Sunday, March 06, 2011

Energy (and Other) Events - March 6, 2011

Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater Boston area that catch the editor's eye.

Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.

If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com

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MIT

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Monday, March 07, 2011

Market Response Modeling: Quantifying the Technology and Policies Needed to Drive Global Zero-Carbon-Emission Building Infrastructure

Speaker: Dr. Kevin Otto, President, Robust Systems and Strategy LLC

Time: 12:30p–2:00p

Location: 7-431, AVT

Building Technology Spring Lecture Series

Buildings consume 38% of energy use globally, far more than the industrial, transportation or any other sector. Yet, unlike these other sectors, we have available today the technology to reduce building energy consumption to near net zero and thereby eliminate their net carbon contribution. Zero energy consuming buildings exist in all applications and in all climates, they work. We are not facing an unsolvable problem in creating energy efficient building technologies. We face a problem of creating demand for, delivering, purchasing, and operationally maintaining very energy efficient buildings. To quantify and explore industrial policy scenarios, a large scale simulation modeling effort was constructed, to simulate the impact on the global building stock of the construction and operation decisions of individual building owners and stakeholders. The results of any scenario simulated out to 2050 were compared with levels necessary to achieve global carbon reduction and stabilization. We also quantified that all current incentive programs used throughout Europe, the US and elsewhere to incentivize building owners to upgrade to more energy efficient materials and systems have little to no impact. Instead, we compute that whole-building incentive programs and building codes are uniformly necessary. These results will be reviewed.

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture, Building Technology Program

For more information, contact:
Kathleen Ross
617 253 1876
kross@mit.edu

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Monday, March 07, 2011

Electronics for Energy Efficiency

Speaker: Jason Stauth

Time: 3:00p–4:00p

Location: 38-401A

EECS Special Seminar

The growing demand for energy will result in dramatic changes to the way we generate and manage energy. This provides unprecedented motivation to explore technologies that can facilitate more efficient energy conversion, reduced consumption and waste, and support lower carbon energy sources. This talk will present a research framework for next-generation electronics for energy efficiency that merges efforts in highly-integrated power electronics, communications electronics, and embedded systems techniques. Future research areas include applications in automotive, energy storage, and distributed energy generation. Research themes include resonant and digital techniques that leverage high-energy-density passives and deep integration in modern semiconductor technologies. A commercial effort in distributed power management for photovoltaic systems will be discussed that combines efforts in power electronics, power-line communications, and networked instrumentation. This effort includes development of a novel resonant switched-capacitor power converter that can achieve effective conversion efficiency of 99.5% and can substantially improve lifetime energy capture in photovoltaic systems.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): EECS HQ

For more information, contact:
Mira Whiting
617-253-4657
mira@mit.edu

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March 7, 2011

3:45pm / 4:15pm

Kolker Room, 26-414

"More Precious than Gold: Critical Elements for New Energy Technologies"

Robert Jaffe, MIT
I will report on a recently completed study jointly sponsored by the APS Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) and the Material Research Society (MRS). The twin pressures of increasing demand for energy and increasing concern about anthropogenic climate change have stimulated research into new sources of energy and novel ways to harvest, transmit, store, transform or conserve it. At the same time, advances in physics, chemistry, and material science have enabled researchers to identify chemical elements with properties that can be finely tuned to their specific needs and to employ them in new energy-related technologies. Elements like dysprosium, gallium, germanium, indium, lanthanum, neodymium, rhenium, or tellurium, which were once laboratory curiosities, now figure centrally when novel energy systems are discussed. Many of these elements are not at present mined, refined, or traded in large quantities. However new technologies can only impact our energy needs if they can be scaled from laboratory, to demonstration, to massive implementation. As a result, some previously unfamiliar elements will be needed in great quantities. We refer to these elements as energy-critical elements (ECEs). Although the technologies in which they are employed and their abundance in the Earth’s crust vary greatly, ECEs have many features in common. The purpose of the POPA/MRS study was to evaluate constraints on availability of energy-critical elements and to make recommendations that can help avoid these obstructions.

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Monday, March 07, 2011

Water Footprint Analysis of Electricity Generation

Speaker: Michael Rutberg, Dept. Mechanical Engineering, MIT

Time: 4:00p–5:00p

Location: 3-343

Center for Energy and Propulsion Research Seminar Series

The interconnection between water and energy systems, or "water-energy nexus," is an area of increasing concern in many arid parts of the world. Withdrawal and consumption of water at electricity generation plants, mainly for cooling purposes, is a significant component of the water-energy nexus in the US and elsewhere. The existing field data on US power plant water use, however, is of limited granularity and poor quality, hampering efforts to track industry trends and project future scenarios. Furthermore, there is a need for a common quantitative framework on which to evaluate the potential of the many technologies that have been proposed to reduce water use at power plants. To address these deficiencies, we have created a system-level generic model (SGM) of water use at power plants that applies to a wide variety of generation technologies. The SGM is a computationally inexpensive analytical model that approximately reflects the physics of the key processes involved and requires a small number of input parameters; the outputs are water withdrawal and consumption intensity in liters per kilowatt-hour. This talk will first give a brief introduction to the water-energy nexus, focusing on water use at power plants, then describe the SGM and its application to water footprint data analysis and technology evaluation.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): RGD Lab

For more information, contact:
Patrick Kirchen

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Jiang Yang: "Shaping Information and Social Dynamics in Social Media: Incentive and Culture"
Monday, March 07, 2011 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Location: MIT Media Lab, E14-633
Speaker: Jiang Yang
Digital social media is revolutionizing the way people socialize and create/share information. Understanding and shaping this revolution calls for a new hybrid of research in technology, design, media, sociology, business, and economics. Yang will address how the two primary motifs in social media space—information and social dynamics—have been shaped by the complex interaction between incentive design and cultural context. In particular, in this talk she will discuss findings from several settings, including online forums, community based Q&A sites, and crowdsourcing websites. She will demonstrate that integrating diverse research methods is particularly desired to understand the full picture.

Understanding the co-evolvement between system design and participators’ human, social, and cultural factors can lead to discovering the major dimensions in the social media design space. Yang's goal is to identify and construct this design space to help in evaluating, suggesting, and guiding new design features. Finally, she will describe a few work-in-progress projects that extend her prior studies and design new social-information experiences for users.

Biography:
Jiang Yang is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information, specializing in human-computer interaction and social computing. She studies information and social dynamics in online social media, focusing on how system designs interact with human, social, and cultural factors. Her research involves developing hybrid research methodology to understand, evaluate, and design social media systems. Jiang received her master's degree in financial engineering, and bachelor's degree in information systems and communication from the University of Science and Technology of China, and has interned in IBM Research, Microsoft Research, and eBay Labs.

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Monday, March 07, 2011

Collision 2 Lecture Series: Laurent Grasso

Speaker: Laurent Grasso

Time: 7:00p–9:00p

Location: E15-070, Bartos Theater

Collision 2: When Artistic and Scientific Research Meet
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The ACT Monday night lecture series Collision 2: When Artistic and Scientific Research Meet draws together artists and scientists from different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science and technology.

