[Editors] MIT Research Digest, Oct. 2008

Elizabeth Thomson thomson at MIT.EDU
Mon Oct 6 16:39:48 EDT 2008


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MIT Research Digest, Oct. 2008
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For Immediate Release
MONDAY, OCT. 6, 2008

Contact: Elizabeth A. Thomson, MIT News Office
E: thomson at mit.edu, T: 617-258-5402


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: Election ‘08: Prioritizing Science * Fuel-Cell  
Nanoparticles
Tree Power * Designing a Landfill * Underwater Robot
Of Worms and Humans * Corn Processing * Robotic Wheelchair
Insights into Chemo * Toward Better Detectors * Watch & Learn
Renewable Energy Regulations * Large Hadron Collider * Smell Receptors
Toward Better Fuel Efficiency *Memory Capacity * Quantum Probe
Super-Massive Black Hole * Cutting Airline Delays
Offshore Fish Farming * Malaria & Cells

ELECTION ‘08: PRIORITIZING SCIENCE
In the run-up to the Nov. 4 presidential election, the MIT News Office  
has asked MIT experts to weigh in on the presidential candidates,  
their policy ideas and aspects of the campaign. In this installment in  
the series, members of the MIT community share their thoughts on what  
should be the next president's top priority in the areas of science  
and technology.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/election-science-0930.html

FUEL-CELL NANOPARTICLES
In a step toward developing better fuel cells for electric cars and  
more, MIT engineers and colleagues have taken the first images of  
individual atoms on and near the surface of nanoparticles key to the  
eco-friendly energy storage devices. Nanoparticles made of platinum  
and cobalt are known to catalyze some of the chemical reactions behind  
fuel cells, making those reactions run up to four times faster than if  
platinum alone is used as the catalyst. No one, however, understands  
exactly why. That's because "little is known about the nanoparticles'  
surface atomic structure and chemistry," which are key to the  
particles' activity, said Yang Shao-Horn, an associate professor in  
the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Materials  
Science and Engineering and director of the Electrochemical Energy  
Laboratory at MIT. Using a new technique known as aberration-corrected  
Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy, Shao-Horn's team, in  
collaboration with Professor Paulo Ferreira of the University of Texas  
at Austin and Dr. Larry Allard of Oak Ridge National Laboratory,  
identified specific atomic structures near the surface of such a  
catalyst. That information in hand, the researchers propose a theory  
for why the material is so active. Perhaps most importantly, "knowing  
the surface composition will help us design even better catalysts,"  
Shao-Horn said. The work was reported in the Sept. 24 online issue of  
the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fuel-cell-1002.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE

TREE POWER
MIT researchers and colleagues are working to find out whether energy  
from trees can power a network of sensors to prevent spreading forest  
fires. What they learn also could raise the possibility of using trees  
as silent sentinels along the nation's borders to detect potential  
threats such as smuggled radioactive materials. The U.S. Forest  
Service currently predicts and tracks fires with a variety of tools,  
including remote automated weather stations. But these stations are  
expensive and sparsely distributed. Additional sensors could save  
trees by providing better local climate data to be used in fire  
prediction models and earlier alerts. However, manually recharging or  
replacing batteries at often very hard-to-reach locations makes this  
impractical and costly. The new sensor system seeks to avoid this  
problem by tapping into trees as a self-sustaining power supply. Each  
sensor is equipped with an off-the-shelf battery that can be slowly  
recharged using electricity generated by the tree. A single tree  
doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge"  
adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time,"  
said Shuguang Zhang, one of the researchers on the project and the  
associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering. The  
original experiments were funded by MagCap Engineering, LLC, through  
MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/trees-0923.html
PHOTO, GRAPHICS AVAILABLE

