Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater
Boston area that catch the editor's eye.
Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.
If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) Events
ht16tp://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html
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Index - Full event information follows the Index and notices of my latest writings. Keep scrolling, please.
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Monday, November 14
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9am Summit on the Future of Europe 2016 - Europe and the Forces of Disunion
12pm Making Decisions in a World Awash in Data: We’re going to need a different boat
12pm The 2012-Present Induced Earthquake Sequence in Southern Kansas
12pm Which Social Cost of Carbon?
12:15pm Ruderal Ecologies: Re-Thinking Urban Infrastructure in a World of Rubble
2:45pm Conversation with Donnell “Trip” Van Noppen, Earthjustice President
3:30pm The Geography of Separate and Unequal: Modern-day Segregation in Boston
4:15pm 1989 in Global Perspective and the Rise of Neoliberalism
5:45pm Toxic Beauty: Environmental Justice and Workers’ Rights
6pm Artfare: How Art Makes Sense of Cultural Upheaval
6pm Cambridge Mothers Out Front Community Meeting
6:30pm Is Equality Fair?
7pm A Shot in the Dark (Matter)
8pm Live Broadcast of 'The Young Turks on Fusion’
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Tuesday, November 15 to Thursday, November 17
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ABX 2016
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Tuesday, November 15
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11am Towards Greater Autonomy and Safety of UAVs: Recovering from Collisions
12pm Fire, Mammal Browsers, and the Origins of African Savanna
12pm The End of Ownership
12pm Latin American Seminar Series: How Gang Activity in Neighborhoods Undermines Democracy: Impacts on Electoral and Non-Electoral Participation in El Salvador
1pm Living With Water: A Conversation on Climate Change and Resilient Cities
1pm Climate Change & Global Health Seminar
4pm Molluscan vulnerability to ocean acidification across life stages
5pm HUCE Special Lecture: Bob Perciasepe on Challenges for the New President
5:30pm Are We Serious This Time?: Media, Politics, and Community
6pm Urban Farming Micro-Credential for Parachute Teachers
6pm Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics with Larry Wilmore
6pm Yes, Humans Really Are Causing Earthquakes
6pm IBM Watson Health - Artifical Intelligence: Mediterranean diet under analysis
6pm Pedal-Powered Innovation from Rural Guatemala: The Bici-Tec Story
6pm Boston Virtual Reality Meetup: Qualcomm & Michelle Osorio
7pm Love for Sale: Pop Music in America
7pm Mending the Tower of Babel through the Science of Bilingualism
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Wednesday, November 16
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7:30am November Boston Sustainability Breakfast
8:30am Social Innovator Encore
9am Theodore H. White Seminar on Press and Politics with Bob Schieffer, Nancy Kaffer, Derrick Jackson, Michael Tomasky
12pm Neuromorphic Technologies for Next-Generation Cognitive Computing
12pm Book Launch: Nudging Health: Health Law and Behavioral Economics
12pm Who Fights for Reputation in International Politics? Leaders, Resolve and the Use of Force
12:30pm Inclusion, Inc. Unconference
4pm Signatures of iron cycling in marine microbial genomes and ecosystems
4pm Deep architectures for visual reasoning, multimodal learning, and decision-making
4:15pm Compatibility and Investment in the U.S. Electric Vehicle Market
5pm MIT Press Bookstore Opening Party
5:30pm Conversation with Andris Nelsons
5:30pm Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice: A book talk discussion and reception with the editors and contributors
5:30pm Conversation in Civic Innovation: Broadband Equity
6pm Discussion About Regenerative Agriculture
6pm Bhutan: The Intersection of Climate Change & Health
6pm Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize Generator Dinner
6pm Meet Switzerland Innovation
6:15pm Innovations in Food Tech for Health
6:30pm The Port Cafe: Nourishment (Ourselves and our Community)
6:30pm Climate Challenges/Clean Energy Solutions
6:30pm Cyber Security in the Age of Hacking
7pm Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File
7pm Jellyfish: Are They Taking Over?
7pm From Ebola to Zika: Combating myths and controlling mosquitoes
7pm FOREVER YOUNG: Looking forward, looking back.
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Thursday, November 17 - Friday, November 18
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2016 MIT WATER SUMMIT: WATER UTILITIES OF THE FUTURE
Social Inclusion and Poverty Eradication: An International Workshop
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Thursday, November 17
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8:30am DeployMass Expo 2016
12pm Substantial Warming of Tropical Agricultural Regions Caused by Neighboring Deforestation
12pm HUCE Special Seminar: Constraints on the Social Discount Rate Derived from Ethical Ambiguities and Uncertainty about Future Climate Change
12:15pm Guns for Butter: The Rationale for U.S. Military Primacy
12:30pm "Blindspot" Workshop with Mahzarin Banaji
1pm Transparency and Freedom of Information in the Digital Age
2pm Catalyzing Efficiency: City Governments and Energy Efficiency Implementers
3pm Battery Science
4pm Photonic Topological Insulators
4pm Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine “Madness, Politics, and Society: Toptasi Mental Asylum”
4pm OEB Seminar Series - "The Neurobiology of Individuality”
4pm After the Arab Spring in Morocco: Reflections on Historiography, Cultural Diversity, and Human Rights
4:30pm Wanton Extinction: Foucault, Wynter, and the Anthropocene
5pm Blocking as Counter-Speech
5pm Starr Forum: Innovation and Its Enemies
5:15pm Climate Change: Ethics in Action
5:30pm Microgrids: The New Shape of Electricity?
6pm History and Human Rights: A Panel Discussion
7pm Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England
7pm Invasive Species and Carbon Cycling in Coastal Dunes of Cape Cod
7pm Journalism Panel: Election Coverage
7pm Sustainable Socials with Green Cambridge!
7pm The Future of Synthetic Biology with George Church
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Friday, November 18 – Sunday, November 20
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Restoring Oceans, Restoring Climate: Facing Fire & Ice, Food & Water, Flood & Drought
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Friday, November 18
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The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment
11am Harvard Free-cycle
12pm Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
12pm The July 15 Coup Attempt and the Transformation of Civil-Military Relations in Turkey
12:15pm Slumdog Entrepreneurs: Creating Something From Nothing
12:30pm Controlling Dynamic Robot Behavior with Optimization
6pm Restoring Oceans, Restoring Climate: Facing Fire & Ice, Food & Water, Flood & Drought
7pm A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age
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Saturday, November 19, 2016 at 9:00 AM - Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 8:00 PM
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TEDxBeaconStreet 2016
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Saturday, November 19
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10am Renewing our Energy - Mothers Out Front Statewide Summit
3pm Boston Interfaith Community Solar Celebration
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Monday, November 21
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11:45am McKinsey Energy and Sustainability presentation
12pm Book Talk: Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East
12pm Mexico's Energy Reform
12pm Talk in Arabic: Egyptian Clothes between Religious Ideology and Social Change
12:10pm Taking the fingerprints of global sea level rise
12:15pm Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi
4pm Views of Colombia Biodiversity from Afar and Within
4pm Documentary Film Screening: AFTER THE LAST RIVER
7pm 2016 Science and Cooking Public Lecture Series: Nathan Myhrvold
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Tuesday, November 22
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12pm IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority): Important, but not for what they do
4:15pm xTalk with Steven Hall, Lori Breslow & Jeff Gore: Active Learning
4:30pm Starr Forum: The Struggle Against Terrorism: Lessons Learned and Next Steps
5pm theMOVE'S FINAL FAREWELL!
7pm Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Some Patterns of American Political Demographics
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Monday, November 14
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Summit on the Future of Europe 2016 - Europe and the Forces of Disunion
WHEN Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, 9am - 6pm
WHERE Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
SPEAKER(S) Leading Harvard European experts and Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs
CONTACT INFO Gila Naderi, Communications Manager
617-998-5417
DETAILS The Summit on the Future of Europe is an initiative of Harvard University’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES). The 2016 Summit, entitled Europe and the Forces of Disunion, will examine the adverse political, economic and social trends that have both fueled the crisis and/or resulted from it. The proceedings will assess the options open to Europe in confronting its multiple challenges and reflect on Europe’s future.
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Making Decisions in a World Awash in Data: We’re going to need a different boat
Monday, November 14, 2016
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building E25-401, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Anthony Scriffignano
In this session, Dr. Anthony Scriffignano, SVP/Chief Data Scientist at Dun and Bradstreet will explore some of the ways in which the massive availability of data is changing and the types of questions we must ask in the context of making business decisions. Truth be told, nearly all organizations struggle to make sense out of the mounting data already within the enterprise. At the same time, businesses, individuals, and governments continue to try to outpace one another, often in ways that are informed by newly-available data and technology, but just as often using that data and technology in alarmingly inappropriate or incomplete ways. Multiple “solutions" exist to take data that is poorly understood, promising to derive meaning that is often transient at best. A tremendous amount of “dark" innovation continues in the space of fraud and other bad behavior (e.g. cyber crime, cyber terrorism), highlighting that there are very real risks to taking a fast-follower strategy in making sense out of the ever-increasing amount of data available. Tools and technologies can be very helpful or, as Scriffignano puts it, "they can accelerate the speed with which we hit the wall."
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): MIT Libraries
For more information, contact: Kelly Hopkins
6172533044
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The 2012-Present Induced Earthquake Sequence in Southern Kansas
Monday, November 14
12:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall 102, Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with Justin Rubinstein, USGS, Menlo Park
The appearance of seismicity concurrent with the expansion of oil and gas activities in southern Kansas since September 2012 suggests that industrial operations are inducing earthquakes there. Much of the seismicity can be related to high-rate injection wells within 5 km of the earthquakes. Hydraulic fracturing does not appear to be connected to these earthquakes. There is significant complexity to the situation, though. Some of the seismicity, including the largest earthquake to occur in the area, the M4.8 Milan earthquake, lies at least 10km from high-rate injection wells. Additionally, the presence of high-rate wells does not guarantee that there will be nearby seismicity. Many of the highest-rate injection wells are located to the southwest of our study area, where there is minimal seismicity.
In March 2015 the state of Kansas enacted new limits on the rate of wastewater disposal in five areas in southern Kansas. Overall, the earthquake rate has decreased significantly since these rules went into place. In more detail, however, earthquake rates within the five areas decreased, but the rate outside the five zones increased. Additionally, there is evidence that injection increased outside of these areas. It is likely that fluid-pressure diffusion is responsible for the migration of seismicity outside the areas of reduced injection because there is little injection in the areas unaffected by the new injection rules. This increase is also a reminder that seismicity can persist long after the reduction or cessation of injection. In addition to the effect of the new injection rules, it is probable that the reduction in injection was partially caused by economic factors that have resulted in a decrease in the production of oil and gas. In fact, injection in the area began to drop starting in January 2015, three months before the rules began to be phased in. We have yet to disentangle the effects of the new injection rules and the low prices of oil and gas on the induced seismicity in southern Kansas.
EPS Colloquium Series
Contact Name: Sabinna Cappo
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Which Social Cost of Carbon?
Monday, November 14
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Matthew Kotchen, Professor of Economics, Yale University
Lunch will be provided.
Energy Policy Seminar Series
Contact Name: cepr@hks.harvard.edu
617-495-8693
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Ruderal Ecologies: Re-Thinking Urban Infrastructure in a World of Rubble
Monday, November 14
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Bettina Stoetzer (MIT, Global Studies and Languages)
Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
STS Circle at Harvard
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: sts@hks.harvard.edu
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Conversation with Donnell “Trip” Van Noppen, Earthjustice President
Monday, November 14
2:45PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, WCC 3007, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Trip van Noppen, President of Earthjustice will be speaking about Earthjustice’s groundbreaking work on environmental justice and other important issues.
Trip serves Earthjustice as its President, leading the organization’s staff, board, and supporters to advance its mission of using the courts to protect our environment and people’s health. After earning degrees from Yale and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Trip clerked for a federal district judge from 1980–82. He then practiced law in Raleigh, NC, from 1982 until 1997, in a litigation practice emphasizing civil rights, employment, environmental, and toxic tort cases. In 1998, Trip joined the Southern Environmental Law Center and became director of that organization’s Carolinas Office. Both in private practice and at SELC, Trip has handled a variety of environmental cases and cases involving access to the courts.
Contact Name: Gina Angiolillo
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The Geography of Separate and Unequal: Modern-day Segregation in Boston
Monday, November 14
3:30 PM – 4:30 PM EST
City Hall-The Hearing Room 801, City Hall Square, 8th Floor, Boston
Dr. Marcos Luna is a Professor of Geography and the Graduate Program Director for the Geo-Information Sciences program at Salem State University. His research focus is on environmental justice and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to the analysis of social and environmental inequities. In addition to academic research, Dr. Luna has worked with community groups throughout the greater Boston region on issues ranging from transportation equity to voter outreach and climate change adaptation. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in GIS, as well as courses on environmental justice, energy and the environment, and weather and climate. He received his Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware, with a focus on Technology, Environment, and Society. He lives in East Boston.
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1989 in Global Perspective and the Rise of Neoliberalism
WHEN Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Basement Seminar Room, Robinson Hall, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR New Directions in European History
SPEAKER(S) Philipp Ther, Professor of Central European History, University of Vienna
CONTACT INFO Alison Frank Johnson afrank@fas.harvard.edu
James McSpadden jmcspadden@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS The talk deals with the intellectual history, the political practice and the social consequences of neoliberalism. The main pillars of this ideology are an idealization of unrestrained free markets, in the belief that they create an equilibrium for all sorts of market imbalances, an irrational faith in the rationality of market agents, and a libertarian antipathy toward the state, as expressed in the myth of “big government.” It also includes some elements of traditional laissez-faire capitalism such as the concept of the “hidden hand”, adding a metaphysical dimension whereby the market is regarded as a last judgment over all commodities. On the practical side, neoliberalism is based upon a standard economic recipe consisting of austerity, privatization, liberalization and deregulation that was codified in the “Washington Consensus” in 1989.
LINK https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2016/11/1989-in-global-perspective-and-the-rise-of-neoliberalism
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Toxic Beauty: Environmental Justice and Workers' Rights
Monday, November 14
5:45PM - 7:00PM
Harvard, Starr Auditorium, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
The Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resource Project invites you for a conversation about promoting environmental justice and workers' rights, especially in underserved communities and with workers in often invisible positions. We will discuss these issues from the perspective of community organizing, law and advocacy, and government regulation and policy – with a focus on opportunities to collaborate across sectors.
Panelists:
Julia Liou, Planning and Development Director, Asian Health Services
Matthew Tejada, Director of the Office of Environmental Justice, US Environmental Protection Agency
Natalicia Tracy, Executive Director, Brazilian Worker Center & Brazilian Policy Center
Trip van Noppen, President, EarthJustice
Moderator: Marshall Ganz, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School
Co-sponsored by HUCE, the Center for Public Leadership, and the HBS Business and Environment Initiative. Open to the public. Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.
Contact Name: Amanda Sardonis
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Artfare: How Art Makes Sense of Cultural Upheaval
Monday, November 14, 2016
6:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Speaker: Kirsten Scheid
"CULTURES OF UPHEAVAL"
FALL 2016 AGA KHAN PROGRAM LECTURES
Open to: the general public
Cost: FREE
Sponsor(s): School of Architecture and Planning, Department of Architecture, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
For more information, contact: Jose Luis Arguello
617-253-1400
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Cambridge Mothers Out Front Community Meeting
Monday, November 14
6-8pm
Community Room, Cambridge Main Library, 429 Broadway, Cambridge
All are welcome and encouraged to come!
