[Editors] MIT Research Digest, May 2008
Elizabeth Thomson
thomson at MIT.EDU
Thu May 1 08:54:24 EDT 2008
For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008
Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office -- Phone: 617-258-5402
-- Email: thomson at mit.edu
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MIT Research Digest, May 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: Heparin Mystery: Solved * Eco-Friendly City
Listening for Hurricanes * Lab on a Chip * Cell Division
Hurricanes & Global Warming * Americans' Carbon Footprints
Mapping Moisture * Genetic Therapy * Solar Revolution
Flu Study * Nexi * Predictably Irrational * Daedalus
E-Zpass Tolls * Stem Cells & Parkinson's * Microbial Evolution
HEPARIN MYSTERY: SOLVED
An international team of researchers led by MIT has explained how
contaminated batches of the blood-thinner heparin were able to slip
past traditional safety screens and kill dozens of patients recently
in the United States and Germany. The team, led by Professor Ram
Sasisekharan of MIT, identified the chemical structure of the
contaminant, known as oversulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS). The
researchers present their findings and offer new approaches to
detecting the contaminant in an April report in Nature Biotechnology.
Another team led by Sasisekharan has shown exactly how OSCS can kill--
specifically by setting off an allergy-like reaction. The biological
effects of the contaminant are outlined in a second report in the New
England Journal of Medicine. “Sophisticated analytical techniques
enabled complete characterization of the contaminant present in
heparin. Further, this study also provides the scientific groundwork
for critical improvements in screening practices that can now be
applied to monitor heparin, thus ensuring patient safety,” said
Sasisekharan, the Underwood Prescott Professor of Biological
Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. The work was
funded by the National Institute of General Medical Science.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/heparin-0423.html
GRAPHIC AVAILABLE
ECO-FRIENDLY CITY
Abu Dhabi is a tiny nation with huge reserves of oil and, as a
result, a lot of wealth. But this Persian Gulf emirate is taking the
long view, and planning right now for a future beyond oil. The most
dramatic piece of Abu Dhabi's futuristic planning is its creation of
a whole new city from scratch, centered on an institute of technology
modeled after, and created in collaboration with, MIT. The new city,
Masdar, is perhaps the most ambitious attempt in the world today to
create a community with a total net energy use of zero--without
sacrificing any of the amenities of modern technology. Carbon
emissions and waste output are also intended to be kept at or near
zero. The city, designed to house 50,000 people with the Masdar
Institute of Science and Technology at its center, will be completely
car-free, with walkways and personal transportation systems instead
of roads and parking garages. Some of the walkways will be topped
with solar panels, which will offer shade from the blistering
tropical sun while also providing electricity for the city.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/itw-abudhabi-tt0416.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE
LISTENING FOR HURRICANES
Knowing how powerful a hurricane is, before it hits land, can help to
save lives or to avoid the enormous costs of an unnecessary
evacuation. Some MIT researchers think there may be a better, cheaper
way of getting that crucial information. So far, there's only one
surefire way of measuring the strength of a hurricane: Sending
airplanes to fly right through the most intense winds and into the
eye of the storm, carrying out wind-speed measurements as they go.
That's an expensive approach--the specialized planes used for
hurricane monitoring cost about $100 million each, and a single
flight costs about $50,000. Monitoring one approaching hurricane can
easily require a dozen such flights, so only storms that are
approaching U.S. shores get such monitoring. Nicholas Makris,
associate professor of mechanical and ocean engineering and director
of MIT's Laboratory for Undersea Remote Sensing, thinks there may be
a better way. By placing hydrophones (underwater microphones) deep
below the surface in the path of an oncoming hurricane, it's possible
to measure wind power as a function of the intensity of the sound.
