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.
If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) Events
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Index
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Full event information follows the Index and notices of my latest writings.
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Monday, February 22
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10am Neurocomputational systems for decision-making
12pm MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS) - Eloise Marais, Harvard
12pm The Paris Agreement
12:15pm Pepsin Era - Artificially Digested Foods and the Eating Body
12:30pm Architecture Lecture: Amir Roth, The Present and Future of DOE's Energy Modeling Program
4pm Dean's Distinguished Lecture: Consumers, Corporations, and Public Health
4pm The Longer-Term Effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on Health and Well-being
4pm The Longer-Term Effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on Health and Well-being
4pm Reparatory Justice for Global Black Enslavement: The Greatest Political Movement of The 21st Century
5:30pm The Blockchain: Enabling a Distributed & Connected Energy Future
5:30pm The Blockchain: Enabling a Distributed & Connected Energy Future
6pm Women Gamers, Women Game-Makers
6:30pm Re-thinking Local: A Cross-regional Dialogue about Strategies for Local Practice in Cities
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Tuesday, February 23
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8:30am Boston Society of Architects Tiny House Presentation
9am Digital Preservation UnConference by NDSR
12pm Brown Bag: Towards an Open Science Publishing Platform
12pm Developing Effective Citizen Responses to Discrimination and Harassment Online
12:30pm Planetary Lunch Colloquium Series (PlCS): Exploring Europa: A Potentially Habitable World
12:30pm Slow Way Home: How the Japanese Have Preserved a Universal Walk-to-School System
12:30pm Rethinking Law and Planning
3pm E. J. Dionne
4pm CRISPR Biology and the Future of Genome Engineering
6:30pm Re-thinking Local: A Cross-regional Dialogue about Strategies for Local Practice in Cities
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Tuesday, February 23
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8:30am Boston Society of Architects Tiny House Presentation
9am Digital Preservation UnConference by NDSR
12pm Brown Bag: Towards an Open Science Publishing Platform
12pm Developing Effective Citizen Responses to Discrimination and Harassment Online
12:30pm Planetary Lunch Colloquium Series (PlCS): Exploring Europa: A Potentially Habitable World
12:30pm Slow Way Home: How the Japanese Have Preserved a Universal Walk-to-School System
12:30pm Rethinking Law and Planning
3pm E. J. Dionne
4pm CRISPR Biology and the Future of Genome Engineering
4pm The Implications of the Paris Climate Agreement
4pm Social Ties and Local Governance: Toward a Theory of Social Institutions
4pm Social Ties and Local Governance: Toward a Theory of Social Institutions
4:30pm The "New Turkey" and Individual Freedoms: Is there Still Room for Coexistence?
5:30pm Askwith Forum: The Pursuit of Hipponess
6pm Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism—From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
5:30pm Askwith Forum: The Pursuit of Hipponess
6pm Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism—From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
6pm Developing a planning tool for rural electrification
6pm A Bike Safety Forum - How Can We Change State Law To Make Cycling Safer?
6:30pm Reverse Engineering, and Repairing, the Brain and Mind
6pm A Bike Safety Forum - How Can We Change State Law To Make Cycling Safer?
6:30pm Reverse Engineering, and Repairing, the Brain and Mind
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Wednesday, February 24
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12pm The American Experience of Nation-Building in South Vietnam
Wednesday, February 24
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12pm The American Experience of Nation-Building in South Vietnam
2pm Learning in Strategic Environments: Theory and Data
2:45pm Experimental Evidence on the Demand for and Costs of Rural Electrification
4pm February Colloquium - The Affect Agenda: How Image and Emotion Influence Voters
4pm LOHAFEX - Lessons from the last iron fertilization experiment
4pm Europe and the Geopolitics of Energy: The Economics of Shale Gas & Tight Oil Production
4pm Sexual Violence in the Context of Armed Conflict’s Criminal, Corrupt and Violent Economies
4:15pm Are There Environmental Benefits from Driving Electric Vehicles? The Importance of Local Factors
5pm Conversation with Karim Ben Khelifa and Fox Harrell: VR. AI, and Installation Art
5pm Intersections of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Science: China, India, and Israel
5:30pm EBC Young Environmental Professionals Program: Sustainable, Responsible, Impact (SRI) Investing
6pm The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
6pm Great Decisions Series | Cities and Climate Change: Boston at the Paris Climate Conference
6pm Securing the Internet of Things: An Investor's View
6:30pm CSR and Sustainability: From the Margins to the Mainstream
7pm Electricity Vision Webinar
7pm Rising Tide: Planning for Boston's Uncertain Future
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Thursday, February 25
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7:45am The International Role of Biometric Data
Thursday, February 25
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7:45am The International Role of Biometric Data
8:30am Policy Podium: Net Metering
12pm Mapping Stories of the City: Teaching Urban Environmental Justice
12pm Experiences in science and risk communication with the public about the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster
12pm The Role of Microsystems for a Clean Energy Future
12pm Wicked Good Causes
3pm Thinking Together--Harvard Catalyst: A Mechanism for Understanding Climate & Inclusion
4pm Future of Food: A talk with America’s Test Kitchen co-founder Christopher Kimball
4:15pm How Numbers Lie: Intersectional Violence and the Quantification of Race
4:15pm Varieties of Helping the Poor: The Institutional Roots of Informal and Organized Giving of Money and Time across Europe
4:30pm Starr Forum: With Friends Like These: Discussion addressing US allies and ISIS
5pm TCN’s UPSTART Roundtable: Music Innovation with Panos Panay, Founder of Sonicbids & Berklee ICE
5pm Medical Ethics in Emergencies, from Katrina to Ebola and Beyond
5pm Vincent Brown: "Designing Histories of Slavery for the Database Age"
5:30pm Challenges and Opportunities in the Music Industry
6pm Migration & Human Trafficking: A Panel Discussion with BU Experts
6pm Signs of a Warming World
6pm Gang Peace to Street Peace: Talk at Harvard
6:30pm Cities of the Future - Real Life Examples of Cognitive Computing
6:30pm Diversified Thought @ Hatch Fenway
6:45pm Making Music Technology: What is the future of this Creative Industry?
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Friday, February 26
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9am The New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable (149)
Friday, February 26
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9am The New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable (149)
9:30am 2016 MassDiGI Game Challenge - General Admission
12pm Urban air pollution: It's getting better all the time?
12:30pm How Machine Learning Helps Count Casualties in Syria
3pm Lessons in Censorship: How Schools and Courts Subvert Students' First Amendment Rights
3pm IRAN: Women Only
7pm Cinematheque: An Evening with Robb Moss
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Saturday, February 27
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11am History of Black Urban Farming in Boston and Food as Medicine
Saturday, February 27
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11am History of Black Urban Farming in Boston and Food as Medicine
3pm JP Time Exchange Birthday Party & Stuff Swap
4pm Sustainability and Environmental Management: Panel & HEEC Social
7pm How to Save the World
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Monday, February 29
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12pm MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS)
Monday, February 29
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12pm MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS)
12pm Clean Power Plan Model Rules: Pathways for Implementation
12:15pm Responsible Innovation and Public Values in the Dutch Shale Gas Controversy
1pm Environmental Impacts of Electricity: a Life-Cycle Perspective
4pm Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness
7pm The American Slave Coast
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Tuesday, March 1
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8am Boston TechBreakfast: March 2016
Tuesday, March 1
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8am Boston TechBreakfast: March 2016
11:45am To Grow an Arm: Regeneration and Biomaterials Go Hand in Hand
12pm Nancy Gibbs, TIME
12pm The Future of Floating Forests in a Changing World
12pm The Big Reverse of the Web: Are Our Policies and Standards Ready?
3:15pm The 2016 Leonie Gordon Lecture: Working With Three Nobel Laureates: Sam Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and Dario Fo
4:30pm Knight Science Journalism Seminar with Rosalind Picard
5:45pm Talk the Walk, a conversation with Swiss explorer Sarah Marquis
6pm BASG March 1: Carbon Realities
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Hope Dies Last
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Monday, February 22
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Neurocomputational systems for decision-making
Monday, February 22
10:00am - 11:00am
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker(s): Bradley Doll, Ph.D.
My research program seeks to understand the human brain's multiple decision-making systems. I am interested in the computations that these systems implement to produce behavior, and how these systems cooperate and compete with one another. In this talk, I show how reinforcement learning models provide a rich computational framework for understanding these systems by making precise quantitative predictions for brain and behavior. I will present empirical tests of these predictions using behavioral, neuroimaging, and genetic measures. These studies illustrate the utility of this computational approach for the study of decision-making, yielding insight into the neurocomputational substrates of the brain's decision systems, the behaviors these systems produce, and how their relative balance affects decisions.
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MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS) - Eloise Marais, Harvard
Monday, February 22,
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Eloise Marais (Harvard)
I study degradation of air quality in Africa associated with rapid population and economic growth and the associated deleterious effects of air pollution on crops, non-crop vegetation, and human health. I have also developed an aqueous-phase chemistry mechanism for improved representation of yields and composition of isoprene secondary organic aerosol in the Southeast US.
Event website: http://bit.ly/1P33yOq
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The Paris Agreement
Monday, February 22
12:00PM - 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
HUCE faculty associate Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, and Robert Stowe, Executive Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program and Manager, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements
HKS Energy Policy Seminar Series
This series is presented by the Energy Technology Innovation Policy/Consortium for Energy Policy Research at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. Lunch will be provided.
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
(617) 495-8693
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Pepsin Era - Artificially Digested Foods and the Eating Body
Monday, February 22
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room, 24 Oxford Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge
Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
Lisa Haushofer, Harvard, History of Science/Chemical Heritage Foundation
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Contact Name: Shana Rabinowich
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Architecture Lecture: Amir Roth, The Present and Future of DOE's Energy Modeling Program
Monday, February 22
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
MIT Architecture Lecture Series
Part of the Spring 2016 Architecture and Building Technology Group Lecture Series.
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture, Building Technology Program
For more information, contact: Hannah Loomis
617-253-7494
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Dean's Distinguished Lecture: Consumers, Corporations, and Public Health
WHEN Mon., Feb. 22, 2016, 4 p.m.
WHERE Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Kresge G2, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Health Sciences, Law, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Chan Office of the Dean
SPEAKER(S) John A. Quelch, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
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The Longer-Term Effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami on Health and Well-being
WHEN Mon., Feb. 22, 2016, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
SPEAKER(S) Duncan Thomas, Norb F. Schaefer Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics, Global Health and Public Policy in the Department of Economics, Duke University
COST Open to all faculty, research scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and students. No RSVP required.
CONTACT INFO ksmall@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Duncan Thomas has spent over a decade researching the aftermath and recovery of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Thomas and colleagues interviewed the same respondents annually for five years after the tsunami, and again 10 and 12 years after the tsunami. The resulting population-representative longitudinal survey data provides insight into the longer-term consequences of the disaster on a broad array of indicators of well-being. In this seminar, Dr. Thomas will trace the reconstruction of lives and livelihoods in the aftermath of the disaster, paying particular attention to the roles of personal and family resources, kinship and social networks, community strength, and the receipt and leveraging of external aid.
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Reparatory Justice for Global Black Enslavement: The Greatest Political Movement of The 21st Century
WHEN Mon., Feb. 22, 2016, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHEREHarvard, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Presented jointly by The History of American Capitalism Workshop at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History and The Weatherhead Initiative on Global History
SPEAKER(S) Sir Hilary Beckles, University of the West Indies
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.facebook.com/events/1558906251092226/
LINK http://warrencenter.fas.harvard.edu/event/american-capita-sir-hilary-beckles-university-west-indies
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The Blockchain: Enabling a Distributed & Connected Energy Future
Monday, February 22
5:30 pm - 8:30 pm
MIT Media Lab, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Cost: $30
With the energy industry trending toward a distributed and connected future, entrepreneurs and industry leaders have an opportunity to look ahead for solutions they can start building today. Bitcoin’s underlying protocol, called “the blockchain”, is a distributed consensus-driven infrastructure enabling trust between connected assets. While currently considered only a financial tool, the blockchain’s actual capability is extremely broad.
Just as advances in TCP/IP created vast opportunities for the internet, the blockchain is enabling us to rethink the basic infrastructure of how energy is distributed, accounted for and secured. For example, microgrids could become more resilient with peer-to-peer communications. P2P enables intelligent electronic devices to share information directly without the need for a centralized system.
Also data about the asset activity, and hence the value, can be exchanged instantaneously 24/7, giving rise to new business models and applications for many distributed energy sources as well as increasing the security and reliability of the grid.
Sound exciting? Join us to learn:
What is the blockchain, really…isn’t it just a financial tool?
Why blockchain is and isn’t like the internet
How can entrepreneurs and industry leaders leverage blockchain technology?
What is the business impact, opportunities and potential disintermediation?
What are the regulatory hurdles and how might blockchain help us address issues of national security?
Speakers
Our distinguished panel will kick off with:
Joi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab
MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge
Phone: 617-253-8240
Email: agoggins@mit.edu
Website: http://www.mitforumcambridge.org
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Women Gamers, Women Game-Makers
WHEN Mon., Feb. 22, 2016, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Kresge Room, Barker Center, 16 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ludics Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center
SPEAKER(S) Nicholas Knouf, Wellesley University
CONTACT INFO rapti@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Gamers can no longer be understood to be primarily men. Recent gaming industry surveys have shown that women now make up one of the largest playing demographics. Yet those who identify as women in online gaming communities can still face extensive harassment, both online and off.
Women are also woefully underrepresented as game developers. To better understand these issues, my colleagues and I have recently conducted a survey of students and alumnae at Wellesley College to explore issues of representation, race, and gender in contemporary electronic gaming. Our results present an incredibly heterogeneous picture that cannot be easily subsumed into the media soundbytes that have followed recent controversies such as #Gamergate.
I will talk about what this means for the future development of gaming, highlighting games produced by students in my classes, as well as tying these conversations to old and new work in feminist theories of technology.
Note: The Event is free and Open to the Public.
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Re-thinking Local: A Cross-regional Dialogue about Strategies for Local Practice in Cities
WHEN Mon., Feb. 22, 6:30 p.m. – Tue., Feb. 23, 2016, 2:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S010, 1730 Cambridge Street, and Portico 124, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard South Asia Institute, Boston Society of Architects Foundation, Harvard Asia Center, and Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative.
SPEAKER(S) These two public events feature Vo Trong Nghia, the most prolific contemporary architect in Vietnam, and Marina Tabassum, the leading female architect in Bangladesh – both speaking at Harvard for the first time.
In addition, Nghia and Tabassum will be joined in a round-table discussion by Michael Murphy, Executive Director of MASS Design Group, and Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
DETAILS
“Re-thinking Local” will examine how architects are developing new models of locally-based design practice given the changing realities of urbanization around the world, with a particular focus on South and Southeast Asia.
This public discussion program will thematically explore how architects are responding to new patterns of urbanization, creating models for construction and fabrication that support sustainable development, and catalyzing local institutions to promote dialogue about the role of design in improving cities. Together, the work of these architects gives new meaning to the model of practicing locally.
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Tuesday, February 23
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Boston Society of Architects Tiny House Presentation
Tuesday, February 23
8:30 AM
Boston Society of Architects, 290 Congress Street, 2nd floor, Boston
The Boston Society of Architects is hosting a presentation about tiny houses -- more details forthcoming.
Speakers:
Tracey Powell, local owner and designer of a high-end, custom tiny house.
Some folks from Getaway, the Harvard start-up that builds and rents out tiny houses in natural settings within 2 hours of Boston.
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Digital Preservation UnConference by NDSR
Tuesday, February 23
9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/digital-preservation-unconference-by-ndsr-registration-20106993559
We are pleased to announce the first Digital Preservation UnConference hosted by the National Digital Stewardship Residency program in Boston. This event will be held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. We invite you to the library on February 23rd, 2015 to discuss digital preservation issues and solutions.