Updating our gas leaks campaign's next steps, preparing for statewide summit
Aiming high in 2017! Brainstorming goals, strategies, pathways to success!
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Is Equality Fair?
Monday, November 14
6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Old South Meeting House, 310 Washington Street, Boston
Yaron Brook (Ayn Rand Institute) & Jonathan Haughton (Beacon Hill Institute)
More information at http://www.fordhallforum.org/category/upcoming-forums
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A Shot in the Dark (Matter)
Monday, November 14
7pm
The Burren, Davis Sq, 247 Elm Street, Somerville
Doug Finkbeiner
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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Live Broadcast of 'The Young Turks on Fusion’
WHEN Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, 8 – 9:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute of Politics
JFK Jr. Forum
SPEAKER(S) The Young Turks Hosts Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola will be joined
by FUSION’s Felix Salmon
CONTACT INFO JFK Jr. Forum Office
617-495-1380
DETAILS
The weekly, hour-long live election-focused show from TYT Network and FUSION will broadcast live from Harvard Institute of Politics!
LINK http://iop.harvard.edu/forum/live-broadcast-‘-young-turks-fusion’
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Tuesday, November 15 to Thursday, November 17
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ABX 2016
Tuesday, November 15 to Thursday, November 17
RSVP at http://abexpo.com/register
Explore the showroom floor at ABX from November 15 to 17, 2016 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Over 400 exhibitors, new products, live demonstrations, and installations will be featured. The exhibit hall presents a great opportunity to network and learn more about what is new in the building industry.
ABX connects architects, developers, project managers, contractors, landscape designers, builders, and other AEC professionals.
Register now for free admission to the exhibit hall!
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Tuesday, November 15
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Towards Greater Autonomy and Safety of UAVs: Recovering from Collisions
Tuesday, November 15
11:00 AM to 12:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-G449 Patil/Kiva, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Inna Sharf , McGill University
Abstract: Making small unmanned aerial vehicles more autonomous is a continuing endeavour in the UAV research community; it is also the focus of Sharf’s research. In this context, her group has been working on problems of state estimation, localization and mapping, system integration and controller design for multicopters and indoor blimps. Following a brief overview of past research projects, this presentation will focus on current work on the development of collision recovery controllers for quadcopters. The collision dynamics model and post collision response characterization of the quadrotor are presented, followed by their experimental validation. A collision recover pipeline is proposed to allow propeller protected quadrotors to recover from a collision. This pipeline includes collision detection, impact characterization and aggressive attitude control. The strategy is validated via a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation of collisions against a wall, showing the feasibility of recovery from challenging collision scenarios. The pipeline is implemented on a custom quadrotor platform, demonstrating feasibility of real-time performance and successful recovery from a range of pre-collision conditions. The ultimate goal is to implement a general collision recovery solution to further advance the autonomy and safety of quadrotor vehicles.
Bio: Dr. Inna Sharf is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She received her B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto (1986) and her PhD at the Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto (1991). Prior to relocating to McGill in 2001, she was on faculty with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria. Sharf’s research activities are in the areas of dynamics and control with applications to space robotic systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and legged robots. Sharf has published over 150 conference and journal papers on her academic research. She is an associate fellow of AIAA and a member of IEEE.
Contact: Liam Paull, lpaull@csail.mit.edu
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Fire, Mammal Browsers, and the Origins of African Savanna
Tuesday, November 15
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, HUH Seminar Room, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Jonathan Davies, HUH Visiting Researcher, Associate Professor, McGill
Herbaria Seminar Series
Contact Name: Barbara Hanrahan
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The End of Ownership
Tuesday, November 15
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C (Room 2036, second floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/11/Perzanowski#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/11/Perzanowski
Recent shifts in technology, intellectual property and contract law, and marketplace behavior threaten to undermine the system of personal property that has structured our relationships with the objects we own for centuries. Ownership entails the rights to use, modify, lend, resell, and repair. But across a range of industries and products, manufacturers and retailers have deployed strategies that erode these basic expectations of ownership. Understanding these various tactics, how they depart from the traditional property paradigm, and why some have been embraced by consumers are all crucial in developing strategies to restore ownership in the digital economy.
About Aaron
Aaron Perzanowski teaches courses in intellectual property, telecommunications and innovation. Previously, he taught at Wayne State University Law School, as a lecturer at the University of California Berkeley School of Information, and as a visitor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. Prior to his teaching career, he served as the Microsoft Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and practiced law at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.
His research addresses topics ranging from digital copyright to deceptive advertising to creative norms within the tattoo industry. With Jason Schultz, he is the author of The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy (MIT Press 2016), which argues for retaining consumer property rights in a marketplace that increasingly threatens them. His book with Kate Darling, Creativity Without Law: Challenging the Assumptions of Intellectual Property (NYU Press 2017), explores the ways communities of creators operate outside of formal intellectual property law.
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Latin American Seminar Series: How Gang Activity in Neighborhoods Undermines Democracy: Impacts on Electoral and Non-Electoral Participation in El Salvador
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S-250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Abby Córdova, DRCLAS Central America Visiting Scholar; Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Kentucky
CONTACT INFO Isade Salcedo (isalcedo@fas.harvard.edu)
DETAILS In Latin America, crime and violence have reached unprecedented levels. The incidence of crime is particularly high in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America, where gangs (maras) largely drive homicide rates and many other criminal activities. This presentation evaluates the effects of neighborhood gang activity and crime victimization on citizens’ political participation in the context of El Salvador.
Dr. Abby Córdova is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kentucky, and a visiting scholar at DRCLAS. Her field of specialization is comparative politics, with a focus on public opinion and political behavior in Latin America. Before joining the University of Kentucky, she was a post-doctoral fellow in the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, where she served as the lead researcher of USAID’s Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) study. She has also been a Fulbright Fellow and worked as a consultant for The World Bank.
Editorial Comment: It occurs to me that perhaps the outcome of USA’s interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan will follow the model of our interventions in the 1980s in Central America, leaving hollow states behind and many opportunities for new powers to fill the vacuum.
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Living With Water: A Conversation on Climate Change and Resilient Cities
Tuesday, November 15
1:00PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, 109 Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
The Climate Governance Initiative invites you for a conversation with Henk Ovink. Henk is Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands (United Nations), Sherpa to the High Level Panel on Water (United Nations) and Principal of Rebuild by Design (HUD, Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force). Henk is also the former Director General of Spatial Planning and Water Affairs for the Netherlands.
Henk (@henkovink) will discuss lessons learned from Rebuild by Design, his current work on behalf of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and his take on how cities should address climate change.
Contact Name: Sanjay Seth
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Climate Change & Global Health Seminar: Health Cobenefits of Clean Energy
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, 1 – 2 p.m.
WHERE 42 Church Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Global Health Institute
SPEAKER(S) Jonathan Buonocore, Sc.D.
CONTACT INFO andrew_iliff@harvard.edu
DETAILS Harvard Global Health Institute is pleased to invite you to the Climate Change and Global Health Seminar on Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. featuring Jonathan Buonocore, Sc.D, presenting on “Health Cobenefits of Clean Energy.” Lunch will be provided.
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Molluscan vulnerability to ocean acidification across life stages
Tuesday, November 15
4:00 - 5:00pm
BU, CAS 132, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Speaker: Justin Ries, Northeastern University
This project aims to investigate the vulnerability of commercially important calcifying marine mollusks to ocean acidification at various stages of their life history. Recently completed and planned future experiments will investigate the impact of ocean acidification on a range of calcifying marine mollusks at various stages of development. Specific projects include investigating: (1) the impact of ocean acidification on calcification rate, shell properties, and epigenetics of juvenile- and larval-stage Eastern Oysters (Crassostrea virginica); (2) the impact of
ocean acidification and warming on calcification rate and shell properties of larval-stage Slipper Limpets (Crepidula fornicata); and (3) the impact of ocean acidification and warming on calcification rate, shell properties, pallial fluid pH, and proteomics of adult Atlantic Sea Scallops (Placopecten magellanicus). Although experimental studies are ongoing, initial results suggest that early-life-stage mollusks exhibit a surprising degree of resilience to moderate levels of CO2-induced ocean acidification (700- 1000 ppm), but exhibit a nonlinear (exponential) increase in vulnerability to more extreme acidification (2000 - 3000 ppm). Microelectrode studies of pallial fluid pH, coupled with targeted epigenetic and proteomic studies, will aim to identify the mechanism(s) behind this non-linearity in mollusks' response to ocean acidification at various stages of development.
BU’s Seminar Series on Climate Change
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HUCE Special Lecture: Bob Perciasepe on Challenges for the New President
Tuesday, November 15
5:00PM TO 6:30PM
Harvard, Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South S010, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
HUCE invites you for a special lecture with the President of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), Bob Perciasepe. Perciasepe has been an environmental policy leader in and outside government for more than 30 years, most recently as Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He is a respected expert on environmental stewardship, natural resource management, and public policy, and has built a reputation for bringing stakeholders together to solve issues.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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Are We Serious This Time?: Media, Politics, and Community
Tuesday, November 15
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Semel Theatre, 10 Boylston Place, 3rd Floor, Boston
On November 15th Prof. William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard Kennedy School ,and Dr. Jocelyn V. Sargent, Executive Director of Hyams Foundation, will discuss the implications of the post-election environment and its impact on our communities. Together they will address how we can create a community that ensures the safe arrival of not just Black children, but all children, into a future full of opportunity and hope.
Are We Serious This Time: Media, Politics and Community will be a conversation about current events in our communities.
Bios
Jocelyn V. Sargent
Dr. Jocelyn V. Sargent was previously the Research and Evaluation Program Officer at the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. In that capacity she was responsible for overseeing the foundation’s research and evaluation activities as well as managing grant programs related to mental health research and mental health workforce development. She is an expert on organizational development and the research and evaluation of community development programs. She joined the Hogg Foundation in 2015.
Prior to coming to the Hogg Foundation, Dr. Sargent was a Program Director and Program Officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where she designed and led grantmaking programs targeting the elimination of racial disparities and improving conditions for marginalized communities. She served on the Racial Equity, Food, Health & Well Being, Education and Learning, and Evaluation teams.
Dr. Sargent served as Program Director of the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina and as Assistant Director for the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. She also was the Deputy Director and Senior Research Associate at the Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center at City University of New York Graduate Center. Prior to this, she worked at the Open Society Institute as a Program Director and created and administered the Foundation’s Southern Initiative, an innovative program designed to increase the capacity of grassroots advocacy groups and support community organizing across the American South.
Dr. Sargent co-founded the Center for Social Inclusion and served as a research advisor and board member for the organization, which supports advocacy strategies for community-based organizations serving low-income and people of color communities. She has taught politics and research methods at the University of Michigan, Hunter College, New School for Social Research, Barnard College, and Duke University. She is a graduate of the University of Texas and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan.
William Julius Wilson
William Julius Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. He is one of only 24 University Professors, the highest professional distinction for a Harvard faculty member. After receiving a Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1966, Professor Wilson taught sociology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1972. In 1990 he was appointed the Lucy Flower University Professor and director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Urban Inequality. He joined the faculty at Harvard in July of 1996.
Past President of the American Sociological Association, Professor Wilson has received 45 honorary degrees fro institutions that including Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and New York University. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, Professor Wilson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine, and the British Academy. In June 1996 he was selected by Time magazine as one of America's 25 Most Influential People. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.
Professor Wilson is the author of numerous publications, including The Declining Significance of Race, winner of the American Sociological Association's Sydney Spivack Award, The Truly Disadvantaged, which was selected by the editors of the New York Times Book Review as one of the 16 best books of 1987, and received The Washington Monthly Annual Book Award and the Society for the Study of Social Problems' C. Wright Mills Award, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor, which was selected as one of the notable books of 1996 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review and received the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award, and The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. Most recently he is the co-author of There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning for America, and Good Kids in Bad Neighborhoods: Successful Development in Social Context.
Other honors granted to Professor Wilson include the Seidman Award in Political Economy (the first and only noneconomist to receive the Award), the Golden Plate Achievement Award, the Distinguished Alumnus Award, Washington State University, the American Sociological Association's Dubois, Johnson, Frazier Award (for significant scholarship in the field of inter-group relations), the American Sociological Association's Award for Public Understanding of Sociology, the Burton Gordon Feldman Award at Brandeis University ("for outstanding contributions in the field of public policy"), and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Award (granted by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Los Angeles).
Professor Wilson is a member of numerous national boards and commissions, and was previously the Chair of the Board of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the Russell Sage Foundation.
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Urban Farming Micro-Credential for Parachute Teachers
Tuesday, November 15
6:00 pm
Harvard Innovation Lab, 125 Western Avenue, Allston
Cost: $25
What is the Urban Farming Micro-Credential?
To better prepare you for classrooms, we are excited to offer a micro-credential in Urban Farming. Micro-credentials are bite-sized, practice-based trainings that allow our schools to better understand your qualifications. While the micro-credential is not required for you to teach with us, we believe that it does increase your likelihood of receiving job offers and could lead to an increased hourly rate in our marketplace.
As an Urban Farming teacher, you will learn how to:
1. Frame 21st century food system issues
2. Develop scientific minds through culinary experiments
3. Bridge K-8 students with Boston's innovative urban agriculture initiatives
The Urban Farming Micro-Credential is a competency-based assessment comprised of prep work, in-person training, and a post-assessment. Once the micro-credential is earned, it will be visible on your online profile. The training costs $25 - you can register here!
What is Parachute Teachers?
Parachute Teachers is a marketplace for substitute teachers. Rather then have students watch a movie or complete a worksheet when their teacher is out for the day, we bring in folks from the community to share their talents with students through high-quality enrichment. Schools can book you for a given date and time based on your availabilit
News and Next Steps:
Our first cohort of Urban Farming teachers entered the classroom last month! They bring diverse expertise in nutrition, hydroponics, compost, and much more.
Our next in-person training will be held on Tuesday, November 15 at 6:00 pm at the Harvard Innovation Lab (arrive at 6 pm for light refreshments; we will begin the training at 6:30 pm). If you have a time conflict, please let me know when a more convenient time would be for you. Feel free to spread the word to friends!
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Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics with Larry Wilmore
Tuesday, November 15
6:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Littauer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
This year’s Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics will be delivered by comedian, producer and writer Larry Wilmore. The David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism will also be awarded to Nancy Kaffer of the Detroit Free Press.
The Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics commemorates the life of the reporter and historian who set the standard for contemporary political journalism and campaign coverage. Past lecturers include Rachel Maddow, Alan K. Simpson, Ben Bradlee, Judy Woodruff, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Congressman John Lewis.
This event will be ticketed. Tickets are free, but will be distributed by lottery. Visit the Harvard Institute of Politics website to enter the lottery. The deadline for entries is midnight Tuesday, November 8. Winners will be notified via email on Wednesday, November 9. Winners must pick up their tickets at the Institute of Politics at HKS on Thursday, November 10 or Monday, November 14 between 9 a.m.-5 p.m. No exceptions.
