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 the MIT News Office. In some cases, photos may be available for news organizations.
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Sickle-Cell Treatment? |
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| Artist's rendition of the New Horizons
spacecraft. The craft's miniature cameras, radio science experiment, ultraviolet
and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments will characterize the
global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and Charon, map their surface compositions
and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere in detail. The spacecraft's most
prominent design feature is an 8-foot (2.5-meter) dish antenna, through which
it will communicate with Earth from as far as 4.7 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers)
away. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)
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Pluto 2006. NASA has chosen a research team that includes an MIT scientist to pursue a possible 2006 mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, a distant source of comets believed to be responsible for much of Earth's water and the chemical precursors of life. Richard Binzel, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, is a member of the Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission science team. Binzel's Pluto research over the past two decades includes the first confirming observations of Pluto's moon, the discovery of polar caps and the first maps of Pluto's surface. The PKB misson team wants to reach Pluto and its moon Charon as soon as possible before 2020. Since 1989, Pluto has been moving farther from the sun. As Pluto gets colder, its atmosphere may freeze out, diminishing the chance to "see" its atmosphere. The double planet system (the last in our solar system to be visited by spacecraft) also is becoming increasingly shadowed, impeding a spacecraft's ability to take pictures in reflected sunlight. "One of the most exciting aspects of this mission is that it will complete the first reconnaissance of our solar system by closely examining Pluto and one or more Kuiper Belt objects," Binzel said. A spacecraft passing by Pluto and Charon would use a remote sensing package as well as spectroscopic and other experiments to characterize the global geology and morphology of the planets, map their surface composition and characterize Pluto's neutral atmosphere and its escape rate.
Monitoring Molten Materials. The MIT inventor of an instrument that will aid efforts to store radioactive wastes in stable glass was honored with a 2001 R&D 100 Award, his fifth in seven years. The instrument could also have applications in other industries involved in processing molten materials. Paul Woskov, principal research engineer at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, won the award for the MilliWave Viscometer. The device is among "the 100 most technologically significant new products" as determined by R&D Magazine and a panel of experts. The new instrument measures a key parameter for processing molten materials: viscosity. "Viscosity is a measure of how well a liquid flows within stationary boundaries, like a pipe, in response to a given force," Woskov said. "It can indicate the chemistry and quality of a glass or metal product." The MilliWave Viscometer is special because it works at the temperatures of molten glass and metals. Its maximum temperature of operation is more than 1,000 degrees C higher than viscometers currently on the market. The work was funded by the DOE.
WTC Cover Story. MIT researchers penned a cover story on the World Trade Center collapse for the December 2001 Journal of Metals. The title: "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation." Professor Thomas Eagar and graduate student Christopher Musso write, "...there is widespread speculation" about why the buildings collapsed so suddenly. In their piece, the two attempt to "separate the fact from the fiction" with respect to the catastrophe by discussing three major events involved: the airplane impact, the ensuing fire, and the collapse itself. "The fire is the most misunderstood part of the WTC collapse. Even today, the media report (and many scientists believe) that the steel melted.... This is not true." The two explain their reasoning with a primer on combustion science and the fact that "people (including engineers) often confuse temperature and heat." They further debunk some reports that "the aluminum from the plane ignited, creating very high temperatures." Although the steel did not melt, it did lose "at least half its strength" and deform. This "weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse." They stress that the structure "was not defectively designed. No designer of the WTC anticipated, nor should have anticipated, a [huge] Molotov cocktail on one of the building floors." Eagar is in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; Musso in the Sloan School of Management.
Technological Innovation. MIT has announced the creation of a center for technological innovation, established through a gift from Jaishree Deshpande and Desh Deshpande, the co-founder and chairman of Sycamore Networks Inc. Their gift of $20 million will establish the initial phase of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, which will be a part of MIT's School of Engineering. The center will be dedicated to supporting research on novel technologies in collaboration with the high technology and venture capitalist communities of New England, and will support undergraduate education in engineering practice. The idea for the center arose from the realization that the limited research and development funds available to young companies restrict their ability to collaborate with leading universities. MIT President Charles Vest said that Deshpande's "'disruptive' idea to connect MIT faculty, students, and researchers with the high-tech and venture capitalist communities will give MIT undergraduates practical experience in the engineering field, and provide a stimulus for technology innovation in the region, and more broadly, in the nation."
Martian Snow. MIT and NASA researchers provided first-time measurements of the density and thickness of seasonal snow and frost on Mars in a December issue of Science. A global view of how Mars changes with the seasons has been provided by extremely precise observations from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The observations were obtained from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter and the spacecraft's radio tracking system. Over the course of a Martian year, which consists of 687 Earth days, as much as a third of Mars' tenuous carbon dioxide atmosphere "freezes out" during the winter in the northern and southern hemispheres. David Smith of NASA, MIT Professor Maria Zuber of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and EAPS research scientist Gregory Neumann measured changes in the height of the Martian surface every two weeks. They showed that small changes in surface height correlate with the expected times of deposition and evaporation of CO2 from the surface. The group also measured miniscule changes in the gravity field of Mars due to the movement of CO2, which allowed them to make the first measurement of the density of surface frost deposits. Funding was from NASA.