An UnConference is more informal than the professional conferences you may be used to, but the goal is the same: sharing ideas and starting the conversation. Instead of a program committee deciding on sessions, we leave the schedule up to the attendees! You can propose a session ahead of time on the Propose page or the morning of the event, then we will break for coffee and voting. We will put together the schedule based on the votes and post it on the event website and on the wall at the event.
More information about the event can be found on the website: jfkdigipres.wordpress.com
Follow @jfkdigipres on Twitter for updates!
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Brown Bag: Towards an Open Science Publishing Platform
Tuesday, February 23
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building E25-117, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Vitek Tracz
The traditional way of publishing new findings in journals is becoming increasingly outdated and no longer serves the needs of much of science. Vitek will discuss a new approach being developed by F1000, an Open Science Platform, that combines immediate publication (like a preprint) with formal, invited, and transparent post-publication peer review. This bypasses the many problems of the current journal system and, in doing so, moves the evaluation of research and researchers away from the journal-based Impact Factor and towards a fairer system of article-based qualitative and quantitative indicators. In the long term, it should be irrelevant where a researcher publishes their findings. As well as this new way to publish research, Vitek will also describe the other two components of the F1000: F1000Prime, an article-level recommendation and evaluation service from over 12,000 leading researchers, and F1000Workspace, a set of tools to help authors to discover literature, collect reference libraries, write articles and collaborate. Suitable for those already published and those looking to be published, bring your lunch and join Vitek Tracz and Micah Altman from the Information Science program for this February Brown Bag program.
Web site: http://informatics.mit.edu/event/towards-open-science-publishing-platform-brown-bag-vitek-tracz
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): MIT Libraries
For more information, contact: Brigham Fay
617-253-5686
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Developing Effective Citizen Responses to Discrimination and Harassment Online
Tuesday, February 23
12pm
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, 23 Everett Street, Second Floor, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/02/Matias#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/02/Matias at 12:00 pm.
with Berkman Fellow, Nathan Matias
Discrimination and harassment have been persistent problems since the earliest days of the social web. As platforms and legislators continue to debate and engineer responses, most of the burden of dealing with online discrimination and harassment has mostly been borne by the online citizens who experience and respond to these problems.
How can everyday Internet citizens make sense of social problems online, including our own racist and sexist behavior? How can we support each other and cooperate towards change in meaningful, effective ways? And how can we know that our interventions are making a difference?
MIT PhD candidate Nathan Matias shares four years of research and design interventions aimed at expanding the power of citizens to understand and develop effective responses to discrimination and harassment online.
About Nathan
Nathan Matias is a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media with Ethan Zuckerman and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. His research interests focus on social computing, collective action, and citizen-led social science. Nathan has collaborated with a wide range of social media companies, news organizations, and advocates to better understand issues of gender discrimination, harassment, and social movements online. His PhD explores methods for digital citizens to conduct data science and field experiments to monitor problems and evaluate their responses to social problems online.
Before MIT, Nathan worked in tech startups that have reached over a billion users, helped start a series of education and journalistic charities, and studied postcolonial literature at the University of Cambridge and Elizabethtown College. He has published data journalism and in The Atlantic, PBS, the Guardian, and other international media.
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Planetary Lunch Colloquium Series (PlCS): Exploring Europa: A Potentially Habitable World
Tuesday, February 23
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
MIT, Building 54-517 (the tallest building on campus)
Speaker(s): Bob Pappalardo (JPL) (via Skype)
After many years of study, NASA recently selected a highly capable suite of remote sensing and in situ instruments for a mission to explore Europa and investigate its habitability through multiple close flybys. The mission will interrogate the moon's ice shell, ocean, composition, and geology including any current activity. This presentation will summarize both our state of knowledge about Europa and the synergistic science potential of NASA's mission to explore Europa and investigate its habitability. | The MIT Planetary Lunch Colloquium Series [PlCS] is a weekly seminar series organized within the EAPS department. Colloquia topics span the range of research interests of the department's planetary sciences research program. A light lunch is provided. For questions contact Isabel Lee (shingpei@mit.edu).
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
Web site: http://bit.ly/1SkEd2K
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Slow Way Home: How the Japanese Have Preserved a Universal Walk-to-School System
WHEN Tue., Feb. 23, 2016, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Len Schoppa, professor of comparative politics and associate dean for the social sciences, University of Virginia
Moderated by Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
COST Free and open to the public
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Rethinking Law and Planning
Tuesday, February 23
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 9-450, Samuel Tak Lee Building, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Nicholas Blomley, Professor of Geography, Simon Fraser University, speaks on issues of law and planning. Title to be added as soon as available.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning
For more information, contact: Phil Sunde
617 253 9315
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E. J. Dionne
Tuesday, February 23
3:00-4:00pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
E.J. Dionne is a journalist and political commentator, and a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at the McCourt School of Public Policy, a Senior Research Fellow at Saint Anselm College, and an NPR, MSNBC, and PBS commentator. He is the author of several books; most recently Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, which was published in January 2016.
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CRISPR Biology and the Future of Genome Engineering
Tuesday, February 23
4pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Jennifer Doudna, UC Berkeley
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The Implications of the Paris Climate Agreement
Tuesday, February 23
4:00-5:00pm
Tufts, 26 Winthrop Street, Room 113, Medford
Interested in how the COP21 result differs from past climate agreements? Join Dr. Johannes Meier, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, for a discussion.
The Paris Agreement represents a significant breakthrough in international climate governance. The Agreement creates a binding regime for global climate mitigation that is universally accepted, it clarifies in very demanding terms the global warming objectives of the UNFCCC, and it requires all countries to take ambitious effort to meet that objective and importantly obliges them to intensify that effort over time. At the heart of the Paris outcome is a change in expectations: No longer are we putting our hope in a “closed architecture deal,” where one size needs to fit all. Instead, the COP21 has embraced diversity and different speeds of change and structural contingencies in an “open architecture.” The talk will address key factors of success to make this new open architecture viable. Specific attention will be paid at the role of civil society on the road through Paris.
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Social Ties and Local Governance: Toward a Theory of Social Institutions
Tuesday, February 23
4:00-5:30 p.m.
Harvard, Allison Dining Room, Taubman Building-5th Floor, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Description: A seminar with Ellen Lust, Founding Director of the Programs on Governance and Local Development at Yale University and at the University of Gothenburg, and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg.
Moderated by Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Associate Professor of International Relations, HKS.
Why do some communities provide secure environments, good education, adequate health care, and other factors that promote human development, while others fail to do so? What determines whether or not decision-making is transparent, leaders are accountable, and citizens enjoy good governance? These questions are key for policy makers, development specialists, and others who seek to improve the lives of millions who suffer from violence, poor education, unattended illnesses, and a lack of opportunity at the hands of corrupt leaders. The search for answers to these questions has tended to focus on political and administrative institutions, the impact of which has been examined largely at the national level; however, social institutions play a critical role in shaping outcomes. As Elinor Ostrom (1990, 1992) points out, community norms, or local social institutions, combine with broader political institutions to determine when communities can overcome collective-action problems. Social structures can help overcome typical common-pool resource problems, helping to explain when communities can join together to foster service provision, resolve disputes, or hold a government accountable. This talk discusses how research across disciplines and geographies highlights the impact of social institutions, the formal and informal rules governing social relationships between individuals within the community, on governance and development, and presents an initial framework that allows us to go beyond individual studies and toward a unified theory of social institutions.
About Ellen Lust: Ellen Lust is a professor in the department of political science at the University of Gothenburg and Founding Director of the Programs on Governance and Local Development at the University of Gothenburg and Yale University. Her publications include Structuring Conflict in the Arab World, and numerous volumes, including most recently Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism, co-edited with Lina Khatib. She has also published articles in such journals as Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Politics and Society. She was an associate founding editor of the newly interdisciplinary journal, Middle East Law and Governance, and now chairs its board of directors.
Contact: Middle East Initiative
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
124 Mt. Auburn Street Suite 100 Cambridge, MA 02138
Harvard Kennedy School
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Phone: (617) 495-4087
Fax: (617) 496-9688
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The "New Turkey" and Individual Freedoms: Is there Still Room for Coexistence?
WHEN Wed., Feb. 24, 2016, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR CMES Seminar on Turkey in the Modern World
SPEAKER(S) Cansu Çamlıbel, writer and senior diplomatic correspondent, 'Hürriyet'; 2015-16 Nieman Fellow, Harvard University
DETAILS Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.
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Askwith Forum: The Pursuit of Hipponess
WHEN Tue., Feb. 23, 2016, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Education, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Education
SPEAKER(S) Speaker: Sandra Boynton, author, illustrator, and songwriter
Moderator: Pamela A. Mason, M.A.T.’70, Ed.D.’75, Senior Lecturer on Education and Faculty Director, Language and Literacy Program, HGSE
Introduction: James E. Ryan, Dean and Charles William Eliot Professor, HGSE
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO askwith_forums@gse.harvard.edu
DETAILS Cartoonist Sandra Boynton presents an up-tempo visual retrospective of her work, starting in 1973 with the quirky greeting cards she began designing in college, and then on through her many children’s books, five record albums of what she calls “renegade children’s music,” and her seven film shorts. In the subsequent conversation with Senior Lecturer Pamela Mason, Boynton will consider her work and offbeat career in the context of her own education (from Kindergarten through 12th Grade) at Germantown Friends School, a Quaker school in Philadelphia.
Sandra is the third of four daughters of renowned teacher and publisher Robert W. Boynton, M.A.T.'47, who received his Masters of Arts in Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Harvard Book Store will sell books and CDs. A signing will follow the forum.
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Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism—From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
Tuesday, February 23
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5.00 - $30.50, On Sale February 2, 2016
Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed NPR commentator and Washington Post columnist E.J. DIONNE JR. for a discussion of his latest book, Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism—From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond.
About Why the Right Went Wrong
Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater’s worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. The radicalism of today’s conservatism is not the product of the Tea Party, E.J. Dionne writes. The Tea Partiers are the true heirs to Goldwater ideology. The purity movement did more than drive moderates out of the Republican Party—it beat back alternative definitions of conservatism.
Since 1968, no conservative administration—not Nixon not Reagan not two Bushes—could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics fifty years ago. The collapse of the Nixon presidency led to the rise of Ronald Reagan, the defeat of George H.W. Bush, to Newt Gingrich’s revolution. Bush initially undertook a partial modernization, preaching “compassionate conservatism” and a “Fourth Way” to Clinton’s “Third Way.” Conservatives quickly defined him as an advocate of “big government” and not conservative enough on spending, immigration, education, and Medicare. A return to the true faith was the only prescription on order. The result was the Tea Party, which Dionne says, was as much a reaction to Bush as to Obama.
The state of the Republican party, controlled by the strictest base, is diminished, Dionne writes. It has become white and older in a country that is no longer that. It needs to come back to life for its own health and that of the country’s, and in Why the Right Went Wrong, he explains how.
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Developing a planning tool for rural electrification
Tuesday, February 23
6pm-7pm
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
RSVP for dinner at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13W5oMQu8fe7tZ7MXg-nPQ2ArPVpQn0TtZXmbz18TlmY/viewform
Details: REM uses information about areas with poor electricity access to determine the best electrification modes (e.g., grid-connected, microgrid, or isolated system) for each household or other load, estimate costs of electrification, and produce preliminary engineering designs of recommended systems. For large regions, REM uses national data sets, such as the Census of India, the National Sample Survey, and satellite imagery to estimate the location and profile of latent electricity demand in order to produce cost estimates and indicative system designs to inform electrification planning. For smaller regions or single systems, REM can use more accurate demand information to produce high quality system designs to directly support project implementation.
These plans can be used by government planners and off-grid electricity system entrepreneurs to make better decisions about how to plan and implement electrification efforts. As REM matures, we hope to apply the tool with consideration of relevant social factors in order to promote improved electrification planning efforts in India and other developing countries.
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A Bike Safety Forum - How Can We Change State Law To Make Cycling Safer?
Tuesday, February 23
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Suffolk University, 120 Tremont Street, Boston
On Tuesday February 23, 2016 from 6:00-8:30PM at Suffolk University a group of state legislators are hosting a forum on bicycle safety. The conversation will center around possible changes to state law and the rules of the road that can make cycling safer, with a focus on cyclist/large vehicle crashes. Representatives from the trucking industry, Boston, Cambridge, the Carmen’s Union, and the MBTA will give brief presentations followed by breakout sessions where ideas for possible legislation will be presented. After the breakout sessions audience members will vote on their preferred solutions. For more information visit: MABikeSafety.com. We encourage attendees to share the news of this event and use the hashtag #MABikeSafety in social media.
FAQs
Is a ticket and ID required to enter the event?
No ticket is required and the event is free and open to the public. However, our venue host Suffolk University requests ID to enter 120 Tremont. If you have registered via this Eventbrite page, your name will be on a list and this will speed your entry. Your registration is also appreciated so we may plan for seating and refreshments.
What is the nearest T stop?
Suffolk University Boston is located nearly across the street from Park Street Station on the Green Line.
Where can I contact the organizer with any questions?
You may contact Andrew Bettinelli in Senator Brownsberger's office at Andrew.Bettinelli@masenate.gov
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Reverse Engineering, and Repairing, the Brain and Mind
MIT Sidney Pacific Committee on Scholarly Interactions (CoSI) | Sebastian Palacios
Tuesday, February 23
6:30 PM to 7:30 PM (EST)
MIT Sidney Pacific, 70 Pacific Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/reverse-engineering-and-repairing-the-brain-and-mind-tickets-21434190240
Leading a group of the most brilliant and groundbreaking MIT engineers as directors of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering (CNBE), Dr. Alan Jasanoff and Dr. Ed Boyden make a historic visit to the MIT graduate residences for a lecture and interactive panel discussion about the quest to solve one of the greatest challenges of our time. Dr. Boyden and Dr. Jasanoff have received numerous awards for some of the most groundbreaking work in neuroscience and neuroengineering of the 21st century. Their work is revolutionizing the study of the brain, including understanding neural mechanisms, brain disease, cognition, memory and more.
Send us your questions for Dr. Boyden and Dr. Jasanoff during registration, or post it to social media with the hashtag #neuroMITSP. The top questions will be selected days in advance, used during the panel discussion, and will win an invitation for dinner with Dr. Boyden and Dr. Jasanoff after lecture and panel discussion. The event will feature a live social media feed.
For current posts, see: https://tagboard.com/neuroMITSP/265887
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Wednesday, February 24
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The American Experience of Nation-Building in South Vietnam
Wednesday, February 24
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Andrew Gawthorpe (Harvard University)
SSP Wednesday Seminar Series
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact: Elina Hamilton
617-253-7529
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Learning in Strategic Environments: Theory and Data
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Refreshments: 1:45 PM
MIT, Building 32-D463, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Vasilis Syrgkanis , Microsoft Research
ABSTRACT: The strategic interaction of multiple parties with different objectives is at the heart of modern large scale computer systems and electronic markets. Participants face such complex decisions in these settings that the classic economic equilibrium is not a good predictor of their behavior. The analysis and design of these systems has to go beyond equilibrium assumptions. Evidence from online auction marketplaces suggests that participants rather use algorithmic learning. In the first part of the talk, I will describe a theoretical framework for the analysis and design of efficient market mechanisms, with robust guarantees that hold under learning behavior, incomplete information and in complex environments with many mechanisms running at the same time. In the second part of the talk, I will describe a method for analyzing datasets from such marketplaces and inferring private parameters of participants under the assumption that their observed behavior is the outcome of a learning algorithm. I will give an example application on datasets from Microsoft's sponsored search auction system.
