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MIT economists judge which methods combat poverty the best
By Davin Wilfrid
In 2003, governments spent $68 billion on programs designed to help the worlds poorest people, according to the United Nations. But how can we tell whether these programs are actually making a difference? The answer, according to economists at MITs Poverty Action Lab, is to compare communities that participate in a particular aid program with similar communities that do not. Economics professor Abhijit Banerjee, one of the labs founders, uses an example to explain his groups thinking. To determine whether new roads lead to greater economic well-being, he says, its not good enough to measure the well-being of towns with roads against the well-being of towns without roads. Instead, one should take a set of towns where roads are being planned and randomly decide the order in which the roads will be built. Then the comparison of the sites where the roads are built early and the sites where they are built later gives a valid measure of their impact. Often, people just ask, How do you feel now that the road is built? Our view is that that often gives you the wrong answer, Banerjee says. Now we have a reasonable way of running a horse race between these different things, where for every ten dollars spent, this one really improved peoples lives and that one didnt. When Banerjee first started studying aid programs, he was disturbed by the lack of solid grounds for evaluating them. You would look at even a simple question, like, Is it the case that having more textbooks or teachers improves student achievement?, and without hard evidence, we really didnt have any answers, he says. Banerjee founded the Poverty Action Lab in June 2003, along with economics professor Esther Duflo, PhD 99, and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University. The lab now supports the two MIT professors and 13 researchers who work globally to implement randomized trials, and it collaborates with six faculty affiliates at other universities. Sometimes the researchers findings square nicely with the aims of a particular program. For example, one trial conducted in rural Kenya showed significant increases in achievement among girls whose schools were selected to participate in scholarship programs. But evaluations can also indicate that programs arent working. A second Kenyan trial showed that children who were taught worm-prevention measures fared no better than those who werent. Once the Poverty Action Lab researchers have collected enough information on different programs, they plan to divide their findings into themes, such as how to get children to go to school. The lab has 15 completed or ongoing studies, whose subjects range from affirmative action programs in India to racial discrimination in the job application process in Chicago and Boston. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers What’s Hot
Market forces influence students’ choice of major
By Sally Atwood They are advised to major in what excites them, but undergraduate students still gravitate to what they perceive as the hot majors for the job market, even though majors often dont determine careers. In the late 1990s it was computer science. Today its management. Its possible that biological engineering will be the hot major by the end of this decade. Robert Redwine, dean for undergraduate education, points to an increasingly diverse undergraduate student body as another possible explanation for recent changes. Since 1993, the School of Engineering has lost 22 percent of its enrollment. Some of that can be attributed to a 9 percent drop in total undergraduate enrollment, but some of it is due to the increased appeal of the Sloan School of Management, which has nearly tripled its undergraduate enrollment in the same period of time. Similarly, at the School of Science, majors in brain and cognitive sciences have more than doubled since 1993. There are also some notable changes within individual engineering departments. Electrical engineering and computer science remains MITs largest department, but since the dot-com implosion in 2000, its enrollment has dropped by about 32 percent. Over the last decade, mechanical engineering has dropped 25 percent, chemical engineering 39 percent, and civil and environmental engineering 41 percent. Ocean engineering, which has a strong graduate program but few undergraduate majors, has merged with mechanical engineering. Still, some departments in the School of Engineering have seen an uptick in enrollment. Aeronautics and astronautics is up 37 percent, and nuclear engineering is up more than 45 percent. Redwine says nuclear engineering has done a good job explaining to students what its program offers besides the ability to design nuclear power plants. Another significant change that mirrors marketplace trends is a new major in bioengineering, which will be presented to the faculty for final approval this spring. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers  Silent Treatment
Martin Marks’s music gives voice to a collection of silent films
By Lisa Scanlon
For almost a year, Martin Marks spent long hours sifting through old sheet music, writing new piano pieces, and recruiting dozens of composers and musicians to write and perform pieces for a DVD collection of silent films. He has weathered seemingly interminable weekends and stolen weekdays in Killian Hall, recording and rerecording scores, often until midnight. Some of those weekends were exhausting, says Marks, a senior lecturer in the Institutes music and theater arts program. But despite the hours, Marks says it was well worth his time to create the music for More Treasures from American Film Archives, a DVD collection of 50 films made between 1894 and 1931 that was released in the fall. Marks has spent more than 20 years studying silent films and the music played along with them. So he was a natural choice as music curator for both More Treasures and its predecessor, Treasures from American Film Archives, which was released in 2000. Besides, he was already familiar with the archives that contributed to the collections. The first DVD draws from 18 archives and includes films from as late as 1985, while the second set focuses on the silent period and features films from five archives: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the George Eastman House, the U.S. Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Marty Marks himself is a treasure, says Annette Melville, director of the National Film Preservation Foundation in San Francisco, which produced the collections. [He has] a deep knowledge of the history of popular music and film, an ability to perform music for silent films, and a way of writing about all of this with wit and scholarly precision. A pianist, Marks prepared and performed most of the scores himself. Some of them are original compositions, but many drew on tunes that were played during the silent-film period. I do like to play the kind of music that was played in the silent period as much as possible, because I think it connects the audiences closer to the experience of the films that was originally intended, Marks says. He also did a certain amount of improvising during the recording sessions. He says that in Killian Hall in Building 14, with the films rolling, he would see things on the screen and start to think of ways he could make the music fit better. Marks, who just returned from a fall sabbatical, is currently writing a book on film music. Also, pending funding, he and his colleagues at the National Film Preservation Foundation are eager to create another collection of archived films. Their hope is to bring more of these hidden treasures out of the archives and into the homes of the general public. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers Turned-On Genes
Scientists learn more about gene regulators
By Lisa Scanlon Although scientists finished a draft sequence of the human genome four years ago, little is known about how genes get called into action. Now, however, researchers at MIT and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have begun to fill in the missing information: they have found all of the regulatory sequences in the yeast genome. Regulatory sequences are specific parts of the genome that turn genes on and off by interacting with molecules called gene regulators. By locating these regulatory elements and thereby determining where regulators bind to the genome, scientists can deduce the regulators functions. The team of investigators, led by Whitehead researchers Richard Young and Ernest Fraenkel, PhD 98, and MIT computer scientist David Gifford 76, is particularly interested in regulators because mutated versions of them are associated with many diseases, including diabetes and cancer. Previously, it could take years to find a regulators binding site. The MIT and Whitehead researchers developed a method to speed up the process. First they found the binding sites rough locations: they placed regulators on chips containing thousands of pieces of DNA and observed where they bound. Then, by using computer algorithms to compare these data with data from other yeast species, the researchers were able to identify precise binding locations. If the sequence for a potential binding site in one species of yeast exists in several other yeast species, then it means its probably important for something, and is most likely a controlling element, says Chris Harbison, a Whitehead graduate student who worked on the project. The researchers also placed cells in a dozen different environments to reveal binding locations that are only used under certain conditions. Though the human genome is far larger and more complex than the yeast genome, researchers at Whitehead and MIT are already applying these technologies to understanding human genetics. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers  Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum
Nationally ranked varsity team could be part of a dynasty in the making
By Kathryn Beaumont
They finished the season 17-3- 1 overall and went undefeated in their conference. Their final Division III rankings were first in New England and eighth nationally. The 2003 season was clearly the best in the history of the MIT varsity mens soccer team, and after so much success, perhaps its understandable that Coach Walter Alessi thought he would never see its equal. I thought that 2003 would be the greatest season in my lifetime, says Alessi, who admits that, before tryouts, he was a little uncertain about the quality of the freshmen players on the 2004 team. He need not have worried. Although a 2-1 loss to Babson in the New England Womens and Mens Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) finals prevented the men from qualifying for the NCAA tournament, the 2004 teams 14-3-1 record was nearly the same as the 2003 teams. The team was also declared 2004 cochampion of the New England Division III Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference. And until the Babson loss, no team had scored a first-half goal on MIT all season. The 2004 record is particularly impressive given that more than half of the teams 25 players were freshmen. Yet the teams seasoned senior leaders shone in their own right. All of them won NEWMAC conference honors. Tri-captains Dan Griffith 05, Jose-Ramon Torradas 05, and Walter Song 06, along with Robert Pilawa 05, were named to the NEWMAC all-conference first team, while goalie Morgan Mills 05 was named to the all-conference second team. In addition, Torradas broke the schools record for all-time number of assists. After 30 years at the helm of MIT mens soccer, is Alessi on the verge of building a dynasty in MIT sportswhich are notorious for their on-and-off successes? Im hopeful, he says, But I have been through the ups and lots of downs. During his first 26 years, only one team won 10 or more games. In the past four years, however, every team has won at least 10 games. Still, Alessi insists, I was happy here before this streak. He is as close to the players on his 1981 one-win team as he is to his current crop of stars. But a 14-win season is nice, too. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers  High-Tech Twine
Novel fibers can sense light
By Lisa Scanlon