This event will also be streamed online on the Harvard Institute of Politics website at http://iop.harvard.edu/forum
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Yes, Humans Really Are Causing Earthquakes
Tuesday, November 15
6:00pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Justin Rubinstein, Research Geophysicist and Deputy Chief of the Induced Seismicity Project, Menlo Park Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey
In 2009, the central United States began to experience an unprecedented surge in earthquakes. They soared from an average of 21 per year to over 650 in 2014 alone. This increased seismicity has been found in just a few regions of the country, with a majority in Oklahoma, and is limited to areas of new and emerging oil and gas production. Rubinstein will discuss the many ways in which humans can cause earthquakes, how local geological conditions can influence their impact, and how scientists measure and analyze seismicity. He will also address the actions that states are taking to minimize or stop human-induced earthquakes and how academic scientists, regulators, and the oil and gas industry are collaborating in these efforts.
Presented in collaboration with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology and the Seismological Society of America.
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IBM Watson Health - Artifical Intelligence: Mediterranean diet under analysis
Tuesday, November 15
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EST)
IBM Watson Health, 75 Binney Street, Cambridge
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Pedal-Powered Innovation from Rural Guatemala: The Bici-Tec Story
Tuesday, November 15
6:00p–8:30p
MIT, Building N52, MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Carlos Marroquin, David Boudreau, Kate Mytty
Explore innovative bicycle-powered ideas with Bici-Tec founder Carlos Marroquin, David Boudreau from Bikes Not Bombs, and Kate Mytty of MIT D-Lab. The conversation will be followed by a reception with the panelists.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): MIT Museum, D-Lab
For more information, contact: Jennifer Novotney
617-253-5927
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Boston Virtual Reality Meetup: Qualcomm & Michelle Osorio
Tuesday, November 15
6:00 PM to 9:45 PM
Laugh Boston, 425 Summer Street, Boston
Located on the corner of Summer and D streets in the lobby of the Westin Hotel in the Seaport District.
Come see our excellent presenters, Nigel Williams from Qualcomm, and Top 100 VR Influencer Michelle Osorio! No cover charge for this one, free snacks will be provided, and excellent food and drinks are available for purchase. We will also have an array of VR and AR demonstrations with devices like the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™, HTC Vive, the MS Hololens, and more.
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Love for Sale: Pop Music in America
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes DAVID HAJDU—music critic for The Nation and author of Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture—and BOB BLUMENTHAL, a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jazz Journalists Association, for a discussion of Hajdu's latest book, Love for Sale: Pop Music in America.
About Love for Sale
From the age of song sheets in the late nineteenth-century to the contemporary era of digital streaming, pop music has been our most influential laboratory for social and aesthetic experimentation, changing the world three minutes at a time.
In Love for Sale, David Hajdu—one of the most respected critics and music historians of our time—draws on a lifetime of listening, playing, and writing about music to show how pop has done much more than peddle fantasies of love and sex to teenagers. From vaudeville singer Eva Tanguay, the “I Don’t Care Girl” who upended Victorian conceptions of feminine propriety to become one of the biggest stars of her day to the scandal of Blondie playing disco at CBGB, Hajdu presents an incisive and idiosyncratic history of a form that has repeatedly upset social and cultural expectations.
Exhaustively researched and rich with fresh insights, Love for Sale is unbound by the usual tropes of pop music history. Hajdu, for instance, gives a star turn to Bessie Smith and the “blues queens” of the 1920s, who brought wildly transgressive sexuality to American audience decades before rock and roll. And there is Jimmie Rodgers, a former blackface minstrel performer, who created country music from the songs of rural white and blacks . . . entwined with the sound of the Swiss yodel. And then there are today’s practitioners of Electronic Dance Music, who Hajdu celebrates for carrying the pop revolution to heretofore unimaginable frontiers. At every turn, Hajdu surprises and challenges readers to think about our most familiar art in unexpected ways.
Masterly and impassioned, authoritative and at times deeply personal, Love for Sale is a book of critical history informed by its writer's own unique history as a besotted fan.
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Mending the Tower of Babel through the Science of Bilingualism
Tueday, November 15
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Le Laboratorie Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
Gigi Luk, PhD, Associate Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Gigi Luk's research on the cognitive consequences of bilingualism extends across the lifespan. These cognitive consequences include literacy acquisition in children and executive functions in young and older adults. In addition to investigating the science of bilingualism, Dr. Luk has examined how to harness scientific findings on bilingualism to improve educational experience for children from diverse language backgrounds. This presentation will entail recent scientific findings on bilingualism and the potential value of these findings for education.
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Wednesday, November 16
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November Boston Sustainability Breakfast
Wednesday, November 16
7:30 AM – 8:30 AM EST
Pret A Manger, 101 Arch Street, Boston
Join us for the November Sustainability Breakfast - Net Impact Boston's informal breakfast meetup of sustainability professionals together for networking, discussion and moral support. It's important to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones out there in the business world trying to do good! Feel free to drop by any time between 7:30 and 8:30 am.
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Social Innovator Encore
Wednesday, November 16
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, 2 International Place, Boston
Did you miss the May Showcase? The Social Innovation Forum's 2016 Innovators will pitch again in November.
Join us for our "Encore" breakfast event on November 16!
The event is a great opportunity for those who missed the Showcase to meet our Innovators and hear their presentations. The morning will begin with breakfast and networking, followed by our Innovator pitches.
2016 Social Innovators Presenting at Encore
African Community Education
Budget Buddies
Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association
Dorchester Community Food Co-op
Hale
Louis D. Brown Peace Institute
Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health (MassCOSH)
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Theodore H. White Seminar on Press and Politics with Bob Schieffer, Nancy Kaffer, Derrick Jackson, Michael Tomasky
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, 9 – 10:30 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, Nye Conference Center, Taubman Building, 5th Floor, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S)
Bob Schieffer, Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow; political contributor to CBS News; former moderator of “Face the Nation”
Nancy Kaffer, columnist, Detroit Free Press; winner of the 2016 David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism
Derrick Z. Jackson, Joan Shorenstein Fellow; Boston Globe essayist
Michael Tomasky, special correspondent, The Daily Beast
Moderated by Nicco Mele, director, Shorenstein Center
COST Free
DETAILS A panel discussion about the 2016 election and news coverage.
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Neuromorphic Technologies for Next-Generation Cognitive Computing
Wednesday, November 16
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 34-401, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Geoffrey Burr, IBM Almaden Research Center
I will describe IBM's roadmap for Neuromorphic Technologies to drive next-generation cognitive computing, ranging from nanodevice-based hardware for accelerating well-known supervised-learning algorithms (which happen to rely on static, labeled data), to emerging, biologically-inspired algorithms capable of learning from temporal, unlabeled data. I will survey the various hardware-centric neuromorphic projects currently underway at IBM Research, and discuss a few in depth.
MTL Seminar Series
MTL seminar speakers for the series are selected on the basis of their knowledge and competence in the areas of microelectronics research, manufacturing, or policy. This series is held during the academic year on Wednesdays at noon. The seminars are open to the public. Lunch is served at 11:30am
Web site: https://www-mtl.mit.edu/mtlseminar/
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Microsystems Technology Laboratories
For more information, contact: Shereece Beckford
253-0086
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Book Launch: Nudging Health: Health Law and Behavioral Economics
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, 12 p.m.
WHERE Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East BC (2036), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Law
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
SPEAKER(S) Cass R. Sunstein, J.D., Harvard Law School
Jerry Avorn, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Abigail Moncrieff, J.D., Associate Professor of Law and Peter Paul Career Development Professor, Boston University School of Law
Moderators: I. Glenn Cohen, J.D., Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center, Harvard Law School (co-editor) and Holly Fernandez Lynch, J.D., MBioethics, Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center (co-editor)
DETAILS In November 2016, Johns Hopkins University Press will publish Nudging Health: Health Law and Behavioral Economics, co-edited by Petrie-Flom Center Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen, Executive Director Holly Fernandez Lynch, and Christopher T. Robertson, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation, James E. Rogers College of Law, the University of Arizona. This edited volume stems from the Center’s 2014 annual conference, which brought together leading experts to build on the success of the behavioral economics movement in order to further develop scholarly discussion of key issues in health law policy, bioethics, and biotechnology by addressing both broad conceptual questions and more specific policy applications.
Behavioral science has swept the fields of economics and law through the study of nudges, cognitive biases, and decisional heuristics—but it has only recently begun to impact the conversation on health care. Nudging Health wrestles with some of the thorny philosophical issues, legal limits, and conceptual questions raised by behavioral science as applied to health law and policy. The volume frames the fundamental issues surrounding health nudges by addressing ethical questions. Panelists will discuss some of the issues addressed in the book: Does cost-sharing for health expenditures cause patients to make poor decisions? Is it right to make it difficult for people to opt out of having their organs harvested for donation when they die? Are behavioral nudges paternalistic? The contributors examine specific applications of behavioral science, including efforts to address health care costs, improve vaccination rates, and encourage better decision-making by physicians. They wrestle with questions regarding the doctor-patient relationship and defaults in healthcare while engaging with larger, timely questions of healthcare reform.
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Who Fights for Reputation in International Politics? Leaders, Resolve and the Use of Force
Wednesday, November 16
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Karen Yarhi-Milo (Princeton)
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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Inclusion, Inc. Unconference
Wednesday, November 16
12:30pm
Tufts, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
How can business play a leadership role in realizing
the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals?
When the United Nations announced the Sustainable Development Goals nearly a year ago, it created a tremendous opportunity for business to demonstrate its role in furthering development. But if business is key to achieving the SDGs, where do we begin?
How can sustainable development be part of a sustainable business model?
What are the strategies and lessons being learned across companies and industries?
What are the key leverage points and challenges businesses face when seeking to engage with the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]?
We invite you to join The Fletcher School’s Institute for Business in
the Global Context on November 16th for an afternoon problem-solving
these kinds of questions.
Building upon IBGC’s latest round of research on inclusive business activities, and in the spirit of the Inclusion, Inc. and The Inclusive City Solutions Symposiums, IBGC is hosting a sector-spanning “unconference" where participants can roll up their sleeves and turn ideas into action in a collaborative, proactive environment.
Why participate?
You'll identify and problem-solve common leverage points and challenges
businesses grapple with when merging sustainable business and development
What will you get?
You'll leave with industry-specific ideas on how to take action on key UN Sustainable Development Goals, and how to integrate that action into core business strategy
To participate, tell us more about yourself! If selected, you’ll be invited to be part of an interactive afternoon among like-minded practitioners, academics, and graduate students working to make the business case for industry-specific engagement with key SDGs.
Request an Invitation by November 6th
Questions about the unconference?
Contact Katherine Round at katherine.round@tufts.edu
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Signatures of iron cycling in marine microbial genomes and ecosystems
Wednesday, November 16
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 48-316, Parsons, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Shane Hogle, Chisholm 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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Deep architectures for visual reasoning, multimodal learning, and decision-making
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-D463, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Honglak Lee , University of Michgan
Abstract: Over the recent years, deep learning has emerged as a powerful method for learning feature representations from complex input data, and it has been greatly successful in computer vision, speech recognition, and language modeling. While many deep learning algorithms focus on a discriminative task and extract only task-relevant features that are invariant to other factors, complex sensory data is often generated from intricate interaction between underlying factors of variations (for example, pose, morphology and viewpoints for 3d object images). In this work, we tackle the problem of learning deep representations that disentangle underlying factors of variation and allow for complex visual reasoning and inference. We present several successful instances of deep architectures and their learning methods in
supervised and weakly-supervised settings. Further, I will talk about visual analogy making with disentangled representations, as well as a
connection between disentangling and unsupervised learning. In the second part of the talk, I will describe my work on learning deep representations from multiple heterogeneous input modalities.
Specifically, I will talk about multimodal learning via conditional prediction that explicitly encourages cross-modal associations. This framework provides a theoretical guarantee about learning a joint distribution and explains recent progress in deep architectures that
interface vision and language, such as caption generation and conditional image synthesis. I will also describe other related work on learning joint embedding from images and text for fine-grained recognition and zero-shot learning. Finally, I will describe my work on combining deep learning and reinforcement learning. Specifically, I will talk about how learning a predictive generative model from video data can be useful for reinforcement learning via better exploration. I also will talk about a new memory-based architecture that helps sequential decision making in a first-person view and active perception setting.
Bio: Honglak Lee is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. from Computer Science Department at Stanford University in 2010, advised by Prof. Andrew Ng. His research focuses on deep learning and representation learning, which spans over unsupervised and semi-supervised learning, supervised learning, transfer learning, structured prediction, optimization, and reinforcement learning. His methods have been successfully applied to computer vision and other
perception problems. He received best paper awards at ICML 2009 and CEAS 2005. He has served as a guest editor of IEEE TPAMI Special Issue
on Learning Deep Architectures, an editorial board member of Neural Networks, and he is currently an associate editor of IEEE TPAMI. He
also has served as area chairs of ICML, NIPS, ICLR, ICCV, CVPR, ECCV, AAAI, and IJCAI. He received the Google Faculty Research Award (2011),
NSF CAREER Award (2015), and was selected as one of AI's 10 to Watch by IEEE Intelligent Systems (2013) and a research fellow by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2016).
Contact: Stefanie S. Jegelka, stefje@csail.mit.edu
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Compatibility and Investment in the U.S. Electric Vehicle Market
Wednesday, November 16
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Jing Li, Harvard University
Support from Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics and the Department of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.
Environmental Economics and Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Jason Chapman
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MIT Press Bookstore Opening Party
Wednesday, November 16
5:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building N50, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Please join us as we celebrate the MIT Press Bookstore's reopening in its new space at 301 Mass. Ave.!
Browse the vast book selection, receive discounts on titles, and see a demonstration of our new Espresso Book Machine.
Meet the staff while you enjoy raffles, door prizes, and refreshments!
RSVP's are appreciated:
We hope you can make it!
Web site: http://bit.ly/2fDpS4H
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): The MIT Press Bookstore
For more information, contact: The MIT Press Bookstore
253-5249
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Conversation with Andris Nelsons
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, John Knowles Paine Concert Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Music, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Music Department
SPEAKER(S) Andris Nelsons, Music Director, Boston Symphony Orchestra. With Tony Fogg, Artistic Administrator, and Mark Volpe, Managing Director
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO musicdpt@fas.harvard.edu
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Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice: A book talk discussion and reception with the editors and contributors.
Wednesday,November 16
5:30 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room 1019, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2016/11/Civic%20Media#RSVP
What does civic engagement look like in a digital age? What does it mean to participate in civic life when the lines between online and offline, political and social, organization and network are increasingly blurred? We define civic media as the “technologies, designs, and practices that produce and reproduce the sense of being in the world with others toward common good.” We offer this intentionally broad definition to accommodate what we see as a growing range of civic practices. And we hope that the term is generative, not restrictive – that it sparks the imagination about what it might include. But this isn’t simply a casual investigation. There is urgency in defining the term, as there is danger of these emerging practices of civic engagement simply getting lumped into larger media trends, or on the flip side, getting written off as anomalies narrowly defined. The term civic media suggests an “acting with” as a means of achieving a common good. It is inclusive of the range of intentional actions that people take with and through technologies, designs, or practices (aka media). Throughout the book, civic media is exemplified not through products or outcomes, but through the processes and potential of using the tools available to strive for the common good.
Join the editors and contributors of the new book Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice (MIT Press 2016) for a discussion on the role of civic media in the changing face of democracy around the world.
