Sunday, March 28, 2010

Energy (and Other) Events - March 28, 2010

MIT

Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector
Speaker: Chris Knittel (UC Davis)

Time: 2:30p–4:00p

Location: E52-244

Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector


Web site: http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/5429

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Energy & Environmental Economics at MIT



Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Why Chemomechanical Design of Materials is Critical to Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure
Speaker: Krystyn Van Vliet, Materials Science and Engineering

Time: 4:00p–5:00p

Location: 3-270

Transportation@MIT Seminar Series

In Spring 2010, the Transportation@MIT seminar series continues by drawing knowledge from MIT research that is applicable to transportation. Our goal is to strengthen the community of MIT researchers by sharing information in the following areas: airlines, automation, behavior and economics, energy sources, environmental impacts, logistics and supply chains, networks, propulsion, system control, urban challenges, and vehicles.


Web site: http://transportation.mit.edu/events.php

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free Admission to MIT and General Public

Sponsor(s): Transportation@MIT

For more information, contact:
Rebecca Fearing
transportation@mit.edu


Tuesday, March 30, 2010
What should we humans do about climate change?
Speaker: Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher

Time: 6:00p–7:30p

Location: N51, MIT Museum

Professor Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher of MIT?s Center for Collective Intelligence lead a hands-on, interactive session exploring how the collective intelligence of thousands of people (including you) can be harnessed to address global climate change.

Have a chance to play with the Climate Collaboratorium - an innovative on-line forum inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux - in which you can explore the impacts of proposed climate change policies, engage in on-line (and at the Museum, in-person) debates, and register your opinion on what we humans should do about global climate change.

The Collaboratorium is one project in MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, whose primary research question is, How can people and computers be connected so that - collectively - they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before? This event is in conjunction with the exhibition Sampling MIT.

Bring your laptop to use the system live. A limited number of MIT Museum computers will also be made available.


Web site:http://web.mit.edu/museum/programs/calendar.html#climate

Open to: the general public

Cost: free

Sponsor(s): MIT Museum

For more information, contact:
Josie Patterson
617-253-5927
museum@mit.edu



Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Art in Action: How Artistic Projects Inspire New Perspectives in Planning
Speaker: Dietmar Offenhuber, Richard The, Sam Auinger, Bruce Odland

Time: 12:30p–2:00p

Location: 9-450

DUSP Speaker Series
Weekly Lecture Series of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Light lunch served.

How can we consider art-related views on urban space? What are the ways that artists help us relate to and understand public space? Can art foster public interaction and communication? In this session, we will focus on art about public space instead of art in public space. We will showcase two positions of individual artists who focus on the use and understanding of public space and the social impacts of art.

Richard The: Richard is a media artist and interaction designer working at the MIT Media Lab and as part of the design studio The Green Eyl in Berlin. In his talk, he will discuss his approaches to design for new social interactions and situations in public space.
http://rt80.net/

O+A: The two composers and sound artists Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland focus on the sonic space of the city. In their large-scale installations, they investigate the relationship between architecture, sound and perception. Currently they focus on issues related to the ?sonic commons?.
http://www.o-a.info/

Moderated by Dietmar Offenhuber, PhD Candidate in DUSP and Researcher at the Senseable City Lab

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning

For more information, contact:
Ezra Glenn
617-253-2024
eglenn@mit.edu



Wednesday, March 31, 2010

MIT Energy Seminar: "Toward an Innovation Centered Climate Change Strategy."
Speaker: Daniel C. Esty, Yale University.

Time: 3:00p–4:30p

Location: E19-319

Prospects for a global agreement on climate change to supplant the Kyoto Protocol are now badly bogged down. The success of the international negotiations is deeply intertwined with the U.S. domestic political conversation around climate change. Unfortunately, the current legislative efforts seem unlikely to win the necessary majorities in the House and Senate. It is now time to think about alternative strategies. In this talk, I will argue that we need to put innovation at the center of our approach to climate change. Critical to this strategy realignment is a focus on getting a clear price signal on greenhouse gas emissions and a package of additional incentives that help to engage the full creative spirit of the country and the world in the effort to advance energy efficiency, explore alternative sources of power generation, and establish whether carbon capture and storage can be done cost effectively. This talk will examine the policy process that will be necessary to put forward such an innovation-centered approach to climate change.