Mit materials science researchers have created two flexible fibers that combine a semiconductors electronic properties with the light-transmitting properties of fiber optics. One of the fibers can detect light, and the other can carry optical and electrical information at the same time without the two interfering with each other. The first fiber could be used for a new computer interface, and the second could be used as a cable to send two different classes of information. The researchers, led by assistant professor Yoel Fink, PhD 00, made the light-sensing fibers by creating a cylinder composed of a semiconductor core surrounded by four metal wires, all of which were covered with a polymer sheath. The team then heated the cylinder, which was 30 centimeters long and 20 millimeters in diameter, in a furnace and slowly stretched it into a fiber hundreds of meters long and less than a millimeter thick. The second fiber, which transmits both light and electronic signals, was created using the same process, although the cylinder contained different materials in different arrangements. Because the fibers are composed of materials with different thermal properties, making them perfectly uniform along their entire length was a particularly stiff challenge. We failed so many times, says Mehmet Bayindir, a postdoc in the Research Laboratory of Electronics and the lead author of a recent paper in Nature about the technology. Now that the researchers have perfected the production process, Bayindir says, the fibers could be used to replace the mouse as a computer interface. Someday, people may interact with computers by pointing beams of light at their screens. Fink and his colleagues are now creating hundreds of meters of the fibers in their lab and exploring other possible applications for them. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers  Action-Packed Dance
An innovative artist in residence teaches MIT students some new moves
By Catherine Nichols
Try to achieve a horizontal levitation, Elizabeth Streb instructs a gymnasium full of MIT students as she hovers parallel to the floor. Only her palms are touching the mat beneath her. The students are having some trouble following her lead, as is their teacher: in the back, Thomas DeFrantz, an associate professor of music and theater arts, laughs as he falls over. DeFrantz invited the dancer to spend four days on campus in October as an artist in residence, during which time she gave the Abramowitz Memorial Lecture, taught the class in the gym, and visited students and professors. Streb is an innovator in dance and leader of Streb, a dance company based in New York City. She says she creates page-turners of actions, a metaphor that makes a little more sense when she shows slides of her historic leap through a sheet of glass, or when she falls straight backward without bending or flinching. She even lit herself on fire once as part of a performance. In spite of the potential for pain, Streb assures the students that the moves she is teaching them are all perfectly safe and probably healthy. All the same, DeFrantz has a few aches the next day. Strebs visit was just what he had hoped, thougha way to encourage a maverick streak in the students, who are innovators in their areas, he says. Unlike Streb, DeFrantz is not interested in training MIT students in a particular mode of dance. He wants to show students from different fields some interesting ways to think about their bodies and about physical space. Then they can incorporate those ideas into their work in the classroom or lab. He wouldnt be at MIT if he wanted to train professional dancers, he says. You get a room of trained dancers and you explain a problem to them, and they all come up with the same solution, DeFrantz says. But you get a room full of MIT students, and theyre all thinking of different thingsthings I never would have come up with. I just love that! In the gym with Streb, the students looked like they loved it, too. Many of them were levitating, and most of them were laughing. Other news from around campus | Saving the System Product Pointer Evaluating Aid Programs What’s Hot Silent Treatment Turned on Genes Men’s Soccer Maintains Momentum High-tech Twine Action-Packed Dance Counterterrorism by Numbers Counterterrorism by Numbers
How mathematics can help break terrorist cells
By Davin Wilfrid Jonathan d. farley, visiting associate professor of mathematics, believes that math could save lives. For much of the past two years, he has studied mathematical tools that could improve U.S. efforts to combat global terrorism, and now his work is attracting attention from defense-related organizations. Farley employs order theorya branch of abstract mathematics that looks at the hierarchies within groupsto characterize the terrorist cells that intelligence agencies are trying to break up. At present, some intelligence researchers use graphs to plot the organization of cell networks: points represent individual terrorists, connected by lines that denote communication. The problem, Farley says, is that such graphs dont take into account the chains of command within cells. Order theory, he believes, would allow an agency to determine whether it has broken up a celland possibly foiled an act of terrorismwith greater certainty. With increased efficiency, counterterrorism agencies could free up money and energy for other operations. This type of work is a big change for a pure mathematician whose research usually has no immediate practical application. I thought it might be nice to actually do something thats useful and potentially life saving, Farley says. And while the math in this project is not as complex as his usual research, the potential benefits make it worthwhile. I knew that significant mathematics need not be sophisticated mathematics, he says. Farley published his ideas in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism in November 2003; that same year, he cofounded a company called Phoenix Mathematical Systems Modeling to turn his ideas into software that will help intelligence agencies. He has spoken with interested defense organizations, including the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Alexandria, VAbased Institute for Defense Analyses, and hopes to have a product ready within five years. |
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