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The power of solar is not on the grand scale of collectors spread over square acres in the west desert, says Daniel Nocera, a widely cited chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is scheduled to speak at Utah State University this week. "Each household could be its own little power station," Nocera said Sunday. Using the principle of photosynthesis and more precisely duplicating the storage process that plants use to stay healthy at night when they're not being fed directly by the sun, Nocera's research published this past July appears to have answered the abiding problem with solar...

WASHINGTON: One of the most perplexing mysteries in the war on terror returned centerstage on Monday with the announcement by US authorities of the arrest in Kabul of a Pakistani-American woman scientist whose sudden disappearance in 2003 caused many to think she was in American or Pakistani custody and underscored the disturbingly clandestine nature of the war. Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT alumna with a doctorate in neurosciences, and a mother of three children, vanished while on a visit to Karachi nearly five years ago. She was believed to have been taken into custody by Pakistani and/or US intelligence agencies because...

It has long been the Holy Grail of environmental scientists, but researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are confident they have found an inexpensive way of producing hydrogen from water, paving the way for the widespread adoption of zero carbon fuel cells capable of powering buildings and cars. The technique is similar to the way photosynthesis works in plants and is based on a new catalyst that can split water at room temperature to create hydrogen and oxygen. The catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode that is placed into water. When electricity runs through the...

<p>The Peruvian village of Compone lies 11,000 ft. above sea level in El Valle Sagrado de los Incas, the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Flat but ringed by mountains, the tallest capped year-round in snow and ice, the valley is graced with a mild climate and mineral-rich soil that for centuries has produced what the Incas called sara—corn.</p>

A good-sized asteroid sailing past our planet right now turns out to be two giant rocks doing a celestial jig. The setup, catalogued as 2008 BT18, was thought to be nearly a half-mile wide after its discovery by MIT's LINEAR search program in January. Nothing else was known about it. Now seen as two objects orbiting each other, the pair will be closest to Earth on July 14, at about 1.4 million miles (2 million kilometers) away. That's nearly six times as far from us as the moon... Radar observations from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on July 6...

Hey! Let’s all go to MIT!I should have gone to MIT. OK, I shouldn’t have done the pub crawl the night before the SAT’s…and I might have focused on my grades a little more. But never mind that. Our time has come. MIT is now free and many of its lectures are on the internet. Well, sort of. Check out this link to OpenCourseWare.com. I listened to two physics lectures last week (video lectures) by Professor Walter Lewin. Here’s the link to Prof Lewin’s first lecture (LINK HERE)…I even understood what he was saying. Friends of mine will remember when...

Tim Fofonoff, a 31-year-old grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stands at the base of a 50-foot-tall, graffiti-covered rock wall just south of Boston. He´s clipped into the Atlas Powered Rope Ascender, a toaster-size battery-driven device that he and his three co-inventors built themselves. With it, he´s about to do something no one outside of a Hollywood script has done before: rappel up a wall at an astonishing 10 feet per second. He stares hesitantly for a moment at the craggy rock face, presses a small button, and darts off the ground as if he were wearing a...

Edward Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist who tried to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts and wound up unleashing a scientific revolution called chaos theory, died April 16 of cancer at his home in Cambridge. He was 90.A professor at MIT, Lorenz was the first to recognize what is now called chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems. In the early 1960s, Lorenz realized that small differences in a dynamic system such as the atmosphere--or a model of the atmosphere--could trigger vast and often unsuspected results. These observations ultimately led him to formulate what...

Contribute to the first collaboratively authored computer game and earn Game Designer credit! The Restaurant Game is a research project at the MIT Media Lab that will algorithmically combine the gameplay experiences of thousands of players to create a new game. In a few months, we will apply machine learning algorithms to data collected through the multiplayer Restaurant Game, and produce a new single-player game that we will enter into the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Everyone who plays The Restaurant Game will be credited as a Game Designer. It's never been easier to earn Game Designer credentials! All contributions are...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Sometimes the cliché fits: It looks like a bomb went off—not necessarily in this lab, but somewhere, with the aftermath seemingly carted here. The gutted remains of a sedan, its engine exposed, the seats ripped out of the frame, sits encased in cables. At other workstations the focus is a single part—an isolated camshaft, an alternator hooked up to test apparatus. It would be easy to misinterpret this place and think that researchers at MIT’s Lab for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) are either piecing back together some shattered car or entering the Automotive X Prize. In...