This series is part of AR - Artistic Research, a yearlong collaboration between the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology and Siemens Stiftung, Munich, co‑curated by ACT Director Ute Meta Bauer and Siemens Stiftung Curator of Visual Arts Thomas D. Trummer. The lecture series is also part of the related ACT course 4.365/4.366 From Bauhaus to Our House.

The lecture series is free and open to the public.

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MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology presents its Monday night lecture series, Collision 2: When Artistic and Scientific Research Meet

Science & Fictions
Laurent Grasso, artist, Paris, France

Respondent: Stefan Helmreich, MIT Professor of Anthropology

Laurent Grasso will discuss the ideas and processes behind hisHAARP project (High Frequency Active Auroral research) eponymous of a research base in Gakona, Alaska. One side of this project was to display a scale reconstitution of the antenna array?s in the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2009. He will also present, theStudies into the Past series, and the exhibition The Horn Perspective that took place at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2009. This exhibition partly deals with Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson?s discoveries on cosmic microwaves (remains of the big bang) through The Horn Antenna. In 2008, Laurent Grasso was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize and in 2010 he was featured at The European Biennial of Contemporary Art: Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain.


Web site: http://visualarts.mit.edu/about/lecture.html

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology

For more information, contact:
Laura Chichisan Pallone
617-253-4415
clauraa@mit.edu

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Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Supply Chain Innovation & Leadership Series
Roger Bloemen, Vice President Global Supply Chain, Solutia
“From Business Strategy to Supply Chain Strategy”
Time: 12-1pm
Location: E51-325

Roger Bloemen is Vice President, Global Supply Chain for Solutia. He has degrees in Bio Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Business Administration from University of Leuven, Belgium. Roger has an executive MBA from Stanford University and gives frequent lectures on Supply Chain strategy at key business schools around the world. Last year Solutia won the Belgian Pics Supply Chain award.

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Prof. Sheila Kennedy's lecture on PV Design applications

March 08, 2011 12:00p–1:00p

Sheila Kennedy, MIT Professor of the Practice of Architecture, will present design work that explores the new nexus of adaptable/responsive design, soft ware, ?soft? solar materials and flexible electronics. This talk will focus on the challenges and opportunities of accelerating the wide spread use of organic thin film and generation 3 CIGs based solar cells. Drawing on the intersection of material research from coursework at MIT and real-world demonstration projects from her practice at KVA MATx, www.kvarch.net Kennedy will discuss how design innovation in architecture and building materials is creating new form factors and applications for solar energy, changing the configuration of public space in the built environment, and driving innovation in the creative economy. Keywords: architecture, innovation, flexible photovoltaics, flat to form manufacturing, craft and technical hybrids, prototyping.

With lunch.

Category: lectures/conferences

Speaker: MIT Faculty Profile: Sheila Kennedy, AIA http://sap.mit.edu/resources/portfolio/kennedy/

Location: 56-167

Sponsored by: MIT Energy Campus Events

Admission: Open to the public

For more information: Contact Ines N.S Gaisset

ines_g@mit.edu

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Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Transportation@MIT Seminar: "System Design in an Uncertain World: Decision Support to Mitigate the Impacts of Convective Weather on Air Traffic"

Speaker: Richard DeLaura, MIT Lincoln Lab

Time: 4:00p–5:00p

Location: 3-270

Transportation@MIT Seminar Series

Transportation@MIT and the MIT Transportation Club are pleased to announce the continuation of the Transportation Seminar Series. All seminars this spring will be held in 3-270 on Tuesdays at 4pm.
This series will feature presentations by faculty researchers at MIT, as well as invited guest speakers from beyond the Institute. Please save the date for the following confirmed speakers:

3/15 Daniela Rus, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

3/29 Noelle Eckley Selin, MIT Engineering Systems Division; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

4/5 Daniel Roos, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering Systems Division

4/12 Youssef Marzouk, MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics

4/26 Jesse Kroll, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering

5/3 Joan Ogden, University of California (Davis), Environmental Science and Policy


Web site: http://transportation.mit.edu/live/news/1175-spring-2011-transportati
on-seminar-series

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free Admission to MIT and General Public

Sponsor(s): Transportation@MIT

For more information, contact:
Rebecca Fearing
6172533366
transportation@mit.edu

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Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Organic and Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Speaker: Mike McGehee, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics, Stanford University

Time: 4:15p–5:30p

Location: 66-110

MITEI Seminar Series
A year-long series of seminars given by leaders in the energy field sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative.

Organic solar cells and dye sensitized solar cells are very promising because they can be deposited rapidly in roll-to-roll coating machines without expensive vacuum chambers or high temperature processing. Since they can be lightweight and flexible, it may soon be possible to roll them onto rooftops at a cost several times lower than is now possible with silicon or cadmium telluride solar cells. Since organic semiconductors do not contain any rare or toxic elements, such as indium, cadmium or tellurium, organic solar cells could be used to provide the world with a significant fraction of its electricity.

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Jameson Twomey
617-324-2408
jtwomey@mit.edu

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Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Legatum Lecture: 2010 Prosperity Index

Speaker: Dr. Ashley Thomas Lenihan & Jiehae Choi

Time: 5:00p–6:00p

Location: 32-144, Dessert Reception to follow

How do you define prosperity? We invite global economists, future policymakers, and transformative thinkers to join us and learn about the Legatum Prosperity Index. This quantitative tool is the world's only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing. The Index produces rankings based on the foundations of prosperity for 110 nations and covering more than 90% of the world's population.


Web site: http://legatum.mit.edu/choilecture

Open to: the general public

Cost: none

Sponsor(s): Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship

For more information, contact:
Agnes Hunsicker
617-324-2768
agnesh@mit.edu

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Has the Climate Change Debate Become Intractable?

March 09, 2011 11:45a–1:00p

Professor Hoffman will discuss the results of his work on breaking down the debate on climate change and understanding its deeper cultural, economic and political aspects. It is at this deeper level that individual and group acceptance or rejection of climate science lies. And solutions to breaking through to a social consensus on the issue lie at this level.

Lunch Provided

Category: lectures/conferences

Speaker: Andy Hoffman, visiting professor

Location: E62-276

Sponsored by: MIT Energy Campus Events

Admission: Open to the public

For more information: Contact Elaine T Lim

elim1@mit.edu

Editorial Comment: I saw Dr Hoffman speak on this topic last week and he has some pertinent things to say about the public debate on climate change.

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Patterns of Knowledge: Phase Transitions and Early Growth of Language Wikipedia Networks

Speaker: Dr. Gergana Bounova is a postdoctoral research associate at MIT. She is living and working in Berkeley, CA, and is also associated with the Biostatistics group at UC Berkeley.

Time: 12:00p–1:00p

Location: E51-325

Abstract: Wikipedia is the largest free encyclopedia on the internet where users contribute and edit articles over time. Since 2001 over 18 million articles (3.5 million in English) have been contributed in about 280 languages. Wikipedia has become the de-facto reference knowledge capture platform online and there is substantial interest in understanding both its structure and evolution over time from a system's perspective. In this presentation I will summarize our recent work on the evolution of language Wikipedias as networks. 177 language Wikipedias (ex: French, Russian, etc.) are modeled as networks of articles connected by thematic hyperlinks. We study phase transitions in these 177 networks as they develop a giant component and become almost fully connected. Critical density and other metrics are correlated and compared to their corresponding random graph values. We also discuss patterns at large, concerning both the diversity and the commonality in the growth of language Wikipedias. Preliminary results on the existence of a "stable Wikipedia network topology" are discussed.