The roiling action of the wind, churning up waves and turning the
water into a bubble-filled froth, causes a rushing sound whose volume
is a direct indicator of the storm's destructive power. The research
has been supported by the ONR, ONR Global-Americas, MIT Sea Grant and
the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/hurricane-tt0409.html
PHOTOS, AUDIO, IMAGE AVAILABLE
LAB ON A CHIP
An MIT team has improved upon its landmark technology reported last
year in which the researchers used a fingernail-sized lab on a chip
to image, perform surgery on and sort tiny worms to study nerve
regeneration. The team has found a unique way to immobilize the
animals while they are still awake for several minutes with
unprecedented stability, which then allowed the researchers to
conduct fast, detailed three-dimensional imaging and to perform high-
resolution laser nanosurgery on the animals. The advance could
ultimately help researchers better understand the genetic
underpinnings of regeneration and degeneration in the nervous system--
not just in the worm but in more complex organisms including humans.
That, in turn, could help in treatments of neural injuries and
diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Led by Mehmet Fatih
Yanik, MIT assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer
science, the team reported its latest work in an April issue of the
journal Lab on a Chip. The research was funded by the NIH, a Packard
Award in Engineering and Science, and Merck & Co. Inc.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/lab-on-chip-0410.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE
CELL DIVISION
Proteins that control cell division play a far more nuanced role than
researchers previously thought in the process that gives rise to
reproductive cells, according to new findings by MIT biologists. The
work, reported in the April 18 issue of Cell, could help scientists
understand why errors occur so often during this process, known as
meiosis. Meiotic mistakes are a leading cause of miscarriage and
birth defects such as mental retardation. The work was led by
Angelika Amon, an MIT biology professor and Howard Hughes Medical
Institute investigator. It was funded by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/cell-divide-0417.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
HURRICANES & GLOBAL WARMING
Hurricanes in some areas, including the North Atlantic, are likely to
become more intense as a result of global warming even though the
number of such storms worldwide may decline, according to a new study
by MIT researchers. Kerry Emanuel, the lead author of the new study,
wrote a paper in 2005 reporting an apparent link between a warming
climate and an increase in hurricane intensity. That paper attracted
worldwide attention because it was published in Nature just three
weeks before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. Emanuel, a
professor of atmospheric science in MIT's Department of Earth,
Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says the new research provides an
independent validation of the earlier results, using a completely
different approach. The paper appeared in the Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society; the work was funded by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/emanuel-paper-0417.html
AMERICANS' CARBON FOOTPRINTS
An MIT class has estimated the carbon emissions of Americans in a
wide variety of lifestyles--from the homeless to multimillionaires,
from Buddhist monks to soccer moms--and compared them to those of
other nations. The somewhat disquieting bottom line is that in the
United States, even the people with the lowest usage of energy are
still producing, on average, more than double the global per-capita
average. And those emissions rise steeply from that minimum as
people's income increases: The class estimated Bill Gates' impact as
about 10,000 times the average. “Regardless of income, there is a
certain floor below which the individual carbon footprint of a person
in the U.S. will not drop,” says Timothy Gutowski, professor of
mechanical engineering, who taught the class that calculated the
rates of carbon emissions. The results will be presented this May
19-20 at the IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the
Environment in San Francisco.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/footprint-tt0416.html
GRAPHIC AVAILABLE
MAPPING MOISTURE
An MIT scientist will lead the science team designing a NASA
satellite mission to collect global soil moisture measurements and
other data seen as key to improving weather, flood and drought
forecasts and predictions of agricultural productivity and climate
change. At present, scientists have no network for gathering soil
moisture data as they do for rainfall, winds, humidity and
temperature. Instead, that data is gathered only at a few scattered
points around the world. But NASA's Soil Moisture Active-Passive
mission (SMAP), scheduled to launch in December 2012, aims to change
that. "Soil moisture is the lynchpin of the water, energy and carbon
cycles over land. It is the variable that links these three cycles
through its control on evaporation and plant transpiration. Global
monitoring of this variable will allow a new perspective on how these
three cycles work and vary together in the Earth system," said
Professor Dara Entekhabi, who holds joint appointments in MIT's
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department
of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Entekhabi will lead the
SMAP team.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/earth-water-0428.html
GRAPHIC AVAILABLE
GENETIC THERAPY
A team of researchers from MIT and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals has
developed safe and effective methods to perform RNA interference, a
therapy that holds great promise for treating a variety of diseases