BIO: Vasilis Syrgkanis is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research NYC, where he is a member of the algorithmic economics and machine learning groups. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2014, under the supervision of Prof. Eva Tardos. His research addresses problems at the intersection of theoretical computer science, machine learning and economics. His work received best paper awards at the 2015 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC'15) and at the 2015 Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS'15). He was the recipient of the Simons Fellowship for graduate students in theoretical computer science 2012-2014.
Contact: Joanne Talbot Hanley, 617-253-4602, joanne@csail.mit.edu
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Experimental Evidence on the Demand for and Costs of Rural Electrification
Wednesday, February 24
2:45p–4:00p
MIT, Building E51-376, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Ted Miguel (Berkeley)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Development Economics Seminar
For more information, contact:
economics calendar
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February Colloquium - The Affect Agenda: How Image and Emotion Influence Voters
Wednesday, February 24
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Boston University, COM 209, 640 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
When facing complex political decisions, voters tend to rely on their first impression and visceral reaction to form their opinion, but then endeavor to come up with a rational reason to justify it. Dr. H. Denis Wu presents studies of recent U.S. presidential elections showing that images of political candidates indeed influence voters at both aggregate and individual levels. Other topics such as the role of visual and verbal cues in communicating affective information, whether positive or negative tone is more powerful, and the role of emotion in agenda-setting effects will be discussed.
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LOHAFEX - Lessons from the last iron fertilization experiment
Wednesday, February 24
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 48-316, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Stefan Thiele, Polz Lab, MIT
Microbial Systems Seminar
Web site: https://microbialsystems.wordpress.com
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering
For more information, contact: Kathryn Kauffman
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Europe and the Geopolitics of Energy: The Economics of Shale Gas & Tight Oil Production
Wednesday, February 24
4:00PM TO 5:30PM
Dr. Robert L. Kleinberg, Schlumberger
Unconventional energy resources may change not only the American energy situation but also global energy markets and the geopolitics-of-energy in fundamental ways, including in Europe. This seminar on the economics of shale gas and tight oil production will focus on their costs and breakeven points and how they change; resources in the USA vs Europe; tax and regulatory systems in the USA vs ROW; geological, geographical and geopolitical risks; and infrastructural bottlenecks.
Contact Name: Ole Gunnar Austvik
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Sexual Violence in the Context of Armed Conflict’s Criminal, Corrupt and Violent Economies
02/24/2016
4:00pm - 6:00pm
University of Massachusetts Boston, Integrated Science Complex, 1st Floor, Room 1400, Dorchester
Join us at UMass Boston for a seminar with Professor Meredeth Turshen on the following:
Too often the literature on wartime violence against women emphasizes individualized violence in interpersonal contexts, neglecting the economic and political facts of the conflicts in which the attacks occur. Women's roles change in war zones; the informalisation of war economies offers women new opportunities but also exposes them to new dangers, repeated flight and relocation, capture and coerced labor. This talk reframes sexual violence using case studies of the extractive industries of Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which funded the regional conflicts.
Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights Speaker Series
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Are There Environmental Benefits from Driving Electric Vehicles? The Importance of Local Factors
Wednesday, February 24
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer 382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Stephen Holland, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Erin Mansur, Dartmouth, Nicholas Muller, Middlebury College, and Andrew Yates, University of North Carolina
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
For more information, contact Professor Stavins (617-495-1820), Professor Weitzman (617-495-5133), or the course assistant, Jason Chapman (617-496-8054).
Contact Name: Bryan J. Galcik
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Conversation with Karim Ben Khelifa and Fox Harrell: VR. AI, and Installation Art
Wednesday, February 24
5:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building E51-335, Tang Center, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
CAST Visiting Artist Karim Ben Khelifa, an award-winning photojournalist, and Fox Harrell, Associate Professor and Director of the Imagination, Computation and Expression (ICE) Laboratory, will discuss The Enemy, an immersive installation using virtual reality. Ben Khelifa and Harrell are integrating concepts from cognitive science and Artificial Intelligence-based interaction models into the project to engender empathy. This event is sponsored by Arts at MIT in collaboration with the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.
Registration required.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Tickets: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1NCPCsaqhbti3C5Zf-ptImfGMfbvRuwcLo5sPqW-kMa8/viewform?c=0&w=1
Sponsor(s): Arts at MIT
For more information, contact: Leah Talatinian
617.252.1888
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Intersections of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Science: China, India, and Israel
Wednesday, February 24
5:00p–6:30p
MIT, Building E52-Dining Rooms 5+6, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Speaker: Professor Yasheng Huang, Professor S.P. Kothari
MISTI Faculty Directors and senior MIT leadership will share their perspective on the challenges and opportunities between China, India and Israel in three key intersections and MIT's potential role. Moderated by Professor Christine Ortiz.
Please RSVP by February 14th through the link below.
Web site: https://misti.typeform.com/to/y4D4XA
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies, MIT India Program, MISTI, MISTI MIT-Israel Program, MIT-China Program
For more information, contact: Molly Gallagher
617- 452-2479
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EBC Young Environmental Professionals Program: Sustainable, Responsible, Impact (SRI) Investing
Wednesday, February 24
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Brown Rudnick LLP One Financial Center, Boston
Environmental professionals hold a unique span of knowledge that is well tailored to positively contribute to the field of sustainability. While environmental factors are just one aspect of sustainability, they are a key aspect. An increased pressure from investors and consumers on organizations to more seriously approach sustainability and environmental efforts has presented a great opportunity for environmental professionals to utilize their skills in this growing field.
Further, in recent years, an even greater level of interest from investors has been evolving, leading to the emergence of Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing (SRI). SRI investing, which places importance on environmental responsibility, among other sustainable interests, is a strong driver for organizations, large and small, to embrace sustainability. However, those interested in pursuing a sustainable business may not have the tools to do so, and this is where those with environmental expertise can help.
This featured speaker/networking program, sponsored by the EBC Young Environmental Professionals Committee, will feature Sean Fair, CRPC, AAMS, an SRI Investment Advisor and Managing Principle of Waymark Wealth Management LLC. He will discuss his own background in the fields of science and mathematics, and how they lead him to SRI investing.
Other items discussed will include a brief overview of SRI investing; its growing importance to consumers, and organizations; and finally where SRI investing fits into the larger picture, including the environmental professional’s potential role in industry, as well as the individual’s role related to other choices made to shape our environment/world.
Program Chair
Cristina Mendoza, Environmental Scientist/Sustainability Consultant, Capaccio Environmental Engineering, Inc.
Speaker
Sean Fair, CRPC, AAMS, SRI Investment Advisor and Managing Principal, Waymark Wealth Management LLC
Program Details
Registration & Networking: 5:30 p.m. – 6:15 p.m.
Program: 6:15 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Networking: 7:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Registration: $15
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The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter
Wednesday, February 24
6:00pm
Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Joseph Henrich, Professor, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University and Co-director of the Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture, University of British Columbia
Lecture and Book Signing
The ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another has allowed us to create ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have enabled successful expansion into myriad environments. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscience, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich, author of The Secret of Our Success, will discuss how our collective intelligence has propelled our species’ evolution.
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Great Decisions Series | Cities and Climate Change: Boston at the Paris Climate Conference
Wednesday, February 24
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Suffolk University Law School, Room 295, 120 Tremont Street, Boston
Join Austin Blackmon, the City of Boston’s Chief for the Environment and Energy for a discussion on the role of cities in combating climate change. Blackmon recently represented Boston at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21), where the city received a prestigious C40 award for “Smart Cities and Smart Community Engagement,” beating out Melbourne, Australia and New York City.
Learn about how the City of Boston has become a global leader in the municipal level fight against climate change and what must be done to stymie this environmental crisis.
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Securing the Internet of Things: An Investor's View
Wednesday, February 24
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
British Consulate, One Broadway, Cambridge
Please bring ID. You will need it to be admitted to the Consulate
We have a really special event coming up next Wednesday, February 24th. Our friends at the office of UK Trade & Investment at The British Consulate in Cambridge are playing host to a panel discussion on investing in security for the Internet of Things.
This very special meeting is taking place at the British Consulate, One Broadway in Cambridge from 6:00 to 9:00 pm on Wednesday, February 24th. Food and beverages will be provided by the Consulate and by our good friends at CyberSN.
Our guests:
Deidre Diamond, President and CEO, CyberSN
Jeff Fagnan, Partner, Accomplice
Sean Kagan, Vice Consul, Information Communications Technology
Moderator: Paul Roberts, Editor in Chief, The Security Ledger
Some thoughts: It goes without saying that the Internet of Things will transform the information security industry, just as it transforms industries from manufacturing to healthcare. Countless security firms (and fortunes) were built on the premise of securing PCs - fat, powerful (and power hungry), multi-purpose devices from a short list of threats: viruses, worms, hacking, denial of service attacks and so on.
But in the coming Internet of Things, endpoints will not look or act anything like the PCs of yore. Ubiquitous, geographically dispersed, low power, connected endpoints may well interact and communicate autonomously. The possibilities by which an attacker might move from any one, low value endpoint to other, sensitive IT assets will be impossible to enumerate. What will the information security solutions of the next ten- or 20 years look like? What new kinds of capabilities and technologies will be needed to tackle the security and privacy challenges of the Internet of Things?
Join us for a great discussion Wednesday evening! We look forward to seeing you there.
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CSR and Sustainability: From the Margins to the Mainstream
Wednesday, February 24
6:30 PM
Impact Hub Boston, 50 Milk Street, 17th Floor, Boston
RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/Corporate-Social-Responsibility-Sustainability-Meetup/events/225650708/
Cost: $15
Do these concepts of CSR and Sustainability have any meaning at all?
Michael Hopkins and Deborah Leipziger will present the key points of Michael's new book to be published by Greenleaf, UK at end 2015. Deborah has also been involved in its production and will share the short presentation followed by discussion and networking.
Rebecca Marsh, Publishing Director, GSE Research and Greenleaf Publishing writes:
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is steadily moving from the margins to the mainstream across the spectrum of private companies, NGOs and the public sector. It has grown from being a concept embraced by a small number of companies such as The Body Shop in the early 1990s to a widespread global movement. At its weakest level, it is represented by a few philanthropic gestures by organisations, but when applied in its most complete form, it can steer the organization or sector to deliver a fully-fledged, system-wide, multi-stakeholder operation, accompanied by multiple types of certification.
For the first time, a book brings together key issues relating to CSR as they apply to different aspects of business; it is not another generalist title about CSR. Michael Hopkins, a leading expert in the field, is joined by a number of outstanding contributors to the book, to explain how CSR has evolved since the 1990s and to offer ground-breaking insights and practical and specific applications of the concept. For example, Mervyn King explains Integrating Reporting, Deborah Leipziger looks at CSR, Branding and the Supply Chain, George Starcher provides a framework for Socially Responsible Restructuring, and Adrian Henriques explores Social Accounting and Stakeholder Dialogue.
A one-stop reference book for professionals and students of CSR
Contributions from leading specialists in the application of CSR
Translates well-established theories into practical tools
We have to make charge to ensure we have a properly set up room ($15). Happily we shall also offer soft drinks, wine and a quick bite. Kindly pay at the door.
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Electricity Vision Webinar
Wednesday, February 24
7:00 PM
Curious about how energy can help or hurt climate change fighting efforts? Want your community to be more pro-active on electricity?
How and where we make and use electricity is key to solving climate change - and the Acadia center has released a series of reports that walk New England through the process from where we are today to a total clean energy vision.
We will hear about their three levels of thinking for bringing our electricity into the 21st century -
EnergyVision - which sets forth important steps on four parallel tracks to create an energy system that is safer, cleaner and more affordable and offers the promise of deep reductions in climate change causing emissions)
UtilityVision - which presents an ambitious but realistic energy future that puts the consumer firmly in the center, complete with specific steps needed to create a new energy system that both meets our needs and supports a fair, healthy economy and environment
CommunityEnergyVision - a comprehensive framework that outlines a pathway for communities to take control of the energy system and modernize the way it is planned and managed.
Tyler Soleau of the Acadia Center, lately of the MA legislative office of Rep Frank Smizik, will cover all the research, with a strong emphasis on Community Energy Vision, and helping communities make the right choices about their energy.
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Rising Tide: Planning for Boston's Uncertain Future
Wednesday, February 24
7pm
Museum of Science, Museum Of Science Driveway, Boston
How do rising sea levels impact our region? Learn what architects, engineers, and urban planners are doing to make the coastal infrastructure around the Boston area more resilient to our changing climate. How do we make decisions when we don’t have all of the information we need? What are the most important factors to consider? Add your voice to a conversation about preparing for the future with planners and stakeholders who are facing these decisions. Refreshments available starting at 6:30 pm.
Advance registration begins at 9:00 am, Wednesday, February 10 (Monday, February 8 for Museum members).
Presented in collaboration with the Boston Harbor Association and Northeastern University.
Funding provided by the Northeastern University Marine Science Center through its partnership with the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program.
Program Speakers
Ellen Douglas, associate professor of hydrology, UMass-Boston
Brian Helmuth, professor of marine and environmental sciences, Northeastern University
Paul Kirshen, professor of climate adaptation, UMass-Boston
Julie Wormser, executive director, The Boston Harbor Association
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Thursday, February 25
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The International Role of Biometric Data
WHEN Thu., Feb. 25, 2016, 7:45 – 9:15 a.m.
WHERE Harvard Club, Washington Room, 374 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Information Technology, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Technology Assessment in Healthcare Seminar series
SPEAKER(S) John Woodward, professor of the practice of international relations, Boston University
CONTACT INFO debra_milamed@hms.harvard.edu
617.327.5612
DETAILS Continental breakfast served.
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Policy Podium: Net Metering
Thursday, February 25
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
50 Milk Street, 15th floor, Start-Up Institute area, Boston
Cost: $0 - $25
An open discussion with experts from our community of professionals about moving forward with solar and net metering in Massachusetts. As recent legislative activities have shown, solar advocates and our House legislative leaders are not able to see a shared path forward for net metering.
What do we need to know, to be effective advocates, about the energy system? How can we all work together to ensure our communities are moving toward sustainability? Of the many complexities of the electricity grid, what do green building advocates need to address as we push for change on behalf of our mission?
The obstacles to a resolution to net metering and energy procurment seem to center around the cost of solar in Massachusetts, yet there is currently no action on the Net Metering Task Force (NMTF) recommendation to study the monetary costs and benefits of distributed generation solar.
A panel composed of NMTF members will gather to discuss issues of net metering caps including:
Comparative solar project costs and financing
Present and future cost impacts to classes of electricity consumers
Impacts of grid modernization, requirements of the Green Communities Act
Cost benefits of distributed generation solar
We are looking forward to hearing from both sides and collaborating on ideas to move forward!
The panelists will include:
David Colton, Easton Town Administrator
Charles Harak, National Consumer Law
Tim Roughan, National Grid
Matt Shortsleeve, Solect Energy
This event will be held at 50 Milk Street, 18th floor, "Hemmingway" conference room, Boston, MA.
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Mapping Stories of the City: Teaching Urban Environmental Justice
Thursday, February 25
12pm
Tufts, Rabb room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Most talks will be streamed lived at Bit.ly/TuftsLunchLearn
Lai Ying Yu
What makes a city thrive? What role does community play in urban vitality? This talk examines how stories of place and community shape understandings of urban space and ideas of progress. The second part of this talk examines how story-telling through short videos, interactive maps, and community interviews can be tools for supporting environmental justice efforts. In particular, we will look at Google MyMaps and the census tool Social Explorer to examine how these may be additional platforms for engaging residents in complex urban development changes.