Sponsored by MIT Engineering Systems Division and New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI).

Food will be available at 11:30; lecture begins at noon.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Engineering Systems Division

For more information, contact:
Stefanie Koperniak
skoperni@mit.edu

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Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Humanitarian Speaker Series
Jason Phillips, Deputy Vice president, Field Operations, International Rescue Committee
“Humanitarian Action in a Changing World: an NGO Practitioner’s View”
Time: 12-1pm
Location: E51-315

Jason Phillips currently works in New York as the Deputy Vice President- Field Operations, for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the largest and oldest humanitarian private voluntary organizations in the United States. He supports 25 countries in the areas of logistics, finance, human resource, administration, information technology, security management and strategic planning. He also supervises the organization's international logistics operations.

Jason moved back to the United States after spending over 9 years living in and managing humanitarian operations in Africa. He has worked as IRC's Country Director in Sierra Leone and Kenya, and as a Program Coordinator in Kenya. Prior to joining IRC, Jason worked with the American Refugee Committee (ARC) in Uganda and Southern Sudan.

Prior to entering the humanitarian field Jason was a lecturer in the Political Science departments at Gettysburg College and The Johns Hopkins University. He also worked in the Private Placement and Leveraged Buyout department of Smith Barney, Harris Upham and Co, an investment bank, upon graduation from college.

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Forensics, Detectors amd Deterrence: Integrating Technology with Policy to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

Speaker: Tom Bielefeld, Belfer Center, JFK School of Government, Harvard University

Time: 12:00p–1:30p

Location: E40-496

SSP Wednesday Seminar

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Security Studies Program

For more information, contact:
617-253-7529

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Building Suburbia: Seven Suburban Landscapes, Or Only Two?

Speaker: Dolores Hayden Professor of Architecture and Urbanism/Professor of American Studies Yale University

Time: 12:30p–2:00p

Location: 9-450

Urban Studies and Planning Departmental Speaker Series
Weekly Lecture Series of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Dolores Hayden is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and Professor of American Studies. She is an urban historian and architect, president of the Urban History Association, and the author of many books about the history of the built environment in the United States. Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003) and A Field Guide to Sprawl (2004) are the most recent.

The Spring 2011 DUSP Speaker Series explores how each invited scholar-practitioner (or practitioner-scholar) has ?made sense? out of a complex socio-spatial phenomenon. In addition to conveying the substance of their work, the speakers have been asked to reflect on how they do what they do, bringing to life the ways that planners and designers use qualitative methods in their scholarship and/or practice. The subject matter ranges across all of the intellectual domains of the Department, and each topic engages the terrain of more than one DUSP program group. Please join us as we collectively make sense of contending efforts to plan post-Katrina New Orleans, the multiple rationales for community gardens and urban greening, the institutional management of poverty by the microfinance industry, the complex evolution of American suburbia, and the challenges of designing 21st century communities to serve low-income households.

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

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011
"Water-associated diseases along the Nile River" - or - Why the World Health Organization (WHO) needs your help

Speaker: William Jobin, Blue Nile Associates

Time: 2:30p–3:30p

Location: 48-316

Environmental Fluid Mechanics / Hydrology Seminar series
Weekly presentations from local and international researchers in the fields of hydrology and environmental fluid mechanics.

The several dams, reservoirs, irrigation systems and cataracts along the Nile River from Uganda to Egypt are home to the most important water-associated diseases in Africa, namely malaria, Snail Fever, River Blindness, and a new one: Rift Valley Fever. We?ll take a tour down the river starting at Lake Victoria in Uganda, and cover the nature of these tropical diseases, and the habitat requirements of the mosquitoes, aquatic snails and blackflies which spread them. Then we will look at the role that engineers and hydrologists have had in their control. Since construction of the Panama Canal in 1910 and creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1945, engineers have had an important role in controlling these diseases, but in recent years they have gradually been displaced by medically-oriented physicians at WHO in Geneva. Then a growing financial crisis at WHO has disabled most of their original broad-based strategies, and has reduced the WHO effort to repeatedly offering medication to people already infected. Thus we might be able to assist WHO in tackling these diseases, by proposing preventive measures which are relatively permanent. Examples will be given of dams and irrigation systems which have caused epidemics, and also of dams and other hydraulic structures which have eliminated important foci of these diseases. These examples might help us to develop design parameters for disease prevention, and could suggest research on new environmental control methods.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering

For more information, contact:
Sheila Anderson
617-258-5554

sherah@mit.edu

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Environmental Inspections in Mexico

Speaker: Andrew Foster (Brown)

Time: 2:30p–4:00p

Location: E51-376

Environmental Inspections in Mexico

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT/Harvard Development & Environment Seminar

For more information, contact:
Theresa Benevento
theresa@mit.edu

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011MacVicar Day 2011

"Energy Education Showcase: Preparing Tomorrow's Leaders"

Time: 2:30p–5:00p

Location: 32-155

Each year, MacVicar Day honors the memory of Margaret MacVicar '64, Sc.D. '67, MIT's first Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student Life, by recognizing the significant achievements made at MIT to enhance undergraduate education and by exploring the next steps forward.

From 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM, a panel of MIT faculty who teach subjects within the Energy Studies program will share their insights into the benefits and challenges of such interdisciplinary teaching and the goals and pedagogies of their specific subjects, highlighting the rise of energy literacy at MIT. A question and answer period will follow the panel remarks.

From 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM, Energy Student Groups and Energy UROP participants will display posters in the Stata TSMC Lobby where refreshments will be served.

All are welcome!


Web site:http://web.mit.edu/provost/macvicar/macvicarday2011.html

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MacVicar Fellows, Teaching and Learning Laboratory, Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education

For more information, contact:
Leann Dobranski
253-3371
leann@mit.edu

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Science, Technology, Policy Crossroads

Time: 4:00p–7:00p

Location: The Broad Institute - 5 Cambridge Center

This year?s symposium will comprise a introductory statement by a DC senior policy practitioner, a panel discussion by senior faculty members in the field of science and technology policy from both MIT and Harvard, break-out sessions on a variety of policy questions, and a reception with time for socializing and networking. The focus of this year?s Crossroads symposium is biotechnology policy. However, biotech will serve only as an example or basis for the deeper questions of how science, technology and policy can and should interact.


Web site: http://stpcrossroads.org/

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): TPSS, Science Policy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Nathaniel R Twarog
ntwarog@MIT.EDU

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Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Civic Media Session: "Civic Tools: The Latest from the Center for Future Civic Media"

Speaker: Featuring C4FCM's groundbreakers

Time: 5:00p–7:00p

Location: 32-141

In this annual tradition, see open-to-the-public demos of the latest, greatest civic media tools from researchers at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, the leader in cutting-edge community-based technology.

You'll see ways to hack bus data, how to make your own high-res map imagery on the cheap, brand new techniques for making websites that can call regular phones, and lots more.