Web site: http://web.mit.edu/mitei/news/seminars/innovation-centered.html

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Tim Heidel
energy-events@mit.edu



Wednesday, March 31, 2010

IDEAS Competition Information Session
Speaker: Samantha Cooper

Time: 7:00p–8:00p

Location: 4-231

The world has problems. You have ideas. We have $50,000.

Come learn about the IDEAS Competition and how you can win up to $8000 and make your innovative idea a reality!

The IDEAS Competition is an annual public service competition that provides an opportunity for members of the MIT community to develop creative ideas for projects that make a positive change in the world - locally, nationally or internationally.

Join us and learn more about the competition, how to enter, and how to write a strong proposal.


Web site: http://web.mit.edu/ideas

Open to: the general public

This event occurs on the 3rd of every month at 7:00p - 8:00p through March 3, 2010, and also on March 31, 2010 at 7:00p - 8:00p.

Sponsor(s): Public Service Center, Graduate Student Life Grants, MIT IDEAS Competition

For more information, contact:
Samantha Cooper
5-5474
coopers@mit.edu



Thursday, April 01, 2010

Energy 101: Nuclear Power
Speaker: Lara Pierpoint

Time: 12:00p–1:00p

Location: 37-212

Energy 101
Energy 101 is a lecture series put on by the MIT Energy Club focusing on the basic technology, policy, business, and economic issues surrounding many basic energy topics. Lectures will be held once or twice and month and are delivered by students.

Come hear a student who is an expert in nuclear power and the nuclear fuel cycle give a primer in nuclear power. Topics will include but are not limited to technology, economics, and regulation and policy surrounding this source of energy.

Food will be provided.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club

For more information, contact:
Tim Heidel
energy-events@mit.edu



Thursday, April 01, 2010

The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition and Digital Technologies
Speaker: Thomas Pettitt, University of Southern Denmark; Peter Donaldson, MIT Literature; James Paradis, MIT Writing

Time: 5:00p–7:00p

Location: 3-270

Is our emerging digital culture partly a return to practices and ways of thinking that were central to human societies before the advent of the printing press? This question has been posed with increasing force in recent years by anthropologists, folklorists, historians and literary scholars, among them Thomas Pettitt, who has contributed significantly to elaborating and communicating the version of this question named in the title of today's forum.

The concept of a "Gutenberg Parenthesis"--formulated by Prof. L. O. Sauerberg of the University of Southern Denmark--offers a means of identifying and understanding the period, varying between societies and subcultures, during which the mediation of texts through time and across space was dominated by powerful permutations of letters, print, pages and books. Our current transitional experience toward a post-print media world dominated by digital technology and the internet can be usefully juxtaposed with that of the period-- Shakespeare's--when England was making the transition into the parenthesis from a world of scribal transmission and oral performance.

MIT professors Peter Donaldson and James Paradis will join Pettitt in a discussion of the value of historical perspectives on our technologizing human present.


Web site: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Communications Forum

For more information, contact:
Brad Seawell
617-253-3521
seawell@mit.edu



Thursday, April 01, 2010

MIT Energy Club Lecture: "Engineering Sustainable Electricity Services--The Key Role of Systems Thinking and Automation" Prof. Marija Ilic, CMU
Time: 5:00p–6:00p

Location: 4-237

In this lecture we pose the problem of sustainable electricity services as a novel systems engineering design problem. We briefly summarize today's operating and planning practices and explain why these need fundamental changing in order to enable qualitatively different electricity services. In particular, we suggest that many new resources have characteristics, which are not generally known to the system operators, and are, therefore, currently not relied on for managing supply and demand in an often-congested electric network. The new resources are also highly variable and, as such, do not lend themselves to static feed-forward scheduling without near-real time automated feedback. Instead, a transformation of this operating and planning mode into an interactive multi-temporal, multi-spatial and multi-contextual system management is needed to accommodate ever-changing system conditions, often driven by many distributed actions. In order to enable a complex system with often-conflicting functionalities, such as reliability, security, short- and long-term efficiency, and sustainability, one must rely on prediction, adaptation and adjustments by all.