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Experiences in science and risk communication with the public about the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster
Thursday, February 25
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Jay T. Cullen, University of Victoria
Abstract: The triple disaster of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdowns that struck Japan in March 2011 led to the release of massive amounts of radioactive isotopes into the environment. Despite the high local levels in Japan, and global reach of contamination from Fukushima the international scientific community has determined that the short and long term impacts on environmental and human health will be difficult to detect. I began outreach and education efforts in the interest of the common good given questions and fear about the disaster among family, friends and members of the public. I was also motivated to correct scientifically inaccurate, poor quality, misinformation that at the time dominated the public domain. While most public response to my work on the Fukushima disaster has been positive, my outreach introduced me to the world of conspiracy theories, through a vocal minority who responded with personal threats, accusations of scientific fraud, and other attacks on my professional and personal integrity. I now have a firsthand understanding of the pitfalls of public science and risk communication. The purpose of this talk is to provide background to the reader about the nature of the disaster, known risks, and an account of how conspiracy ideation and poor science literacy colored a minority of the public feedback to my scientifically grounded monitoring program and evidence based outreach efforts.
Oceans & Health Seminar
Contact Name: Olivera Saric Knezic
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The Role of Microsystems for a Clean Energy Future
Thursday, February 25
12:00-1:00 pm
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Rajeev Ram, MIT
In the U.S., approximately 40% of primary energy is used to produce electricity. Electricity is projected to supply an increasing share of the world’s total energy demand and is the fastest-growing form of end-use energy worldwide. This presentation will specifically provide an introduction to microelectronics R&D technologies and materials related challenges relevant to realizing a clean energy future.
Professor Ram will focus on improvements in electrical energy efficiency from lower cost, more efficient, solid-state lighting to lighter weight electrical vehicles to a flexible electricity grid. Technologies include chip-scale converters for solid-state lighting and microprocessor power supplies. At the kW scale, module integrated converters employing integrated wide bandgap seminconductors are being explored for industrial motor and automotive charger applications. At MW scale, projects include creating greater flexibility in grid assets such as transformers by employing advanced converter architectures.
Through these examples, Professor Ram will convey the role that Electrical Engineers can and should play in addressing global issues such as climate change and energy access.
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Mapping Stories of the City: Teaching Urban Environmental Justice
Thursday, February 25
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Lincoln Filene Center, Rabb Room, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Lai Ying Yu, Tufts English Department
What makes a city thrive? What role does community play in urban vitality? This talk examines how stories of place and community shape understandings of urban space and ideas of progress. The second part of this talk examines how story-telling through short videos, interactive maps, and community interviews can be tools for supporting environmental justice efforts. In particular, we will look at Google MyMaps and the census tool Social Explorer to examine how these may be additional platforms for engaging residents in complex urban development changes.
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Wicked Good Causes
Thursday, February 25
12:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, 1 Memorial Drive, #1, Cambridge
Cost: $11
Thursday, February 25 starting at 12pm noon we are gathering together leaders of great causes from all over Massachusetts and New England for an event of perspective changing talks, pitches and networking opportunities related to good causes for a better world. Tickets will be $20 at the door.
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Thinking Together--Harvard Catalyst: A Mechanism for Understanding Climate & Inclusion
WHEN Thu., Feb. 25, 2016, 3 – 4 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 114 Mount Auburn Street, Room 406, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Office of the Assistant to the President for Institutional Diversity and Equity
SPEAKER(S) Carol Martin, program manager of the Harvard Catalyst Program for Faculty Development and Diversity Inclusion
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Mai_Vang@harvard.edu
DETAILS This interactive presentation will demonstrate the ways in which diversity within a process enables successful collaboration and innovative partnership. It will highlight how Harvard Catalyst efficiently brings together the intellectual force, technologies, and clinical expertise of Harvard University and its affiliates and partners.
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Future of Food: A talk with America’s Test Kitchen co-founder Christopher Kimball
Thursday, February 25
4 p.m.
Northeastern, East Village, 17th floor, near Ruggles Street and Columbas Avenue, Boston
Please join President Aoun at "The Future of…”, a presidential speaker series that explores what's on the horizon for the topics that shape our lives. Each event features a conversation with a leading thinker and innovator on themes like food, dating, the media — and more.
Don’t miss the next event in the series, “The Future of Food,” with Christopher Kimball, co-founder of America’s Test Kitchen. He’ll be discussing how we eat, the ways our eating habits are changing, and what lies ahead on the dining scene.
“The Future of Food”
Hors d’oeuvres, a book signing, and a showcase of Northeastern’s food innovators will follow the event.
Space is limited - please arrive early.
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How Numbers Lie: Intersectional Violence and the Quantification of Race
WHEN Thu., Feb. 25, 2016, 4:15 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; visiting professor, City University of New York
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Tracing the genealogy of statistical discourses on race, Muhammad explores the violence of racial quantification on black women and men’s lives beginning in the postbellum period. How did the numbers of out of wedlock childbirths or incarcerated men come to define the progress and potential of African Americans by contrast to others? Why have such facts spoken for themselves as is so often said today? Or have they?
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Varieties of Helping the Poor: The Institutional Roots of Informal and Organized Giving of Money and Time across Europe
WHEN Thu., Feb. 25, 2016, 4:15 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Hoffmann Room, Busch Hall, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Seminar on Social Exclusion and Inclusion
SPEAKER(S) Sebastian Koos, Visiting Scholar, CES; Discussant: Emily Barman, Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston University
COST free
CONTACT INFO Jonathan Mijs, mijs@fas.harvard.edu
LINK ces.fas.harvard.edu/#/events/3656
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Starr Forum: With Friends Like These: Discussion addressing US allies and ISIS
Thursday, February 25
4:30p–6:00p
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Speaker: Barry R Posen (moderator), Kristin Fabbe, Christine Fair, Sarah Leah Whitson,
Moderator will be MIT Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program, Barry R Posen.
Speakers Include:
Kristin Fabbe
Fabbe is an assistant professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit at Harvard, where she teaches the course of the same name in the MBA required curriculum. Her primary expertise is in comparative politics, with a regional focus on the Middle East and southeastern Europe, particularly Turkey.
Christine Fair
Dr. Fair is an associate professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program, within Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Previously, she has served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate in USIP's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention.
Sarah Leah Whitson
Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division, oversees the work of the division in 19 countries, with staff located in 10 countries. She has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and political rights.
CIS Starr Forum
A public events series on pressing issues in international affairs, sponsored by the MIT Center for International Studies.
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/cis/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact:
617-253-8306
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TCN’s UPSTART Roundtable: Music Innovation with Panos Panay, Founder of Sonicbids & Berklee ICE
Thursday, February 25
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Venture Cafe, CIC, One Broadway, Cambridge, MA (map)
TCN UpStart Roundtables are monthly gatherings at the Venture Cafe that bring together Boston-area early-stage startups and seasoned entrepreneurs. This free series with The Capital Network, Venture Cafe, and Silicon Valley Bank is a great opportunity for you to ask burning questions about starting a company and meet other like-minded entrepreneurs in a casual cafe setting.
This week our theme is Music Innovation – and there could be no other better to discuss this than Panos Panay, the Founding Managing Director of Berklee ICE (Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship) as well as a passionate entrepreneur and active startup mentor in the creative media space. As the founder of Sonicbids, he created the leading platform for bands to book gigs and market themselves online, building a subscriber network of 550,000 bands and 35,000 promoters from over 100 countries. He led the company as CEO for 13 years, from its inception until after its successful acquisition by Backstage LLC, in a deal backed by Guggenheim Partners.
Speakers:Panos is widely credited for spotting and capitalizing early on three distinct emerging trends in the music business over the last decade: the shift to a primarily online means of marketing; the emergence of an “artistic middle class”; and the shift from a record-label funded industry to a consumer brand-funded music business. He writes weekly about startups and entrepreneurship for blogs and publications such as Huffington Post, Forbes, WSJ Accelerators and Fast Company; and guest lectures at universities including MIT Engineering, Boston University, Brown University, and Wharton School of Business. He speaks often at industry events like SXSW, MIDEM and TEDx. As a passionate arts and business advocate Panos serves on a number of boards including being the Chair of Berklee College of Music’s Presidential Advisory Council for six years. He is a die-hard supporter of English football club Arsenal F.C.
Awards include: Fast Company’s “Fast 50” honor; Inc Magazine’s “Inc 500”; Mass Hi-Tech All Stars; Berklee College’s Distinguished Alumnus Award; and Boston Business Journal’s “40 under 40” and BostInno’s 50 on Fire. Sonicbids and Panos were also profiled in a chapter in the Financial Times-published book “Outsmart” by best-selling author Jim Champy.
Specialties: Refusing to accept that there should be a trade-off between your passion and the way you make a living.
Pete McDonald is the Relationship Manager the Emerging Technology Practice at Silicon Valley Bank. Pete has over 20 years of experience working with startups and works primarily with early stage Technology and Life Science companies.
Pete moderates The Capital Network’s Upstart program which is a series of fireside chats with entrepreneurs held at the Venture Cafe (CIC Kendall) once a month.
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Medical Ethics in Emergencies, from Katrina to Ebola and Beyond
Thursday, February 25
5:00pm to 6:30pm
Harvard, Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall 110, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
Sheri Fink is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown, 2013) about choices made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The talk will be followed by a book signing with the author.
For centuries, philosophers have mulled the ideal ways to divide the goods of society. More recently that question has been applied to medicine. Perhaps the most acute, life-and-death version of this conundrum arises in emergencies--who gets care when there doesn't seem to be enough for everyone? Dr. Sheri Fink, a New York Times correspondent and author of Five Days at Memorial, will illustrate the dilemmas for medical professionals, journalists, and the broader public with examples arising in recent disasters.
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Vincent Brown: "Designing Histories of Slavery for the Database Age"
Thursday, February 25
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Multimedia scholarship invites reconsideration of how history has been, could be, and should be represented. By wrestling creatively and collectively with the difficult archival problems presented by social history of slavery, Harvard's Vincent Brown hopes to chart new pathways for pondering history's most painful and vexing subjects. This presentation considers three graphic histories of slavery -- a web-based animation of Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, a cartographic narrative of the Jamaican slave revolt of 1760-61, and a web-based archive of enslaved family lineages in Jamaica and Virginia -- that illustrate how the archive of slavery is more than the records bequeathed to us by the past; the archive also includes the tools we use to explore it, the vision that allows us to see its traces, and the design decisions that communicate our sense of history's possibilities.
Multi-media historian Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of History, Professor of African and African-American Studies, and Director of the History Design Studio at Harvard University. His research, writing, teaching, and other creative endeavors are focused on the political dimensions of cultural practice.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Web site: http://cmsw.mit.edu/event/vincent-brown-designing-histories-of-slavery-for-the-database-age/
More info: 617-324-0490
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Challenges and Opportunities in the Music Industry
Thursday, February 25
5:30 PM to 6:30 PM (EST)
Venture Café (Havana Room), 5th Floor, CIC, One Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/challenges-and-opportunities-in-the-music-industry-tickets-21774905328
From Napster to iTunes to what? The music industry has experienced drastic changes over the course of the digital revolution. This panel of experts will discuss the new challenges that musicians and the music industry faces as well as what is currently working and what a musician has to do to be successful in this industry in the future.
Panelists:
Peter Spellman – Berklee College of Music
Ralph Jaccodine – Ralph Jaccodine Management
Jayce Varden – PledgeMusic
Will Brierly – SnowRunner Productions (Moderator)
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Migration & Human Trafficking: A Panel Discussion with BU Experts
Thursday, February 25
6:00 PM
Boston University, Hillel House, 213 Bay State Road, 4th floor, Boston
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Signs of a Warming World
Thursday, February 25
6:00AM TO 7:00AM
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Boston
RSVP at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu
Cost: Fee Free members, students, and Tree Spotters; $5 nonmember
The temperature of the Earth is increasing, but what does that mean? And what effect will this have on people and ecosystems? Climate scientist will review some of the myriad indicators scientists monitor to understand the direction and pace of ongoing climate change, including changes in temperature, the cryosphere (snow, ice), and the hydrologic cycle (floods, droughts, sea level rise). Benjamin I. Cook, Research Scientist, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University, will discuss what these changes mean for species in the natural environment and our own societies. And he will touch on what we can expect in the future if we allow climate change to continue apace, and what options we may have to ameliorate, or adapt to, in a world that will be much warmer at the end of the 21st century than any time of the last several thousand years.
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Gang Peace to Street Peace: Talk at Harvard
Thursday, February 25
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 2009, 1585 Mass. Avenue, Cambridge
The Untold Story!
A discussion with author Rodney E. Dailey
Featured Panelists:
Dianne Wilkerson – Moderator
Steve Coachman – Leader
Kevin Wiggins - Leader
Chris Haskins – Leader
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Cities of the Future - Real Life Examples of Cognitive Computing
Thursday, February 25
6:30 PM
IBM Innovation Center, 1 Rogers Street, Cambridge
We are pleased to announce our 2nd event in the series "Real Life Examples of Cognitive Computing". We are fortunate to have two visionaries who use big data and machine learning to improve the designs for Cities of the Future.
Presenter 1: Kelly Jin - Head of Data Analytics for the City of Boston
Kelly will describe how the City of Boston uses big data to improve quality of life of citizens and enhance its service delivery. By integrating multiple data sources with intelligence models, Boston’s Citywide Analytics Team helps improve the quality of services, visualizes data that provides life-saving information, all the while keeping Mayor Walsh and City leadership apprised of the real-time status of critical metrics.
Presenter 2: Paolo Santi – Lead Researcher at MIT's Senseable City Lab
Paolo is an internationally acclaimed expert in mobility data. Hailing from the University of Pisa in Italy, Paolo is currently leading the Ambient Mobility studies at MIT’s Senseable City Lab where he uses advanced machine learning techniques for urban data analysis. Paolo will describe how data from millions of cell-phones and taxi-trips is used to model and predict pedestrian and vehicle traffic flow for planning and route management by public and commercial transportation services.
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Diversified Thought @ Hatch Fenway
Thursday, February 25
6:30 PM to 8:00 PM (EST)
Hatch Fenway, "The Coop," Landmark Center 8th Floor East Elevators, 401 Park Drive, Boston
Join the Hatch Fenway Community in a conversation designed to bring inspiration and support to young disruptive entrepreneurs, founders and students. Diversified Thought is a conversation around Minorities & Diversity in Tech. Diversity is imperative to building a stronger innovation economy; more markets can be reached with a wider range of bright ideas in the marketplace. Additionally, it’s just good business! Diversified Thought is on the forefront of the drive to increase Minorities & Diversity in Boston's Tech Ecosystem and the global industry.
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Making Music Technology: What is the future of this Creative Industry?
Thursday, February 25
6:45 PM to 7:45 PM (EST)
Venture Café (Havana Room), 5th Floor, CIC, One Broadway, Cambridge
Music technology has provided a path to our cultural history and future. These tools are designed and adapted for both artists and audiences. These same tools have changed how artist interact with their audience and audiences can interact with the artist. Finally, technology has defined which business models are possible and how music entrepreneurs sustain their art form.
Join us for this panel of experts discussing this creative industry and what it will look like in the coming years.
Panelists:
Ann Chao, Sonation
Helena Fruscio, State of MA
Elliot Schrock, Trill
Moderator:
David Day, Together Boston and Mmmmaven
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Friday, February 26
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The New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable (149)
Panel I: Two Keynote Addresses on Regional Energy Issues
Panel II: Enabling Consumers in NE: New Technologies, Practices, & Policies to Transform Retail Energy Markets
Friday, February 26
9 am to 12:30 pm
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, 13th Floor, Boston
Cost: $0 - $65
Livestream RSVP at https://signup.clickstreamtv.com/event/raab/events/
Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Matthew Beaton and Québec Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Pierre Arcand (invited) will provide keynote addresses on state, provincial, and regional energy plans and issues.
These keynote addresses will be followed by a timely topic:
Enabling Consumers in New England: New Technologies, Practices, & Policies to Transform Retail Energy Markets.