Web site: http://civic.mit.edu/event/civic-media-session-civic-tools-the-latest-from-the-center-for-future-civic-media

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for Future Civic Media

For more information, contact:
Andrew Whitacre
(617) 324-0490
awhit@mit.edu

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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Materials Science and Engineering Seminar: Material structure in the nano-world: The nanostructure problem and modern scattering methods for solving it

Speaker: Prof. Simon Billinge, Columbia

Time: 4:00p–5:15p

Location: 66-110

Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Series
Sponsored by CMSE, DMSE, and MPC. To receive announcements about this series and other events of interest to the MIT materials community, subscribe to the matseminars mailing list at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/matseminars

To solve society's most pressing problems, such as sustainable energy, we will need transformative, rather than evolutionary, technologies. Many of these depend on finding materials with properties that are substantially improved over existing candidates, and we are increasingly turning to complex materials to find them. Complex materials have complicated structures, large unit cells, and multiple chemical species. They are often nanostructured: nanoparticulate, nanoporous, or having nanoscale chemical or electronic inhomogeneities or nanoscale structural distortions. A great challenge in researching these materials is to characterize their structure. Apart from the issue that the structure is inherently complicated, structures on the nanoscale cannot be solved using our tried and trusted technique of crystallography, the so-called nanostructure problem. We don't have robust tools for solving the structure of precisely the complex nanomaterials that we want to engineer. I will describe some of the promising scattering techniques that are emerging.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for Materials Science & Engineering, Materials Processing Center, Materials@MIT

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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Sloan Automotive Laboratory Spring 2011 Seminar Series

Speaker: Prof. Wai Cheng, Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Time: 4:15p–5:30p

Location: 37-212

Sloan Automotive Laboratory Spring 2011 Seminar Series
Seminar on topics related to engines, fuels, vehicle behavior, broader transportation energy questions presented by graduate students, faculty, researchers, and special guest speakers of the Sloan Automotive Laboratory.

Topic: Revisiting Methanol as an Alternative Transportation Fuel

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Mechanical Engineering Dept.

For more information, contact:
Janet Maslow
3-4529
jsabio@mit.edu

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Friday, March 11, 2011

Strategies for Managing and Improving Amtrak Service in the Northeast Corridor

Speaker: Joseph Boardman, Amtrak President & CEO

Time: 12:00p–2:00p

Location: W20-307

CTL Distinguished Speaker Series
This speaker series brings at least three speakers each semester to the MIT campus to talk about their expertise in fields that are studied by members of the Transportation Students Group, including transit, airlines, high speed rail, and intelligent transportation systems.

Part of the CTL sponsored Distinguished Speakers Series. Light lunch provided.

Web site: http://ctl.mit.edu/distinguished-speakers

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free

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Friday, March 11, 2011

The Evanescent: Tasting

Speaker: Amy Trubek, "Tasting and Attentiveness: Nature or Culture?" and Brad Weiss, "In Tastes, Lost and Found"

Time: 2:30p–5:00p

Location: 56-114

Sensing the Unseen

A session of "Sensing the Unseen," a John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and sponsored by MIT Anthropology. With discussant commentary by Rachel Black (BU) and Steven Shapin (Harvard). Join us for a multi-sensory experience!

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/unseen/species/evanescent.html

Open to: the general public
Cost: none

Sponsor(s): Anthropology

For more information, contact:
Amberly Steward
617-253-3065
asteward@mit.edu

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Friday, March 11, 2011

New Concepts in Molecular and Energy Transport Within Carbon Nanotubes: Thermopower Waves and Stochastically Resonant Ion Channels

Speaker: Michael S. Strano, Chemical Engineering, MIT

Time: 3:00p–4:00p

Location: 66-110

Chemical Engineering Department Seminar Series
See speakers, talk titles, and dates at http://web.mit.edu/cheme/news/seminar.html

Our laboratory has been interested in how carbon nanotubes can be utilized to illustrate new concepts in molecular and energy transfer. In the first example, we predict and demonstrate the concept of thermopower waves for energy generation. Coupling an exothermic chemical reaction with a thermally conductive CNT creates a self-propagating reactive wave driven along its length. We realize such waves in MWNT and show that they produce concomitant electrical pulses of high specific power >7 kW/kg. Such waves of high power density may find uses as unique energy sources. In the second system, we fabricate and study SWNT ion channels for the first time and show that the longest, highest aspect ratio, and smallest diameter synthetic nanopore examined to date, a 500 μm SWNT, demonstrates oscillations in electro-osmotic current at specific ranges of electric field, that are the signatures of coherence resonance, yielding self-generated rhythmic and frequency locked transport. The observed oscillations in the current occur due to a coupling between stochastic pore blocking and a diffusion limitation that develops at the pore mouth during proton transport.

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/cheme/news/seminar.html

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Chemical Engineering Department

For more information, contact:
Melanie Miller
617-253-6500
melmils@mit.edu

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Harvard

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March 7 | Monday | Seminar
US AID and the Social Entrepreneur
8:00-9:00 am| Fainsod Room (3rd floor, Littauer Building)

Hear about the conditions and challenges associated with starting and managing ventures in a variety of countries. M-RCBG Senior Fellow Alan Trager will moderate, and breakfast will be served. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Kokkalis Program.

Nancy Wildfeir-Field, Regional Alliance Advisor for Europe and Eurasia
US Agency for International Development (US AID)

Please RSVP to jennifer_nash@harvard.edu

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March 7 | Monday | ETIP/Consortium Energy Policy Seminar Series
Where do New Energy Technologies Come From? Using Patent Data to Identify the Importance and Sources of Knowledge Flows from Other Industries
12:00 – 1:30 pm| Weil Hall (ground floor, Belfer Building), Kennedy School

Greg Nemet
Visiting Scholar

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March 7
Climate, Hazards, Economy and Society: A System of Systems
Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Dean, Schmid College of Science, Vice Chancellor for Special Projects, Chapman University, Orange, CA.

12:00 p.m. Taubman 301 Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK St.
Contact Name: Christopher Kim cskim@chapman.edu

-------------------------------------

The Atlantic Herring Fishery and the Threat of Industrial Midwater Trawliing
Greg Wells of the Pew Environmental Group and the Herring Alliance will be discussing his work to protect and restore ocean wildlife and ecosystems in the northeast United States, from Virginia to Maine, by reforming the Atlantic herring fishery.

March 7

5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Pound Hall, Room 332, Harvard Law School
Contact Name: Derek Brain derekjbrain@gmail.com

-----------------------------------------

Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping TechnologiesSusan Landau, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University & CRCS
Tuesday, March 8, 12:00 pm
Griswold Hall Room 110, Harvard Law School
RSVP required for those attending in person to Amar Ashar (ashar@cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast) and archived on our site shortly after.

This talk is part of a lens on privacy and security, which will highlight various talks this semester that focus on issues related to privacy and security in digitally networked environments

The United States has moved large portions of business and commerce, including the control of critical infrastructure, onto IP-based networks. This reliance on information systems leaves the U.S. highly exposed and vulnerable to cyberattack, yet U.S. law enforcement remains focused on building wiretapping systems within communications infrastructure. By embedding eavesdropping mechanisms into communications technology itself, we build tools that could easily be turned against us.Indeed, such attacks have already occurred. In a world that has Al-Qaeda, nation-state economic espionage, and Hurricane Katrina, how do we get communications security right?