Panelists include Ethan Zuckerman (MIT), Colin Rhinesmith (Simmons), Beth Coleman (University of Waterloo), Ceasar McDowell (MIT), and Peter Levine (Tufts). The discussion will be moderated by editors, Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis.
About Eric
Eric Gordon is the founding director of the Engagement Lab at Emerson. He is also a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Eric studies civic media and public engagement within the US and the developing world. He is specifically interested in the application of games and play in these contexts. In addition to being a researcher, he is also the designer of award winning "engagement games," which are games that facilitate civic participation. He has served as an expert advisor for the UN Development Program, the International Red Cross / Red Crescent, the World Bank, as well as municipal governments throughout the United States. In addition to articles and chapters on games, digital media, urbanism and civic engagement, he is the author of two books: Net Locality: Why Location Matters in a Networked World (Blackwell 2011, with Adriana de Souza e Silva) and The Urban Spectator: American Concept Cities From Kodak to Google (Dartmouth 2010). His edited volume (with Paul Mihailidis) entitled Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice will be published by MIT Press in 2016.
About Paul
Paul Mihailidis's research explores the nexus of media literacy, young people and engagement in civic life. He is the Director of the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, a program that annually gathers scholars and students from around the world to investigate media and global citizenship. His book Media Litearcy and the Emerging Citizen: Youth, Engagement and Participation in Digital Culture (Peter Lang 2014) explores the competencies young citizens need to thrive in the digital age.
Mihailidis has published widely on media literacy, global media, and digital citizenship.In addition to Media Literacy and the Emerging Citizen, he has edited two books: Media Literacy Education in Action: Theoretical and Pedagogical Perspectives(w/Belinha DeAbreu, Routledge 2013) and News Literacy: Global Perspectives for the Newsroom and the Classroom (Peter Lang 2012). He has two forthcoming anthologies: The Civic Media Reader (MIT Press, w/ Eric Gordon) and the International Encyclopedia of Media Literacy (Wiley, with Renee Hobbs)
Mihailidis sits on the board of directors for the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), is the co-editor for the Journal of Media Literacy Education (JMLE), and the Associate Director of the Engagement Lab at Emerson College. Mihailidis has presented his research to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), UNESCO, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and traveled to China to join the board of the Academy for Global Media in Chongqing. As Director of the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, Mihailidis oversees a program that gathers over 60 students and a dozen faculty from five continents for three weeks every summer to create multimedia media literacy products that are used in over 100 countries around the world
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Conversation in Civic Innovation: Broadband Equity
Wednesday, November 16
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Roxbury Innovation Center, 2300 Washington Street, 2nd Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conversation-in-civic-innovation-broadband-equity-tickets-27843972070
Broadband has become an assumed service, and yet in some parts of the state – and even the city – high-speed internet access is limited, unavailable, or unaffordable. Broadband access is necessary to help our students learn, to build small businesses and to enable residents to engage as citizens.
As we type, click, and swipe, it is easy to forget about the underlying infrastructure that supports our online activities. This critical infrastructure is complex and in order to provide equitable access to broadband, physical considerations like fiber infrastructure and broadband readiness of buildings are critical to how we expand access.
In addition, we need to buy service from someone. Should cities pursue Muni Networks like Chattanooga, TN and Westminster, MD or should cities pursue strategies that promote competition and choice. Whether it is provided by a company or a local government, the service that we buy needs to be fast, affordable, and reliable.
Please join us for a discussion on Broadband Equity. Panelists will include:
Keynote: Susan Crawford, Berkman Center
Anne Schwieger, City of Boston
Damon Cox, The Boston Foundation
Sharon Gillett, Microsoft
Chris Mitchell, Institute for Local Self Reliance
Theo Hanna, Tech Goes Home
Moderator: Cathy Wissink, Microsoft
Schedule:
5:30 – 6 PM – Registration and networking
6:00 – 7:00 – Panel Discussion
7:00 - 7:30 – Q&A
7:30 – 8:30 – Post event networking
The Conversations on Civic Innovation is a regular series, co-convened by the Venture Café Foundation and the Microsoft Innovation and Policy Center New England.
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Discussion About Regenerative Agriculture
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
6:00 PM
Greentown Labs, 28 Dane Street, Somerville
Once inside Greentown Labs, look for fellow agricultural enthusiasts!
Welcome to our first Meetup! We'll be talking about regenerative agriculture and potential upcoming projects that volunteers can be involved with.
We invite you to join our tribe of like minded people and although this first meeting will be a conversation, future Meetups will involve action, fruit tree plantings, and installations.
People can park in the Market Basket lot or in the Greentown Labs visitor spaces in the church parking lot at 23 Tyler Street.
We look forward to meeting you!
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Bhutan: The Intersection of Climate Change & Health
Wednesday, November 16
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
The Metcalf Trustee Center, 9th Floor, 1 Silber Way, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bhutan-the-intersection-of-climate-change-health-tickets-28702173975
Bhutan is a small Himalayan country that is forging a unique path for national development, emphasizing the multiple facets (not just economic growth) that determine Gross National Happiness. As part of this effort, the country has emphasized development of accessible health care, and has been assisted in this effort by the Bhutan Foundation, as well as faculty and students from the Boston area. But climate change could threaten positive health developments. Join us for this panel event discussing this pivotal intersection, followed by a reception.
Keynote Address:
Dasho Benji
Founder of the Bhutan Trust for Environment and Conservation and currently a special advisor to the National Environmental Commission. He has served in a variety of roles in the Government of Bhutan since 1966.
Panel Moderator
Prof. Anthony Janetos, Director, Pardee Center for the Long Range Future
Panelists
Rich Feeley, Former hair of the Department of Global Health, Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH)
Kristin Johnson, DrPH Candidate BUSPH, worked with a Bhutanese AIDS NGO in 2014
Dr. James Richter, Massachusetts General Hospital, currently studying the etiology of stomach cancer in Bhutan
Tshering Dukpa, Kysar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences
Tshewang Wangchuk, Executive Director, Bhutan Foundation
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Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize Generator Dinner
Wednesday, November 16
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
MIT Stratton Student Center - Room W20-307, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Interested in improving the global food and agriculture system? Have an idea, but need a team, mentor, or access to industry professionals? Interested in food and agriculture, but don't yet have an idea?
Join us at the Generator Dinner for the Rabobank-MIT Food & Agribusiness Innovation Prize! Already have an idea? If you are a current student interested in presenting a quick summary of your idea at the Generator Dinner, please RSVP and fill out this pitch selection form.
The Rabobank-MIT Food & Agribusiness Innovation Prize, sponsored by Rabobank and supported by MIT J-WAFS and the MIT Food and Agriculture Club, is a premier business-plan competition for university and graduate students. This prize is distinct from other competitions because of its specific focus on food and agribusiness and access it will provide successful entrants to the broad business community. Visit our website for more information about the prize and future updates.
The Generator Dinner will provide the opportunity to:
Learn about the challenges in food and agribusiness from the perspective of leaders and entrepreneurs
Pitch and/or hear innovative ideas for improving the food and agriculture industry
Meet other students with similar interests to form teams
Eat great food and network with like-minded individuals
The Generator Dinner is not a pitch competition, but rather an opportunity for students with ideas to share them and recruit team members, and for those interested in participating in the Prize to find students looking for teammates. All students with interest in the industry are welcome. The event is also open to students from other universities and industry experts from the Boston area.
Rabobank-MIT Food & Agribusiness Innovation Prize Timeline: The competition will take place in two stages. First round applications will be due in late December 2016, from which finalists will be selected. Finalists will then be paired with mentors to refine their ideas. Mentors will be leading experts in industry and academia, with experience relevant to finalist submissions. At the Award Ceremony in Spring 2017, finalists will present their business plan and compete to win $25,000 in total prize money will be awarded ($12k, $8k, and $5k for first through third place, respectively).
More about Rabobank: Rabobank Group is one of the largest banks in the world. In the Americas, Rabobank is a premier bank to the food, agribusiness and beverage industry, providing sector expertise, strategic counsel and tailored financial solutions to clients across the entire food value chain, including the crop input, industrial production, manufacturing and processing, trade, distribution, retail, and food service segments.
More about J-WAFS: The Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab, J-WAFS, was established in the fall of 2014 as an Institute-wide effort to bring MIT’s unique strengths to works towards environmentally benign, scalable solutions for water and food systems across a range of regional, social, and economic contexts.
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Meet Switzerland Innovation
swissnex Boston 420 Broadway, Cambridge
Wednesday, November 16
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Invitation upon Request at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCOYEdn4RNJ2QGkjUuhe9eHBxAZpCwA46RFtJjD3jgKS8YhA/viewform
November 16, we invite you to join us for an evening with Raymond Cron, CEO of Switzerland Innovation – a nationwide innovation hub bringing together academia and industry.
This is an event geared towards entrepreneurs, researchers, and members of organizations interested in exploring business and research opportunities with Switzerland.
Switzerland regularly ranks as the most innovative country in the world. What’s this small country’s recipe for success? For one thing, it is education. Swiss technical schools and universities rank among the world’s best, and are an important basis for innovation. But in order for universities to produce marketable products and services, they need strong ties to the economy.
In order to facilitate the collaboration between academia and industry, Switzerland Innovation offers universities and companies the grounds to collaborate and to use each others’ research results for the development of marketable products and services. With its five nationwide hubs – Park Basel Area, Park Innovaare, Park Zurich, Park Network West EPFL, and Park Biel/Bienne – Switzerland Innovation provides fertile grounds for innovation and reinforces Switzerland as one of the most innovative countries in the world.
Speaker Bio
Raymond Cron is CEO of Switzerland Innovation since 2015. Prior to this assignment Raymond held top management positions in the Swiss Construction and Real Estate Industry. From 2004 until 2008 he served as Director General of the Swiss Civil Aviation Authority. Aside he serves as a chairman respectively board member of some Swiss companies and institutions. Raymond Cron holds a Master of science in civil engineering of ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich. He did his post-graduate studies in economics and management at BWI of ETH. His full bio can be found on LinkedIn.
Agenda
6 PM: Welcome and opening remarks
6.30 PM: Presentation by Raymond Cron, CEO of Switzerland Innovation, followed by Q&A, networking reception
9 PM: Doors close
Interested? Request an invite at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCOYEdn4RNJ2QGkjUuhe9eHBxAZpCwA46RFtJjD3jgKS8YhA/viewform
Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a researcher, or part of an organization interested in exploring business and research opportunities in one of the most dynamic and innovative economies in Europe – request an invite through our form for this intimate event at swissnex Boston. We’ll follow up with you shortly!
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Innovations in Food Tech for Health
Wednesday, November 16
6:15 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Perkins+Will, 225 Franklin Street, Floor 11, Boston
Cost: $15 – $20
Technology is rapidly changing our global food system, but what is food tech innovation doing to improve our health?
On Wednesday, November 16th Branchfood will host a panel and networking event on "Innovations in Food Tech for Health," starting at 6:15 PM at Perkins+Will Architecture Firm in Boston.
Panel discussion will include consumer trends in the health/food tech sector, innovative products being developed to promote healthy lifestyles, success stories and opportunities related to startup development and industry focus, and creating environments that foster health and wellness. Attendees include current and aspiring entrepreneurs, students in food focused college programs, those aspiring to build products that create healthy lifestyles, and community members.
Included is a food tech showcase including Poly and Kindrdfood and tasting of innovative health foods being produced right here in Boston including Micro Mama's, Keto+Co, Health-Ade, Perfectly Free and more!
Schedule:
6:15PM - 7:00PM - Networking and Food Tasting
7:00PM - 8:00PM - Panel Discussion + Audience Q+A
8:00PM - 8:30PM - Networking
Panelists:
Janelle Nanos, Business Reporter at Boston Globe Media (moderator)
Janelle Nanos is a writer, editor, and journalism professor in Boston. She writes about ideas, people, and businesses that drive Boston’s innovation economy and was the editor of BetaBoston, spearheading coverage of of technology and innovation. Prior to joining the Globe, she was a senior editor at Boston Magazine, where she edited and wrote features and service packages. Among her varied interests are higher education, public policy, health care, technology, travel, design, food, and politics. She also continues to write regularly for national travel publications and teaches a course in magazine writing at her alma mater, Boston College. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, USA Today, D.C. Magazine, Newsday, Slate, Marie Claire, The Village Voice, Forbes.com, Mother Jones, City Limits, Travel + Leisure Family, and Nerve.com, among other publications.
Kyle Cahill, Director of Sustainability & Environmental Health at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Kyle Cahill is responsible for the strategic direction and day-to-day management of a company-wide sustainability program that includes assessing the impact of sustainability practices to the company and community at large. Prior to Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kyle was Senior Program Officer at Oxfam America, an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. At Oxfam, he led the organization’s work on poverty footprinting, a process for companies to measure, analyze and improve their impacts on communities in developing countries. Prior to joining Oxfam, Kyle was Director of Corporate Engagement at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) where he worked with the private sector on environmental projects addressing climate change, safer products and materials, water use and waste reduction. Kyle serves on the board of directors of Plant A Fish and on the advisory boards of New Earth and Virid.us.
Tara McCarthy, Co-founder and Chief Dietitian Kindrdfood
Tara McCarthy is the Co-founder and Chief Dietitian at Kindrdfood. Kindrdfood empowers families with a medically limited diet, to navigate food and offers a guided path to great food, making change easier & less stressful. Tara has been a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) for over 16 years. She been on the staff at Boston Children’s Hospital since 2001, during which time, she has cared for a wide variety of patients including those challenged by food allergies, celiac disease, EoE, FPIES and CSID. In addition to counseling at Boston Medical Center, BC Campus School, (a school for developmentally delayed children), and in the homes of many families, Tara also has taught Nutrition courses at Northeastern University and mentored dozens of RDNs. Tara lives in Milton, MA with her husband and three children
Ian Brady, Chief Executive Officer at AVA
Ian Brady is the Chief Executive Officer at AVA, an intelligent eating platform that’s transforming the way people think about food and nutritional health. They’ve brought together some of the best talent in nutrition science, technology and behavioral coaching, along with top tier investors from Silicon Valley to redesign healthy eating experiences. Prior to AVA, Ian was the chief product officer of Kensho and he co-founded and served as a vice president at SoFi. Brady has served as the director of emerging technology at Fidelity Investments, where he was responsible for Fidelity.com as well as retail innovation programs across Fidelity’s web, mobile, and investor center channels.
Jake Cacciapaglia, VP of Media at Runkeeper
Jake Caccoapaglia is the VP of Media at Runkeeper, a leading mobile running app that helps runners of all levels – including beginners – get started with a fitness routine and stick with it forever. Initially launched in Boston, Runkeeper now has more than 45 million users across over 180 countries and has partnered with Fitbit, Loseit!. and others to make health data even more accessible and actionable. Jake was the first non-technical hire after CEO (Jason Jacobs) and has been with the company for nearly five years. During his time at RunKeeper Jake has held roles in community, support and platform development. His is resposible for establishing partnerships with companies like Spotify, Nike, Saucony, New Balance, Walgreens, and Sony.
Presenter:
David Dymecki, Principal at Perkins+Will
David has three decades of experience in the programming, planning and design of athletic and recreation projects. He has lectured and written articles and book chapters on a variety of topics for Athletic Business, National Intramural Recreational Sports Association and the Society for College and University Planners. He has presented on issues ranging from athletic and recreation sports master planning to design guidelines and trends to facilities renovation.
