now scientists in the  
Weinberg lab have shown that both normal and cancer cells that are  
induced to follow one of these pathways may gain properties of adult  
stem cells, including the ability to self-renew. In a paper published  
online by Cell, the researchers demonstrated in mice and in human  
cells that cells that have undergone an "epithelial-to- 
mesenchymal" (EMT) transition acquire several important  
characteristics of stem cells. Conversely, the researchers also  
showed that naturally existing normal stem cells as well as tumor- 
seeding cancer stem cells show characteristics of the post-EMT cells.  
This research was supported by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation,  
the MIT Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, the National Cancer  
Institute, and the DOD.
IMAGE AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/stem-cell-0515.html

IMAGE-RECOGNITION SOFTWARE
It takes surprisingly few pixels of information to be able to  
identify the subject of an image, a team led by an MIT researcher has  
found. The discovery could lead to great advances in the automated  
identification of online images and, ultimately, provide a basis for  
computers to see like humans do. Antonio Torralba, assistant  
professor in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence  
Laboratory, and colleagues have been trying to find out what is the  
smallest amount of information--that is, the shortest numerical  
representation--that can be derived from an image that will provide a  
useful indication of its content. Deriving such a short  
representation would be an important step toward making it possible  
to catalog the billions of images on the Internet automatically.  
"We're trying to find very short codes for images," says Torralba,  
"so that if two images have a similar sequence [of numbers], they are  
probably similar--composed of roughly the same object, in roughly the  
same configuration." If one image has been identified with a caption  
or title, then other images that match its numerical code would  
likely show the same object (such as a car, tree, or person) and so  
the name associated with one picture can be transferred to the  
others. The work is supported in part by the NSF.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/csail-tt0521.html

PHARMACEUTICAL CAUTION
Anti-obesity drugs that work by blocking brain molecules similar to  
those in marijuana could also interfere with neural development in  
young children, according to a new study from MIT's Picower Institute  
for Learning and Memory. Marijuana is known to be an appetite  
stimulant, and a new class of anti-obesity drugs work by blocking  
brain receptors that respond to a chemical in marijuana and other  
cannabinoids. Marijuana contains special active compounds that are  
referred to collectively as cannabinoids. But other cannabinoids  
(endocannabinoids) are generated naturally inside the body. The MIT  
study, which was done in mice, found that blocking cannabinoid  
receptors could also suppress the adaptive rewiring of the brain  
necessary for neural development in children. The work is reported in  
a May issue of Neuron. "Our finding of a profound disruption of  
cortical plasticity in juvenile mice suggests caution is advised in  
the use of such compounds in children," wrote lead author Mark  Bear,  
director of the Picower Institute and Picower Professor of  
Neuroscience. This work is supported by the National Eye Institute  
and the National Institute of Mental Health.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/bear-obesity-0507.html

RUNWAY SAFETY
Next year, Boston's Logan International Airport will become one of  
the first U.S. airports to deploy Runway Status Lights (RWSL), a new  
technology developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory as part of the Federal  
Aviation Administration's continuing program to improve runway  
safety. RWSL--an automated, all-weather safety backup to pilots,  
airport vehicle operators, and air-traffic controllers--is designed  
to aid in the prevention of runway accidents while not interfering  
with the efficient tempo of operations required at high-capacity  
airports. The system was developed at Lincoln Laboratory under the  
FAA's Runway Incursion Reduction Program.
IMAGES AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/runway-tt0521.html

JOB TESTING & RACE
Conventional wisdom holds that the standardized tests some employers  
require of job applicants serve as a barrier to equal employment. But  
a pioneering study shows just the opposite: Screening increases  
employers' precision in matching applicants to jobs and can raise  
productivity for workers of all races--without hindering minority  
hiring. "Job testing has the potential to raise productivity by  
improving the quality of matches between workers and firms. But  
because of the near-universal finding that minorities fare relatively  
poorly on standardized tests, there is a pervasive concern that  
better candidate selection comes at a cost of reduced opportunity for  
groups with lower average test scores," says David Autor, associate  
professor of economics at MIT who conducted the study with David  
Scarborough of Black Hills State University. Their study, "Does Job  
Testing Harm Minority Workers? Evidence from Retail Establishments,"  
was recently published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/autor-tt0507.html

MECHANICS OF JUDGMENT
How do we know what other people are thinking? How do we judge them,  
and what happens in our brains when we do? MIT neuroscientist Rebecca  
Saxe is tackling those tough questions and many others. Her goal is  
no less than understanding how the brain gives rise to the abilities  
that make us uniquely human--making moral judgments, developing  
belief systems and understanding language. It's a huge task, but  
"different chunks of it can be bitten off in different ways," she  
says. Saxe, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences,  
specializes in social cognition--how people interpret other people's  
thoughts. It's a difficult subject to get at, since people's thoughts  
and beliefs can't be observed directly. "These are extremely abstract  
kinds of concepts, although we use them fluently and constantly to  
get around in the world," says Saxe.
IMAGE, PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/saxe-tt0514.html