About Susan
Susan Landau is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for the 2010-2011 academic year. Her book, Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies will be published by MIT Press in February 2011; she is also the co-author, with Whitfield Diffie, of the 1998 Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption. From 1999-2010 Landau was at Sun Microsystems, first as Senior Staff Engineer and then as Distinguished Engineer. There she concentrated on the interplay between security and public policy, and she briefed government officials in both Washington and Europe on such disparate issues as security risks in surveillance mechanisms, digital rights management, and cryptographic export control. In 2009 she testified for the House Science Committee on Cybersecurity Activities at NIST's Information Technology Laboratory. Landau is currently a member of the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, established by the Center for Strategic and and International Studies, and serves on the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council and on the advisory committee for the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Before joining Sun, Landau was a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts and Wesleyan University. Landau is the recipient of the 2008 Women of Vision Social Impact Award, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an ACM Distinguished Engineer.

About the Privacy and Security Lens
In spring 2011, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) will highlight a series of talks that will focus on issues related to privacy and security in digitally networked environments. Events associated with this “lens” will seek to foster discussion and explore novel solutions to digital security and privacy issues, and aim to surface and engage with some of the technological, legal, political, economic, and behavioral tensions at work within these topics. This cross-disciplinary initiative will build on current CRCS and BCIS collaborative efforts, and seek to bring multiple perspectives and approaches to these issues.

-------------------------------------

To Tell The Truth: Combining Corporate Financial and Sustainability Reporting on a Global Scale
WHEN Tue., Mar. 8, 2011, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Kennedy School of Government
Weil Town Hall, Belfer Building (Lobby Level)
79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations
SPEAKER(S) Robert K. Massie, former president of Ceres, co-founder of the Global Reporting Initiative, Hauser senior visiting fellow
Steve Lydenberg, Hauser senior research fellow
TICKET INFO Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Maryann Leach: 617.495.1114
LINK http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/events/

-------------------------------------

The Science and Technology of the Deepwater Horizon Incident
Join members of the BP's Deepwater Production and Gulf Coast Restoration teams for a discussion on the technical and scientific issues of oil production in deep water systems such as those in the Gulf of Mexico, including responding to and remediating oil spills.

March 9

3:30 - 5:00 p.m. Belfer Center Library (3rd Floor, Littauer Building) Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK St.

-------------------------------------

March 9 | Wednesday | Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
How Many Economists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? A Natural Field Experiment on Technology Adoption
4:10-5:30| Littauer 382, Kennedy School

David Herberich
University of Chicago

-------------------------------------
Future of Energy: "Responsible Stewardship of U.S. Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Development"
WHEN Wed., Mar. 9, 2011, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Northwest Building B103, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Center for the Environment
SPEAKER(S) Michael R. Bromwich, director, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement
CONTACT INFO Brenda Hugot: bhugot@fas.harvard.edu
NOTE Bromwich is overseeing the fundamental restructuring of the former Minerals Management Service, which was responsible for overseeing oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf. Bromwich was previously a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C., and New York offices of Fried Frank, where he headed the firm's Internal Investigations, Compliance and Monitoring practice group. From 1994 to 1999, Bromwich served as inspector general for the Department of Justice. As inspector general, he headed the law enforcement agency principally responsible for conducting criminal and administrative investigations into allegations of corruption and misconduct involving the 120,000 employees of the Department of Justice.
LINK http://environment.harvard.edu/michael-bromwich

--------------------------------

There and Back Again: Deep-Sea Exploration to the Earth's Most Extreme Habitats
March 9, 2011
6:00pm
http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/lectures_and_special_events/index.php
Geological Lecture Hall 24 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA

The majority of our biosphere consists of deep ocean, but to date we have explored very little of it. Indeed, just thirty years ago scientists discovered entirely new ecosystems thriving on chemicals from within the Earth (rather than from sunlight). Harvard biologist Peter Girguis, Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard, will highlight some of these amazing deep-sea explorations and discuss current research, including the role of deep-sea microbes in mitigating oil spill disasters. Free and open to the public.

-----------------------------------

March 10, 2011
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Neural Mechanisms of Attention
Location: Northwest B103 (at the end of Everett Street, Cambridge)
Name: Eric Knudsen
Speaker Affiliation: Stanford University
Attention allows us to select the most important information at any moment in time and to enhance and differentially process that information while ignoring other information. This amazing capacity is essential to nearly all cognitive processes. But, how does attention work at the level of cells and circuits? We are addressing this question by studying circuits that contribute to attention in birds. We have identified a midbrain network, including structurally specialized cholinergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic circuits, that perform many of the fundamental computations underlying attention, including filtering for stimulus salience, competitive selection of the most salient stimulus, and top-down enhancement of the quality of information. We study the properties of these circuits both in vivo and in brain slice preparations. I will discuss our current understanding of how the computations performed by these circuits contribute to attention.

---------------------------------

'Failed States' and Development Aid: The Impact of Labels in Global Interventionism
WHEN Thu., Mar. 10, 2011, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Perkins Room, Rubenstein-415, Harvard Kennedy School
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Teresa Cravo, associate, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
LINK http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/events/5431/failed_states_and_development_aid.html

--------------------------------

Citizens United v. Democracy?
WHEN Thu., Mar. 10, 2011, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Austin Hall 111, Harvard Law School
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
SPEAKER(S) Joshua Cohen, Martha Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society; professor of political science, philosophy, and law, Stanford University
CONTACT INFO ethics@harvard.edu
NOTE Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be available.
LINK http://ethics.harvard.edu/component/content/article/40-general-content/164-currentlecture

-------------------------------

Nanoporous Black Silicon by Liquid Etch: Optics, Photovoltaics and Photoelectrochemistry
March 11, 2011
4:00pm
Contact Name: Brenda Hugot
bhugot@fas.harvard.edu
Maxwell Dworkin G115 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Featuring Howard Branz,Principal Scientist in the National Center for Photovoltaics, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
----------------

Northeastern

----------------

Monday, March 7, 2011
Barnett Lectureship

The Challenge of Sustainability

Guest Speaker: Professor Richard N. Zare, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University

Reception: 3:30 - 4:00 PM, Raytheon Amphitheater, 240 Egan
Lecture: 4:00 - 5:00 PM, Raytheon Amphitheater, 240 Egan, Boston, MA

------

Tufts

------


The Global Development And Environment Institute Presents

The 2011 Leontief Prize for
Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought

“Towards a New Economics of Climate Change”

Award recipients and lecturers:

Lord Nicholas Stern
IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics
Author of the “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change”
Cambridge University Press, 2007

Dr. Martin Weitzman
Professor of Economics at Harvard University
Author of “On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change”and other landmark papers in environmental economics.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 5:00-7:30 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall, Medford Campus, Tufts University

Ceremony and addresses will be followed by a reception.