including cancer and hepatitis. "RNA interference is a tool that has
a lot of people excited, and one reason for the excitement is that we
hope it will provide a new method to control almost any gene in your
body," said Daniel Anderson of the David H. Koch Institute for
Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, senior author of a paper on the
work appearing as the cover story in the April 27 issue of Nature
Biotechnology. Scientists see RNA interference (RNAi) as a way to
turn off specific disease-causing genes. Despite this potential,
researchers studying the technique have been stymied by one major
problem: How to deliver RNAi agents to target tissues. Now, the MIT/
Alnylam team has developed a library of new molecules that
successfully delivered RNAi agents in several animals, including
mice, rats and cynomolgus monkeys. The team hopes to test the
delivery materials in human clinical trials within the next few
years. The research was funded by the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/rnai-0427.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
SOLAR REVOLUTION
Promising to transform solar power from a "boutique" option to an
affordable, dependable, mainstream energy solution, MIT and the
Chesonis Family Foundation have launched a "solar revolution" with
the ultimate aim of making solar energy America's primary carbon-free
fuel. The Solar Revolution Project (SRP), funded by a $10 million
gift from the Foundation, will explore new materials and systems that
could dramatically accelerate the availability of solar energy. The
SRP will complement and interact closely with other large solar
projects at MIT, creating one of the largest solar energy clusters at
any research university. The Chesonis gift will allow MIT to explore
bold approaches that are essential for transforming the solar
industry. Specifically, it will focus on three elements --capture,
conversion and storage -- that will ultimately make solar power a
viable, near-term energy source.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/chesonis-0422.html
FLU STUDY
The widespread assumption that pandemic influenza is an exceptionally
deadly form of seasonal, or nonpandemic, flu is hard to support,
according to a new study in the May issue of the American Journal of
Public Health. The study challenges common beliefs about the flu--in
particular the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim
that "the hallmark of pandemic influenza is excess mortality." Peter
Doshi, a graduate student in the History, Anthropology, and Science,
Technology and Society Program at MIT, based his study on an analysis
of more than a century of influenza mortality data. He found that the
peak monthly death rates in the 1957-1958 and 1968-1969 pandemic
seasons were no higher than--and were sometimes exceeded by--those
for severe nonpandemic seasons. Doshi says the pandemic-equals-
extreme-mortality concept appears to be a generalization of a single
data point: the 1918 season, a period in which "doctors lacked
intensive care units, respirators, antiviral agents and antibiotics."
He argues that "had no other aspect of modern medicine but
antibiotics been available in 1918, there seems good reason to
believe that the severity of this pandemic would have been far reduced."
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/pandemic-0411.html
NEXI
A new experimental robot from the MIT Media Lab can slant its
eyebrows in anger, or raise them in surprise, and show a wide
assortment of facial expressions to communicate with people in human-
centric terms. Called Nexi, it is aimed at a range of applications
for personal robots and human-robot teamwork. Nexi has become
something of an Internet celebrity after a preliminary video
demonstration of its facial expressions using pre-scripted movements
was posted on YouTube. The spot has been accessed more than 70,000
times, and viewers have reacted with comments ranging from awe and
bemusement ("This robot seems more humane then most humans") to shock
and alarm ("Creepy. Very creepy"). Created by a group headed by Media
Lab's Professor Cynthia Breazeal, known for earlier expressive robots
such as Kismet, the new product is known as an MDS (mobile, dextrous,
social) robot.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/nexi-0409.html
PHOTOS AVAILABLE
PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL
It's been a long road from being engulfed in flames in an explosion
in Israel to leaving dollar bills in dorm refrigerators at MIT. But
in an odd way, it's all connected. Unexpected and surprising
connections are at the heart of the fascinating research conducted by
Dan Ariely, who holds joint appointments in MIT's Media Lab and Sloan
School of Management. His studies of behavioral economics have
demonstrated in a variety of creative ways that people often make
decisions that seem to defy logic--but they do so in very
predictable, consistent ways. Hence the title of Ariely's new book,
"Predictably Irrational" (HarperCollins), which catapulted onto The
New York Times' bestseller list upon its Feb. 19 debut.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/ariely-tt0409.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
DAEDALUS
Twenty years ago, on April 23, 1988, a team of MIT students, faculty
and alumni succeeded in a project that set a pair of aviation records
that still stand to this day. On that day, a lightweight airplane
called Daedalus--completely under human power--flew across the
Mediterranean Sea from the Greek island of Crete to just a few meters
from the shore of the island of Santorini. The plane was named for
the character in Greek mythology who escaped from King Minos of Crete
by flying away with the help of wings made of feathers attached to
his arms with wax. The modern Daedalus used a set of bicycle pedals
and a chain transmission to power a large, slow-moving propeller.