Spread Of 1918 Flu Pandemic ExplainedThis transmission electron micrograph of an ultra-thin specimen revealed some of the ultra-structural morphologic features seen in 1918 influenza virus virions. The prominent surface projections on the virions are composed of either the hemagglutinin, or neuraminidase type of glycoproteins. (Credit: Cynthia Goldsmith) ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2008) — MIT researchers have explained why two mutations in the H1N1 avian flu virus were critical for viral transmission in humans during the 1918 pandemic outbreak that killed at least 50 million people. The team showed that the 1918 influenza strain developed two mutations in a surface molecule called...

of 1941 Professor of Economics, shows that a return to 1970s-style gas lines and stagflation isn't in the cards.Blanchard's paper, "The Macroeconomic Effects of Oil Price Shocks: Why are the 2000s so different from the 1970s?" outlines changes in U.S. and global economic policies between the two eras. Cited in The Economist (Nov. 17) as an explainer for the current situation, the paper was co-written by Blanchard's colleague Jordi Gali (Ph.D. 1989) of the Center for International Economic Research in Barcelona.Blanchard discussed the differences between the oil shocks in the 1970s and in the 2000s during a recent interview with...

Gilbert Strang is a quiet man with a rare talent: helping others understand linear algebra. He's written a half-dozen popular college textbooks, and for years a few hundred students at the elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been privileged to take his course. Recently, with the growth of computer science, demand to understand linear algebra has surged. But so has the number of students Strang can teach. An MIT initiative called "OpenCourseWare" makes virtually all the school's courses available online for free — lecture notes, readings, tests and often video lectures. Strang's Math 18.06 course is among the most popular,...

Lawyers for accused Logan airport bomb prankster Star Simpson have asked that a judge, not a jury of her peers, decide the MIT sophomore’s fate. But they’re also hoping Simpson’s Dec. 3 bench trial date in the East Boston Division of Boston Municipal Court won’t be necessary. Defense attorney Thomas Dwyer Jr. this morning filed a motion to dismiss the single charge of possession of a hoax device Simpson, 19, faces. He argued that no reasonable person could have believed the getup that nearly got his client killed by state police on Sept. 21 “could function as such a machine.”...

The computer circuit board on Star Simpson's sweatshirt that security thought may have been a bomb at a Boston airport isn't out of character for her, according to the Maui woman's background, school affiliations and online supporters. But her mother, Stephanie Simpson, said it may have been a mistake because Star used the shirt the day before on career day at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and when she went to pick up her boyfriend at the airport. "It was just sleepyheads. She must have been just asleep to the fact of where she was going," Stephanie Simpson said.

http://home.peoplepc.com/psp/newsstory.asp?cat=TopStories&referrer=welcome&id=20070922/46f49340_3ca6_1552620070922-1497302150 Lawyer: Fake Bomb Charge an Overreaction BOSTON - The MIT student who walked into Logan International Airport wearing a computer circuit board and wiring on her sweat shirt claimed it was harmless artwork. But to troopers who arrested her at gunpoint, it was a fake bomb. Nineteen-year-old Star Simpson was charged Friday with possessing a hoax device. Her attorney described the charge as offbase and "almost paranoid," arguing at a court hearing that she did not act in a suspicious manner and had told an airport worker that the device was art.

"I have no idea what a real bomb looks like," writes a blogger at machinist.salon.com, "but I don't think it’s a plastic board with a 9-volt battery on it." 19 year old M.I.T. student, Star Simpson showed up at Logan International Airport Friday to pick up a friend. Such an event would not normally kick up an international news storm, but Simpson had not taken the general stupidity index into account; something we're apparently required to do now.She was wearing a black sweat shirt with a white plastic board attached. The board itself, known as a socket or bread-board, is...

(WBZ) BOSTON An MIT student with a fake bomb strapped to her chest was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport and later claimed it was artwork, officials said. Star Simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board and wiring in plain view over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport. "She said that it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said at a news conference. "She claims that it was just art, and that she was proud...