Please bring your ID for security checkin.
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The Port Cafe: Nourishment (Ourselves and our Community)
Wednesday, November 16
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Community Art Center, 119 Windsor Street, Cambridge
Join us for our November meal! The theme is "Nourishment" for ourselves and our community, as we come together during the season of feasts and family.
We can't wait to share a meal with you!
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Climate Challenges/Clean Energy Solutions
Wednesday, November 16
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
2-Part Event:
PRESENTATION BY THE TOP-TO-TOP GLOBAL CLIMATE EXPEDITION
The Top-to-Top Global Climate Expedition, a family of climate explorers, is arriving in Boston after having sailed through the Northwest Passage on their 50-foot sailboat, the S/V Pachama. Dario and Sabine Schwörer and their five children have spent more than a dozen years sailing all of the world’s seven seas, setting foot on seven continents, and climbing six of the world’s highest mountains, in an effort to witness, document, and report on climate change and its solutions.
CLEAN ENERGY CEO PANEL DISCUSSION
Peter Rothstein, President of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, will lead a panel of local clean energy CEOs who are delivering solutions that address climate change. The panel of entrepreneurs will discuss how the development of innovative clean energy technologies and services contribute to encouraging climate progress.
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Cyber Security in the Age of Hacking
Wednesday, November 16
6:30 - 9pm
Akamai Technologies hq, 150 Broadway, Cambridge
NSBE Boston invites you to our November Professional Development Meeting – “Cyber Security in the Age of Hacking” sponsored by Akamai Technologies.
How secure is the internet?
Join us on Wednesday, as learn more about how internet threats have evolved over time and how companies are adopting to the changing landscape. Recent attacks have increased in both scale and frequency, impacting companies such as Twitter, Amazon, and even our political parties. Let’s go beyond the headlines and take a look into the world of internet security.
Featured Speaker – Harold Moss, Akamai Technologies
Harold is responsible for defining a customer influenced strategy for Akamai security products, a core element of the Akamai business growth program. As the world evolves and threats increase, the need for new innovative practical security models which leverage the power of cloud and intelligence become increasingly more important. He has spent a significant part of his career as a consumer and vendor security specialist for companies such as IBM and EMC, and marries those experiences to help shape practical security solutions for tomorrow
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Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University welcome the award-winning author of Philadelphia Fire and Hoop Roots JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN for a discussion of his latest book, Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File.
About Writing to Save a Life
An award–winning writer traces the life of the father of iconic Civil Rights martyr Emmett Till—a man who was executed by the Army ten years before Emmett’s murder. An evocative and personal exploration of individual and collective memory in America by one of the most formidable Black intellectuals of our time.
In 1955, Emmett Till, aged fourteen, traveled from his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. Several weeks later he returned, dead; allegedly he whistled at a white woman. His mother, Mamie, wanted the world to see what had been done to her son. She chose to leave his casket open. Images of her brutalized boy were published widely. While Emmett’s story is known, there’s a dark side note that’s rarely mentioned. Ten years earlier, Emmett’s father was executed by the Army for rape and murder.
In Writing to Save a Life, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. Wideman's personal interaction with the story began when he learned of Emmett’s murder in 1955; Wideman was also fourteen years old. After reading decades later about Louis’s execution, he couldn’t escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. Author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Wideman brings extraordinary insight and a haunting intimacy to this devastating story.
An amalgam of research, memoir, and imagination, Writing to Save a Life is completely original in its delivery—an engaging and enlightening conversation between generations, the living and the dead, fathers and sons. Wideman turns seventy-five this year, and he brings the force of his substantial intellect and experience to this beautiful, stirring book, his first nonfiction in fifteen years.
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Jellyfish: Are They Taking Over?
Wednesday, November 16
7pm - 9pm
NE Aquarium, Simons IMAX Theatre, 1 Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Lisa-ann Gershwin, Ph.D., Director, Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Services
Jellyfish! The mere mention of the word sends shivers down the spines of those who have been stung—or don’t want to be. Whereas once only swimmers feared their stings, more and more, it seems, jellyfish are demanding attention in a variety of ways.
Whether they get sucked into the water intake pipes of nuclear power plants and trigger emergency shutdowns, capsize fishing trawlers, kill tourists, or surreptitiously take over ecosystems, reports are drifting in from all the world’s oceans. Join lively and passionate Australian scientist and writer, Lisa-ann Gershwin, as she explains why we are seeing more jellyfish and what it means for our future.
Dr. Gershwin will sign copies of her most recent book, Jellyfish: A Natural History, in the IMAX lobby directly following her lecture.
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From Ebola to Zika: Combating myths and controlling mosquitoes
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016, 7 – 9 p.m.
WHERE Armenise Auditorium at Harvard Medical School, 210 Longwood Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Science in the News (SITN)
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO sitnboston@gmail.com
DETAILS Science in the News (SITN) is a graduate student group with a mission to bridge the communication gap between scientists and non-scientists. This event is part of our Fall Lecture Series, given by graduate students to the general public. The event is free and open to all.
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FOREVER YOUNG: Looking forward, looking back.
Wednesday, November 16
7 PM
Barn Room, First Parish, 3 Church Street, Cambridge
Cambridge Forum celebrates the legacy and future of folk music as it marks its 50th anniversary.
Join us for a lively evening of music and memories from the early days of the Harvard Square folk scene to the current state of the Americana genre.
Betsy Siggins, raconteur and staffer at the legendary Club 47, will recall her early days in with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Folklorist Millie Rahn will moderate the conversation, interspersed with music from multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Jake Armerding.
Back in the late ’50s, a Harvard Square coffeehouse/jazz club reluctantly let an unknown folksinger on stage, says Rahn. “There was this performer around town, long hair, often barefoot. She’d been playing some of the clubs across the river in Boston. And, of course, her name was Joan Baez.”
In the early days, Club 47 was the place to play for folk musicians in the Boston area and all the greats performed there — Baez, Bob Dylan and Muddy Waters. The space eventually morphed into today’s Club Passim which has given rise to some of the top musicians in the folk world, like Shawn Colvin and Suzanne Vega.
The music scene has changed greatly over the past 50 years. But Cambridge and Club Passim continue to turn out fresh and exciting talent that reflect many influential trends in today’s evolving music world. In the tradition of the Club ’47 legends, musician Jake Armerding embodies the consummate hard-working troubadour. He hails from a Massachusetts family of musicians where he honed his songwriting skills, while also becoming an accomplished violin, mandolin and guitar player. Jake will perform some of his own songs throughout the evening in addition to some classic gems from the Dylan days. Come and enjoy!
This program is made is possible by funding from the Lowell Institute and the Harvard Square Business Association.
November is Folk Month in Harvard Square so indulge yourself. Free and open to all.
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Thursday, November 17 - Friday, November 18
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2016 MIT WATER SUMMIT: WATER UTILITIES OF THE FUTURE
NOVEMBER 17-18,
WONG AUDITORIUM, MIT
RSVP at http://www.mitwatersummit.com
Cost: $15 - $150
The MIT Water Club and its sponsors are thrilled to announce the fifth edition of the MIT Water Summit, a gathering of not only students and faculty from MIT and the greater Boston area, but also leaders from industry, finance, government, and academia to explore current problems and potential solutions surrounding water resources.
This year the Summit will focus on political, financial, and technological issues surrounding the future of water utilities around the globe. Stay tuned for updates!
November 17 Panels
VISIONS: AVAILABILITY, SUSTAINABILITY, EFFICIENCY
Separation Technology for Treatment and Recovery
Water-sensitive Urban Design
IT and Big Data for Smart Utilities
ECONOMICS
Pricing a limited resource efficiently
Investing in Infrastructure
Funding research & development
POLICY
Water Rights: Conflicts & Solutions
Water Quality: Safety and Regulation
Water Environments: Protecting Sources
November 18 Talks
FROM VISIONS TO VALUE: LESSONS FROM INDUSTRY
Working with utilities: partnerships and innovative services
Environmental stewardship: efficient private use of public water
Entrepreneurship: Paths from Academia to Markets
Technology Showcase Space: Innovations Coming to Market
SMALL WORKING GROUPS
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Social Inclusion and Poverty Eradication: An International Workshop
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 17 – Friday, Nov. 18, 2016
WHERE Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Comparative Research Program on Poverty (CROP), University of Bergen and International Social Science Council;
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University;
Seminar on Social Exclusion and Inclusion;
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
SPEAKER(S) Five sessions over two days.
Keynote Speaker: Vijayendra Rao, Lead Economist, Development Research Group, The World Bank
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Sarah Banse, sarahbanse@wcfia.harvard.edu
DETAILS The event will bring together international experts in both poverty analysis and those whose work focuses on group discrimination, stigma, and exclusionary relations. Participants will assess the contribution of social inclusion policies, from affirmative action, inclusionary housing, and group rights, to basic income and social protection floors. They will consider how to interrupt processes that isolate and discriminate against particular groups, and the extent to which ending exclusionary treatment or guaranteeing access of dishonored or stigmatized groups may prevent poverty.
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Thursday, November 17
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DeployMass Expo 2016
Thursday, November 17
8:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, 63 Franklin Street, Floor 3, Boston
Join MassCEC and leading Massachusetts clean energy innovation companies for an interactive expo highlighting technologies aimed at cutting energy use and costs.
GOAL: To connect public entities with energy challenges to Massachusetts-based clean energy and water innovation technologies. Eligible projects could receive thousands of dollars in funding to offset project costs and save taxpayer dollars via MassCEC’s DeployMass program.
TECHNOLOGIES: Third-party validated, commercial ready and approved providers including HVAC, energy management and monitoring, renewably energy generation, energy efficiency and water technologies.
AUDIENCE: State agencies, authorities, municipalities, public colleges and universities.
If you have any questions regarding registration or the Massachusetts as a First Customer Program, please email Marinna Teixeira at MTeixeira@masscec.com.
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Substantial Warming of Tropical Agricultural Regions Caused by Neighboring Deforestation
Thursday, November 17
12pm - 1pm
Tufts, Rabb room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Avery Cohn
Tropical deforestation can substantially increase nearby air temperature by reducing evaporative cooling. But, because recent tropical forest loss has been concentrated in recently-settled regions with low weather station density, forest loss-driven biophysical warming has likely gone systematically under-detected in temperature records. I’ll present results of research in my group analyzing satellite data to demonstrate that in many locations across the tropics, forests lost from 2000-2013 caused warming that exceeded the warming predicted from global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. I’ll close on a hopeful note—discussing how the finding might
encourage farmers to protect nearby forests.
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HUCE Special Seminar: Constraints on the Social Discount Rate Derived from Ethical Ambiguities and Uncertainty about Future Climate Change
Thursday, November 17
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, 26 Oxford Street, 4th Floor, Cambridge
HUCE welcomes Stephan Lewandowsky, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, School of Experimental Psychology and Cabot Institute, University of Bristol
Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol. His research examines people’s memory, decision making, and knowledge structures, with a particular emphasis on how people update information in memory. His most recent research interests examine the potential conflict between human cognition and the physics of the global climate, which has led him into research in climate science and climate modeling. His talk will briefly review the ethical issues surrounding the social discount rate and then report a simulation experiment that constrains the value of the discount rate by considering 4 sources of uncertainty and ambiguity: scientific uncertainty about the extent of future warming, social uncertainty about future population and future economic development, political uncertainty about future mitigation trajectories, and ethical ambiguity about how much the welfare of future generations should be valued today.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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Guns for Butter: The Rationale for U.S. Military Primacy
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Belfer Center Library, Littauer-369, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Liviu Horovitz, Research Fellow, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
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"Blindspot" Workshop with Mahzarin Banaji
Thursday, November 17
12:30p–3:00p
MIT, Building 50-100, 142 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Mahzarin Banaji
We all have blind spots: subtle cues that influence our perceptions of others, and how we act towards them. Harvard Prof. Mahzarin Banaji, co-author of the best-seller "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People", is hosting a workshop at MIT to help community members probe their own blind spots.
The workshop is sponsored by the Division of Student Life and the Institute Community and Equity Office. The workshop will be held in Morss Hall in Walker Memorial and there is no charge to attend, and all MIT faculty, staff, and students are welcome. In addition to a great workshop, DSL and the ICEO will provide free copies of Blindspot to anyone who registers for the event prior to Friday, October 14.
The workshop will be followed by a reception for attendees with Prof. Banaji.
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Tickets: http//tickets.mit.edu
Sponsor(s): Division of Student Life, Institute Community and Equity Office
For more information, contact: Bob Ferrara
617-253-7495
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Transparency and Freedom of Information in the Digital Age
Thursday, November 17
1:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East B and Room 2012, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2016/11/Transparency#RSVP
The Internet has transformed the government accountability landscape in many respects. Government actors have long been subject to open government laws and requirements that they consider public input when issuing regulations. But, the democratizing impact of networked communications technologies has allowed more citizens to engage more directly than ever before with federal, state, and local officials.
Some of these engagements take place through authorized channels, including via submission of freedom of information requests and filing of administrative comments. Others take place through more radical, unauthorized transparency interventions.
Journalists, civil liberties advocates, and others seeking to study government and hold it accountable regularly rely on information obtained via freedom of information requests, as well as leaks or hacks, to support their activities. This kind of information can be crucial to informed debate on complex issues, including national security and international affairs. But, easy access to tools that facilitate government transparency makes it harder to distinguish the appropriate role for journalists or activists from the role of everyday citizens. And, those seeking to use information obtained via unlawful means may face normative, ethical, and perhaps even legal dilemmas about the limitations on such use.
This symposium seeks to examine the present state of play with respect to transparency and freedom of information. It will incorporate short sets of remarks and “interventions” throughout the program offering perspectives on the current landscape. And, there will be two panel discussions. The first will offer a "view from the inside,” considering how government actors operate in an atmosphere of increased transparency and citizen engagement. The second will offer a "view from the outside,” as those interested in promoting transparency and accountability consider the ways in which the Internet has impacted their work.
This event is presented by Harvard Law School and by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, with generous support from HLS alumnus Mitch Julis.
Itinerary
1:00p - 1:05p
Welcome and Introduction
WCC Milstein East B
1:05p - 2:00p
Opening Interventions
WCC Milstein East B
Speakers: Jonathan Manes (University of Buffalo School of Law)
Esme Caramello (Harvard Law School)
Michael Morisy (MuckRock)
2:05p - 3:20p
Panel #1 -- "View from the Inside"
WCC Milstein East B
Panelists: Richard Lazarus (Harvard Law School)
Amy Bennett (National Archives)
Quentin Palfrey (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, MIT)
John Stubbs (Romulus Global Issues Management)
Moderated By: Christopher T. Bavitz (Harvard Law School)
3:20p - 3:30p
BREAK
3:30p - 4:00p
Output Transparency vs. Input Transparency (Video Presentation)
WCC Room 2012
Speaker: Cass Sunstein (Harvard Law School)
4:00p - 5:20p
Panel #2 -- "View from the Outside"
WCC Room 2012
Panelists: Nani Jansen Reventlow (Doughty Street Chambers)
David E. McCraw (The New York Times)
Jameel Jaffer (Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University)
David Sobel (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Moderated By: Andy Sellars (Boston University School of Law)
5:20p - 5:30p
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
WCC Milstein East B
5:30p - 6:30p
Cocktail Reception
WCC HLS Pub
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Catalyzing Efficiency: City Governments and Energy Efficiency Implementers
Thursday, November 17
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST
Increasing the energy efficiency of America’s multifamily buildings could save building owners and operators, residents, governments, energy efficiency service providers, and financiers billions of dollars annually. Recognizing this, a new report from the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), “Catalyzing Efficiency: Unlocking Energy Information and Value in Apartment Buildings,” presents actions that federal and local governments and energy efficiency implementers can now take to help these stakeholders better analyze and use building performance data to create significant savings.