Think of this panel as a critically important companion to the Utility of the Future and Grid Modernization discussions. It will cover a range of related topics, from technologies and software to better financing mechanisms, to important market design issues and policy levers. We have a stellar panel of leading practitioners and companies working on ways to enable customers to better manage their energy use (rates/bills, energy efficiency, demand response, distributed renewables, storage, and EVs).
The panel will cover current applied research in the field; how competitive suppliers in Texas are able to engage residential customers in new ways; New York's unfolding REV vision of the consumer of the future; using innovative methods to engage small and medium commercial customers; and how policy reform in New England can help unleash the energy consumer of the future. Speaking on this panel are:
Harvey Michaels, Director Energy Mgt. Research, MIT (Sloan)
Jim Steffes, EVP Corporate Affairs, Direct Energy
Jim Gallagher, Exec. Director, NY State Smart Grid Consortium
Tim Healy, Chairman & CEO, EnerNOC
Dan Allegretti, VP State Government Affairs (East), Exelon
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2016 MassDiGI Game Challenge - General Admission
Friday, February 26, 2016 at 9:30 AM - Saturday, February 27, 2016 at 6:00 PM (EST)
Microsoft NERD Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/2016-massdigi-game-challenge-general-admission-registration-19874590435
The MassDiGI Game Challenge is a one-of-a-kind competition event that helps aspiring game developers launch new games. The Game Challenge will be held on February 26-27, 2016 at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA. Featuring panel discussions, keynote talks and more - you won’t want to miss this! A general admission ticket gives you the chance to check out everything, hear the talks, listen to the panels, network and have a blast! The Game Challenge will feature:
Competitive Game Challenge w/ Great Prizes: Check out the entered games in one of three levels (Indie, College and High School) and in one of two categories (Best Entertainment Game or Best Serious Game).
Educational Programming: Day 1 of the Game Challenge will feature sessions to help teams fine-tune their pitch for the judging committee. Mini-sessions will focus on the topics of art, design, business and technology.
Indie Game Showcase: What would a Game Challenge be without a few games to play! The regional indie community is full of extremely talented individuals with great ideas on the cutting edge of game development. Teams and general attendees will have a chance to network with and, more importantly, play some of the great Indie games created in our own backyards.
Whether you are a small developer looking to breakout or a student exploring job opportunities, after attending the MassDiGI Game Challenge you’ll be guaranteed to walk away with valuable new connections and a better understanding of this exciting industry.
REGISTER EARLY!
NOTE: The deadline for general admission registration is Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 5pm ET!
Registration for both competing teams and general attendees is limited, so we encourage all interested parties to sign up as early as possible.
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Urban air pollution: It's getting better all the time?
Friday, February 26
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
William H. Brune, Pennsylvania State University
Speaker Bio: http://www.met.psu.edu/people/whb2
Atmospheric Sciences Seminar
Host: Adam Birdsall
Email: abirdsall@g.harvard.edu
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How Machine Learning Helps Count Casualties in Syria
Friday, February 26
12:30pm to 2:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Lunch 12:30pm; Talk 1pm
Megan Price, Director of Research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group
IACS Seminar Series
Contact: Natasha Baker
Phone: 617-496-2623
Email: iacs-info@seas.harvard.edu
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Lessons in Censorship: How Schools and Courts Subvert Students' First Amendment Rights
Friday, February 26
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
This event is free; no tickets are required.
Harvard Book Store welcomes CATHERINE J. ROSS, Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School and a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Education, for a discussion of her book Lessons in Censorship: How Schools and Courts Subvert Students' First Amendment Rights.
About Lessons in Censorship
American public schools often censor controversial student speech that the Constitution protects. Lessons in Censorship brings clarity to a bewildering array of court rulings that define the speech rights of young citizens in the school setting. Catherine J. Ross examines disputes that have erupted in our schools and courts over the civil rights movement, war and peace, rights for LGBTs, abortion, immigration, evangelical proselytizing, and the Confederate flag. She argues that the failure of schools to respect civil liberties betrays their educational mission and threatens democracy.
From the 1940s through the Warren years, the Supreme Court celebrated free expression and emphasized the role of schools in cultivating liberty. But the Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts courts retreated from that vision, curtailing certain categories of student speech in the name of order and authority. Drawing on hundreds of lower court decisions, Ross shows how some judges either misunderstand the law or decline to rein in censorship that is clearly unconstitutional, and she powerfully demonstrates the continuing vitality of the Supreme Court’s initial affirmation of students’ expressive rights. Placing these battles in their social and historical context, Ross introduces us to the young protesters, journalists, and artists at the center of these stories.
Lessons in Censorship highlights the troubling and growing tendency of schools to clamp down on off-campus speech such as texting and sexting and reveals how well-intentioned measures to counter verbal bullying and hate speech may impinge on free speech. Throughout, Ross proposes ways to protect free expression without disrupting education.
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IRAN: Women Only
Friday, February 26
3:00p–4:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, Lucian Pye Conference Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: photojournalist Randy H. Goodman
Photo exhibit by photojournalist Randy H. Goodman
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/cis/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact:
617-253-8306
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Cinematheque: An Evening with Robb Moss
Friday, February 26
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Boston University, COM 101, 640 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
AN EVENING WITH ROBB MOSS. Moss, a filmmaking professor at Harvard and prolific documentarian, will show Containment, co-directed by Harvard physics professor, Peter Galison. Its a real-life sci-fi dystopian tale of radioactive waste proliferating the globe and nobody in charge aware of how to stop its dangers. Will you sleep at night after seeing this film?
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Saturday, February 27
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History of Black Urban Farming in Boston and Food as Medicine
Saturday, February 27
11:00 am – 2:00 pm
Bethel AME Church, 40 Walk Hill Street, Boston
Learn about the history of farming in Boston from Black Urban Farmers and how to can use the foods we eat for over well-being and good health. Discover instructions and recipes for curing common ailments like inflammation and other diseases through diet.
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JP Time Exchange Birthday Party & Stuff Swap
Saturday, February 27
3pm - 6pm
Urbano, 29 Germania Street, Jamaica Plain
The JP Time Exchange is turning 1, and it’s time for a party! Members and non-members, please join us for a Birthday Party and Stuff Swap on Saturday, February 27 at Urbano in the Brewery Complex near Stony Brook. No need to bring anything – feel free to come, browse the stuff, and take what appeals to you – or take nothing at all! You’ll also have a chance to learn more about the Exchange, brainstorm your own gifts and needs, enjoy music and chat with great neighbors.
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Sustainability and Environmental Management: Panel & HEEC Social
Saturday, February 27
4:00 PM to 7:00 PM (EST)
Harvard, Maxwell-Dworkin room G115 and lobby, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Hello, SEM friends!
The Sustainability and Environmental Management program invites you to a special panel from 4:00-6:00 p.m. in Maxwell-Dworkin G-115 featuring faculty and students from the SEM program who will discuss their courses, professional experience, and how the program has helped them advance their careers in sustainability.
Light refreshments will be served. Join the Harvard Extension Environmental Club (HEEC) afterwards in the lobby of Maxwell-Dworkin for networking and social activities from 6:00-10:00 p.m. Catering will be provided - BYOB.
So we can estimate our food and beverage needs, and people can identify whom they might wish to mix with, please register and get your ticket to go!
And check out the roster and responses of who's attending, and download the information for reference at:
We hope to see you there!
The Harvard Extension Environmental Club
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How to Save the World
Saturday, February 27
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM
ImprovBoston, 40 Prospect Street, Cambridge
Cost: $12
AFTER GETTING A SUGGESTION OF A WORLD ISSUE, A NEVER BEFORE SEEN PRESENTATION IS GIVEN AS TO HOW TO SOLVE THAT PROBLEM AND THEN WE LEARN HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD.
SPOILER ALERT: ITS THROUGH LAUGHTER.
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Monday, February 29
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MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS)
Monday, February 29
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Speaker: Susan Solomon (MIT)
is internationally recognized as a leader in atmospheric science, particularly for her insights in explaining the cause of the Antarctic ozone "hole". She and her colleagues have made important contributions to understanding chemistry/climate coupling, including leading research on the irreversibility of global warming linked to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, and on the influence of the ozone hole on the climate of the southern hemisphere. Her current focus is on issues relating to both atmospheric chemistry and climate change.
MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar [MASS] is a student-run weekly seminar series. Topics include research concerning atmospheric science, and climate. The seminars usually take place on Mondays in 54-915 from 12.00-1pm. 2015/2016 co-ordinators: Marianna Linz (mlinz@mit.edu), John Agard (jvagard@mit.edu), and Dan Rothernberg (darothen@mit.edu).
Web site: http://bit.ly/1P33yOq
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact: Marianna Linz
617-253-2127
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Clean Power Plan Model Rules: Pathways for Implementation
Monday, February 29
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard Kennedy School, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Kate Konschnik, Lecturer on Law and Director, Environmental Policy Initiative, Harvard Law School
This series is presented by the Energy Technology Innovation Policy/Consortium for Energy Policy Research at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. Lunch will be provided.
HKS Energy Policy Seminar Series
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
(617) 495-8693
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Responsible Innovation and Public Values in the Dutch Shale Gas Controversy
Monday, February 29
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room, 24 Oxford Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge
Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
Behnam Taebi, Harvard, HKS Belfer Center
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
STS Circle at Harvard
Contact Name: Shana Rabinowich
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Environmental Impacts of Electricity: a Life-Cycle Perspective
Monday, February 29
1:00p–2:00p
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Edgar Hertwich, Professor and Director of Industrial Ecology, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
As some renewable energy projects face increasing environmental opposition, do we underestimate the potential downside of clean energy? In particular, is variable renewable power really any good if it may not be available when we want it? A new report of the International Resource Panel provides a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts of various power technologies.
Building on lifecycle inventories from this work, Edgar Hertwich and his team have developed comparative assessments of electricity scenarios for Europe. The work shows that transmission grid extensions can address the challenge of matching wind energy to demand while energy storage is needed for photovoltaics.
Reception to follow.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative
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Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness
Monday, February 29
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
MIT, Building E62-450, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker(s): Steve Levitt (University of Chicago)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Microeconomic Applications
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The American Slave Coast
Monday, February 29
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Ned and Constance Sublette, authors
The American Slave Coast offers a provocative vision of US history from earliest colonial times through emancipation that presents even the most familiar events and figures in a revealing new light.
Authors Ned and Constance Sublette tell the brutal story of how the slavery industry made the reproductive labor of the people it referred to as breeding women essential to the young country's expansion. Captive African Americans in the slave nation were not only laborers, but merchandise and collateral all at once. In a land without silver, gold, or trustworthy paper money, their children and their children's children into perpetuity were used as human savings accounts that functioned as the basis of money and credit in a market premised on the continual expansion of slavery. Slaveowners collected interest in the form of newborns, who had a cash value at birth and whose mothers had no legal right to say no to forced mating.
This gripping narrative is driven by the power struggle between the elites of Virginia, the slave-raising mother of slavery, and South Carolina, the massive importer of Africans a conflict that was central to American politics from the making of the Constitution through the debacle of the Confederacy.
Virginia slaveowners won a major victory when Thomas Jefferson's 1808 prohibition of the African slave trade protected the domestic slave markets for slave-breeding. The interstate slave trade exploded in Mississippi during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, drove the US expansion into Texas, and powered attempts to take over Cuba and other parts of Latin America, until a disaffected South Carolina spearheaded the drive to secession and war, forcing the Virginians to secede or lose their slave-breeding industry.
Filled with surprising facts, fascinating incidents, and startling portraits of the people who made, endured, and resisted the slave-breeding industry, The American Slave Coast culminates in the revolutionary Emancipation Proclamation, which at last decommissioned the capitalized womb and armed the African Americans to fight for their freedom.
Ned Sublette is the author of Cuba and Its Music, The World that Made New Orleans, and The Year Before the Flood. Constance Sublette has published, as Constance Ash, three novels and edited the anthology Not of Woman Born.
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Tuesday, March 1
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Boston TechBreakfast: March 2016
Tuesday, March 1
8:00 AM
Microsoft NERD - Horace Mann Room, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Interact with your peers in a monthly morning breakfast meetup. At this monthly breakfast get-together techies, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs share learn from their peers through show and tell / show-case style presentations.
And yes, this is free! Thank our sponsors when you see them :)
Agenda for Boston TechBreakfast:
8:00 - 8:15 - Get yer Bagels & Coffee and chit-chat
8:15 - 8:20 - Introductions, Sponsors, Announcements
8:20 - ~9:30 - Showcases and Shout-Outs!
~9:30 - end - Final "Shout Outs" & Last Words Boston TechBreakfast
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To Grow an Arm: Regeneration and Biomaterials Go Hand in Hand
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - 11:45am to 12:45pm
Harvard, Geological Museum 102, Haller Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Buddy Ratner, University of Washington
Amputation of a digit or limb due to trauma or chronic disease impacts quality of life, both physically and psychologically. Unlike other vertebrate species such as zebra fish and urodele amphibians, the ability for mammals such as humans and mice to regenerate lost limbs or digits is nearly non-existent, with extensive scarring being the typical healing response.
We start with the knowledge that every fetus and many amphibians can readily generate or regenerate limbs. The complexity of the process overwhelms our present developmental biology and certainly our technology. But, programmed in living systems is the ability to grow complete, functional limbs with skin, bone, tendons, vasculature, innervation, etc. A critical difference between healing in most vertebrates and healing in amphibians is scar. In amphibians, an amputated limb will lead to the formation of a blastema, in contrast to the scar outcome in mammals. The blastema “directs” the regrowth of the new limb. Within the blastema, macrophages are found to be present and active.
We have invented a precision-porous biomaterial that directs macrophages to the M2 (pro-healing) polarization and has been shown to lead to scar-free, vascularized, regenerative healing in skin, bone, sclera, heart stroma and vaginal wall. The biomaterial is now being used in humans. We can use this material to direct resident macrophages to regenerate digits and limbs – the ability to do this regeneration is programmed into the macrophages – let them do the work! Important elements are (1) avoid scar, (2) keep the limb healing site wet (regeneration, even with the fetus, occurs under water) and (3) potentially deliver locally (at the correct times) key growth factors.
Topics in Bioengineering
Contact: Rebekah Stiles
Email: rstiles@seas.harvard.edu
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Nancy Gibbs, TIME
Tuesday, March 1
12:00-1:00pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Nancy Gibbs is the editor of TIME. She is the co-author, along with TIME’s Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House. She joined TIME in 1985 as a part-time fact checker in the International section. She became a writer in 1988 and has written more than 100 cover stories, including the black-bordered special issue on the September 11 attacks, which won a National Magazine Award in 2002. The Chicago Tribune named her one of the ten best magazine writers in the country in 2003; her articles are included in the Princeton Anthology of Writing, Best American Crime Writing 2004, Best American Political Writing 2005 and TIME: 85 years of Great Writing. She has been a frequent guest on radio and television talk shows, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose, and a guest essayist on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
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The Future of Floating Forests in a Changing World
Tuesday, March 1
12:00pm to 1:05pm
Harvard, 22 Divinity Avenue, Seminar Room, Cambridge
Jarrett Byrnes, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston
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The Big Reverse of the Web: Are Our Policies and Standards Ready?
Tuesday, March 1
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room B010, Singer Classroom (lower level), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/03/Buytaert at 12:00 pm.
with Open Source developer, Dries Buytaert
We're on the cusp of the next wave of the web, where information will come to people, versus people seeking it out. This "big reverse" of the web poses all sorts of issues: ranging from policy, to personal privacy, to standardization across devices. Join creator of Drupal and co-founder and CTO of Acquia Dries Buytaert as he discusses what it will take to navigate a web that doesn't look or feel anything like what we know today.
About Dries
Dries Buytaert is an Open Source developer, technology executive, academic, and hobbyist photographer with two wonderful kids. He was born and raised in Antwerp (Belgium), but moved to the Boston in 2010.
