http://www.physorg.com/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhysOrg.com) -- There is no lack of worry this season over the flu, both the seasonal and H1N1 varieties, but there is a critical lack of understanding of the viruses that cause these illnesses. For years, scientists have recognized that interactions between the influenza virus and its human host - intricate dances involving the virus's genes and proteins and those in humans - are important in determining the course and severity of disease. But a deep, comprehensive knowledge of such host-virus interactions has been elusive. http://www.physorg.com/news180368422.html Biology Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:42:36 EST news180368422 (PhysOrg.com) -- It was a battle to save a cherished piece of nature from the forces of economic growth. Preservationists formed groups to present their case, and public figures across the country spoke up about the matter. Yet in the end, industry and commerce triumphed, changing the natural landscape. http://www.physorg.com/news180365515.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:10:01 EST news180365515 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have spent decades searching for the elusive material known as dark matter, which is believed to make up 25 percent of the universe. On Thursday, Dec. 17, a team of physicists including some at MIT reported possible evidence of two dark matter particles in a detector located in a former iron mine in Minnesota. http://www.physorg.com/news180365061.html Physics Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:25:02 EST news180365061 Imagine flying all the way from coast to coast, completely guilt-free, in an airplane that doesn`t emit a single particle of greenhouse gas or air pollutants. That could happen someday, perhaps brought to reality thanks to the incentive of a $10 million prize that has been proposed by a team of MIT students. http://www.physorg.com/news180298127.html Other Sciences Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:50:28 EST news180298127 (AP) -- Over the past week, Facebook has been nudging its users - first gently, then firmly - to review and update their privacy settings. http://www.physorg.com/news180290362.html Technology Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:00:05 EST news180290362 Yesterday, Dec. 15, at the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, MIT researchers debuted the Copenhagen Wheel -- a revolutionary new bicycle wheel that not only boosts power, but can keep track of friends, fitness, smog and traffic. Though it looks like an ordinary bicycle wheel with an oversized center, the Wheel's bright red hub is a veritable Swiss army knife's worth of electronic gadgets and novel functions. http://www.physorg.com/news180212131.html Technology Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:56:35 EST news180212131 (PhysOrg.com) -- Always on the cutting edge of new computing technologies, Google has recently announced that it is investigating the use of quantum computing schemes to achieve faster image recognition rates. Last week, at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NIPS 2009) in Vancouver, Canada, the company demonstrated that their new search technology outperforms the algorithms used on the computers running in its data centers today. http://www.physorg.com/news180107947.html Physics Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:00:29 EST news180107947 (PhysOrg.com) -- Jules Verne (1828-1905) is often remembered as a 19th-century founder of science fiction, whose enthusiasm for invention fills his books - from the spacecraft in From the Earth to the Moon (1865) to the submarine in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1869), and many more. http://www.physorg.com/news180107594.html Other Sciences Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:59:48 EST news180107594 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new paper from MIT biology professor Leonard Guarente strengthens the link between longevity proteins called sirtuins and the lifespan-extending effects of calorie restriction. http://www.physorg.com/news180036887.html Medicine & Health Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:00:02 EST news180036887 (PhysOrg.com) -- Hotel guests come and go. But in the first decade of the 1900s, a pair of frequent Russian visitors to the Hotel Parisiana, near the Sorbonne on Paris' Left Bank, stood out vividly. The children of the hotel's proprietors, the Chamont family, remembered them into the 1970s as 'hardworking' and 'pious' men. The guests, Dimitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin, were mathematicians, studying in Paris; they often prayed and went to church. http://www.physorg.com/news180030744.html Other Sciences Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:10:01 EST news180030744 As the voyagers of the Starship Enterprise boldly went to explore new worlds week after week on Star Trek, they used a host of futuristic technologies - including tricorders, holodecks, teleportation systems and warp drives - that may have seemed almost beyond possibility to many of the shows` (and movies`) legion of devoted viewers. But, say many scientists interviewed on a new program airing on public television, real science and technology is starting to catch up to - and sometimes even surpass - some parts of that future. http://www.physorg.com/news179761611.html Other Sciences Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:10:08 EST news179761611 (PhysOrg.com) -- On Tuesday, Dec. 1, members of the MIT Media Lab`s Human Dynamics Laboratory received an e-mail with a $40,000 proposition. The U.S. Defense Department`s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was holding a competition that weekend: on Saturday morning, 10 large red weather balloons would be raised at undisclosed locations across the United States; the first team to use social media - like online social networks and communication systems - to determine the correct latitude and longitude of all 10 would receive $40,000. http://www.physorg.com/news179760120.html Technology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:50:02 EST news179760120 (PhysOrg.com) -- The iPhone`s familiar touch screen display uses capacitive sensing, where the proximity of a finger disrupts the electrical connection between sensors in the screen. A competing approach, which uses embedded optical sensors to track the movement of the user`s fingers, is just now coming to market. But researchers at MIT`s Media Lab have already figured out how to use such sensors to turn displays into giant lensless cameras. On Dec. 19 at Siggraph Asia -- a recent spinoff of Siggraph, the premier graphics research conference -- the MIT team is presenting the first application of its work, a display that lets users manipulate on-screen images using hand gestures. http://www.physorg.com/news179760349.html Technology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:27:31 EST news179760349 MIT and Boston University researchers have discovered that the drug hydroxyurea kills bacteria by inducing them to produce molecules toxic to themselves - a conclusion that raises the possibility of finding new antibiotics that use similar mechanisms. http://www.physorg.com/news179674100.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:29:28 EST news179674100 A few words culled from some hacked e-mails in Britain have generated chaos in the world of climate science -- throwing dark clouds over Pennsylvania State University and stirring up negative publicity for the field that shows no sign of abating. http://www.physorg.com/news179603440.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:10:04 EST news179603440