In this webinar, IMT will present its findings and recommendations with a focus on the role of city governments and energy efficiency implementers. Participants will hear from efficiency program implementers who have capitalized on city benchmarking data to build and refine programs that better engage owners and managers to implement cost-effective efficiency actions in multifamily properties.
Presenters: Institute for Market Transformation, City of Cambridge, MA
This webinar is one of a series of four examining the findings and recommendations of IMT's "Catalyzing Efficiency" report. Other webinars will take place on:
December 1, 2 PM ET
Catalyzing Efficiency: Market-Rate Owners
Presenters: IMT and WegoWise
December 8, 2 PM ET
Catalyzing Efficiency: Affordable Multifamily Owners
Presenters: IMT and Bright Power
December 15, 2 PM ET
Catalyzing Efficiency: Lenders and Investors
Presenters: IMT and Community Preservation Corporation
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Battery Science
Thursday, November 17
3pm
Tufts, Nelson Auditorium, Anderson 112, 200 College Avenue, Medford
Jay Whitacre, Carnegie Mellon
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Photonic Topological Insulators
Thursday, November 17
4:00 pm
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Refreshments @ 3:30 pm in 4-349 (Pappalardo Community Room)
MORDECHAI (MOTI) SEGEV, Israel Institute of Technology
The recent breakthroughs on photonic topological insulators will be discussed, with an emphasis on fundamental aspects that are universal to many waves systems in nature, as well as on new ideas ranging from topological lasers to disorder-induced photonic topological phenomena.
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Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine “Madness, Politics, and Society: Toptasi Mental Asylum”
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, 4 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Medical School, Minot Room, fifth floor, Countway Library of Medicine, 10 Shattuck Street, Boston MA 02115
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Department of Postgraduate and Continuing Education, McLean Hospital and the Center for the History of Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
SPEAKER(S) Fatih Artvinli, Ph.D.: Assistant Professor of the History of Medicine and Ethics, Acibadem University School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO For further information contact David G. Satin, M.D., Colloquium Director, phone/fax 617-332-0032, e-mail david_satin@hms.harvard.edu
DETAILS The second in a series of three lectures given as the 2016 Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine. The Colloquium offers an opportunity to clinicians, researchers, and historians interested in a historical perspective on their fields to discuss informally historical studies in progress.
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OEB Seminar Series - "The Neurobiology of Individuality"
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Biological Labs Main Lecture Hall #1080, 16 Divinity Avenue
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
SPEAKER(S) Dr. Benjamin de Bivort, Harvard University
TICKET INFO Free and open to the public
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After the Arab Spring in Morocco: Reflections on Historiography, Cultural Diversity, and Human Rights
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
SPEAKER(S) Susan Gilson Miller, Professor, Department of History, University of California, Davis
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
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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Wanton Extinction: Foucault, Wynter, and the Anthropocene
Thursday, November 17
4:30PM TO 6:30PM
Harvard, Boylston 237, 5 Harvard Yard, Cambridge
This talk draws on the work of Michel Foucault and Sylvia Wynter to rethink the Anthropocene. Critically responding to the renaturalizing turn in recent feminist and queer thought, it seeks to articulate an ethics of living through a genealogical lens, engaging deep time and the fossil record as an archive of extinction.
Lynne Huffer is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She is the author of Are the Lips a Grave?; Mad for Foucault; Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures; and Another Colette; and also serves as editor of philoSOPHIA: A Journal in Continental Feminism. She has published academic articles on feminist theory, queer theory, Foucault, and ethics, as well as personal essays, creative nonfiction, and opinion pieces in literary journals and mass media venues.
Sponsored by the Mahindra Center for the Humanities (France and the World Seminar), the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the Harvard University Center for the Environment
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Blocking as Counter-Speech
Thursday, November 17
5:00-6:30pm
Location TBD
Annual Lester Kissel Lecture in Ethics by Rae Langton, Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Newnham College, University of Cambridge
This lecture is named for the late Lester Kissel, a graduate of Harvard Law School and longtime benefactor of Harvard University's ethics programs and activities.
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Starr Forum: Innovation and Its Enemies
Thursday, November 17
5:00p–6:30p
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
A book talk with Calestous Juma
CIS Starr Forum
A public events series on pressing issues in international affairs, sponsored by the MIT Center for International Studies.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact: 617-253-8306
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Climate Change: Ethics in Action
Thursday, November 17, 2016
5:15p–8:30p
MIT, Building 50-140, Morss Hall, 142 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
From record temperatures to extreme weather events, the impacts of climate change are evident around the globe. Yet while the climate threat becomes increasingly clear, the collective nature of its causes and the seeming remoteness of its impacts challenge many of our ethical intuitions. What is our ethical responsibility to take action against climate change? Join other members of the MIT community in a conversation about the ethical implications of climate change and our collective responsibility for action.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Radius/T&C, Office of the Vice President for Research
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Microgrids: The New Shape of Electricity?
Thursday, November 17
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Greentown Labs, 28 Dane Street, Somerville
As our power system becomes increasingly decarbonized, decentralized and distributed, will microgrids be the new face of electricity generation and transmission? This panel will evaluate microgrid opportunities from the perspective of technology entrepreneurs, equipment vendors, project developers, utilities and regulators.
Panelists and Speakers Include:
Sean Becker - President and Founder, Sparkplug Power
Paul Elias - Partner, J.M Forbes & Co.
Mark Johnson - Smart Cities Chief & MW Battery Energy Storage Solar Microgrids Innovator, Schneider Electric
Ed Krapels - CEO, Anbaric
Ben Polito - President, Pika Energy
Emily Reichert - CEO, Greentown Labs
Richard Stuebi - President, NextWave Energy
Event Schedule:
5:30-6:30pm: Networking
6:30-6:40pm: Opening Remarks
6:40-6:45pm: Introduce Panelists
6:45-7:30pm: Panel Discussion
7:30-8:30pm: Networking
Panel Description:
The electric power industry is being transformed by explosive growth in solar energy and electric vehicle adoption, major advancements in battery technologies that increasingly promise economic storage of grid-sourced electricity, and the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) and predictive analytics to enable distributed intelligence of electricity delivery and use.
These trends merge the drive toward “microgrids," which are subsets of the electric distribution network that can be managed autonomously independent of the utility to produce increased customer value: improved resilience and power quality at similar (or in certain cases, lower) costs.
This panel will discuss the long-term potential and nearer-term commercial possibilities for microgrids from multiple perspectives actively evaluating microgrid opportunities: technology entrepreneurs, equipment vendors, project developers, utilities and regulators.
We hope you'll join us!
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History and Human Rights: A Panel Discussion
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016, 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sever Hall 113, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard's Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Seminar on Violence and Non-Violence
SPEAKER(S) Jacqueline Bhabha (Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health)
Bernard Harcourt (Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Columbia School of Law)
Samuel Moyn (Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law and Professor of History, Harvard University)
Kathryn Sikkink (Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; Carr Center for Human Rights Policy)
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu
617-495-0738
DETAILS Seating is limited.
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Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England
Thursday, November 17
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
RSVP at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu
Cost: $5 member, $10 nonmember
The Arnold Arboretum welcomes author, journalist, and natural historian, Stephen Long for a special talk on the forests and the people of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont who were faced with acre after acre of blown down trees after the devasting 1938 hurricane.
The 1938 hurricane was so devastating partly because nobody had any inkling that it was bearing down on them. Stephen Long will show why that happened and place this storm within a historical context of New England hurricanes before and since. Until now, the hurricane’s damage to the region’s forests and the people who relied on them has gone largely unexamined. Throughout this talk, eyewitness accounts and archival photos will illuminate this most destructive weather event to ever hit New England. Long's book will be available for purchase and signing.
Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.
Contact Name: arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu
(617) 524-1718
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Invasive Species and Carbon Cycling in Coastal Dunes of Cape Cod
Thursday, November 17
7 pm
NE Aquarium, Simons IMAX Theatre, 1 Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Robert Vincent, Ph.D., MIT, Sea Grant College Program
MIT Sea Grant coastal ecologist Dr. Robert Vincent is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service to study carbon cycling in coastal dune habitats, as well as the effects of historic peat deposits on the establishment and persistence of invasive plants (Phragmites australis). With the increased risk of erosion from coastal storms exposing the once-buried peat deposits, and the challenge of controlling an aggressive invasive species, this dynamic system has a lot going on. Join Dr. Vincent to learn how the research findings from this study will inform future conservation efforts in the region as well as allow us to gain a deeper understanding of carbon cycling in coastal dunes.
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Journalism Panel: Election Coverage
Thursday, November 17
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Northeastern, 425 Shillman Hall, 115 Forsyth Street, Boston
Cost: $5
The Society of Professional Journalists New England Chapter will be hosting five panelist that will discuss their experiences in covering local, state and national elections, including this historic 2016 presidential election.
The five panelists are:
Chris Cassidy, Boston Herald's chief presidential campaign reporter @ChrisCassidy_BH
Paul Steinhauser, NH1's political director and anchor http://www.nh1.com/news-team/
Lauren Dezenski, POLITICO Massachusetts reporter http://www.politico.com/states/massachusetts/staff/lauren-dezenski
Bill Marcus, Fox News Radio New England reporter billmarcus.com
Meg Heckman, past president of the New Hampshire Press Association and lecturer at the University of New Hampshire megheckman.com
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Sustainable Socials with Green Cambridge!
Thursday, November 17
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Plug Cambridge, 618 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Look for our banner!
Come and join Green Cambridge for our monthly meet-up!
We are a group of Cantabrigians dedicated to improving the environment and striving for sustainability. We'll be talking about all things green, giving run-downs on our community, advocacy and organizing work, and just getting to know one another.
Can't make it? We'll be repeating the event the third Thursday of every month! Plus, our organizing and planning meetings happen the first Thursday of every month. Also check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and at www.greencambridge.org
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The Future of Synthetic Biology with George Church
Thursday, November 17, 2016
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Broad Institute, 7 Cambridge Center, Cambridge
Information density, longevity and energy costs for DNA are thousands to millions-fold better than conventional storage. Interfacing with biological, audio and visual data is more attractive and natural. The cost of DNA I/O is dropping much faster than Moore's law (3-million fold in 7 years). I/O bio-systems (nano machines) include CRISPR Cas1/2 and Polymerases. A related effort is "Genome-Project-Write" which aims to improve technologies for building and testing human (and many other) genomes.
George Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard and MIT and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard.
George is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to genomic science and his many pioneering contributions to chemistry and biomedicine. In 1984, he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first commercial genome sequence (the human pathogen, H. pylori). He helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the Personal Genome Project in 2005. George invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and array DNA synthesizers.
George is also the co-author of "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves". More information is online at http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465021751.
This is a joint meeting of GBC/ACM and the Boston Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society.
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Friday, November 18 – Sunday, November 20
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Restoring Oceans, Restoring Climate: Facing Fire & Ice, Food & Water, Flood & Drought
Harvard, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Cost: $150, Students/Low-Budget, $20
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Friday, November 18
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The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment
WHEN Friday, Nov. 18, 2016
WHERE Harvard Law School, Milstein East B and C conference rooms, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Ethics, Law, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Policy Program
SPEAKER(S) John Bessler
Stephen Bright
Lincoln Caplan
James Forman Jr.
Brandon Garrett
Bernard Harcourt
Pamela Karlan
Kathryn Kase
Randall Kennedy
Corinna Lain
Sanford Levinson
Evan Mandery
Michael Meltsner
Michael Radelet
Larry Schwartztol
Reva Siegel
Carol Steiker
Jordan Steiker
Christina Swarns
Laurence Tribe
Mark Tushnet
Alex Whiting
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO mworth@law.harvard.edu
DETAILS The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment is a multi-panel conference, sponsored by the Criminal Justice Policy Program, that will explore themes in Professors Carol Steiker & Jordan Steiker’s book, "Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment" (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, to be released October, 2016). Visit bit.ly… for the program schedule. Registration is required: Please register at http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/supreme-court-and-capital-punishment/register
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Harvard Free-cycle
Friday, November 18
11 am–2 pm
Lobby, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge
Bring any and all surplus furniture, supplies, and equipment to the Lobby of 124 Mt. Auburn Street. Clothing, books, office supplies, kitchen goods, toys, baby supplies, tools, hardware and any thing else reusable is welcome here. Whether or not you donate, you are welcome to take anything you want for free. These Freecycles save money, reduce Harvard’s waste, and conserve the embodied natural resources and energy in manufactured goods.
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Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Friday, November 18
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Neil Donahue, Carnegie Mellon. Title TBA.
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
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The July 15 Coup Attempt and the Transformation of Civil-Military Relations in Turkey
WHEN Friday, Nov. 18, 2016, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CMES, Room 102, 38 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Center for Middle Eastern Studies
SPEAKER(S) Koray Çalışkan, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Please note: this is a brown bag lunch event; beverages and dessert will be provided.
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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Slumdog Entrepreneurs: Creating Something From Nothing
WHEN Friday, Nov. 18, 2016, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, S153, CGIS South, 1st Floor, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Asia Center Fellows Seminar Series; Harvard Asia Center
SPEAKER(S) Professor Soumodip Sarkar, Associate Professor, Department of Management, University of Évora, Portugal; Asia Center Associate
Chair: Professor Dwight Perkins, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus, Harvard University
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Controlling Dynamic Robot Behavior with Optimization
Friday, November 18
12:30pm to 2:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Lunch 12:30pm; Talk 1pm
Scott Kuindersma, Harvard University
Despite the existence of incredible robot hardware, the limitations of our best planning and control algorithms have prevented us from unleashing these machines to tackle critical exploration, automation, and disaster response challenges. This talk will summarize our recent research on designing optimization algorithms that improve our ability to plan and stabilize dynamic motions involving contact in large-scale robots, including the Atlas humanoid robot at the DRC.
Speaker Bio: Scott Kuindersma is an Assistant Professor of Engineering and Computer Science at Harvard University and the director of the Harvard Agile Robotics Laboratory. Previously, he was a postdoc in the Robot Locomotion Group at MIT CSAIL and the Control Lead for MIT’s DARPA Robotics Challenge team. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2012. His current work is focused on developing algorithms for robust legged locomotion and manipulation, control and estimation for morphing UAVs, and realtime control optimization for human assistive devices.
Website: http://scottk.seas.harvard.edu
Host: Institute for Applied Computational Science (IACS)
Contact: Natasha Baker
Phone: 617-496-2623
Email: nrbaker@seas.harvard.edu
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Restoring Oceans, Restoring Climate: Facing Fire & Ice, Food & Water, Flood & Drought
Friday, November 18 – Sunday, November 20, 2016
Friday, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Harvard, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Cost: $150, Students/Low-Budget, $20
Human behavior has led to today’s global warming – can human behavior reverse it as well? We have been searching for – and finding – answers leading to Yes!