(AP) BOSTON An MIT student has been arrested at gunpoint after allegedly walking into Logan International Airport with a fake bomb strapped to her chest this morning. State police say 19-year-old Star Simpson, a sophomore from Hawaii, had a computer circuit board, wiring and a putty that later turned out to be Play-Doh in plain view over a black hooded sweatshirt she was wearing. Stay with wbztv.com and WBZ-TV for the latest on this developing story.

A woman who walked into Logan International Airport allegedly wearing a fake bomb strapped to chest was arrested at gunpoint Friday, officials said. Star Simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board, wiring and a putty that later turned out to be Play-Doh in plain view over a black hooded sweatshirt she was wearing, said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport. After a Massachusetts Port Authority official notified State Police about 8 a.m., troopers tracked Simpson down outside Terminal C, where they arrested her and later determined the device was a fake.

Beneath the bustling “infinite corridor” linking buildings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just past a boiler room, an assemblage of tinkerers from 16 countries welded, stitched and hammered, working on rough-hewn inventions aimed at saving the world, one village at a time. (snip) This summer, it played host to a four-week International Development Design Summit to identify problems, cobble together prototype solutions and winnow the results to see which might work in the real world. (snip) The summit (www.iddsummit.org) was the brainchild mainly of Amy Smith, a lecturer at M.I.T. who received her master’s there in 1995 and in...

In the 40 years that humans have been traveling into space, the suits they wear have changed very little. The bulky, gas-pressurized outfits give astronauts a bubble of protection, but their significant mass and the pressure itself severely limit mobility. Dava Newman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems at MIT, wants to change that. Newman is working on a sleek, advanced suit designed to allow superior mobility when humans eventually reach Mars or return to the moon. Her spandex and nylon BioSuit is not your grandfather's spacesuit--think more Spiderman, less John Glenn. Traditional bulky spacesuits "do...

MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain...

ESPN's Chris Berman likes to say "no one circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills." He might add "or the Boston Globe." Its editorial of today, A telling admission, heaps of paeans of praise on Marilee Jones, who resigned her position as MIT Dean of Admissions after an investigation revealed that she earned none of the academic degrees she had claimed. The Globe quickly gets out of the way its acknowledgement that "no doubt, Marilee Jones did the wrong thing." But you'd hardly know it from the rest of editorial: "I misrepresented my academic degrees when I first applied to...

Her railing against the harmful pressure on youngsters to bolster their resumes and applications when applying to college made Marilee Jones one of the nation’s best known deans of admissions. But the college crusader was forced to quit her prestigious post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week when the school learned she embellished her own resume and lied about her college degrees. “This is a very sad and disappointing story. She really is a quite competent person, a leader in her field,” said Chancellor Phil Clay. “But this is a case where integrity and honesty trumps everything.” For...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Thursday that admissions dean Marilee Jones — a crusader for reducing the anxiety around college admissions — has resigned for misrepresenting her academic credentials to the university. Jones, dean since 1997, has been a highly visible campaigner for reforming the college admissions process. She issued a statement saying she had misrepresented her credentials when she first came to work at MIT 28 years ago and "did not have the courage to correct my resume when I applied for my current job or at any time since.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - MIT edged out host and defending champion U.S. Military Academy by seven points (6,372-6,365) to secure the pistol program's fifth NRA Intercollegiate National Championship and second in three years. Despite falling to the Black Knights in free pistol by a margin of 26 points, the Engineers overcame the deficit with advantages of 25 and eight points in standard (second place) and air pistol (first place). In the open individual aggregate category, Daipan Lee placed third (1,614) while Eddie Huo finished four points behind him. On the women's side, the squad placed third (2,690) as Diana Nee earned...

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Future models of consumer goods, from digital cameras to MP3 players, could take a leap forward with a new type of analog circuit demonstrated at a trade show Thursday by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The MIT team showed a comparator-based switched capacitor (CBSC) circuit, which could be manufactured with smaller size and better power efficiency than traditional analog circuits using operational amplifiers. The team had presented a rougher version in 2006, and improved on the design this week by unveiling an 8-bit, 200 MHz analog-to-digital converter at the International Solid State Circuits...