DESIGNING A LANDFILL
Many architects dream of being given a "tabula rasa" -- a blank slate  
-- upon which they could let the imagination soar when designing a  
home, building or other project. A team led by MIT architects  
Alexander D'Hooghe and Nader Tehrani are working on what could be the  
largest blank slate in the history of construction. This summer, the  
MIT team was among the winners of an Urban Design Institute of Korea- 
sponsored contest to design a mammoth landfill project on South  
Korea's western coast -- a 401 square kilometer area that will house  
farms, cities and developments ranging from a spaceport to an  
amusement park. Intended to fill between the long fingers of land that  
project into South Korea's Saemangeum Bay, the project could cost  
billions of dollars and be eight times bigger than the record-breaking  
Palm Deira landfill development under way in Dubai.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/landfill-0926.html
IMAGES, PHOTOS AVAILABLE

UNDERWATER ROBOT
MIT researchers have designed a new robotic underwater vehicle that  
can hover in place like a helicopter -- an invaluable tool for  
deepwater oil explorers, marine archaeologists, oceanographers and  
others. The new craft, called Odyssey IV, is the latest in a series of  
small, inexpensive artificially intelligent submarines developed over  
the last two decades by the MIT Sea Grant College Program's Autonomous  
Underwater Vehicles Laboratory. The Odyssey series revolutionized  
underwater research in the 1990s by introducing the thrifty and highly  
capable underwater robots. But the previous Odyssey vehicles still had  
one significant limitation: Like sharks, they could only operate while  
continuously moving forward. No more. The new Odyssey IV, which has  
just completed sea trials off Woods Hole, Mass., can move through the  
deep ocean, up to 6,000 meters down, stopping anywhere in the water  
column and constantly correcting for currents and obstacles.  
Navigating to its preprogrammed destination, it can hover in place,  
making detailed inspections of the footings of an offshore oil  
platform, or photographing the flora and fauna around an undersea  
vent. The work is led by Professor Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis,  
director of MIT Sea Grant, and Franz Hover, an assistant professor of  
mechanical engineering.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/odyssey4-0925.html
VIDEO, IMAGE AVAILABLE

OF WORMS AND HUMANS
On the surface, the tiny roundworm bears little resemblance to a  
person. Its nervous system, for example, has just 302 neurons to our  
100 billion. Yet it uses many of the same genes and signaling  
chemicals as the human brain, so studies of its system could have  
relevance to our own. Now an MIT team has shown that even the simplest  
worm behaviors can be controlled by multiple signaling pathways. The  
results might have implications for the treatment of human brain  
disorders. In the new study, published in the journal Nature  
Neuroscience, H. Robert Horvitz and postdoctoral scientist Niels  
Ringstad investigated neural pathways of a mutant worm strain with  
defective egg-laying behavior. Horvitz, a Nobel laureate and Howard  
Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, is the David H. Koch Professor  
of Biology, a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at  
MIT and affiliated with the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer  
Research at MIT. The Life Sciences Research Foundation, The Medical  
Foundation and the NIH supported this study.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/worms-0924.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE

CORN PROCESSING
Across Tanzania and elsewhere in Africa, processing the corn harvest  
is labor intensive: Families and friends gather to spend a day or two  
filling bags with the dried cobs, beating then to loosen the kernels,  
and then separating out the kernels from the cobs, or else simply  
removing the kernels by hand. It would take one person about two weeks  
to complete the job alone, but thanks to a technology largely  
developed at MIT, there's a better, faster way. Jodie Wu, an MIT  
senior in mechanical engineering, spent the summer traveling from  
village to village in Tanzania to introduce a new system for  
processing the corn: A simple attachment for a bicycle that makes it  
possible to remove the kernels quickly and efficiently using pedal  
power. The device makes processing up to 30 times faster and allows  
one person to complete the job alone in one day. The basic concept for  
the maize-sheller was first developed in Guatemala by an NGO called  
MayaPedal, and then refined by Wu last semester as a class project in  
D-Lab: Design, a class taught by Department of Mechanical Engineering  
Senior Lecturer Amy Smith. Now, thanks to Wu's efforts, the technology  
is beginning to make its way around the world.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/itw-corncob-tt1001.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE

ROBOTIC WHEELCHAIR
MIT researchers are developing a new kind of autonomous wheelchair  
that can learn all about the locations in a given building, and then  
take its occupant to a given place in response to a verbal command.  
Just by saying "take me to the cafeteria" or "go to my room," the  
wheelchair user would be able to avoid the need for controlling every  
twist and turn of the route and could simply sit back and relax as the  
chair moves from one place to another based on a map stored in its  
memory. "It's a system that can learn and adapt to the user," says  
Nicholas Roy, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and  
co-developer of the wheelchair. "People have different preferences and  
different ways of referring" to places and objects, he says, and the  
aim is to have each wheelchair personalized for its user and the  
user's environment. Unlike other attempts to program wheelchairs or  
other mobile devices, which rely on an intensive process of manually  
capturing a detailed map of a building, the MIT system can learn about  
its environment in much the same way as a person would: By being taken  
around once on a guided tour, with important places identified along  
the way. For example, as the wheelchair is pushed around a nursing  
home for the first time, the patient or a caregiver would say: "this  
is my room" or "here we are in the foyer" or "nurse's station." Also  
collaborating on the project are Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at  
MIT's AgeLab, and Seth Teller, professor of computer science and  
engineering. The research has been funded by Nokia and Microsoft.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/wheelchair-0919.html
PHOTO, VIDEO AVAILABLE

INSIGHTS INTO CHEMOTHERAPY
MIT researchers have shown that cells from different people don't all  
react the same way when exposed to the same DNA-damaging agent -- a  
finding that could help clinicians predict how patients will respond  
to chemotherapy. The research team from MIT's Center for Environmental  
Health Sciences (CEHS) and the Departments of Biological Engineering  
and Biology, identified a group of 48 genes that can predict how  
susceptible an individual is to the toxic compound known as MNNG. The  
work appears in a Sept. online edition of Genes and Development. MNNG,  
a DNA-damaging compound similar to toxic chemicals found in tobacco  
smoke and in common chemotherapy agents, usually kills cells by  
inducing irreparable DNA damage. However, the researchers found a wide  
range of susceptibility among cells taken from healthy people. The  
work was led by Leona Samson, senior author of the paper, director of  
CEHS, and an American Cancer Society Research Professor. The research  
was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences  
and the National Cancer Institute.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/cell-response-0918.html

TOWARD BETTER DETECTORS
A bizarre but well-established aspect of quantum physics could open up  
a new era of electronic detectors and imaging systems that would be  
far more efficient than any now in existence, according to new  
insights by an MIT leader in the field. MIT Professor of Mechanical  
Engineering Seth Lloyd has found that a peculiar quantum-physics  
property called entanglement can be harnessed to make detectors-- 
similar in principle to radar systems used to track airplanes in  
flight or ships at sea--that are as much as a million times more  
efficient than existing systems. In addition, beams of entangled light  
could be swept across a scene to reconstruct a detailed image, with a  
similar improvement in efficiency. The new findings, reported in the  
journal Science, are purely theoretical, but Lloyd says that  
laboratory experiments have already proven the feasibility of both the  
light sources and the detectors needed for such a quantum-based  
photodetection system, so he anticipates that within a year it should  
be possible to build a laboratory-scale system to demonstrate the new  
concept.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/quantum-detect-0911.html

WATCH AND LEARN
In work that could aid efforts to develop more brain-like computer  
vision systems, MIT neuroscientists have tricked the visual brain into  
confusing one object with another, thereby demonstrating that time  
teaches us how to recognize objects. It may sound strange, but human  
eyes never see the same image twice. An object such as a cat can  
produce innumerable impressions on the retina, depending on the  
direction of gaze, angle of view, distance and so forth. Every time  
our eyes move, the pattern of neural activity changes, yet our  
perception of the cat remains stable. "This stability, which is called  
'invariance,' is fundamental to our ability to recognize objects -- it  
feels effortless, but it is a central challenge for computational  
neuroscience," explained James DiCarlo of the McGovern Institute for  
Brain Research at MIT, the senior author of the new study appearing in  
a Sept. issue of Science. "We want to understand how our brains  
acquire invariance and how we might incorporate it into computer  
vision systems." This work was funded by the NIH, the McKnight  
Endowment Fund for Neuroscience and a gift from Marjorie and Gerald  
Burnett.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/neuron-object-0911.html
VIDEO, IMAGE AVAILABLE