TOMORROW'S TECHNOLOGIES
As the economy appears to falter, here's something to keep in mind:  
History is filled with examples of new technologies that have helped  
to usher in more prosperous times. (Case in point: Few people who  
experienced the recession of the early 1990s could have foreseen the  
emergence of the World Wide Web.) With this in mind, the MIT News  
Office asked MIT researchers for their thoughts on potentially life- 
altering technologies that lie just around the corner. Two examples:  
Low-cost, nanoscale solar cells, and robots that are practical and  
affordable.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/hope-horizon-0521.html

COMMERCIAL PROPERTY MARKET
Despite signs of a widening disconnect between buyers and sellers,  
transaction sale prices of U.S. commercial property owned by  
institutional investors rose 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2008  
after two consecutive quarterly declines, according to an index  
produced by the MIT Center for Real Estate. The modest upturn in the  
quarterly transaction-based index (TBI) means that while prices for  
properties such as shopping malls, apartment complexes and office  
towers are still some 6 percent below peak values, there may be a ray  
of light in real estate markets. "The uptick in the index this  
quarter highlights the difference between the commercial property  
market and the U.S. housing market," said Professor David Geltner,  
director of the MIT/CRE.

LOW-TECH SOLAR
For a project that could be on the very cutting edge of renewable  
energy, this one is actually decidedly low tech--and that's the  
point. A team of MIT students, led by mechanical engineering graduate  
student Spencer Ahrens, has spent the last few months assembling a  
prototype for a concentrating solar power system they think could  
revolutionize the field. It's a 12-foot-square mirrored dish capable  
of concentrating sunlight by a factor of 1,000, built from simple,  
inexpensive industrial materials selected for price, durability and  
ease of assembly rather than for optimum performance. That's in stark  
contrast to most attempts to build solar dish concentrating systems,  
which have tended to use expensive custom-made equipment to achieve  
high efficiency.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/solar-dish-0506.html

UNIVERSAL DAY CARE
Universal day care, the recurring dream of working parents  
everywhere, benefits adults economically but may burden young  
children with health and behavior problems, according to an MIT  
economist's study of a highly subsidized childcare program in Quebec.  
Working with colleagues at two Canadian universities, MIT Professor  
Jonathan Gruber studied the impact of Quebec's childcare program over  
a decade, beginning with the provincial government's move in 1997 to  
subsidize universal day care for 4-year-olds and kindergarten for 5-  
year-olds. By 2000, the program included infants to 5-year-olds. In  
their study, which has been issued as a working paper by the National  
Bureau of Economic Research, the researchers focused on changes in  
families' use of day care; the rate of mothers' return or entry into  
the work force and the effects of day care on children. "The Quebec  
Family Policy was a major government innovation. Its 'five-dollar-a- 
day' plan has given us a rare experimental environment for analyzing  
the effects of publicly financed childcare," says Gruber, professor  
of economics.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/econ-childcare-0502.html

REPAIRING AIRWAY INJURIES
MIT tissue engineers have successfully healed airway injuries in  
rabbits using a technique they believe could apply to the trachea and  
other parts of the human body. The work, published in the advance  
online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  
expands researchers' understanding of the control of tissue repair  
and could lead to new treatments for tracheal injuries, such as smoke  
inhalation and damage from long-term intubation. The new technique  
heals airway injuries by placing new tracheal cells around the injury  
site. Two types of tracheal cells, embedded within a three- 
dimensional gelatin scaffold, take over the functions of the damaged  
tissue. "We can begin to replicate the regulatory role cells play  
within tissues by creating engineered constructs with more than one  
cell type," said Elazer Edelman, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot  
Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and senior author of the  
paper. The research was funded by the NIH.
IMAGES AVAILABLE
MORE:http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/trachea-0505.html

BABBLING BIRDS
Young songbirds babble before they can mimic an adult's song, much  
like their human counterparts. Now, in work that offers insights into  
how birds--and perhaps people--learn new behaviors, MIT scientists  
have found that immature and adult birdsongs are driven by two  
separate brain pathways, rather than one pathway that slowly matures.  
"The babbling during song learning exemplifies the ubiquitous  
exploratory behavior that we often call play but that is essential  
for trial-and-error learning," comments Michale Fee, the senior  
author of the study, a neuroscientist in the McGovern Institute for  
Brain Research at MIT and an associate professor in MIT's Department  
of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. The work was reported in Science,  
and funded by the NIH, the Hertz Foundation, and the Friends of the  
McGovern Institute.
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/birdsongs-0501.html

PREVENTING STOMACH CANCER
Prompt treatment of a microbe that causes stomach ulcers and other  
ailments can reverse damage to the lining of the stomach and  
ultimately prevent one of the most lethal forms of cancer from  
developing there, MIT researchers have concluded. In a May issue of  
Cancer Research, the scientists say their results should lay to rest  
any question about whether--and when--antibiotic treatment of  
Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) can eliminate or reduce risk of  
developing gastric, or stomach cancer. The findings are important,  
the researchers say, because stomach cancer is the second leading  
cause of cancer death worldwide, and approximately half of the  
world's population is infected with H. pylori. The work was led by  
James Fox, D.V.M., a professor in the Department of Biological  
Engineering, director of MIT's Division of Comparative Medicine, and  
member of the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences. It was  
funded by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/stomach-0501.html

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