BOSTON — A 23-year-old inventor has come up with a tool to give mere mortals the powers of a superhero: the ability to zoom up a rope as fast as 10 feet per second and scale the side of a building. The battery-powered, handheld gadget is envisioned as a tool for firefighters and soldiers, and helped earn Nate Ball of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, to be announced Wednesday. While he has practical applications in mind, Ball says it isn't a stretch to compare the tool to the gadgets fictional heroes use to quickly climb to...

BOSTON -- A black MIT professor began a hunger strike Monday to protest the university's decision to deny him tenure, which he claims was based on race. James Sherley, a stem cell scientist, said he tried for two years to persuade administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to reverse the department head's rejection of his tenure bid. "I'm not actually doing this to get tenured," Sherley said. "I'm doing this for the reason that I wasn't tenured -- which is racism -- and I want this institution to admit that that is the problem and make plans to do...

James Sherley, a biological engineer whose opposition to embryonic stem cell research has been controversial among his peers, charges he has been denied the same freedom to challenge scientific orthodoxy afforded his white colleagues.

A recent MIT analysis shows that the energy balance of corn ethanol is actually so close that several factors can easily change whether ethanol derived from that process ends up a net energy winner or loser. Further analysis shows that making ethanol from cellulosic sources such as switchgrass has far greater potential to reduce fossil energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. A graduate student in MIT’s Department of Engineering, Tiffany A. Groode, performed a life cycle analysis on the production of corn ethanol, as others have done. Groode, however, incorporated the uncertainty associated with the values of many of...

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted. The cost? It's all free of charge. The OpenCourseWare movement, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002

Stem cells grew, multiplied and differentiated into brain cells on a new three-dimensional scaffold of tiny protein fragments designed to be more like a living body than any other cell culture system. An MIT engineer and Italian colleagues will report the invention--which may one day replace the ubiquitous Petri dish for growing cells--in the Dec. 27 issue of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE. Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, is a pioneer in coaxing tiny fragments of amino acids called self-assembling peptides to organize themselves into useful structures. Working with visiting graduate student Fabrizio...

Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- A black Massachusetts Institute of Technology stem cell researcher who doesn't support human cloning says he is planning a hunger strike for next February if the prestigious college doesn't reverse its decision to deny him tenure. Dr. James L. Sherley, an associate professor of biological engineering, says he is a victim of racism. Sherley has been an outspoken advocate against human cloning -- including the kind of therapeutic cloning his colleagues and other scientists want to use to create and destroy human embryos for their stem cells. He has been fighting for tenure at MIT for...

BOSTON -- A black professor at MIT has threatened to go on a hunger strike and "die defiantly" outside the provost's office if the university does not grant him tenure, which he said was denied because of racism. For two years, stem cell scientist James L. Sherley has asked senior administrators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to overturn the decision by his department head not to put him forward for tenure. On Monday, he was told by provost L. Rafael Reif that the decision would stand. "I will either see the provost resign and my hard-earned tenure granted at...

MIT scientists have engineered yeast that can improve the speed and efficiency of ethanol production, a key component to making biofuels a significant part of the U.S. energy supply. Currently used as a fuel additive to improve gasoline combustibility, ethanol is often touted as a potential solution to the growing oil-driven energy crisis. But there are significant obstacles to producing ethanol: One is that high ethanol levels are toxic to the yeast that ferments corn and other plant material into ethanol. By manipulating the yeast genome, the researchers have engineered a new strain of yeast that can tolerate elevated levels...

I posted this article because I happen to agree with Sherley's conclusions based upon my own research into actual and on-going Stem Cell research projects. I am not against all Stem Cell research or attempts to develop medical cures, because those projects showing the most promise involve either mature (adult) cells or stem cells rendered from the host organism. But the attempt to develop cures from any stem cells, say stem cell lines derived from a creature other than the original host creature is a canard. That is if you were sick, reverse development of your own cells to a...

Researchers have developed advanced shape-memory polymers that could find uses as expandable stents and fasteners that close themselves. The researchers who developed self-tying sutures that change shape when exposed to light have now made morphing structures that can take on three consecutive shapes in response to changes in temperature. The shape-changing polymers could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used in assembling complex parts. The structures are made of shape-memory polymers, a class of materials that change from one preset shape to another in response to a new condition, such as increased heat. In the past few...