RENEWABLE ENERGY REGULATIONS
Well-intentioned rules passed by many states to combat climate change  
through the development of renewable energy technologies may not  
achieve the intended effects and may even be counterproductive,  
according to research by an MIT graduate student. But the problem is  
easy to fix: A modified set of regulations could be much more  
effective, the study found. At least 25 states have enacted renewable  
portfolio standards (RPS), which require electric utilities to obtain  
a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources by a  
certain date (such as "20 percent from renewables by 2020"). But these  
standards will not achieve the desired effects and may actually end up  
delaying some of the most promising renewable-energy technologies, the  
study found. Michael Hogan, the student who carried out the study as  
part of his master's thesis work in MIT's Environmental Technology and  
Public Policy Program, says that such standards push investments much  
too heavily toward technology that is already well proven and close to  
being economically competitive, especially land-based wind power. In  
the process, technologies that may have much more potential to replace  
coal plants in the longer term, such as solar thermal systems and  
offshore wind, get short shrift.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/renewable-energy-tt1001.html
PHOTO AVAILABLE

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
Dozens of MIT physicists are waiting anxiously to sift through data  
from the world's biggest physics experiment, which officially started  
in Sept. when scientists sent the first beam of protons zooming at  
nearly the speed of light around the 17-mile Large Hadron Collider  
(LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. Some 40 MIT researchers are among the  
thousands of physicists from around the world collaborating on the  
LHC, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. MIT has the  
largest American university group working on one of the collider's  
four detectors, known as the CMS (compact muon solenoid) detector, and  
a smaller group working on another LHC detector known as ATLAS (a  
toroidal LHC apparatus). The first circulating beam is a major  
accomplishment on the way to the ultimate goal: high-energy beams  
colliding in the centers of the LHC's particle detectors. Scientists  
participating in these experiments will analyze the collisions in  
search of extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical  
universe. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, the LHC  
experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they  
do. They could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter,  
uncover hidden symmetries of the universe and possibly find extra  
dimensions of space.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/lhc-0910.html

SMELL RECEPTORS
MIT biological engineers have found a way to mass-produce smell  
receptors in the laboratory, an advance that paves the way for  
"artificial noses" to be created and used in a variety of settings.  
The work could also allow scientists to unlock the mystery of how the  
sense of smell can recognize a seemingly infinite range of odors.  
"Smell is perhaps one of the oldest and most primitive senses, but  
nobody really understands how it works. It still remains a tantalizing  
enigma," said Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for  
Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a paper on the work  
appearing online the week of Sept. 29 in the Proceedings of the  
National Academy of Sciences. Artificial noses could one day replace  
drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs, and could have numerous medical  
applications, according to Zhang and colleagues. DARPA recently  
approved funding for the team's MIT (microfluidic-integrated  
transduction) RealNose project. The research was funded by the ROHM  
Corporation (Japan), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation  
(Sweden), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and a  
John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Joyce and Roger Kiley provided pure  
odorants.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/smell-0929.html

