These brief summaries of MIT research are drawn from several sources and are issued throughout the year. More information on any of these stories can be obtained by contacting Elizabeth Thomson at the MIT News Office. In some cases, photos may be available for news organizations.
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Protecting the Soldier of the Future |
Life after Hubble |
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Participants at a March 13 news conference announcing the Army's selection of MIT's proposal for an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) are, from left, MIT Provost Robert Brown; Dean of Engineering Thomas Magnanti; Professor Ned Thomas, Director of the ISN; Vice President for Research and Associate Provost Alice Gast, and Professor Paula Hammond of chemical engineering. Photo by Donna Coveney, MIT |
Protecting the Soldier of the Future. The Army has selected MIT to create lightweight molecular materials to equip the foot soldier of the future with uniforms and gear that can heal them, shield them and protect them against chemical and biological warfare. MIT won the competition for the five-year, $50 million proposal for an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN). Industry will contribute an additional $40 million. The ISN will be staffed by up to 150 people. In addition to MIT researchers, it will also include specialists from the Army, DuPont, Raytheon, Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Together, these researchers will develop ideas such as a uniform that is nearly invisible, soft clothing that can become a rigid cast when a soldier breaks his or her leg, and paper-weight chainmail. "Our goal is to help greatly enhance the protection and survival of the infantry soldier," said Edwin Thomas, ISN director and a professor of materials science and engineering. "This will be achieved by creating, then scaling up to a commercial level, revolutionary materials and devices composed of particles or components [often] so tiny that hundreds could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. The idea is to incorporate these nanomaterials and nanodevices into the future soldier's uniform, and associated equipage like helmets and gloves."
Puzzling Pulsars. An MIT astronomer and colleagues using the NSF's Very Large Array radio telescope have found a pulsar -- a spinning, superdense neutron star -- that is apparently much younger than previously thought. This finding, combined with the discovery in 2000 of a pulsar that was older than previously thought, means that many assumptions astronomers have made about how pulsars are born and age must be re-examined, according to the researchers. This also is the first time a pulsar has been observed moving away from the center of an associated supernova remnant. Joshua Migliazzo, a graduate student in physics also affiliated with MIT's Center for Space Research, is a co-author of the research. His work was funded by an MIT Presidential Fellowship.
Russian Science. An MIT professor weighed the economic, political and intellectual aspects of the challenges confronting Russian science during a recent talk at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Loren Graham, a professor of the history of science, spoke on "Russian Basic Science: Changes Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Impact of International Support," and also focused on the role of both private foundations and of the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation. "It appears more and more likely that Russia will develop an organizational framework for fundamental science that resembles foreign models a bit more than the Soviet pattern did, but remains distinctly different," said Graham.
Cellular Therapy. For the first time, scientists from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and MIT have used a combination of nuclear transplantation, gene therapy and embryonic stem cell differentiation to create custom-tailored cellular therapy that shows promise in mice. The work, a collaboration between Whitehead member and MIT Professor of Biology Rudolf Jaenisch and Whitehead Fellow George Daley, was published online as two companion papers by Cell on March 8. Scientists have used nuclear transfer to create embryonic stem cells and differentiate them in culture to create many different cell types, including the stem cells that are the precursors to all immune and blood cells. But scientists have never shown that the cells created in culture could be reintroduced into an animal to treat a disease. Jaenisch and Daley used skin cells from an immune-deficient mouse to create a cellular therapy that was able to partially restore immune function. "Though the immune system wasn't completely restored, there was enough improvement to predict that a comparable result in humans would translate into a significant clinical benefit," says Daley. The work is supported by the NIH, NSF, MIT Biotechnology Process Engineering Center, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds and the National Cancer Institute.
Life after Hubble. If Olivier de Weck does his job well, all the different engineers and experts involved in the construction of the three space observatories slated to replace the Hubble Space Telescope will "scream at me equally." The goal, said the MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics with a smile, "is to make everyone's job equally hard." De Weck's research involves integrating the optics, control systems, structures and other disciplines that must work together on these complicated instruments. "Many of these instruments are so flexible and deployable that they cannot be fully tested on the ground ... this requires extensive upfront modeling and simulation," he said. "The problem is to find a design that is balanced between these multiple disciplines. How do you do so mathematically?" The three observatories will focus on exploring the early universe and aiding the search for dark matter; looking for extrasolar Earth-like planets and evidence of of planet formation; and stellar dynamics. The work is funded by NASA, with further support from a Pellegrini Medicus fund scholarship and an MIT Carroll L. Wilson award.
Toward Better Vaccines. MIT work reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could help researchers design vaccines that will stimulate the immune system in a targeted manner, perhaps with fewer side effects. Professor of Biology Richard Young and colleagues used DNA microarrays to explore the responses of human macrophages -- immune cells -- to a variety of bacteria. Macrophages recognize and engulf microbes in a vigilant effort to keep the body healthy. The researchers found that macrophages respond to a broad range of bacteria by sending off an alarm to the rest of the immune system and transforming into cells primed to mount an immune response. Further, the macrophage didn't have to "see" the whole bacterium to send off its alarm signal, but the presence of specific bacterial components, such as proteins, induced activation. Young is a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Funding was from the NIH, Corning Inc., Affymetrix Inc., Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
Mythical Beasts of Sound. Music soothes the savage beast, but MIT researchers report in Nature that they have invented mythical beasts of sound that may pave the way to better musical experiences for the hearing impaired. Imagine an orchestra that pounded out only a rhythm and a few snatches of melody, or created an annoying jumble of conflicting sounds. This is what music is like for many of the more than 45,000 hearing-impaired adults and children worldwide with the bionic ear known as the cochlear implant. MIT researchers separated and then recombined two components of speech and music to better understand how the brain processes sound. They named the resulting weird sounds "auditory chimeras" after the mythological beasts with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent. With the knowledge gleaned from the MIT study, cochlear implant users may someday be able to upgrade the software controlling their devices to enjoy a much richer musical experience. Zachary Smith, primary author of the paper and a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, is also affiliated with the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Funding is from the NIH.