Researchers at MIT's George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Lab have detected tiny twitches and vibrations in the membranes of individual cells and neurons by using a powerful and noninvasive imaging technique. Down the line, Michael Feld, director of the lab, hopes to use the technique to create three-dimensional images, illuminating even finer activities within living cells. The goal, says Feld, is to "study the structure of a living cell and the way it changes as circumstances change." Today's molecular imaging techniques come with a host of pros and cons. Among the most widely practiced techniques is electron microscopy, which creates highly...

Small, battery-powered gadgets make powerful computing portable. Unfortunately, there's still a continual need to recharge the batteries of phones, laptops, cameras, and MP3 players by hooking them up to a tangle of wires. Now researchers at MIT have proposed a way to cut the cords by wirelessly supplying power to devices. "We are very good at transmitting information wirelessly," says Marin Solja�ić, professor of physics at MIT. But, he says, historically, it's been much more difficult to transmit energy to power devices in the same way. Solja�ić, who was a 2006 TR35 winner (see "2006 Young Innovator"), and MIT colleagues...

Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) -- An MIT professor says that embryonic stem cell research is nowhere close to helping patients. He said that's because scientists haven't yet figured out how to stop embryonic stem cells from causing tumors when injected into patients. Professor James Sherley, a stem cell researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was in Australia to talk with lawmakers about why they should resist backing legislation promoting human cloning. Sherley said that embryonic stem cells cause tumors and cancers when injected into human tissue and, as a result, they can't be used to treat patients with various diseases....

Engine on a chipISA InTech, September 28, 2006 Engine on a chip A tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios, and other electronic devices. It could also dramatically lighten the load for people who can’t connect to a power grid, including soldiers who now must carry many pounds of batteries for a three-day mission. All this technology can come at a reasonable price. In the long term, mass production could bring the per-unit cost of power...

Based on a new theory, MIT scientists may be able to manipulate carbon nanotubes -- one of the strongest known materials and one of the trickiest to work with -- without destroying their extraordinary electrical properties. The work is reported in the Sept. 15 issue of Physical Review Letters, the journal of the American Physical Society. Carbon nanotubes -- cylindrical carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair -- have properties that make them potentially useful in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and reinforcing composite materials. With an internal bonding structure rivaling that of another well-known form of carbon, diamonds, carbon...

Last year, members of the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer based at Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated that acid-sensitive polymer nanoparticles could boost the delivery of anticancer drugs into the acidic interior of tumors. Now, that same group of investigators has shown that these nanoparticles are effective at suppressing tumor growth when tested in an animal model of human ovarian cancer. In addition, animals treated with this nanoparticle formulation do not appear to experience adverse side effects that often limit the ability of patients to tolerate chemotherapy. The researchers reported the results of their preclinical work...

... I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible. Indeed. I attended a week's worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider's directive. There is...

The disease of America Hatred now has reached pandemic proportions in many corners of the globe, spreading far beyond the predictably hopeless fever swamps of Islamic militants, French intellectuals, or Latin American demagogues. In fact, many citizens within the USA itself energetically embrace the basic assumptions of America Hatred, perceiving their country as an unequivocally negative force on the world scene. John Tirman, director of MIT’s prestigious Center for International Studies, recently wrote a book called “100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World.” When questioned on my radio show, he refused to dismiss the notion that humanity might have...

EARTH IN THE BALANCE Don't Believe the Hype Al Gore is wrong. There's no "consensus" on global warming. BY RICHARD S. LINDZEN Sunday, July 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms--unless we change the way we live now. Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are...

Editor's note: Global warming is unlikely to be a dangerous future problem, with or without the implementation of such programs as the Kyoto Protocol, according to Dr. Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...alarmist media claims to the contrary are fueled more by politics than by science... The global mean temperature is never constant, and it has no choice but to increase or decrease--both of which it does on all known time scales. That this quantity has increased about 0.6ºC (or about 1ºF) over the past century is likely. A relevant...

Seven days before the test, Stephanie Yeh stood in her sorority house and cried. An electrical engineering and computer science major, she was set to graduate near the top of her MIT class next month and start a six-figure job as a Wall Street analyst. Just one test, terrifying to her, remained. She, like scores of undergraduates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had been putting it off for nearly four years. But Yeh and the others have to pass this exam to graduate. She had to swim 100 yards, four lengths of a pool, without stopping. The problem: Yeh never...