TOWARD BETTER FUEL EFFICIENCY
As a car accelerates up and down a hill then slows to follow a hairpin  
turn, the airflow around it cannot keep up and detaches from the  
vehicle. This aerodynamic separation creates additional drag that  
slows the car and forces the engine to work harder. The same  
phenomenon affects airplanes, boats, submarines, and even your golf  
ball. Now, in work that could lead to ways of controlling the effect  
with potential impacts on fuel efficiency and more, MIT scientists and  
colleagues have reported new mathematical and experimental work for  
predicting where that aerodynamic separation will occur. The research  
solves "a century-old problem in the field of fluid mechanics," or the  
study of how fluids -- which for scientists include gases and liquids  
-- move, said George Haller, a visiting professor in the Department of  
Mechanical Engineering. Haller's group developed the new theory, while  
Thomas Peacock, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate  
Professor in the same department, led the experimental effort. Papers  
on the experiments and theory were published in Sept. issues of the  
Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the Physics of Fluids. The research was  
initially supported by the MIT Ferry Fund. Currently the work is  
supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/fluid-flow-0924.html
PHOTO, VIDEO, IMAGES AVAILABLE

MEMORY CAPACITY
In recent years, demonstrations of memory's failures have convinced  
many scientists that human memory does not store the details of our  
experiences. However, a new study from MIT cognitive neuroscientists  
may overturn this widespread belief: They have shown that given the  
right setting, the human brain can record an amazing amount of  
information. In the study, the results of which could have  
implications for artificial intelligence and for understanding memory  
disorders, people viewed thousands of objects over five hours.  
Remarkably, afterward they were able to remember each object in great  
detail. "Visual long-term memory capacity is much higher than  
previously believed and shown," said Aude Oliva, associate professor  
of brain and cognitive sciences and senior author of a paper  
describing the work, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National  
Academy of Sciences in Sept. The research was funded by the NSF, the  
NIH, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship,  
and a National Research Service Award.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/vision-memory-0908.html
PHOTO, IMAGES AVAILABLE

QUANTUM PROBE
MIT researchers may have found a way to overcome a key barrier to the  
advent of super-fast quantum computers, which could be powerful tools  
for applications such as code breaking. Ever since Nobel Prize-winning  
physicist Richard Feynman first proposed the theory of quantum  
computing more than two decades ago, researchers have been working to  
build such a device. One approach involves superconducting devices  
that, when cooled to temperatures of nearly absolute zero (-459  
degrees F, -273 degrees C), can be made to behave like artificial  
atoms -- nanometer-scale "boxes" in which the electrons are forced to  
exist at specific, discrete energy levels (picture an elevator that  
can stop at the floors of a building but not in between). But  
traditional scientific techniques for characterizing -- and therefore  
better understanding -- atoms and molecules do not necessarily  
translate easily to artificial atoms, said William Oliver of MIT  
Lincoln Laboratory's Analog Device Technology Group and MIT's Research  
Laboratory for Electronics. In a Sept.  issue of Nature, Oliver and  
colleagues report a technique that could fill that gap. This work was  
funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Laboratory  
for Physical Sciences, the DOD, and the US government.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/artificial-atom-0903.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE

SUPER-MASSIVE BLACK HOLE
An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack  
Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed  
to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way  
galaxy. The astronomers linked together radio dishes in Hawaii,  
Arizona and California to create a virtual telescope more than 2,800  
miles across that is capable of seeing details more than 1,000 times  
finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. The cosmic target of the  
observations was the source known as Sagittarius A* ("A-star"), long  
thought to mark the position of a black hole whose mass is 4 million  
times that of the sun. Though Sagittarius A* was discovered three  
decades ago, the new observations for the first time have an angular  
resolution, or ability to observe small details, that is matched to  
the size of the black hole "event horizon" -- the region inside of  
which nothing, including light, can ever escape. The concept of black  
holes, objects so dense that their gravitational pull prevents  
anything including light itself from ever escaping their grasp, has  
long been hypothesized, but their existence has not yet been proved  
conclusively. Astronomers study black holes by detecting the light  
emitted by matter that heats up as it is pulled closer to the event  
horizon. By measuring the size of this glowing region at the Milky Way  
center, the new observations have revealed the highest density yet for  
the concentration of matter at the center of our galaxy, which "is  
important new evidence supporting the existence of black holes," said  
Sheperd Doeleman of MIT, lead author of the study that was published  
in Nature. This work was funded by the NSF.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/blackhole-view-0903.html
IMAGES AVAILABLE