This event is free and open to the public.
Directions to Tufts Medford Campus can be found on the web at: http://www.tufts.edu/home/maps/

For more information about the event, contact Lauren Denizard at 617-627-3530 Or visit our Web site: www.gdae.org
Lord Nicholas Stern Dr. Martin Weitzman
Co-sponsored with:
The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); The Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE);
Energy, Climate, and Innovation Program (ECI), Center for International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP), Fletcher

-------

Other

-------

*Monday, March 7 from 6PM-8:30PM* ***SoJust Skillshares are the 1st Monday of every month - mark your calendar!***
*Skillshare: Fundraising - Getting Past the Fear of Asking* *
*by Robbie Samuels, SoJust Co-Founder and Trainer/Consultant at
www.RobbieSamuels.com
at The NonProfit Center by South Station
*Do you want to raise money to support the causes and organizations you care about?* **This engaging coaching session focuses on getting past the fear of asking and how to avoid some common mistakes. Learn an easy way to sort through contact lists and build a strong prospect list based on the 3 Cs of fundraising: capacity, connection and commitment. Learn specific language for how to make a strong ask, based on the relationship-building tips shared in *Art of the Schmooze*, and ten tips that will make your next fundraising plan a success. "If you are afraid to ask for money, kick yourself out of the way and let the cause talk."
RSVP: http://www.sojust.org/events/16373242/

----------------------------------

The topic of the March Growing Green Innovators in Business Network (GIBN) Conversation will be Evidence for Sustainability: Trends in Benchmarking and Reporting and the call will be held on Tuesday March 8 at 2pm ET. To join the call, please RSVP to info@digin.org. The call-in number is: (760) 569-9000 and the code is: 160031#.

And please remember that Growing GIBN Conversations will be held on the 2nd Tuesday of every month in 2011. These calls will focus on the topics that are most compelling to you -- a network of green innovators in business -- and draw on your experience and ideas. Some of these topics may be a continuation of the themes that emerged during Solutions Labs events. Others may be suggested during the conversations or during other GIBN calls and events. Please feel free to propose topics.

-------------------------------------

NESEA's Building Energy Conference
March 8-10, 2011, in Boston, MA.
BuildingEnergy is the only conference where architects, designers, planners, builders, policymakers, manufacturers, and installers work together to determine what's possible. Conference sessions range from emerging trends in renewable energy to deep energy retrofits of commercial and residential buildings. The Trade Show features 160 exhibitors with the latest sustainable technologies and products.

http://www.nesea.org/be11/

----------------------------

Mass Innovation Night

• Date: 3/9/2011
• Location: Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142
• Time: 6:00pm - 8:30pm
• Audience: Innovators, entrepreneurs, social media mavens, job seekers, students, seekers of inspiration and knowledge
• Twitter: @massinno or #bostonazurehack
• Description: Mass Innovation Night is a free monthly product launch party and networking event. Every month ten companies introduce new products and the social media community blogs, tweets, posts video and pictures, and in general helps increase the buzz around innovative new products.
RSVP http://massinnovationnights.com/event-rsvp

-------------------------------------
Hattie Nestel, Anti Nuclear Activist, Presents a 40 min Power Point presentation, followed by a question/answer session.

When: Thur March 10, 7 pm
Where: Peter Ames' Home,

90 Ivy St. Brookline, 02448
Peter's telephone number is 617 731-0512
Sponsored by Brookline PeaceWorks
Amy's telephone number 617 738-8029

T Directions:
Cleveland Circle Green Line, get off at St Mary's stop, the first stop when you come up from underground,
Walk 2 short blocks up St Mary's Street, towards Cambridge, and turn left onto Ivy Street. Peter's home is 1/2 block down.
(for driving check http://www.mapquest.com)

Did you know:
if there was a Chernobyl type melt down at Vermont Yankee, the Quabbin Resevoir would be irradiated and would not be able to supply water to the city of Boston?


Hattie with Francis Crowe and the Women of the Shut It Down affinity group of Citizen's Awareness Network, offering their reasons for shutting down Vermont Yankee at Windham County Court.

Hattie is an activist extraordinaire, participating many times in civil disobedience at Vermont Yankee, as well as peace walks through Vermont cities, and an Interfaith Peace Walk Towards a Nuclear Free Future, from London to Geneva, April to June 2008.

See her website for more info:
http://peacehq.tripod.com/OSHN/hn-home.html

----------------------------------

Neighborhood Weatherization Skill-Share
Sunday, March 13th, 10am-3pm, 41 Brent St., Codman Sq, Dorchester

Making windows less drafty

The federal government hasn't cut carbon yet, and the state's energy efficiency programs don't go far enough, so let's do it ourselves!

· Learn skills you can take back to your own home
· Share lunch and celebrate with friends and neighbors
· Help toweatherize the home of two long-time community activists
The work list includes sealing air leaks in basement and attic, making windows and doors less drafty, and using a blower door to measure energy savings.

Sign up on-line or by calling 857-544-6846. Co-organized with Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), a Cambridge-based co-op bringing neighbors together to weatherize our homes and take the energy future into our own hands.

------------------------------------

March 13th
11 am
GRACE ROSS
"Main Street Smarts: Who Got Us Into this Economic Mess and How We Get Through It"

Grace will explore the story of Main Street, what we've experienced and the challenges for reversing the economy for the regular people of Massachusetts. She will explore the need to reengage in a political process that is supposed to be for the people. In the long term ramp up to the market crash and the immediate foreclosure crisis the people were force fed the mythology of free markets and supply side economics, we need to equip ourselves with the tools to fight back against these lies.

Grace Ross brings 25 years of experience working with the grassroots and creating policy change from the municipal all the way up to the national and international political arenas. Among her many campaigns Grace is currently actively involved with the Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending, fighting to keep people in their homes.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT US

Rev. Jason Lydon, Minister
Community Church of Boston
565 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 266-6710
(617) 266-0449 (fax)
info (at) commchurch.org
http://www.communitychurchofboston.org

-----------------------

HEET EfficiencyWare party

(like a Tupperware party for efficiency products)

Sunday March 13th, 6 to 8 p.m.
Private home, on Prospect Hill in Somerville
Food and drinks will be served

We’ll show how to install our favorite energy- and water-saving products from Smartstrips to LEDs, while we discuss how much you could save from them. Through EFI’s generous discount to us, we will be able to sell you everything at standard EFI prices, while keeping 30% of the proceeds for HEET. This is an experiment to see if this type of event could create a revenue stream for us and get great products out to you. Food and drink served. Every guest will get some free water efficiency devices that can save you over $400 in water and heat over the next decade.

Email AudreySchulman@gmail.com to get the address and RSVP. She’ll arrange car sharing for those who want it.


------------
Upcoming

------------


Wednesday, March 16
11am - 1pm
Location: online



Featured Speakers




11:00AM EST
Driving to 1 Million Electric Vehicles by 2015
Patrick Davis, Program Manager,Vehicle Technologies
U.S. Department of Energy




12:00PM EST
Challenges of Electric Vehicle Integration
Clay Luthy, Global Distributed Energy, Resource Manager
IBM Global Energy & Utilities



Attend this complimentary event for U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle Technology Program updates and to learn about the challenges involved in ensuring an effective grid integration and seamless user experience.