Dries is the founder and project lead of Drupal, an Open Source platform for building websites. Drupal is used by 2% of the world's websites. He is also co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Acquia, a venture-backed technology company. They provide the technology platform that helps many large organizations build and operate their digital experiences.
He's a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum and holds a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University and a Licentiate Computer Science (MsC) from the University of Antwerp.
Friends describe him as a "workaholic". While that may be true, he believes it's worth it as both Drupal and Acquia share a desire to enable hundreds of thousands of dreamers and doers to craft the digital world. Scaling Drupal and Acquia is the harder, less traveled path, but also the one with the biggest impact. He lives to help build the world he wants to exist in.
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The 2016 Leonie Gordon Lecture: Working With Three Nobel Laureates: Sam Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and Dario Fo
WHEN Tue., Mar. 1, 2016, 3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement, 34 Concord Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose, Theater
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement
SPEAKER(S) Robert Scanlan, president and artistic director, The Poets' Theatre
COST Free and open to the public; reservation required
TICKET WEB LINK https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bSLRZ6Nded_Weau5Zn0C18GX-ULxII-nmeJYNvUk2e4/viewform
CONTACT INFO 617.495.4072
DETAILS Bob Scanlan is a theatre director who has taught at Harvard since 1989, most recently as Professor of the Practice of Theatre in the English Department. While Director of the Drama Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1977-89), he translated and directed Dario Fo's We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay in conjunction with Fo's first North American tour, working extensively with him and his wife and collaborator, Franca Rame, during that visit. Scanlan also knew and met regularly with Samuel Beckett during the 1980s and eventually produced or directed all of Beckett's works for the stage. He and Seamus Heaney collaborated on several Poets' Theatre programs in subsequent years.
Scanlan was Literary Director of the American Repertory Theatre under Robert Brustein, and Director of the Dramaturgy and Playwriting Programs at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard. He now heads the newly revived Poets' Theatre of Cambridge, and is currently directing Dario Fo's Mistero Buffo in a new translation by himself and the Italian poet, Walter Valeri.
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Knight Science Journalism Seminar with Rosalind Picard
Tuesday, March 1
4:30 pm
MIT, Building E19-623, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Rosalind Picard is credited with starting the branch of computer science known as affective computing, a field which explores the emotional relationships between human beings and the interface of technology with such human behaviors. The field has led to research and development in such areas as emotion recognition by robots and wearable computers. Her work has also led new directions in autism research, such as developing devices that could help people better recognize emotional nuances. She is the founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT’s Media Lab and co-director of the Media Lab’s Advancing Wellbeing Initiative. She has co-founded two businesses: Empatica, Inc. creating wearable sensors and analytics to improve health, and Affectiva, Inc. delivering technology to help measure and communicate emotion.
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Talk the Walk, a conversation with Swiss explorer Sarah Marquis
Tuesday, March 1
5:45 pm to 8:30 pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Sarah Marquis, the Swiss adventurer and writer, was nominated as Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic in 2014, and named European Adventurer in 2013. She walked solo 10,000 miles from Siberia to Australia, and then wrote a book about it, Wild by Nature, which was released in the US on February 9th. She has been profiled in The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic, and has been walking around the globe– almost non-stop– for the past 23 years. See other talks she’s given here.
Sarah will be interviewed in front of a live audience about her adventures and accomplishments by Heidi Legg, the journalist behind the popular Boston newsletter TheEditorial.com.
SARAH MARQUIS
She enjoyed a wild childhood in the countryside, climbing trees and watching birds for hours at a time. When she was a child, she burned with an intense curiosity. This inner thrill for discovery would shape her, make her flexible but strong. She emerged from childhood ready for the next step.
With no pocket money, Sarah started the thankless task of slug hunting in the family vegetable garden at the age of seven. She earned one franc for every 100 slugs. No matter the weather, she worked and saved to have the eight francs she needed for a copy of her dream magazine, National Geographic.
When she was eight years old she took off with her dog to spend the night in a cave and didn’t tell anyone where she was going. Her taste for traveling brought her to Australia, but it was in New Zealand that she encountered the full experience of walking. It was here that she made her decision: she would walk to fulfill her desire for discovery, and her need to try to understand Life. She spent time in Patagonia, where kilometer after kilometer she explored the land. She stayed in Moorea (French Polynesia) where she was attracted to the beauty of the islands and their inhabitants. She explored Canada by canoe and in 2000 she crossed the United States by foot, from the Canadian border to the Mexican border: it was 4,260 kilometers in four months and six days on a path full of obstacles. It was the famous PCT. At that point she thought she had reached the limit of her abilities. But then the Australian bush beckoned her once again (over the years she has returned regularly to rejuvenate). From up in the snowy mountains of Switzerland, she thought up a wild plan: to cross the Australian deserts alone and on foot…
“The fire that had always burned inside me would become my passion, my job, my life.”
HEIDI LEGG is the Founder of TheEditorial.com where she interviews visionaries and thinkers around her in Boston and Cambridge, USA. She weaves together these big thinkers in their fields, using a singular long-format interview, much like The Paris Review for writers.
She then brings these visionaries together for live events to discuss ideas around disruption, change, realities and utopias. Heidi’s work has been published in TheAtlantic.com, The Boston Globe’s BetaBoston.com, Thehuffingtonpost.com and theKnightsbridge-Village.com.
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BASG March 1: Carbon Realities
Tuesday, March 1
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Cambridge Innovation Center, Venture Cafe - 5th Floor, One Broadway, Cambridge
Cost: $10 - $12
Carbon plays a major role in causing climate change and, one could say, is underpriced. For now, anyway. Few, if any of us, are paying for the hidden costs of climate change that are resulting from carbon emissions. We are dedicating March 1st to talking about how we can be more effective in accounting for the impact of carbon emissions on our world and our futures and are excited to have several incredible speakers and contributors join us in this discussion.
Johanna Jobin, Director, Global EHS & Sustainability at Biogen, will share Biogen’s journey to carbon neutrality and talk about how companies are valuing carbon and taking it into account in their business strategies. No small feat for the largest MA company, this achievement follows an impressive multi-year effort to reduce energy intensity, invest in environmental projects and engage their suppliers. Before Biogen, Johanna was Head of Corporate Responsibility & Community Affairs of MilliporeSigma. She received her Master of Environmental Management degree, with a certificate in Energy and Environment, from Duke and is an ISO 14001 trained auditor. Johanna is also active with NAEM, USGBC, AIM, WPI, MSEP, the City of Cambridge Climate Protection Action Committee, and “e” inc.
State Senator Mike Barrett, D-Lexington, will bring his passion and mission to have Massachusetts lead the country by putting a price on carbon with bill S.1747, An Act combating climate change, which he introduced last year along with 46 Senators and Representatives. This website offers background. Mike represents nine MA communities and has just accepted a new appointment as Chair of the Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight, a special Senate body charged with examining the performance of Executive branch programs and agencies. Mike favors increasing the prices of fossil fuels to pay for the health and environmental harm they cause. Working with a growing circle of voters, environmentalists and business leaders, Mike has put the issue on the state’s political agenda.
Joe Lassiter, Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School, will address the intersection of innovation and environmental regulation, particularly as it relates to climate and carbon. Joe has extensive experience studying and teaching how high-potential ventures attack the problem of financing and bringing to market innovations that develop clean, secure and carbon-neutral supplies of reliable, low-cost energy. Joe’s long career at HBS includes several distinguished appointments and many years of teaching undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from across the University and its affiliated hospitals about how to turn high potential ventures into high-performance businesses.
We are also grateful to Eric Grunebaum and Jamie Salo for setting the stage for our discussion. Eric advises startups and facilities owners on clean energy and efficiency projects. As a senior member of environmental accounting firm Trucost, Jamie works with businesses and investors to measure and value their environmental performance.
Please join us, our guests, and our co-hosts Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability Roundtable for what will be yet another very cool evening. -- Carol, Holly, Tilly.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, March 2
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Vanguard Series: E+, Key Secrets to Success with Net Positive Development Part 1: Residential
Wednesday, March 2
8:30 AM - 11:30 AM
50 Milk Street, 14th Floor, "Dali" Conf Room, Boston
Cost: $50-$65
Join John Dalzell, Senior Architect at the Boston Redevelopment Authority for Part 1 of his two part E+ Series on the city's energy positive affordable energy development. Below is a brief introduction on the E+ program. We look forward to having a deep level discussion on net-positive building development.
In Boston, we are taking our green building and renewable energy efforts to the next frontier by creating ultra-efficient buildings that generate surplus clean energy. We are demonstrating that energy positive green homes and buildings can be constructed sustainably and cost-effectively, while enhancing the livability and vitality of Boston’s neighborhoods now and into the future.
Boston, a national leader in green building, is promoting the next generation of high performance deep green buildings. The E+ Green Building Program will demonstrate the feasibility of regenerative multi-unit residential buildings and bring energy and environmentally positive homes to Boston’s neighborhoods.These proposal submissions show us that regenerative buildings are achievable and not beholden to a particular esthetic.
We are deeply appreciative of the time, expertise, and effort each team has put in their proposal. As evidenced by their vision, creativity and ingenuity, each and every team is a leader in green building design, engineering, and sustainable development.
The initiative continues Boston’s efforts to promote sustainable development and green buildings throughout the City. With the support of NSTAR Electric and National Grid and in partnership with the US Green Building Council, the USGBC Massachusetts Chapter, the Boston Society of Architects and the Boston Architectural College, this initiative is challenging leading architects, engineers, developers, and builders to respond to global climate change and envision a truly sustainable future. Source: City of Boston.
Email: info@usgbcma.org
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Zone Extremes in the Arctic, and Their Impact on Surface Climate
Wednesday, March 2
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus)
Speaker: Lorenzo Polvani (Columbia)
Sack Lunch Seminars (SLS) is a student-run weekly seminar series. Topics include climate, geophysical fluid dynamics, biogeochemistry, paleo-oceanography/climatology and physical oceanography.
Web site: http://bit.ly/1RQpuuO
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact: Darius Collazo
617-253-2127
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Narrative and the Making of US National Security
Wednesday, March 2
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Ron Krebs (University of Minnesota)
SSP Wednesday Seminar Series
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact: Elina Hamilton
617- 253-7529
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Learning to Make Choices in the Era of Big Data
WHEN Wed., Mar. 2, 2016, 4 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Shivani Agarwal, 2015-2016 William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; assistant professor and a Ramanujan Fellow, Indian Institute of Science (India); associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences and of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences; co-director of the Indo-US Joint Center for Advanced Research in Machine Learning, Game Theory and Optimization
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS In this lecture, Agarwal will speak about her research studying computational models that can be used to understand how people make choices in the face of increasingly vast amounts of data. Through her analysis, Agarwal hopes to bring together techniques from machine learning, statistics, social choice theory, psychology, and economics to construct compact models of choice and ranking behavior that incorporate key features of human decision-making.
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2016 Norton Lecture 1 of 6: "Romancing Slavery"
WHEN Wed., Mar. 2, 2016, 4 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mahindra Humanities Center
SPEAKER(S) Toni Morrison
TICKET INFO Events are free, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45 p.m.
DETAILS 2016 Norton Lectures. "The Origin of Others: The Literature of Belonging"
Lecture One: Romancing Slavery Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Lecture Two: Being and Becoming the Stranger Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Lecture Three: The Color Fetish Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Lecture Four: Configurations of Blackness Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Lecture Five: Narrating the Other Monday, April 11, 2016
Lecture Six: The Foreigner's Home Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Events are free, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45 p.m.
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Book Talk: Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America
WHEN Wed., Mar. 2, 2016, 4:10 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Ash Center Fellow Hollie Russon Gilman will discuss her new book, Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America (Brookings, 2016);Moderating the discussion will be Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and HKS Academic Dean Archon Fung. Respondents include HKS Assistant Professor of Public Policy Quinton Mayne and Nigel Jacob, Co-Chair, Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics, City of Boston.
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO maisie_obrien@hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS Join us for a conversation with Ash Center Fellow Hollie Russon Gilman as she discusses her new book, Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America (Brookings, 2016). Moderating the discussion will be Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and HKS Academic Dean Archon Fung. Respondents include HKS Assistant Professor of Public Policy Quinton Mayne and Nigel Jacob, Co-Chair, Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics, City of Boston.
Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called “revolutionary civics in action” by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds.
Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, in-depth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance.
While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Democracy Reinvented also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance.
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Children's Lead Levels and Black White Test Score Gaps
Wednesday, March 2
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Anna Aizer, Brown University, and Janet Currie, Princeton University
For more information, contact Professor Stavins (617-495-1820), Professor Weitzman (617-495-5133), or the course assistant, Jason Chapman (617-496-8054).
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
Contact Name: Bryan J. Galcik
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Restoring Nature's Relationships at Home, a talk by Doug Tallamy, author of "Bringing Nature Home"
Wednesday, March 2
7:00 to 8:30pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
A free lecture by Doug Tallamy on Mar 2 at 7:00pm, presented by Grow Native Mass at the Cambridge Public Library
If we are to make our residential landscapes truly living ecosystems once again, we need to understand the specialized relationships that make plants and animals interdependent. Who better to take us on an in-depth journey into this fascinating and complex world than Doug Tallamy? He will give us detailed examples of these co-evolutionary relationships, showing us how they determine the stability and complexity of local food webs— providing birds with insects and berries, dispersing bloodroot seeds, pollinating goldenrod, and much more. This knowledge equips us to knowingly select plants and to construct landscapes that restore nature’s relationships at home.
Doug Tallamy is a Professor of Entomology and Wildlife Biology at the University of Delaware. His groundbreaking book, Bringing Nature Home, was published in 2007 and continues to have national impact; it was awarded the 2008 Silver Medal by the Garden Writers' Association. In 2014, he co-authored The Living Landscape with Rick Darke. Doug’s conservation work and science-based advocacy for native plants has earned him numerous awards.
Free and open to the public
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Thursday, March 3
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An Entrepreneurial Approach to Environmental Education: Opportunities and Challenges to Engage Future Business Leaders
Thursday, March 3
12pm
Tufts, Rabb room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Most talks will be streamed lived at Bit.ly/TuftsLunchLearn
Vikki Rodgers
At Babson College we educate entrepreneurial leaders who create great economic and social value everywhere. Our science curriculum has the unique opportunity to ignore the typical disciplinary boundaries and instead create an entrepreneurial mindset by fostering scientific discovery and investigation relevant to business applications. Solving environmental problems often requires working in interdisciplinary teams. In this talk Dr. Vikki Rogers will discuss the approach she takes in engaging business students in learning environmental science and ecological impact. She will provide examples of small group projects in the areas of Environmental Technology, Economic Botany, Ecotourism & Conservation, and Ecological Management.
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Climate and the Water-Energy Nexus: Towards an Assessment Framework for China
Thursday, March 3
3:30pm to 4:45pm
Harvard, Pierce Hall 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Casey Brown, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
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Can Russia Really Pivot to Asia?
Thursday, March 3
4:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building E40-496, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Yoshi Takeda and Elizabeth Wishnick
Focus on Russia Lecture Series
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact: Harlene Miller
617-258-6531
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BU Research on a Sustainable Energy Future
Thursday, March 3
4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
BU Questrom School of Business, 595 Commonwealth Avenue Rooms 426 and 428, Boston
As demonstrated by the recent Paris Climate Conference, global energy systems face a massive challenge in shifting away from unsustainable carbon-emitting fuels to sustainable sources, while serving the energy and development needs of a planet whose population will reach ten billion before the end of the century. This challenge calls for contributions from disciplines that span the full range of BU’s capabilities in research and policy analysis. At this event, faculty members engaged in a wide range of research related to sustainable energy systems and policies will discuss their current and future work.
Hosted by Peter Fox-Penner, Professor of the Practice, Questrom School of Business
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The Path to Denmark: How Do Societies Develop Control of Corruption?
