scholarly journals Keith R. Porter Lecture, 1996. Of mice and men: genetic disorders of the cytoskeleton.

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
E Fuchs

Since the time when I was a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Howard Green, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I have been interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying growth, differentiation, and development in the mammalian ectoderm. The ectoderm gives rise to epidermal keratinocytes and to neurons, which are the only two cell types of the body that devote most of their protein-synthesizing machinery to developing an elaborate cytoskeletal architecture composed of 10-nm intermediate filaments (IFs). Our interest is in understanding the architecture of the cytoskeleton in keratinocytes and in neurons, and in elucidating how perturbations in this architecture can lead to degenerative diseases of the skin and the nervous system. I will concentrate on the intermediate filament network of the skin and its associated genetic disorders, since this has been a long-standing interest of my laboratory at the University of Chicago.

2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Angulo

William Barton Rogers, conceptual founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pursued two interrelated careers in nineteenth-century America: one centered on his activities in science and the other on his higher educational reform efforts. His scientific peers knew him as a geologist and natural philosopher, director of the first geological survey of Virginia, author of over one hundred publications in science, and promoter of professionalization. His colleagues in higher education, meanwhile, thought of him as the reform-minded professor at the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia, who later left the South and established one of America's first technological institutes. Comparatively little has been written about either of these areas of Rogers's life and career. We know much more about the scientific and educational thought of such figures as Louis Agassiz at Harvard, Benjamin Silliman at Yale, Joseph Henry at Princeton, and Alexander Dallas Bache at the helm of the Coast Survey. The literature on Rogers, by comparison, has offered little insight into his life and even less about his relationship to broader developments in nineteenth-century science and higher learning.


Author(s):  
Joan Marie Johnson

Chapter 5 explores what happened when women approached existing coeducational schools offering restricted gifts to benefit women. These donations either forced a school to open its doors to women or increased the number of women admitted by providing scholarships for women or erecting a women’s building or a women’s dormitory. Like the college founders, these donors believed that women were capable of the same intellectual achievement as men but found that many of America’s best universities resisted coeducation. The women in this chapter, including Mary Garrett, and Phoebe Hearst and the gifts they gave show how money could be wielded to force changes that would benefit women, in the form of access to education and professions formerly restricted to men. Moreover, coeducation at these schools, including Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley, was especially significant. If women were welcomed at these important institutions, they could demonstrate their intellectual and professional capabilities and equality with men.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (18) ◽  
pp. 6644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Izabela Szymczak-Pajor ◽  
Józef Drzewoski ◽  
Agnieszka Śliwińska

Numerous studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency is very common in modern societies and is perceived as an important risk factor in the development of insulin resistance and related diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2DM). While it is generally accepted that vitamin D is a regulator of bone homeostasis, its ability to counteract insulin resistance is subject to debate. The goal of this communication is to review the molecular mechanism by which vitamin D reduces insulin resistance and related complications. The university library, PUBMED, and Google Scholar were searched to find relevant studies to be summarized in this review article. Insulin resistance is accompanied by chronic hyperglycaemia and inflammation. Recent studies have shown that vitamin D exhibits indirect antioxidative properties and participates in the maintenance of normal resting ROS level. Appealingly, vitamin D reduces inflammation and regulates Ca2+ level in many cell types. Therefore, the beneficial actions of vitamin D include diminished insulin resistance which is observed as an improvement of glucose and lipid metabolism in insulin-sensitive tissues.


2009 ◽  
Vol 113 (1147) ◽  
pp. 599-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. Hall

Abstract The Silent Aircraft Initiative was a Cambridge-MIT Institute programme involving a large team of researchers from both the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The aim of the project was to produce a concept aircraft design that would be so quiet it would be imperceptible in the urban environments around airports.. This paper gives an overview of how all the sources of engine noise were carefully addressed within the Silent Aircraft design. Novel technologies, a new engine configuration, improved airframe integration, new operational procedures and advanced component design were all required in order to reduce the overall engine noise level to the Silent Aircraft target. The study suggests that in order to dramatically reduce the noise of future aircraft engines a number of major design changes must be combined.