Made largely of carbon-fiber composite and Mylar, it weighed just 69
pounds. On its record flight, Daedalus traveled 115 kilometers (about
71.5 miles) across the sea before being buffeted by winds, breaking
its tail spar and crashing into the waves just 7 meters offshore from
its destination. The pilot, champion bicyclist Kanellos
Kanellopoulos, swam to shore unhurt, and the wreckage of the craft
was sent to the Smithsonian, where it remains in storage. An
identical craft used in the initial tests is on display at Boston's
Museum of Science.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/daedalus-0422.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
E-Zpass TOLLS
Eighteen months of road trips between Boston and New York inspired
MIT economist Amy Finkelstein to study the hidden cost of E-ZPass,
the popular electronic toll collection system that eliminates the
frustration of manual tolls. What she unearthed is that the handy E-
ZPass program hides tax hikes in plain sight--right on the windshield
transponder that's electronically "read" in E-Z lanes throughout 12
states. In a landmark 2007 paper, "E-ZTax: Tax Salience and Tax
Rates," Finkelstein reported that when toll authorities implement
electronic toll collection systems like E-ZPass, toll rates begin to
creep up more than they would have under the old manual toll system.
Drivers appear to be much less aware of toll rates when they pay
tolls electronically, which makes it politically easier to raise
tolls. As a result, she estimates that--after the new system is
phased in--toll rates are 20 to 40 percent higher on roads and
bridges that offer electronic toll collection than they would be if
all drivers still paid tolls by cash.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/eureka-ezpass-tt0409.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
STEM CELLS & PARKINSON'S
A team including MIT researchers has demonstrated for the first time
that artificially created stem cells can be used to treat symptoms of
Parkinson's disease in rats. The work, reported in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to successful treatments
for human patients of Parkinson's, the degenerative neurological
disorder. However, the researchers pointed out that hurdles
associated with reprogramming cells must first be cleared. "This is
the first demonstration that reprogrammed cells can integrate into
the neural system or positively affect neurodegenerative disease,"
said Marius Wernig, lead author of the article and a postdoctoral
researcher in the laboratory of Rudolf Jaenisch, a member of the
Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research and a professor of biology
at MIT. The research was supported by the Ellison Medical Foundation
and the NIH.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/parkinson-0407.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
MICROBIAL EVOLUTION
Microbes, the oldest and most numerous creatures on Earth, have a
rich genomic history that offers clues to changes in the environment
that have occurred over hundreds of millions of years. While
scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the many important
environmental roles played by microbes living today--they process the
food in our intestines, they keep carbon moving through the ocean
food web, they can be harnessed to process sewage and build specific
proteins--they still know little about these tiny critters.
Scientists at MIT who are trying to understand existing microbes by
studying their genetic history recently created a new approach to the
study of microbial genomes that may hasten our collective
understanding of microbial evolution. The team, led by Professor Eric
Alm of the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and
Biological Engineering, published a paper on their work in PLoS
Genetics. This work is part of the Virtual Institute for Microbial
Stress and Survival. The research was also supported by the DOE, the
NIH, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/evolution-tt0402.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE
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