Contact: http://www.virtualenergyforum.com
newsletters@virtualenergyforum.com
--------------------------------

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Fire in the Heart: White Activists for Racial Justice

Harvard sociologist Mark Warren uncovers the dynamic processes through which some
white Americans become activists for racial justice [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7wih55cab&et=1104449747173&s=217&e=001DKbjUrRpB-6qAw6qZKRL7KAVDV0WrVEmgcUbqXnEa001hLPAUovvX9XZ-TW6bHJfKF71lXjDKHKqIKMQBxcWEZ2E2Bhv_iKdmpDupikTbBIuNfwKlyAO0Gt0DaoKUZb10k7u-f7UmvDhqCKY7i0Cbw==]

Cambridge Forum
The First Parish in Cambridge
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
www.cambridgeforum.org [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7wih55cab&et=1104449747173&s=217&e=001DKbjUrRpB-5of3dakCr4HiT9q0asS8mXVVrIZ2V0AiOVVCWtQPhlVVoqnsAB2Wyg9g2ss9e8SnYH6MZ-HEIh_DNzdYvWpakjY4yowi5qI56hR7jLEXodZQ==]
Cambridge Forum is recorded and edited for public radio broadcast. Edited CDs are
available by contacting Cambridge Forum [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7wih55cab&et=1104449747173&s=217&e=001DKbjUrRpB-5of3dakCr4HiT9q0asS8mXVVrIZ2V0AiOVVCWtQPhlVVoqnsAB2Wyg9g2ss9e8SnYH6MZ-HEIh_DNzdYvWpakjY4yowi5qI56hR7jLEXodZQ==]
or calling 617-495-2727. Select forums can be viewed in their entirety on the Forum Network.

---------------------------------

Gragger/Noisemaker! The Workmen's Circle's 4th Annual Radical Purim Party Celebrating Economic Justice!

Saturday, March 19th, 8pm - midnight
At Spontaneous Celebrations, 45 Danforth St, Jamaica Plain
Sliding scale $10-20

*Bloco AfroBrazil*
*DJ Annie R U Ok*
*And a unique, never-before-seen Purim shpiel (play)*

We will honor work that is being done locally to protect workers' rights and fight back against bad employers. The Gragger, the Jewish noisemaker, is traditionally used to drown out the name of our foes - join us to make some serious noise in a rowdy call for justice and joy!

Live music! Costume contest! Cash bar! Performance!

Contact Leah for more info: leah@circleboston.org
www.circleboston.org

Leah Madsen
Program and Membership Organizer
Boston Workmen's Circle
leah@circleboston.org
617-566-6281

----------------------------------

Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy for Multifamily Residential Buildings Workshop – Saturday, March 19, Cambridge City Hall Annex
A morning workshop for owners of multifamily residential buildings on energy efficiency and renewable energy options and opportunities
Sponsored by the Cambridge Energy Alliance, Massachusetts Rental Housing Association, and City of Cambridge
For more info, contact John Bolduc, jbolduc@cambridgema.gov, 617-349-4628

---------------------------
Urban Gardening Book Club

We'll be discussing the book Farm City, by Novella Carpenter, and how it relates to community and urban food production at Roxbury Community College on 3/22 at 6:00 pm (Academic Bldg 3). All are welcome! We'll be selecting the next book at the meeting, but if you're interested and unable to make it, feel free to send me your suggestions in advance. Free to contact me with any additional questions.

The event is supported by the Boston Gardener's Council and The Roxbury Community College Service Learning Garden Project. In addition, event information is available on the page below:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143456282386051

Thank you very much!
Stephanie

--
Stephanie Bostic
MS in Agriculture, Food & the Environment 2010
Tufts University

Blogging about food and fiber: http://groundcherry.wordpress.com

-------------------------------------

Eco-Municipalities Talk - Wednesday, March 23, 7:00 pm, Cambridge Main Library Auditorium

Speakers: Peter Britt, Sustainability Coordinator, Portsmouth, NH John Bohenko, City Manager, Portsmouth, NH; Sarah James from the Institute for Eco-Municipality Education & Assistance will give a brief introduction about eco-municipalities.

In November, 2007, Portsmouth, New Hampshire formally decided to become an Eco-Municipality, when its City Council passed a resolution declaring that the following four sustainability objectives would guide its municipal operations:

1. Reduce dependence on fossil fuels, underground metals, and minerals
2. Reduce dependence upon synthetic chemicals and other unnatural substances.
3. Reduce encroachment upon nature.
4. Meet human needs fairly and efficiently

An Eco-Municipality uses a comprehensive, integrated approach to creating a sustainable city.

Find out how Portsmouth became an Eco-Municipality and how the city takes the systems approach to sustainability now.

Sponsored by the office of Vice Mayor Henrietta Davis, the Cambridge Renewable Energy Team (CREATe), and the Cambridge Energy Alliance.

--------------------------------------

Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk Univesity
“WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, and Our Right to Know”
with Daniel Domscheit-Berg (former WikiLeaks staffer) and Herbert Snorasson (former WikiLeaks staffer); moderator Wendy Ballinger (Ford Hall Forum Board member)
Thursday, March 24, 8-9:00 am [special breakfast forum]
Moot Court Room, Suffolk University Law School

Although Herbert Snorasson and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, both former staffers at WikiLeaks, cannot enter the United States for fear of arraignment, they join us live by video fromIceland and Germany to answer questions about the necessity of and danger in leaking state secrets. With Wendy Ballinger, Treasurer and former Executive Director of Ford Hall Forum, Snorasson and Domscheit-Berg discuss why their newest venture, OpenLeaks, is superior to Assange’s WikiLeaks model and other various “Leaks” sites launching around the world. The two will tell us how and why they became involved with WikiLeaks, particularly their idea on the public’s right to know versus global security. Signed copies of the book will be sold following the presentation.
-------------------------------------------------------------

*Compelling Conversation with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
Civil Rights Activist and Former Champion Boxer
Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.*

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a formidable boxer who had won the European Light Welterweight Championship for two years in a row and knocked out Emile Griffith in the first round when his promising career was cut short. In 1966, he was falsely arrested for the murder of three white people in a bar. Sentenced to a triple life-sentence, Carter always maintained his innocence. Subjected to a nineteen-year travesty of justice, he was finally set free in 1985 by a federal court. His story was immortalized in a Bob Dylan song and made into a Hollywood movie starring Denzel Washington.

Carter has chronicled his own life in two books, _The Sixteenth Round_, and 2011?s _Eye of_ _the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom_. He now devotes much of his time to speaking out on behalf of the wrongly convicted.

*Bunker Hill Community College**in A300 Auditorium*

250 New Rutherford Ave.
Boston, Massachusetts 02129-2995
Free but you need to register for tickets at the website below*
*
Compelling Conversations Speaker Series


Directions

http://www.bhcc.mass.edu/inside/64

-----------------------------

Think Global, Act Local:
A Community Climate Action Roundtable

Thursday, March 24, 6pm-7:30pm, Suffolk University, 73 Tremont St.

All politics are local but many problems are global. How do neighborhood-based groups form effective partnerships with larger organizations to bring global issues home and amplify grassroots voices? Join BostonCAN and representatives from other neighborhood-based and national sustainability organizations as we discuss stories of successful collaboration between community-based organizations and national groups that highlight best practices. Speakers will include Cindy Luppi from Clean Water Action discussing stopping coal power in eastern Mass and Mela Bush from Greater Four Corners Action Coalition onimproving mass transit in Dorchester.
Free and open to the public. Snacks provided. RSVP at on-line https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115453565198269 or by calling 857-544-6846.