We introduce a Dynamic Monitoring and Decision Systems (DYMONDS) framework as one such possible interactive framework in support of on-line sensing and decision making at various industry layers capable of meeting multiple metrics.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club

For more information, contact:
MIT Energy Club
energyclub@mit.edu




Thursday, April 01, 2010

Social Venture (Entrepreneurship & Financing)
Speaker: Una Ryan, Bill Rodriguez, David Steinmiller

Time: 5:00p–7:00p

Location: E25-117

Global Health at MIT

Featuring the perspectives of physicians, engineers, and non-profit-sector directors, this panel discussion about the inception,
development, and funding of a health-related start-up focusing on patients in the developing world will provide insights into the importance of product design criteria, intellectual property considerations for products being sold
in the developing versus the developed world, and business model adoption, underscoring the tension between ethical and financial considerations in this sector.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Global Health at MIT, Graduate Student Life Grants, MIT Public Service Center

For more information, contact:
Michael Goldberg
michaelg@mit.edu



Thursday, April 01, 2010

Goldstein Lecture in Architecture, Engineering, and Science
Speaker: David MacKay, "Sustainable Energy--without the hot air," Physicist and Chief Scientific Advisor, Dept of Energy and Climate Change, London; Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge

Time: 6:30p–8:30p

Location: 34-101

Co-sponsored by the Department of Architecture and the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture

For more information, contact:
617-253-7791

Editor's Comment: A lot of people are looking forward to hearing David MacKay. This may be a very informative event.



Friday, April 02, 2010

Arundhati Roy in Conversation with Noam Chomsky
Speaker: ARUNDHATI ROY with Noam Chomsky

Time: 3:30p–5:00p

Location: 26-100, Video overflow room 34-101

Please join us for a conversation with Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things and Field Notes on Democracy, and MIT professor of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, author of Hegemony or Survival and the forthcoming book, Hopes and Prospects, as they discuss the threats to democracy in the United States, India, and worldwide.
THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR THIS EVENT. WE WILL, HOWEVER, HAVE VIDEO OVERFLOW ROOMS SET UP. PLEASE SEE OUR WEBSITE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION. NO ONE WILL BE ADMITTED TO 26-100 WITHOUT A TICKET. THANK YOU.


Web site: web.mit.edu/tac

Open to: the general public

Cost: n/a

Tickets: cenglish@mit.edu

Sponsor(s): The Technology and Culture Forum at MIT, MIT Program in Women's and Gender Studies

For more information, contact:
Patricia-Maria Weinmann
617-253-0108
weinmann@mit.edu



Friday, April 02, 2010

Reception: Water Walkers: Portraits of Ghana's Street Vendors
Time: 4:00p–6:00p

Location: 7-238, Rotch Gallery (Rotch Library)

Photos by Melissa Haeffner (G). Through digital storytelling, this project presents the daily experience of water vendors as they negotiate their way through spatial dimensions of traffic and market, home and school.

Haeffner's self-published book of the same title will be sold at the reception. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Pure Home Water, to continue distribution of clean water in Ghana.

Exhibit on view April 1-30.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Libraries

For more information, contact:
Jolene de Verges
617/258-5593
jdeverge@MIT.EDU



Harvard



Art, Public Space and New Media
WHEN
Mon., Mar. 29, 2010, 4 p.m.
WHERE
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA
TYPE OF EVENT
Art/Design, Humanities, Presentation/Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Humanities Center
SPEAKER(S)
Artists Tobias Putrih (Boston-Ljubljana); Michael Meredith, and Helidon Gjergji (New York-Naples-Tirana). Moderated by Svetlana Boym.
COST
Free and open to the public
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~humcentr/

Climate Change & the Media: "Techno-Optimism or Pessimism? 'Fixing' the Planet's Climate Problems"
WHEN
Wed., Mar. 31, 2010, 1 – 2:30 p.m.
WHERE
Bell Hall, Belfer 5th floor, Harvard Kennedy School
TYPE OF EVENT
Environmental Sciences, Presentation/Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S)
Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine; Jeff Goodell, author of "How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate"
COST
Free to the public
CONTACT INFO
Cristine_Russell@hks.harvard.edu
NOTE
Refreshments will be served.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/news_events/calendar.html


Thanks to Fred Hapgood's Boston Lectures on Science and Engineering list http://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/site02.html

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