WHEN Thu., Mar. 3, 2016, 4:10 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Humanities, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, professor of democracy studies, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany
DETAILS Part of the Comparative Democracy Seminar Series.
The author of "The Quest for Good Governance" (Cambridge University Press 2015) and leader of the EU-funded 10 million euro framework research project ANTICORRP, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi takes up the challenge from where renowned authors Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson had left it in “Why Nations Fail.” If the difference in economic performance is accounted for by governance, what explains why so few countries engage on the path of open and inclusive government versus one limiting access and spoiling its subjects? She argues that corruption has historically started by being the norm before becoming the exception, and that in over eighty electoral democracies of the present world the spoiling of public resources by ruling elites is still the rule of the game and a major collective action problem. Understanding the historical development of corruption control if the main target of her book.
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Knight Science Journalism Craft Night with Virginia Hughes
Thursday, March 3
4:30 pm
MIT, Building E19-623, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Virginia Hughes is the science editor at BuzzFeed News. Before joining BuzzFeed, Virginia was an independent journalist specializing in genetics, neuroscience, and biotechnology. Her blog, Only Human, was published by National Geographic, and her writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Slate. Virginia was once the community manager of ScienceBlogs and interned for Discover Magazine, Seed Magazine and NPR’s science desk.
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EnergyBar!
Thursday, March 3
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Greentown Labs, 28 Dane Street, Somerville
EnergyBar is a monthly event devoted to helping people in clean technology meet and discuss innovations in energy technology. Entrepreneurs, investors, students, and ‘friends of cleantech,’ are invited to attend, meet colleagues, and expand our growing regional clean technology community.
Our attendees typically span a variety of disciplines within energy, efficiency, and renewables. If you're looking for a job in cleantech or energy, trying to expand your network, or perhaps thinking about starting your own energy-related company this is the event for you. Expect to have conversations about issues facing advanced and renewable energy technologies and ways to solve our most pressing energy problems.
Light appetizers and drinks will be served starting at 5:30 pm. Suggested dress is shop floor casual. Hope to see you there!
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Socially Responsible Investing Panel
Thursday, March 3
5:45 PM to 7:30 PM (EST) - Add to Calendar
101 Federal Street, Boston
Please join NEWIEE and the Commonwealth Financial Group for a Socially Responsible Investment Panel at Commonwealth Financial’s office at 101 Federal Street (8th floor) on Thursday, March 3. Registration/networking begins at 5:45, the panel will run from 6-7 followed by networking. The event is free, but please RVSP through Eventbrite, because space is limited.
This event aims to educate attendees about the exciting arena of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). In today’s investment world, we often get caught up in traditional approaches, but one of the fastest growing areas in the investing world today is the SRI Space. Key highlights will include:
Defining the importance of SRI;
Educating attendees on SRI, including details on associated fees; and
Dispelling the myth that SRI requires investors to sacrifice returns.
The a panelists will be Ben Hamblen, Director of Firm Development at Commonwealth Financial Group and Paul Hilton, a Partner at Trillium Asset Management; both specialize in SRI.
Wine and appetizers will be served thanks to our host Commonwealth Financial Group. Please join us for networking before and after the event. We look forward to seeing you there!
Logistics: Note that there are two elevator banks in the building, so make sure to use the one labeled "101" to get the 8th floor. Commonwealth Financial Group is two blocks from South Station and Downtown Crossing and there is parking beneath the building.
NEWIEE may on occasion take photographs and/or video of event attendees for use in print materials or by electronic methods. Your attendance at any NEWIEE event grants permission for NEWIEE to use these photographs and/or video in its marketing and public relations efforts.
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Goldsmith Awards in Political Journalism with Keynote by Walter Isaacson
WHEN Thu., Mar. 3, 2016, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Award Ceremonies, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Walter Isaacson, former chairman of CNN, former editor of TIME, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and author of bestselling books on Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS The annual Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize honors journalism that promotes more effective and ethical conduct of government, the making of public policy, or the practice of politics. The finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting are: The Associated Press, The Guardian US, InsideClimate News, The New York Times, Tampa Bay Times and The Washington Post, for stories that covered topics such as police shootings, slave labor in the seafood industry, and Exxon’s role in manufacturing doubt about climate change.
Walter Isaacson, former chairman of CNN, former editor of TIME, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and author of bestselling books on Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin, will receive the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism and deliver the keynote address.
This event will also be webcast.
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SCIENCE with/in/sight: 2016 Koch Institute Image Awards
Thursday, March 3
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, 500 Main Street, Cambridge
MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research cordially invites you to the opening of the 2016 Image Awards exhibition. Our new images celebrate the spirit of MIT, the power of collaboration, and the Koch Institute's fifth anniversary as a community of life scientists and engineers under one roof. From cancer cells to circuit boards, these towering, colorful canvases will awe and inspire, encouraging viewers to look a little closer, think a little bigger, and explore the world in new ways. Join biologists, chemists, and engineers for networking, lightning presentations, and more, as they illuminate the night with their bright ideas.
Reception at 6:00 p.m., Presentations at 7:00 p.m., Coffee and dessert follow.
Event parking will be available free of charge in MIT's Stata Center garage (map) from 5:30-9:00 p.m.
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Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion
Thursday, March 3
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes SUSAN JACOBY, author of eleven previous books, for a discussion of her latest work, Strange Gods: A Secular History of Conversion.
About Strange Gods
In a groundbreaking historical work that addresses religious conversion in the West from an uncompromisingly secular perspective, Susan Jacoby challenges the conventional narrative of conversion as a purely spiritual journey. From the transformation on the road to Damascus of the Jew Saul into the Christian evangelist Paul to a twenty-first-century “religious marketplace” in which half of Americans have changed faiths at least once, nothing has been more important in the struggle for reason than the right to believe in the God of one’s choice or to reject belief in God altogether.
Focusing on the long, tense convergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—each claiming possession of absolute truth—Jacoby examines conversions within a social and economic framework that includes theocratic coercion (unto torture and death) and the more friendly persuasion of political advantage, economic opportunism, and interreligious marriage. Moving through time, continents, and cultures—the triumph of Christianity over paganism in late antiquity, the Spanish Inquisition, John Calvin’s dour theocracy, Southern plantations where African slaves had to accept their masters’ religion—the narrative is punctuated by portraits of individual converts embodying the sacred and profane. The cast includes Augustine of Hippo; John Donne; the German Jew Edith Stein, whose conversion to Catholicism did not save her from Auschwitz; boxing champion Muhammad Ali; and former President George W. Bush. The story also encompasses conversions to rigid secular ideologies, notably Stalinist Communism, with their own truth claims.
Finally, Jacoby offers a powerful case for religious choice as a product of the secular Enlightenment. In a forthright and unsettling conclusion linking the present with the most violent parts of the West’s religious past, she reminds us that in the absence of Enlightenment values, radical Islamists are persecuting Christians, many other Muslims, and atheists in ways that recall the worst of the Middle Ages.
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Civic Ecology: Healing and Growing in Community
Thursday, March 3
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arbor Way, Boston
Fee $10 - Details and Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu
Community gardening and forestry, participatory watershed restoration…in communities around the world there is a growing phenomenon. People are coming together to rebuild and restore local environments affected by crisis, disaster, or neglect. In New Orleans after Katrina, in New York after Sandy, in Soweto after apartheid, and in any number of postindustrial, depopulated cities, people work together to restore nature, renew communities, and to heal themselves. Marianne Krasny will share stories of this emerging grassroots environmental stewardship, arguing that humans’ innate love of nature and attachment to place compels them to restore nature and places that are threatened, destroyed, or lost. She’ll also report examples of nature and community exerting a healing and restorative power on their stewards and of the measurable effects of civic ecology on individuals and communities.
Presented jointly by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Massachusetts Audubon's Boston Nature Center, and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy
Contact Name: arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu
617-384-5277
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“Plays with Words," Featuring Comedian Aparna Nancherla and ImprovBoston
WHEN Thu., Mar. 3, 2016, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Comedy, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Moderator Robin Young, cohost, Here & Now, WBUR and National Public Radio
Aparna Nancherla, stand-up comedian
Glenda Carpio, professor of English and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Performers from ImprovBoston
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Languages constantly evolve and reflect cultural practices. They are a fluid reflection of the passage of time, influenced by many factors, including age, class, and gender. “Plays with Words” provides an opportunity to examine and enjoy the role of gender within the comedic landscape.
"Plays with Words" is part of the conference "Ways with Words: Exploring Language and Gender"—an exploration of the state of language in today's society as it relates to, mirrors, and affects perceptions of gender. The program begins on the evening of March 3 and continues with a full day of presentations and discussions on March 4.
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Friday, March 4
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2016 Goldsmith Seminar on Investigative Reporting
WHEN Fri., Mar. 4, 2016, 9 – 10:30 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, Nye Conference Center, Taubman Building, 5th Floor, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Award Ceremonies, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorensten Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S) Investigative reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The Guardian, and other publications.
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS A panel discussion with the winners and finalists of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, whose stories include topics such as police shootings, slave labor in the seafood industry, and Exxon’s role in manufacturing doubt about climate change. Learn about the making of their stories, which have made an impact on U.S. public policy.
Panelists:
Neela Banerjee, senior reporter, InsideClimate News
Kimberly Kindy, national investigative reporter, The Washington Post
Michael LaForgia, reporter, investigations team, Tampa Bay Times
Robin McDowell, reporter, former Myanmar correspondent, The Associated Press
Jessica Greenberg-Silver, reporter, business section, The New York Times
Jon Swaine, senior reporter, Guardian US
Thomas Patterson, Shorenstein Center interim director, moderator
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Emotional Intelligence Hackathon
March 4 - March 6
5:00pm - 2:00pm
Microsoft New England R&D Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Cost: $25
Emotions are critical to human behavior but are mostly missing from the digital world. What if devices, apps and technology could sense human emotions and adapt to them?
Join Affectiva for an exciting weekend-long hackathon during which participants will create emotion-aware technology. You will get to use Affectiva’s emotion-sensing SDKs for iOS, Android and Windows. We’ll provide a selection of interesting devices, and together we will design the future of emotion technology.
Form Teams:
The organizers of the hackathon will help participants to form small teams (of around 5 people). These teams will work together to create an emotionally aware solution. You do not need to have a pre-existing team to attend, we will help you join a team. The more diversity we have on a team the more skills and ideas will be brought to the solution.
Selection of devices that we will provide include (but are not limited to):
BB-8 Robot by Sphero
Nest thermostat
Philips Hue programmable light bulbs
Flora Boards
Raspberry Pi
Arduino boards and shields
What to Bring:
Laptop
Mobile devices
Most importantly your ideas!
What you Get:
Food and drinks
IoT Devices to try
A help desk to support getting your ideas off the ground
Use of Affectiva’s emotion-recognition SDK
A hackpad to write about your project
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2016 MIT Energy Conference: Big Meets Small: A New Era Emerges
March 4-5, 2016
Cambridge Mariott, 50 Broadway, Cambridge
Cost: $50 - $440
More changes have occurred in the global energy sector in the past decade than in the 100 years prior. This year’s MIT Energy Conference main theme is centered on the interconnection between activities, technologies, and geographies, discussing the idea that small, distributed impacts can generate big, long-lasting solutions. “Big Meets Small" is about taking a more holistic approach: understanding the disruption that is happening across the energy value chain and how infrastructure developments, technology improvements, and market changes, both big and small, have a place in the puzzle.
In particular, the Conference will discuss the promise of distributed technologies at scale, new market structures shifting the power dynamics between large and small energy players, new financing models enabling unprecedented levels of involvement in energy investment, and local policies seeking to halt the global impacts of climate change.
In its 11th edition, the MIT Energy Conference invites you to join in the conversation at the systems-level: we will bring together leaders and visionaries from industry, government, the scientific community, and the private sector that are looking at today’s complex interactions, which are redefining the future of energy worldwide.
Please join us for what is sure to be an exceptional and thought-provoking two days.
We hope to see you there!
2016 MITEC Organizing Team
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Compton Lecture by Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director
Friday, March 4, 2016
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building W16, Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Christine Lagarde
MIT welcomes Madame Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, for the spring 2016 Karl Taylor Compton Lecture on Friday, March 4, 2016. Lecture title to be announced.
Open to: the general public
Cost: n/a
Tickets: n/a
Sponsor(s): Institute Events, Office of the President
For more information, contact: Institute Events
617-253-4795
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Askwith Forum – New American Mosaic: Diversity and The Innovation Economy
WHEN Fri., Mar. 4, 2016, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Discussion, Diversity & Equity, Forum, Lecture, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT Alumni, AskWith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME Roger Falcon
CONTACT EMAIL askwith_forums@gse.harvard.edu
CONTACT PHONE 617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS Speaker: Alejandra Y. Castillo, National Director, Minority Business Development Agency, U.S. Department of Commerce
By 2044, the U.S. Census Bureau anticipates that minority populations will become the majority groups in America. What does this mean? What are the opportunities and challenges for democracy? How do we define a New America? Undoubtedly, these are all questions that present significant public policy challenges in education, health, workforce readiness, as well as economic and business participation. The success of America’s minority populations, the mosaic of our democracy, will directly determine whether or not the United States continues to be globally competitive in an ever-changing economic and technological landscape.
Today more than ever, educators are uniquely positioned to serve as important catalysts of change. What role will they play in designing the vehicle to develop and sharpen critical thinking, support new democratic systems, and create innovative technologies that are able to advance policies and programs designed to ensure that all Americans are active participants in the economic engine that fuels the nation? The economic nexus between entrepreneurs and educators is a symbiotic relation. Castillo will provide education leaders with a call to action designed to boldly lead us into a healthy economic future by embracing the new demographic horizon with groundbreaking action and urgency.
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Saturday, March 5
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The Fletcher Conference on Managing Political Risk
Saturday, March 5
8:00am - 5:30pm
Microsoft New England R&D Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Cost: $20 - $90
The 2016 Fletcher Conference on Managing Political Risk Group will bring together business professionals, academics, and graduate students focused on international relations and business to consider the risks and opportunities that companies, investors, and organizations face today.
In today's volatile political and economic landscape, risk mitigation tools are essential for globally focused firms. Effective business strategy relies on a nuanced understanding of how factors such as governmental policy and regulations, elections and coups, protests and violent conflict, bribery and corruption, local politics and stakeholder sentiment, as well as broad geopolitical and market shifts pose risks to an enterprise.
Political risk analysis and management lies at the intersection of economics, politics, security, conflict resolution, law, energy, business and finance. The Fletcher School, the nation's first graduate institute of international affairs, specializes in each of these fields and is thus the ideal platform for a discussion on managing political risk.
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Civic Ecology Service Day with Marianne Krasny
March 5
9am - 12pm
Boston Nature Center, 500 Walk Hill Street, Mattapan
Register here: https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?DayPlanner=1494&DayPlannerDate=3/5/2016 or call 617-983-8500.
Civic ecology brings communities together to strengthen bonds while supporting local ecosystems. Come to the Boston Nature Center for a civic ecology volunteer morning. Volunteers will help with the removal of invasive plants, preparing the sanctuary’s bird boxes for spring, and improving the Nature Nook. Work together to support this unique wildlife sanctuary while learning about an urban ecosystem. This is the culminating event of the visit from Dr. Marianne E. Krasny of Cornell University. Free
Presented jointly by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Center, and the Emerald Necklace Conservancy
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2016 Social Enterprise Conference
2016 Social Enterprise Conference, hosted by the students of HBS & HKS
Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 9:00 AM - Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 5:00 PM (EST)
Memorial Hall, Harvard University, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Cost: $80.12 - $159.24
The Social Enterprise Conference brings together top leaders, practitioners, and students passionate about social enterprise.