------------------------------------------------

Babson Energy and Environmental Conference

Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Future

Register Now at http://beec2011conference.eventbrite.com/

Register now to attend the 5th Annual Babson Energy and Environmental Conference on March 31st, 2011 at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.

This year’s theme is “Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Future”, and we will explore how innovation and entrepreneurship will play a pivotal role in shaping the new green economy in the years to come. We will hear severalexciting keynotes from high profile entrepreneurs:

• Dr. Bart Riley, Co-Founder, A123 Systems (NASDAQ: AONE)
• Sheeraz Haji, CEO, Cleantech Group
• Nancy Floyd, Founder & Managing Director, Nth Power
• Kathy Brown, Senior Vice President – Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility, Verizon
Other featured speakers

• Leonard Schlesinger, President, Babson College
• Mark Donohue, Clean Technology Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Babson College
• Peter Rothstein, President, New England Clean Energy Council
• Cynthia Curtis, Chief Sustainability Officer, CA Technologies
• Rob Pratt, Chairman & CEO, GreenerU
• Clint Wilder, Senior Editor, Clean Edge & Author, The Clean Tech Revolution
• Chuck McDermott, General Partner, Rockport Capital
• Jeramy Lemieux, Head of Climate Savers, Diversey, Inc.
• Greg Dixon, SVP of Marketing, EnerNOC
• Kathy Loftus, Global Leader for Sustainability Engineering, Maintenance & Energy Management, Whole Foods
• Michael Bakas, Senior Vice President – Renewable Energy, Ameresco
• Robert Gough, Founder, Port Meadow Tech
• Bob Reese, President/ Co-Founder, Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery
• Jonathan Nash, Director of Business Development, NewStream
• Patrick Cloney, Executive Director, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
• David O’Connor, Senior Vice President for Energy and Clean Technology, ML Strategies, LLC
• Kim Stevenson, Manager of New Technologies, CT Clean Energy Fund
And Many More!

Our engaging panel sessions will focus on several main topics:

• Innovations in Cleantech and Renewable Energy
• Sustainable Business Practices
• Financing Strategies
• New Energy Policy & Implications
• Responsible Consumption and Disposal of Food, Water & Waste
Our Entrepreneurs Showcase will give a glimpse of some of the newest innovators in the industry. Further, you will have the opportunity to listen to panelists from Enernoc, WholeFoods, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, CA Technologies, Diversy and many more. Our goal is to show that sustainable business practices are not at odds with creating profit and growing a company.

The world needs more entrepreneurs and leaders focused on preserving the earth’s resources while building a more sustainable future. We hope that you will join us for this exciting event, and be inspired to become part of the next wave of change!

For additional information, please contact Jatin Ahuja (jahuja1@babson.edu), Adam Ostaszewski (aostaszewski1@babson.edu) and Joel Robbins (jrobbins1@babson.edu)

----------------------------

Digital Media and Popular Uprisings

March 31, 2011
6-8 p.m.
Lesley University
University Hall Amphitheater
1815 Mass. Ave.
2nd Flr.
Cambridge, MA 02140

Google Map: http://bit.ly/edM4fz


The importance of digital media in building the recent wave of popular
uprisings in the Middle East has been widely heralded in the global
press. But how are social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and
digital communication devices like texters, cell phones and PDAs really
being used on the ground to help organize millions of people towards a
common goal - democracy. And is it true that these movements for
democracy in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and beyond are completely
spontaneous and being organized on the fly with the help of modern
technology? Or is there more to the story?

Lesley University and Open Media Boston have invited three experts on
digital media and grassroots organizing to speak to these and related
issues. Each brings a unique perspective to the discussion.

Ethan Zuckerman is co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices
and senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Jillian York is a writer and freedom of expression activist who studies
Internet controls and online activism, with a focus on the Arab world.
She is a project coordinator at the Berkman Center for Internet and
Society.

Suren Moodliar is a coordinator of Massachusetts Global Action and an
organizer of the Majority Agenda Project. He is deeply interested in
networks and social change.

The panel will be chaired by Jason Pramas, Editor/Publisher of Open
Media Boston, www.openmediaboston.org, and introduced by a
representative of Lesley University.

Doors will open at 5:45 p.m. There will be light refreshments served in
the Atrium just outside the Amphitheater. The event is free and open to
the public.

For more information, or press inquiries, please email
info@openmediaboston.org.

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The Sociology Department at Northeastern University is hosting our 2nd annual globalization symposium on March 31, with a focus on global commodity chains, neoliberalism, and human rights. The evening session, in particular, will explore issues related to politics and activism surrounding global commodities such as coffee, coca cola, drugs, arms, as well as clothing and apparel.


What: Global Commodities, Chained and Unchained- 2nd Annual Conference on Globalization at Northeastern University

When: March 31, 2011

Panel 1- 2:45 to 4:30pm (Global Commodity Chains- a Critical Approach)

Panel 2- 6:00 to 8:00pm (Global Commodity Chains and Human Rights)

Where: Northeastern University, 20 West Village F

For more Information, see: http://globalcommodities2011.blogspot.com/


Conference Description:

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern University is pleased to host its 2nd annual conference on globalization. We are excited to bring together a group of prominent scholars to discuss their recent research on global commodity chains and to critically assess the political and cultural implications of neoliberal globalization.

Presenters at the evening session, including Carolyn Nordstrom (Notre Dame University), Robert Ross (Clark University), Edward Fischer (Vanderbilt University) and Robert Foster, will discuss the interconnections between commodity chains and human rights and the potential paths of resistance available to populations marginalized within the current neoliberal order.

Presenters at the afternoon session, including Catherine Dolan (Oxford University), Andrew Schrank (University of New Mexico), Robert Foster (University of Rochester) and Damla Isik (Western Connecticut State College), will draw on their ethnographic field work to discuss critical approaches to global commodity chain research and theory.

This event is free and open to the public. The Department of Sociology-Anthropology at Northeastern hopes you can join us for what promises to be an exciting, politically inspirational, and intellectually rich encounter. For more information on the conference, including times and location, please visit our blog at http://globalcommodities2011.blogspot.com.

Hope to see you there!

Jeffrey S. Juris
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Northeastern University
www.networkingfutures.com

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Resource

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Boston Food System

"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."

The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas. Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.

Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities. Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers. Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.

It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs

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Artisan Asylum http://artisansasylum.com/

Sprout & Co: Community Driven Investigations http://thesprouts.org/studios

Greater Boston Solidarity Economy Mapping Project http://www.transformationcentral.org/solidarity/mapping/mapping.html
a project by Wellesley College students that invites participation

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Links to events at 60 colleges and universities at Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com

Thanks to

Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the
Boston Area http://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/site02.html

Boston Area Computer User Groups http://www.bugc.org/

http://www.mitenergyclub.org/calendar/mit_events_template

http://sustainability.mit.edu/

http://www.environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/

http://green.harvard.edu/events

http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/tabid/57/Default.aspx

http://pechakuchaboston.org/blog/

http://boston.nerdnite.com/

http://www.meetup.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/

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