In all of our conferences we have faced pressing questions in this era of planetary degradation, mass extinction and climate disruption. We have also introduced many positive and powerful solutions for varied terrestrial habitats across the world, and brought hope to the difficult climate story we are living through.
Now we’re tackling a new and challenging player: Oceans. Covering 70% of the earth’s surface and currently harboring vast amounts of climate heat, many other questions arise:
What roles do oceans play in the viability of life on land?
What roles do terrestrial habitats play in the viability of life in the oceans?
What is the role of those extraordinarily productive “edges” where land and water meet?
What are the ocean equivalents of regenerative management practices on land?
What are the dynamics of ocean life? If you were a bacterium, plankton, squid, fish or dolphin, what would oceans look like to you? What would you ask humans to do to preserve your habitats?
Finally, what are the relationships between oceans and land? How can we manage both for the good of the entire planetary system and the creatures who live here?
As in our prior six conferences, we’ll examine eco-restoration and the power of nature to heal global damage and reverse global warming. We will step beyond our conventional assumptions to hear from forward-thinking scientists, ocean restoration experts, fisheries professionals and activists about the remarkable possibilities of regenerated abundant oceans for a healthy and livable planet, on land and at sea.
Join us for a vast virtual ocean voyage and a weekend of fascination, promise and hope!
Volunteer and scholarship opportunities available – please contact info@bio4climate.org
A word about our ticket prices: On the one hand we want everyone and anyone who would like to attend our conferences to be able to afford to do so. On the other we are a small non-profit with limited resources and need ticket revenue to pay for conference expenses. Our ticket structure is meant to reflect both of those needs. So we ask you to feel free to buy a $20 ticket if that’s what’s comfortably affordable for you, and if you can afford a bit more but not $150, simply make an additional donation here. You’ll also get a free ticket if you volunteer to help before or during the conference. And if a full-price ticket is within your means, we greatly appreciate it. But more important than anything else is that we’d love to have you join us to share in this weekend full of beauty, wonder and hope.
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A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age
Friday November 18
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Daniel Levitin - A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age
We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process—especially in election season. New York Times-bestselling author Daniel J. Levitin (This is Your Brain on Music) shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them.
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Saturday, November 19, 2016 at 9:00 AM - Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 8:00 PM
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TEDxBeaconStreet 2016
Saturday, November 19, 2016 at 9:00 AM - Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 8:00 PM
The Lincoln School, 19 Kennard Road, Brookline
YEAR FIVE: TEDxBeaconStreet 2016 Conference
TEDxBeaconStreet is a unique community event featuring diverse, multi-generational thought leaders from all walks of life. We support contemporary themes and highly interactive learning to facilitate community discussions and envision the impact of emerging ideas. Apply now to attend our fifth annual event.
FRIDAY SCHEDULE
7:00pm - 10:00pm: Escape Velocity Launch Party
Venue: Brookline Teen Center
SATURDAY SCHEDULE
BLOCK ONE
9:00am - 12:00pm: TEDxYouth@BeaconStreet
BLOCK TWO
12:30pm - 6:00pm: TEDxBeaconStreet
Venue: Lincoln School in Brookline
SUNDAY SCHEDULE
BLOCK THREE
9:00am - 12:00pm: TEDxBeaconStreet
BLOCK FOUR
12:30pm - 6:00pm: TEDxBeaconStreet
Venue: Lincoln School in Brookline
We have GREAT Speakers to help celebrate our fifth successfull year. We'll hear from a Congressman, professional teen skiers, Harvard and MIT researchers, a NASA engineer, a parks designer, social justice advocates, educators, and many more!
Meet the Speakers
Our community aims to promote innovations and inspire lifelong learning. Our priority is building an engaged and thoughtful audience, and we're thrilled to include you! If you love TEDxBeaconStreet and want to be more involved, tell us your superpower.
Do you know someone else who should attend? Forward to friends, colleagues, and family, or share event details on social networks using hashtag #tedxbeaconst and follow our blog and Medium page for updates.
For more information, visit: http://www.2016.tedxbeaconstreet.com
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Saturday, November 19
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Renewing our Energy - Mothers Out Front Statewide Summit
Saturday, November 19
10am-4pm
Old West Church, 131 Cambridge Street, Boston
We'll be celebrating our 2016 wins and setting our 2017 goals
Representatives from each organizing team community needed.
Interested in knowing more and/or attending? contact Cambridge co-coordinator
Zeyneb Magavi (zeynebmagavi@gmail.com)
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Boston Interfaith Community Solar Celebration
Saturday, November 19
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Second Church In Dorchester, 44 Moultrie Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boston-interfaith-community-solar-celebration-tickets-28475673506
Join Second Church in Dorchester, Bethel AME, and Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin as we celebrate the progress to bring solar to our houses of worship. We will hear from clergy, lay leaders, and State Representatives about the important role community solar can play in the just transition to renewable energy. There will be music, cake, and an opportunity to meet neighboring congregations.
We hope to see you there!
This event is sponsored by Co-op Power and Resonant Energy. Co-op Power is a renewable energy cooperative dedicated to building a multi-class and multi-race movement for a just and sustainable energy future. Resonant Energy works with and for multiple groups of stakeholders to originate, develop, and finance clean energy projects. We are dedicated to making 100% clean energy an easy choice for 100% of people.
This event is free and open to the public.
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Monday, November 21
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McKinsey Energy and Sustainability presentation
Monday, November 21
11:45 am to 12:45 pm
MIT, Building E62-276, 100 Main Street, Cambridge
Please join McKinsey & Company's Senior Partner Scott Nyquist for a discussion on climate change, recent progress in policy and technology, and implications for energy companies. Scott Nyquist is a Senior Partner in the Houston Office and a leader in the McKinsey Sustainability and Resource Productivity Network as well as a leader in the McKinsey's Energy Practice. Scott is also on the McKinsey Global Institute Council, which advises on MGI's research on global economic, business, and technology trends. McKinsey's Sustainability and Resource Productivity (SRP) network helps the world's leading institutions make sustainability and resource productivity a core driver of economic performance. SRP's mission is to be the best place to work for people with ambition to make a positive and lasting impact on both clients and environment.
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Book Talk: Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East
WHEN Monday, Nov. 21, 2016, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Fainsod Room, Littauer-324, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Middle East Initiative, CMES/WCFIA Middle East Seminar
SPEAKER(S) A seminar with Nader Hashemi, Director, Center for Middle East Studies and Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver and Danny Postel, Assistant Director, Middle East and North African Studies Program, Northwestern University on their new book Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Hurst Publishers, February 2017).
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, ‘sectarianism’ has become a catch-all explanation for the region’s troubles. The turmoil is attributed to ‘ancient sectarian differences,’ putatively primordial forces that make violent conflict intractable. In media and policy discussions, sectarianism has come to possess trans-historical causal power.
This book trenchantly challenges the lazy use of ‘sectarianism’ as a magic-bullet explanation for the region’s ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Through multiple case studies — including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait — this book maps the dynamics of sectarianisation, exploring not only how but also why it has taken hold. The contributors examine the constellation of forces — from those within societies to external factors such as the Saudi-Iranian rivalry — that drive the sectarianisation process and explore how the region’s politics can be de-sectarianised.
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Mexico's Energy Reform
Monday, November 21
12pm-1:30pm
Harvard, Belfer Building, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Lourdes Melgar, Robert Wilhelm Fellow, Center for International Studies, MIT, and former Deputy Secretary of Energy for Hydrocarbons, Mexico
Lunch will be provided.
Energy Policy Seminar Series
Contact Name: cepr@hks.harvard.edu
617-495-8693
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Talk in Arabic: Egyptian Clothes between Religious Ideology and Social Change
WHEN Monday, Nov. 21, 2016, 12 – 1:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CMES, Room 102, 38 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Center for Middle Eastern Studies
SPEAKER(S) Zeinab Taha, Associate Professor Arabic Linguistics, Department of Arabic Language (former Arabic Language Institute), The American University of Cairo
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
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.
LINK http://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/egyptian-clothes-between-religious-ideology-and-social-change
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Taking the fingerprints of global sea level rise
Monday, November 21
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Jerry Mitrovica, Professor of Science
Jerry X. Mitrovica joined Harvard in 2009 as a Professor of Geophysics. His work focuses on the Earth's response to external and internal forcings that have time scales ranging from seconds to billions of years. He has written extensively on topics ranging from the connection of mantle convective flow to the geological record, the rotational stability of the Earth and other terrestrial planets, ice age geodynamics, and the geodetic and geophysical signatures of ice sheet melting in our progressively warming world. Sea-level change has served as the major theme of these studies, with particular emphasis on critical events in ice age climate and on the sea-level fingerprints of modern polar ice sheet collapse.
Mitrovica is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University. He is a former Director of the Earth Systems Evolution Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and J. Tuzo Wilson Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto, where he also received his Ph.D. degree. He is the recipient of the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America, the W.S Jardetsky Medal from Columbia University, the A.E.H. Love Medal from the European Geosciences Union and the Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. He is also a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America, as well as a past Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
Contact Name: arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu
(617) 524-1718
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Spaceship in the Desert: Energy, Climate Change and Urban Design in Abu Dhabi
Monday, November 21
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Gökçe Gunel, Columbia
Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
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: sts@hks.harvard.edu
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Views of Colombia Biodiversity from Afar and Within
Monday, November 21
4:00PM
Harvard, CGIS South (S-020), Belfer Case Study Room, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies hosts a conversation with Brian Farell, Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Biology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Brigitte Baptiste, Director, Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt, Colombia, on the tremendous biological and cultural richness of Colombia and its approach to natural resource management.
A world view of Colombia biodiversity as a sustainable, integrative natural resource for all. Colombia leads the world in the diversity of habitats and species it harbors. This unequalled natural resource can strengthen the economy, education and health of all Colombians through an integrative program that enables the work of scientists, educators and those who live closest to nature. Several countries have explored different aspects of such an approach to natural resource management with advances and mistakes that offer lessons. Taken together, the tremendous biological and cultural richness of Colombia forms the basis of a healthy and sustainable future.
Brian D. Farrell is the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (as of July 2014), and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator in Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He is an authority on coevolution between insects and plants and a specialist on the biology of beetles. He is the author of many dozens of scientific papers and book chapters on the evolution of ecological interactions between plants, beetles and other insects in the tropics and temperate zone. Professor Farrell also spearheads initiatives to repatriate digital information from scientific specimens of insects in museums to their tropical countries of origin. In 2011-2012, he was a Fulbright Scholar to the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Professor Farrell received a BA degree in Zoology and Botany from the University of Vermont and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland.
Brigitte Baptiste was born in 1963, and is a biologist by training with studies in fresh water fish ecology at the Colombian amazon. Brigitte Baptiste holds an MA from UF Gainesville in Latin American studies, working with forest management by local communities in the high Andes. Linked for a long time to the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, where mostly thought Landscape Ecology, was appointed as Science Director of the Humboldt Research Institute for Biological Resources in 2009 and since 2011 is the Institute's General Director. Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, until January 2017.
Contact Name: Paola Ibarra
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Documentary Film Screening: AFTER THE LAST RIVER
Monday, November 21
4:00PM TO 6:00PM
Harvard, Room 518, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Join Harvard GSD for a screening of the documentary film AFTER THE LAST RIVER, followed by a conversation with Director Victoria Lean and Producer Jade Blair. In the shadow of a De Beers mine, the remote community of Attawapiskat lurches from crisis to crisis, as their homeland transforms into a modern frontier. Filmed over five years, this feature length film follows the First Nation’s journey from relative obscurity and into the international spotlight.
Free and open to the public.
Contact Name: Genevieve Ennis Hume
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2016 Science and Cooking Public Lecture Series: Nathan Myhrvold
Monday, November 21
7 p.m.
Harvard, Science Center Lecture Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Nathan Myhrvold, (@ModernCuisine), former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, author of “Modernist Cuisine”
Now in its seventh year, the series is organized by Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).
The public lectures are based on the Harvard course “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter,” but do not replicate course content.
All talks will take place in the Harvard Science Center (1 Oxford St., Cambridge, Mass., Hall C) and begin at 7 p.m., unless otherwise noted
Each presentation will begin with a 15-minute lecture about the scientific topics from that week’s class by a faculty member from the Harvard course
Seating for all lectures is first come, first seated
If you have questions regarding the public lecture series, please contact science_cooking@seas.harvard.edu.
The Harvard College Course
The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Alícia Foundation developed the General Education science course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter,” which debuted in the fall of 2010. The course uses food and cooking to explicate fundamental principles in applied physics and engineering. (Watch a video about the course.)
While limited to currently enrolled Harvard undergraduates, the class, which brings together eminent Harvard researchers and world-class chefs, is available to others on-campus through the Harvard Extension School and online through the HarvardX platform (details below).
Instructors
Michael Brenner, Glover Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics and Professor of Physics; Harvard College Professor
Pia Sörensen, Preceptor in Science and Cooking
David Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics
Lab Design/Implementation
Pere Castells, Unitat UB-Bullipèdia
Science and Cooking at Harvard Extension School
A version of “Science and Cooking” will be offered for credit through the Harvard Extension School in Spring 2017. Registered students will have access to the expertise and support of Harvard teaching staff, and will participate in an on-campus weekend in our cooking lab.
An online version of the course is also available as a HarvardX course.
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Tuesday, November 22
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IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority): Important, but not for what they do
Tuesday, November 22
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room 3019 (third floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/11/Bradner#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2016/11/Bradner at 12:00 pm.
The Obama Administration’s decision to allow ICANN to assume sole responsibility for the development of policy over the naming and numbering function of the Internet, and the proceeding transition process has been a dramatic affair. Scott Bradner, who was involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET and has served on a number of roles at the IETF, will be at the Berkman Klein Center on November 22 to provide a history of ICANN, IANA, and the transition process. Why were so many concerned that the transition meant the U.S. was giving the Internet to China and Russia? Come by and find out.
About Scott
Scott Bradner was involved in the design, operation and use of data networks at Harvard University since the early days of the ARPANET. He was involved in the design of the original Harvard data networks, the Longwood Medical Area network (LMAnet) and New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet). He was founding chair of the technical committees of LMAnet, NEARnet and the Corporation for Research and Enterprise Network (CoREN).
Mr. Bradner served in a number of roles in the IETF. He was the co-director of the Operational Requirements Area (1993-1997), IPng Area (1993-1996), Transport Area (1997-2003) and Sub-IP Area (2001-2003). He was a member of the IESG (1993-2003) and was an elected trustee of the
Internet Society (1993-1999), where he was the VP for Standards from 1995 to 2003 and Secretary to the Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2016. Scott was also a member of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) as well as a trustee of the IETF Trust from 2012 to 2016.
Mr. Bradner retired from Harvard University in 2016 after 50 years working there in the areas of in computer programming, system management, networking, IT security and identity management. He still does some patent related consulting.
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xTalk with Steven Hall, Lori Breslow & Jeff Gore: Active Learning
Tuesday, November 22
4:15p–5:15p
MIT, Building 10-105, Bush Room, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
MIT professors Steven Hall, Lori Breslow & Jeff Gore will give a panel discussion on active learning and how they are implementing it in their teaching.
xTalks: Digital Discourses
The xTalks series provides a forum to facilitate awareness, deep understanding and transference of educational innovations at MIT and elsewhere. We hope to foster a community of educators, researchers, and technologists engaged in developing and supporting effective learning experiences through online learning environments and other digital technologies.