This year the conference’s content will focus on the untold truths of Social Enterprise and challenge participants to dare to take the steps necessary to make a difference.
We hope to see you for a weekend of inspiration and action at the 17th Annual Social Enterprise Conference!
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Sunday, March 6
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Tufts Energy Conference
Sunday, March 6
9am until 7pm
The Fletcher School at Tufts University, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
RSVP at https://secure.touchnet.net/C21525_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=297&SINGLESTORE=true
Cost: $14.99 - $34.99
Panels on
Energy, Environment, and Security in the Arctic
Biofuels: Balancing Food Security and Clean Energy Goals
The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy
What’s Next for Conventional Energy?
Prospects for a Global Natural Gas Market
Challenges and Opportunities: China’s 20% Non-Fossil Fuel Target
The Return of Iranian Supply and the Future of OPEC
And a free energy showcase
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Growing Plants from Seed
Sunday, March 6
1:30 p.m. - 3 p.m.
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Lecture Hall, Cambridge
Plants grown from seed have greater genetic diversity, are better adapted to their environment, and are less expensive to produce. In this class you will learn when and how to collect seeds in the wild; how to collect, clean, and store them; and how to sow and tend for them. Emphasis will be placed on species that can be grown easily and without fancy equipment or large investments of time.
Instructor: Dan Jaffe, Propagator and Stock Bed Grower, New England Wild Flower Society
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Monday, March 7
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MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar (MASS) - Gerard Roe, UW
Monday, March 7
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus)
Speaker: Gerard Roe (UW)
MIT Atmospheric Science Seminar [MASS] is a student-run weekly seminar series. Topics include research concerning atmospheric science, and climate. The seminars usually take place on Mondays in 54-915 from 12.00-1pm. 2015/2016 co-ordinators: Marianna Linz (mlinz@mit.edu) and John Agard (jvagard@mit.edu).
Web site: http://bit.ly/1P33yOq
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact: Marianna Linz
617-253-2127
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Platformizing Higher Education: Computer Science and the Making of MOOC Infrastructures
Monday, March 7
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room, 24 Oxford Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge
Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
Shreeharsh Kelkar, MIT
The STS Circle at Harvard is a group of doctoral students and recent PhDs who are interested in creating a space for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences. We want to engage not only those who are working on intersections of science, politics, and public policy, but also those in the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture who have serious interest in exploring these areas together with social scientists and humanists.
STS Circle at Harvard
Contact Name: Shana Rabinowich
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Mind Control: Past, Present and Future
Monday, March 7
5:00-6:45 PM
Harvard, CGIS Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Panelists: Ed Boyden (Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gabriel Kreiman (Harvard Medical School)
Rebecca Lemov (Harvard University)
Alvaro Pascual-Leone (Harvard Medical School)
Seung-Schik Yoo (Harvard Medical School)
Moderator: Kerry Ressler (Harvard Medical School)
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Future Island: Cuba / with Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jorge Fernandez Torres, Doris Sommer, Timothy Hyde
Monday, March 7
6:00p–9:00p
MIT, Building E15-001, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jorge Fernandez Torres, Doris Sommer, Timothy Hyde
Curation: Agencies + Urgencies
ACT's Spring 2016 lecture series Curation: Agencies + Urgencies addresses the contexts and forces shaping the practice of curation today. Bringing together a cast of influential curators, critics, and educators operating across institutional boundaries and political scales- from the book to the biennial- these lectures consider the curator- as diplomat, as researcher, as (para-)artist, as speculator, as provocateur, as censor- and the varying roles and forms curation itself: What defines spaces of curation today? What are the politics pressurizing the practice? What role does the emerging discipline of curatorial studies play in the institutionalization of art? What are the limits and possibilities of curation as a mode of publicity?
In many ways, these are timely questions for an evolving artistic research program such as ACT. Indeed, ACT is in the midst of its own curatorial moment: The program is currently reconceiving the accessibility and presentation of its archive, experimenting with new forms of publication, and developing lines of pedagogy and research that naturally overlap with the basic associative impulse of curatorial praxis- that is, the drive to find new forms and spaces of relief, to form new associations and ecologies of works, people, venues, and sites.
ll-2016-about-series/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and Open to the Public
Sponsor(s): Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, Department of Architecture, Arts at MIT, School of Architecture and Planning, Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT)
For more information, contact:
Marion Cunningham
617-253-5229
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Annals of the Anthropocene: The Science and Policy of Earth's Atmosphere
Monday, March 7
7pm
The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville
Guest scientists David Keith and Steven Barrett
David is a Professor of Applied Physics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, and a Professor of Public Policy in the Harvard Kennedy School. His group works on climate science, energy technology, and public policy. He also helps lead Carbon Engineering, a company working on air capture of CO2.
Steven is an Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the director of the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. His group works on the environmental impacts of aviation including atmospheric modeling and propulsion.
Science by the Pint is a monthly science cafe free and open to the public, run by the Harvard non-profit outreach group Science In The News (SITN). Read more here: http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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Tuesday, March 8
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Building Energy Boston Conference + Trade Show
March 8-10
Seaport World Trade Center, Boston
More information at http://nesea.org/conference/buildingenergy-boston-2016
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Local Specialty Crop & Local Food Trade Shows
Tuesday, March 8
8:30 am – 2:00 pm
Buyers & Attendees – Register at http://sbnmass.formstack.com/forms/2016_lfts_buyer_application
Cost: $20-$30
*This event is intended for commercial buyers, not individual consumers.*
Editorial Comment: Although not intended for individual consumers, consumers interested in the local food network might want to attend.
The Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts (SBN) is offering our 5th Local Food Trade Shows. The 2016 Local Food Trade Shows are designed to facilitate connections and stimulate business relationships between producers and wholesale buyers of local food, with a focus on specialty crop food products in Massachusetts.
This event is ideal for restaurants and institutional buyers interested in trading with local food suppliers and who desire to buy more locally produced products from growers, fishermen, and value added producers from Massachusetts and New England.
Local Specialty Crop Trade Show
Exhibitors will include New England based farmers, produce distributors and local specialty crop producers (products made with 50% or more specialty crops also qualify). Please view the USDA definition of specialty crops here. This Trade Show is sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. Exhibition booths are free for specialty crop farmers and other specialty crop producers.
Local Food Trade Show
This trade show is open to all non-specialty crop food producers including meat and dairy farms, fisheries, baked goods and other added value producers. Exhibition booths are $125.00.
The Specialty Crop Trade Show is made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MassGrown).
Due to the expansion of our program, we are offer two trade shows, taking place the same time and in the same location. Each trade show will feature different types of exhibitors.
Who should attend?
Any wholesale buyers, who are interested in purchasing Massachusetts or New England-produced food items. These buyers can be supermarkets, co-ops, restaurants, hotels, institutions, schools, food processors in search of ingredients, distributors, or anyone else interested in local purchasing options.*This event is intended for commercial buyers, not individual consumers.*
Maddie Phadke 617-395-0250
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2016 Norton Lecture 2 of 6: "Being and Becoming the Stranger"
WHEN Tue., Mar. 8, 2016, 4 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mahindra Humanities Center
SPEAKER(S) Toni Morrison
TICKET INFO Events are free, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45 p.m.
DETAILS 2016 Norton Lectures. "The Origin of Others: The Literature of Belonging"
Lecture One: Romancing Slavery Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Lecture Two: Being and Becoming the Stranger Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Lecture Three: The Color Fetish Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Lecture Four: Configurations of Blackness Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Lecture Five: Narrating the Other Monday, April 11, 2016
Lecture Six: The Foreigner's Home Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Events are free, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45 p.m.
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Knight Science Journalsim Seminar with Kevin Esvelt and Marc Lipsitch
Tuesday, March 8
4:30 pm
MIT, Building E19-623, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Kevin Esvelt will pioneer a “Sculpting Evolution” research program at MIT’s Media Lab starting in fall 2016. Currently, he works at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute, where he co-developed the CRISPR/Cas9 system for targeted genome editing and described how we might use RNA-guided gene drives to spread genomic alterations through wild populations. Kevin’s current interests include building safeguards for the responsible development of gene drives, exploring methods of stably altering the composition of microbial communities, and researching new tools and strategies for evolutionary engineering.
Marc Lipstich is a professor at Harvard University’s Department of Epidemiology with a joint appointment in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease. He is director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics and associate director of the Interdiscplinary Concentratration in Infectious Disease Epidemiology Program. His research concerns the effect of naturally acquired host immunity, vaccine-induced immunity and other public health interventions on the population biology of pathogens and the consequences of changing pathogen populations for human health, such as the use of antimicrobial agents and the response of microbes to such exposures.
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Mass Innovation Nights #84
Tuesday, March 8
6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
We are looking forward to our second annual Civic Tech event on TUESDAY (yes note not our usual day) March 8th! Microsoft is our sponsor and #MIN84 will be held at District Hall. Check out our website (http://bit.ly/MIN84) fir 11 innovative products showcasing and offering solutions to continuously improve government infrastructure and enhance the lives of citizens. See you there!
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"Radical Practice," hosted by Women in Design with Julia King, Susan Surface, and Others
WHEN Tue., Mar. 8, 2016, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Women in Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO events@gsd.harvard.edu
DETAILS On March 8, 2016, Women in Design, a Harvard Graduate School of Design student group, will celebrate its third-annual International Women’s Day. Dedicated to empowering women designers, we propose an open dialogue on what it means to be a creative woman developing, challenging, and innovating her craft in the 21st century. In exploring conventional and potential modes of practice, we aim to cultivate radical alternatives to the dominant roles and methods of our fields. As we reflect on strides the design fields have made toward achieving gender equity, we see International Women’s Day 2016 as a catalytic platform to investigate how radical practice can re-situate—and revolutionize—our work.
Women in Design continues to challenge how women, as well as other underrepresented groups in the design disciplines, can work for equity across representation, compensation, and valuation. To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, we have invited pioneering women practitioners across the design disciplines to engage and share their backgrounds, experiences, and philosophies of radical practice—the what, how, and why (or why not). In this spirit, we invite you to join us in questioning and speculating how, both individually and collectively, we can radically transform the design field.
LINK www.gsd.harvard.edu/#/events/radical-practice-hosted-by-women-in-design-with-julia-king-susan.html
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A Climate of Change
Tuesday, March 8
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square Somerville
Cost: $5 – $15
These four short films examine the effects on the fishing industry associated with climate change, including warming waters, lack of biodiversity, and ocean acidification. Across New England and the nation, fishermen and scientists are observing notable shifts in the ecosystem and dramatic changes on the water. This Island Institute screening will help introduce shellfish aquaculture as an example of economic diversification for fishing communities and will prove to be excellent opportunities for relationship building and dialogue exchange on climate change.
This event is presented in partnership with the Conservation Law Foundation, and we will be joined by CLF's Executive Vice President Sean Mahoney.
Program Overview
7 – 8:30 p.m.: Climate of Change film event at Somerville Theatre
Part I: Warming Waters in the Gulf of Maine (6 min)
Part II: Ocean Acidification in Alaska (9 min)
Part III: Collapse and Adaptation in Apalachicola, FL (9 min)
Part IV: The Future of Aquaculture (10 min)
8 - 8:30 p.m.: Facilitated Q&A
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Opportunity
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Solarize Somerville is a go!
Hello neighbors--
On this cold winter day, I'm delighted to share the sunny news that Somerville MA has been chosen by the MassCEC (Clean Energy Center) to be a Solarize Mass community! You can see the announcement here:
State energy officials today announced the selection of the first five communities to participate in Solarize Mass for 2016. The new municipalities participating in the community-based solar energy group-buying program that lowers overall costs of installing solar electric systems include Somerville and Natick, as well as Shelburne, Colrain and Conway, which have joined as a trio of partner communities....
As the announcement has just been made, we don't have a lot of additional information at this time. But this selection means that we can now work with the city and the state to help residents of Somerville to decide if solar is a suitable option for them and their homes or businesses. We'll be developing and sharing educational materials, we'll have events to help people learn more and get questions answered, and we will help people to understand the processes associated with generating local, artisanal electrons.
Officially I'm the "Solar Coach" for Somerville. I am a point of contact to help people with basic solar PV issues and incentives. I'm working with folks from the city who will manage the overall project. This is a joint effort by the Office of Sustainability and Environment, with director Oliver Sellers-Garcia, and the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development with Russell Koty.
As a Coach, I am a volunteer organizer and am not authorized to speak as a spokesperson on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or MassCEC. My job is to help people to understand the program once it's in place, and to answer questions that my neighbors may have as they consider the options. Things outside of my wheelhouse will be directed to the folks who can answer them.
You can contact me here with questions, or soon we'll have some information resources with more details. If you might want to volunteer to be on the outreach team. let me know.
Mary Mangan
Solar Coach Volunteer
[vendors should not contact me, I'm not supposed to have contact with them prior to the proposal process]
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Membership in the coop costs $2.50 per quart. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch. No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.
For more information checkout.
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Cambridge Residents: Free Home Thermal Images
Have you ever wanted to learn where your home is leaking heat by having an energy auditor come to your home with a thermal camera? With that info you then know where to fix your home so it's more comfortable and less expensive to heat. However, at $200 or so, the cost of such a thermal scan is a big chunk of change.
HEET Cambridge has now partnered with Sagewell, Inc. to offer Cambridge residents free thermal scans.
Sagewell collects the thermal images by driving through Cambridge in a hybrid vehicle equipped with thermal cameras. They will scan every building in Cambridge (as long as it's not blocked by trees or buildings or on a private way). Building owners can view thermal images of their property and an analysis online. The information is password protected so that only the building owner can see the results.
Homeowners, condo-owners and landlords can access the thermal images and an accompanying analysis free of charge. Commercial building owners and owners of more than one building will be able to view their images and analysis for a small fee.
The scans will be analyzed in the order they are requested.
Go to Sagewell.com. Type in your address at the bottom where it says "Find your home or building" and press return. Then click on "Here" to request the report.
That's it. When the scans are done in a few weeks, your building will be one of the first to be analyzed. The accompanying report will help you understand why your living room has always been cold and what to do about it.
With knowledge, comes power (or in this case saved power and money, not to mention comfort).
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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
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HEET has partnered with NSTAR and Mass Save participating contractor Next Step Living to deliver no-cost Home Energy Assessments to Cambridge residents.
During the assessment, the energy specialist will:
Install efficient light bulbs (saving up to 7% of your electricity bill)
Install programmable thermostats (saving up to 10% of your heating bill)
Install water efficiency devices (saving up to 10% of your water bill)
Check the combustion safety of your heating and hot water equipment
Evaluate your home’s energy use to create an energy-efficiency roadmap
If you get electricity from NSTAR, National Grid or Western Mass Electric, you already pay for these assessments through a surcharge on your energy bills. You might as well use the service.
Please sign up at http://nextsteplivinginc.com/heet/?outreach=HEET or call Next Step Living at 866-867-8729. A Next Step Living Representative will call to schedule your assessment.
HEET will help answer any questions and ensure you get all the services and rebates possible.
(The information collected will only be used to help you get a Home Energy Assessment. We won’t keep the data or sell it.)
(If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to call HEET’s Jason Taylor at 617 441 0614.)
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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha@sbnboston.org
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Free Monthly Energy Analysis
CarbonSalon is a free service that every month can automatically track your energy use and compare it to your past energy use (while controlling for how cold the weather is). You get a short friendly email that lets you know how you’re doing in your work to save energy.
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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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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
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Greater Boston Solidarity Economy Mapping Project http://www.transformationcentral.org/solidarity/mapping/mapping.html
a project by Wellesley College students that invites participation, contact jmatthaei@wellesley.edu
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Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
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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://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Events: http://events.mit.edu
MIT Energy Club: http://mitenergyclub.org/calendar
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://www.environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Mass Climate Action: http://www.massclimateaction.net/calendar
Microsoft NERD Center: http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
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