CUTTING AIRLINE DELAYS
MIT researchers are working toward a computer tool that could reduce  
airline flight delays due to weather. Already, they have found that a  
prototype deployed in the New York City region cut delays last year by  
2,300 hours, saving the equivalent of some $7.5 million in operating  
costs. The team, led by Richard DeLaura of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's  
Weather Sensing Group, estimates that fully implementing the Route  
Availability Planning Tool (RAPT) in the New York region alone could  
save 8,800 hours per year, or $28 million. Deploying RAPT at other key  
spots all over the country could reduce delays at both large and small  
airports, DeLaura says. Lincoln Laboratory studies suggest that  
getting even two or three additional flights per hour out of airports  
during thunderstorms in highly congested areas can significantly  
reduce the weather-related delays that ripple across the nation's air  
travel system. RAPT gives air traffic managers assistance in deciding  
whether to allow planes to take off during inclement weather,  
increasing the odds of sneaking a few jets out between thunderheads.  
The computerized tool takes weather information from satellites and  
radar systems, makes predictions about whether a pilot would choose to  
fly through such conditions, and displays the information graphically  
to enable an air traffic controller to make a quick decision. A  
prototype of the system has been used in the New York City region --  
including LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports -- for about four years,  
with modest funding from the Port Authority of New York and New  
Jersey. This past year, the FAA began funding RAPT.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/air-traffic-0903.html
IMAGE AVAILABLE

OFFSHORE FISH FARMING
A self-propelling underwater cage developed and recently tested by an  
MIT researcher could not only cut costs for offshore ocean-based fish  
farms but also aid the movement of such operations into the high seas,  
avoiding the user conflicts and compromised water quality of coastal  
zones. Fish farms account for more than half of the seafood produced  
globally; 40 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is  
farmed in other countries and imported. However, very little of that  
comes from ocean-based farms. In conventional offshore fish farming,  
cages are routinely repositioned to control disease. Stout towboats  
haul the enormous cages to another site, and both the cage size and  
typical propulsive inefficiency of boats make such movements very  
energy-intensive events. Cliff Goudey, director of MIT Sea Grant's  
Offshore Aquaculture Engineering Center, is exploring a different  
approach to moving the cages. By placing large, slow-turning  
propellers directly on a cage, Goudey frees it from the normal  
constraints of a boat. His system uses a pair of eight-foot diameter,  
electrically powered propellers, with 6.2-horsepower underwater  
motors. The motors are powered through tethers to the surface attached  
to a diesel generator and a pair of motor controllers mounted on a  
small boat.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/aquaculture-0902.html
VIDEO AVAILABLE

MALARIA & CELLS
In work that could lead to new ways of detecting and treating malaria,  
MIT researchers have used two advanced microscopy techniques to show  
in unprecedented detail how the malaria parasite attacks red blood  
cells. The researchers' images show red blood cell membranes becoming  
less flexible, which causes the cells to clump as they try to navigate  
tiny blood vessels. They also show the destruction of hemoglobin, the  
critical molecule that red blood cells use to carry oxygen. The images  
are made possible by microscopy techniques that reveal tiny vibrations  
in red blood cell membranes. "By studying the way the cell membrane  
vibrations progressively change as the malaria parasite matures inside  
the cell, we can study the changes in its mechanical, elastic and  
dynamic properties," said Michael Feld, director of MIT's George  
Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory and a professor of physics. Feld and  
Subra Suresh, dean of MIT's School of Engineering, are senior authors  
of a paper on the work published in the Proceedings of the National  
Academy of Sciences in Sept. The study establishes the first  
experimental connection between cell membrane vibration and the  
pathological state of a living cell. This work was funded by the  
National Center for Research Resources of NIH, the NSF, and the  
Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Center.
MORE: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/blood-cell-0901.html
IMAGES, PHOTO AVAILABLE

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