Author(s):  
Tara H. Abraham

Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) has become an icon of the American cybernetics movement and of current work in the cognitive neurosciences. Much of this legacy stems from his classic 1943 work with Walter Pitts on the logic of neural networks, and from his colourful role as chairman of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics (1946-1953). This biographical work looks beyond McCulloch’s iconic status by exploring the varied scientific, personal, and institutional contexts of McCulloch’s life. By doing so, the book presents McCulloch as a transdisciplinary investigator who took on many scientific identities beyond that of a cybernetician: scientific philosopher, neurophysiologist, psychiatrist, poet, mentor-collaborator, and engineer, and finally, his public persona towards the end of his life, the rebel genius. The book argues that these identities were neither products of McCulloch’s own will nor were they simply shaped by his institutional contexts. In integrating context and agency, the book as provides a more nuanced and rich understanding of McCulloch’s role in the history of American science as well as the institutional contexts of scientific investigations of the brain and mind: in particular at Yale University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The book argues that one of McCulloch’s most important contributions was opening up new ways of understanding the brain: no longer simply an object of medical investigation, the brain became the centre of the multidisciplinary neurosciences.


2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (01) ◽  
pp. 151-154

As noted in the October issue ofPS, G. Bingham Powell, Jr., the Marie E .and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester, became APSA's 108th president on September 4, 2011, at the close of the APSA Annual Meeting. Eight new members of the APSA council were elected fall 2011. The new members are Paul Gronke, Reed College; Ange-Marie Hancock, University of Southern California; David A. Lake, University of California, San Diego; Taeku Lee, University of California, Berkeley; Kenneth J. Meier, Texas A&M University; Kathleen Thelen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Stephen M. Walt, Harvard University; and Angelia R. Wilson, University of Manchester.


1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. Giles ◽  
K. Jahoda ◽  
J. H. Swank ◽  
W. Zhang

AbstractThe X-ray Timing Explorer (XTE) is a NASA satellite designed to perform high-time-resolution studies of known X-ray sources. The two main experiments are a large-area proportional counter array (PCA) from the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and a high-energy X-ray timing experiment (HEXTE) from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). The PCA data is processed by an electronic data system (EDS) built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that performs many parallel processing analysis functions for on-board evaluation and data compression. MIT also provide an all-sky monitor (ASM) experiment so that XTE can be slewed rapidly to new transient sources. The spacecraft provides a mean science telemetry rate for the PCA of ~20 kilobits per second (kbps), with bursts to 256 kbps for durations of 30 minutes. Photons are tagged to 1 μs and absolute timing should be better than 100 μs. XTE is due for launch in late August 1995 and the first NASA Research Announcement (NRA) is due out in January 1995. This paper summarises XTE’s performance and then discusses the interactive and flexible operations of the satellite and some of the science it can do. These features should make XTE a productive spacecraft for coordinated observation programs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (10) ◽  
pp. 44-47
Author(s):  
Harry Hutchinson

This article discusses how Singapore is amassing a brain trust to compensate for resources that nature didn’t provide to it. CREATE or “Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise” is one of the most ambitious projects of Singapore’s National Research Foundation. CREATE seeks to unite Singapore’s universities with world-class research institutions to study issues ranging from urban planning to medical treatment. The organization has partnerships with 10 foreign universities, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Technical University of Munich, Cambridge University, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. There are five research groups in CREATE’s partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research areas are infectious diseases, environmental sensing and modeling, biosystems and micromechanics, urban mobility, and low-energy electronic systems. The University of California, Berkeley, has two research programs with CREATE. One aims to improve the efficiency of buildings in the tropics, and the other is working on raising the electrical output of photovoltaic devices.


Author(s):  
O. Sasikumari

In 1954 , two independent research teams, one consisting of Andrew F. Huxley and Rolf Niedergerke from the University of Cambridge, and the other consisting of Hugh Huxley and Jean Hanson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed the theory of skeletal muscle contraction [1]. They used electron microscopy to study the details of muscle filaments. The structure was studied in detail by then, but the mechanism of skeletal muscle contraction was not defined. Based on various assumptions about the actin and myosin filaments of muscle, later they postulated a theory called “sliding filament theory”. When this theory is scrutinized in detail, I find that there are a lot of defects in this theory, which I have pointed out and I have made an attempt to postulate a different mechanism for the skeletal muscle contraction.


Author(s):  
Teruaki Ito ◽  
Alexander H. Slocum

This paper describes two approaches to teaching engaging creative engineering design classes. Both of these classes have evolved over many years using feedback from annual class reviews. One is the computer-aided design class, CAD-EX, at the University of Tokushima (UT) in Japan, and the other is the introductory design and manufacturing class, 2.007, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. Comparing these two classes conducted in two difference countries, this paper discusses how we created learning environments that engage students in a variety of design-related activities.


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