Web site: http://odl.mit.edu/news-and-events/events/lori-breslow-jeff-gore-steven-hall-active-learning
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): xTalks: Digital Discourses, Office of Digital Learning
For more information, contact: Molly Ruggles
617-324-9185
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Starr Forum: The Struggle Against Terrorism: Lessons Learned and Next Steps
Tuesday, November 22
4:30p–6:00p
MIT, Building 66-110
Counter-terrorism discussion with Under Secretary of State Sarah Sewall
CIS Starr Forum
A public events series on pressing issues in international affairs, sponsored by the MIT Center for International Studies.
Web site: http://cis.mit.edu/events/starr-forum-struggle-against-terrorism-lessons-learned-next-steps
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact:
617-253-8306
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theMOVE'S FINAL FAREWELL!
Tuesday, November 22
5p-11p
Flatbread Pizza in Davis Square, 45 Day Street, Somerville
FRIENDS -- It's been a beautiful ride.
Over the past 7 years, theMOVE hustled day and night to help reshape the way Boston eats. We engaged over 3000 local volunteers -- mostly urban youth of color -- on powerful farm workdays, to connect our communities with the labor and land that sustain us. We helped build the demand for local produce to help strengthen local farms. And we helped put food justice on the agendas of community organizations, local and national businesses, regional farms, government agencies, the state legislature, the governor, and residents across Boston. While we're far from giving up, we've found a new home for this work within the Urban Farming Institute; as of the end of this year theMOVE will officially disband. So, on what will undoubtedly be a bittersweet night, at a place that helped us launch and sustain it all, we invite you -- the beautiful community that built this work alongside us -- to come together to celebrate with us one last time.
On Tuesday 11/22, on the night before the Thanksgiving holiday begins, join the Urban Farming Institute and theMOVE out at for a night of responsibly-sourced and ridiculously-delicious pizza and bowling. Part of the proceeds from all pizza sales will go to the Urban Farming Institute to continue this powerful work of getting youth out onto local farms to learn about where our food comes from.
NO COST TO ENTER! The event is open to all, so please invite your famiily and friends. We will also have a silent auction!
While we'd prefer to see your beautiful faces, in case you can't make it to the event you can order pizza from Flatbread online here (tinyurl.com/flatbreadfundraiser) on the night of November 22nd and get it delivered to your home (no need to mention UFI or theMOVE -- we will get a portion of all pizza sales that night).
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Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
Tuesday, November 22
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes STEVEN JOHNSON, the bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From, Future Perfect, and How We Got to Now, for a discussion of his latest book Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World.
About Wonderland
This lushly illustrated history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.
Johnson’s storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he describes, full of surprising stops along the journey from simple concepts to complex modern systems. He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows.
Johnson compellingly argues that observers of technological and social trends should be looking for clues in novel amusements. You’ll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.
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Upcoming Events
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Monday, November 28
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PAOC Colloquium - Jorge Sarmiento (Princeton)
Monday, November 28
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Dr. Jorge L. Sarmiento is the George J. Magee Professor of Geoscience and Geological Engineering, Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University. He obtained his PhD at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University in 1978, and then served as a post-doc at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA in Princeton before joining the Princeton University faculty in 1980. He has published widely on the oceanic cycles of climatically important chemicals such as carbon dioxide, on the use of chemical tracers to study ocean circulation, and on the impact of climate change on ocean biogeochemistry. He has participated in the scientific planning and execution of many of the large-scale multi-institutional and international oceanographic biogeochemical and tracer programs of the last two decades. He was Director of Princeton's Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program from 1980 to 1990 and 2006 to 2015, and is Director of the Cooperative Institute for Climate Science. He is also serves as Director of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM). He has served on the editorial board of multiple journals and as editor of Global Biogeochemical Cycles. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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The Geopolitics of the New Energy Abundance
Monday, November 28
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Meghan O’Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Lunch will be provided.
Energy Policy Seminar Series
Contact Name: cepr@hks.harvard.edu
617-495-8693
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How Data and Technology Can Help Improve Government
Monday, November 28
2:30pm
Harvard, Data Privacy Lab, CGIS Knafel K354, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
This will be a brainstorming session on the ways data and technology can improve local government. The session begins with a presentation by Susan Crawford. Her recent book The Responsive City highlights the promising intersection of government and data through vivid case studies featuring municipal pioneers and big data success stories from Boston, Chicago, New York, and more. She explores topics including:
Building trust in the public sector and fostering a sustained, collective voice among communities
Using data-smart governance to preempt and predict problems while improving quality of life
Creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer money with digital tools
Spearheading these new approaches to government with innovative leadership
Holly St. Clair will respond and provide a few words about her thoughts and vision for the State of Massachusetts.
Then, the remainder of the session will be spent brainstorming ideas for how data and technology can help improve government. What are some low-hanging opportunities?
Speakers: Susan Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School and a co-director of the Berkman Center. She is the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, co-author of The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance, and a contributor to Medium.com’s Backchannel. She served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2009) and co-led the FCC transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations. She also served as a member of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology and Innovation and is now a member of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Broadband Task Force. Ms. Crawford was formerly a (Visiting) Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard’s Kennedy School, a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Michigan Law School (2008-2010). As an academic, she teaches Internet law and communications law. She was a member of the board of directors of ICANN from 2005-2008 and is the founder of OneWebDay, a global Earth Day for the internet that takes place each Sept. 22. One of Politico’s 50 Thinkers, Doers and Visionaries Transforming Politics in 2015; one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology (2009); IP3 Awardee (2010); one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future (2011); and one of TIME Magazine’s Tech 40: The Most Influential Minds in Tech (2013). Ms. Crawford received her B.A. and J.D. from Yale University.
Holly St. Clair is the Director of Enterprise Level Data Management overseeing the Commonwealth of Massachusett's activities in data management, data analysis, research, and public access to data. Ms. St. Clair has pioneered the use of advanced decision support tools in Metropolitan Boston, managing a variety of projects that use scenarios modeling, community indicators, and innovative meeting formats to engage stakeholders in dialogue about policy choices. She has a excellent track record in public sector innovation and is recognized by Planetizen as one of the Leading Thinkers and Innovators in the field of Urban Planning and Technology.
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The Promise and Peril of Human Rights Technology
Monday, November 28
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Jay D. Aronson, Carnegie Mellon
STS Circle at Harvard
Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
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: sts@hks.harvard.edu
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Market Structure with the Entry of Peer-to-Peer Platforms: The Case of Hotels and Airbnb
Monday, November 28
2:30p–4:00p
MIT, Building E52-432, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Speaker: Chiara Farronato (Harvard)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): IO Workshop
For more information, contact: economics calendar
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Tuesday, November 29
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Neurotech 2016
Tuesday November 29
9 am - 5 pm
Reception: 5 pm - 6 pm
MIT, Building 46-3002 Singleton Auditorium, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge
The Neurotech 2016 symposium presents eight talks by neurotechnology pioneers whose cutting-edge innovations are changing the face of neurobiological research from molecules to cognition.
Questions: Contact Denise MacPhail at dharring@mit.edu
Registration is required and space is limited.
Speakers:
Canan Dagdeviren, MIT
Erik Jorgensen, University of Utah
Sridevi Sarma, Johns Hopkins
Erika Sasaki, CIEA Japan
Stephen Smith, Allen Institute
Alice Ting, Stanford
Van Wedeen, Harvard/MGH
Chris Xu, Cornell
Symposium schedule to be posted soon.
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Investigating past climate using cave mineral formations
Tuesday, November 29
4:00 - 5:00pm
BU, CAS 132, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Speaker: Corrine Wong, Boston College
Studying past climate provides context for understanding modern climate variability and provides insights into how future climate might respond to warming global temperatures. Reconstructing climate from geologic archives, such as ice cores and tree rings, extends climate records beyond periods for which there are instrumental measurements and historical observations. Cave mineral deposits, speleothems, serve as a powerful archive of terrestrial climate to complement climate information gleaned from polar, marine, and short-lived archives.
Bio: Climate change is one of society's most pressing challenges. Understanding how on-going climate change will impact our water resources requires an intimate understanding of the natural and anthropogenic processes that influence water availability and water quality. Furthermore, it is important to characterize the natural variability in these processes in the past and present. Members of Dr. Wong's research group address such questions as "What climate processes govern past variability in the hydroclimate of the Americas?' and "What are the dominant sources and processes dictating urban water compositions?" To read more about specific projects, please visit our Research page.
BU’s Seminar Series on Climate Change
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Innovation Through Aggregation Forum
Tuesday November 29
4:00 PM to 7:30 PM EST
MIT Samberg Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Join us as we review the A Better City-facilitated Joint Solar Power Purchase Agreement--the largest renewable-energy project ever to be constructed in the U.S. through an alliance of diverse buyers, the recent joint power power purchase agreement involving MIT, Boston Medical Center, and Friends of Post Office Square to enable a solar PV farm in North Carolina.
Contact: Miriam Posner
A Better City
617-502-6257
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Keeping the Ocean Safe for People and People Safe from the Ocean
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, 5 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Captain Claudia C. Gelzer, Commander of Sector Boston and Commander of the Port, U.S. Coast Guard
Lee Titus, Chief of Response, Sector Boston, U.S. Coast Guard
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS The Coast Guard is a multi-mission maritime agency with broad authority over any and all operations along the Massachusetts coast and in Boston Harbor. From finding and rescuing boaters in distress to responding to and overseeing clean-up of oil and chemical spills in our pristine waters, this fifth branch of the Armed Forces has its work cut out in the 21st century. This talk with review how the Coast Guard seeks to strike the balance between maritime safety, security, and environmental protection amidst changing climate conditions, all while facilitating the powerful economic engine of maritime commerce.
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Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean Studies Program: "Under the Wall: Infrastructure as Security and as Threat on the U.S.- Mexico Border”
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S-250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Speaker: Ieva Jusionyte, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Harvard University
Ieva Jusionyte is assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Anthropology from Brandeis University and a B.A. in Political Science from Vilnius University. Between 2012 and 2016 Jusionyte was assistant professor of anthropology and Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, where she coordinated the Crime, Law, and Governance in the Americas program. As a social anthropologist of Latin America, Jusionyte focuses on the ethnographic study of security, crime, statecraft and the media. Her first book, Savage Frontier: Making News and Security on the Argentine Border (University of California Press 2015; www.savagefrontierbook.com) is based on ethnographic research conducted in the border area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay between 2008 and 2014.
Moderator: Diane Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, Chair, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
CONTACT INFO Rachel Murray-Crawford (rachelmurray@fas.harvard.edu)
DETAILS Politics of security on the U.S.-Mexico border have expanded from traditional concerns with drug trafficking and unauthorized migration to a paradigm of “all threats and hazards,” which includes wildland fires, floods, and toxic spills that can spread downwind, downhill, and downstream from Sonora to Arizona. Based on ethnographic research with emergency responders – firefighters and paramedics – in northern Mexico and southern U.S., the talk will examine the violent entanglement between statecraft, law, and topography, and trace its injurious effects on those who inhabit or trespass the militarized desert terrain of urban borderlands.
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Harvard Club Faculty Series: “Genetics for the Modern Man and Woman” T. Bernard Kinane, MD, Harvard Medical School
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, 6:15 – 7:45 p.m.
WHERE The Harvard Club of Boston, 374 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Lecture, Research study, Science, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Harvard Club of Boston
SPEAKER(S) T. Bernard Kinane, M.D., Harvard Medical School; Associate Chief for Education, Massachusetts General Hospital
COST Complimentary with registration
CONTACT INFO Matt Hegarty
DETAILS An international expert on the genetic basis and cutting-edge treatment of disease, T. Bernard Kinane is a native of Tipperary, Ireland. He graduated from University College Dublin and served as a post-doc fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the Harvard Medical School faculty. Now chief of pediatric pulmonary and director of the pediatric sleep program, his research focuses more broadly on the basic cause of interstitial lung disease and asthma. Deeply committed to the education of Harvard medical students, trainees, patients and the general public through formal education and social media, Dr. Kinane serves on the admissions committee of the Medical School and has been honored by its faculty and students with numerous teaching awards for his devotion and innovation.
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The Oceans in a Warming World: How are the oceans changing and what role do they play in climate change?
Tuesday, November 29
6:30pm to 7:30pm
New England Aquarium: Ocean Center, Harborside Learning Lab, 1 Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Speaker: John Marshall, MIT, EAPS
Due to its enormous heat capacity and ability to move heat around the globe, the ocean plays an out-sized role in climate and climate change. The ocean is at the center of contemporary questions such as: Why have global-mean surface temperatures not warmed in the last decade, despite CO2 continuing to rise in the atmosphere?; Why is the Arctic losing sea-ice but not the Antarctic?; Will ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream change?; How much might sea-level rise this century? In this lecture we will touch on some of these questions and review how scientists observe patterns of warming propagating down in to the ocean's interior, how the ocean is responding to that warming and what we think the future holds and why.
About the Speaker
John Marshall is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. He conducts research in climate science and the general circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, which he studies through the development of mathematical and numerical models of key physical and bio-geochemical processes.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact: Holli Flaherty
(617)973-0295
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Opportunity
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Effective Altruism MIT Sloan Meetup Group
Want to make the world the best place it can be?
Effective Altruism is a worldwide movement that uses rational thinking and science to have the best possible impact. Effective Altruism MIT Sloan is bringing together people from all over the area to share experiences and be more effective by working together.
To learn more about effective altruism, read the introduction on the international EA website (https://www.effectivealtruism.org) or watch Peter Singer's TED talk.
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Discounted Solar for Somerville
As part of the State’s Solarize Mass program, local volunteers and the City of Somerville recently launched the Solarize Somerville campaign to make it easier and cheaper for residents and small businesses to install solar panels.
The program, which is offering information and guidance, free site consultations, and solar panel discounts through November, has set an ambitious goal to inspire at least 200 property owners to sign up for solar —and each of those private solar installations will also benefit the community directly. For every 400 kW in signed private contracts through the program, the program’s solar vendor SolarFlair will donate a system of up to 5 kW for a public or community purpose. All are invited to the program kickoff at a Meet the Installer event on Tuesday, July 26 at 6-7:30 p.m., 167 Holland St. Additional events on topics such as solar basics, financing, and solar for multifamily homes will be announced.
Unique to the program is its neighbor-to-neighbor approach: trained resident volunteers and a designated volunteer Solar Coach are available essentially as mentors. They can, for example, walk anyone through the process, provide general loan program and tax incentive information, and share their own solar experiences. The campaign’s webpage and blog offers useful information, tips, and a link to websites where you can estimate the solar potential of your home and roughly calculate how much solar could save you on your energy bills at www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/solarize.
Somerville is one of the most urban communities ever to participate in Solarize Mass, which makes the neighbor-to-neighbor approach especially helpful due to some of the unique challenges here such as multi-family houses with more than one owner. Winter Hill resident Mary Mangan, the program’s volunteer Solar Coach, went through that process and is ready to share helpful tips.
"I'm excited to work with our eager volunteers to help our neighbors understand the benefits of solar power. As a co-owner of a two-family home with solar, I can also offer some insights about how that process went for us," said Mangan.
Also key to the program is the selection of a designated vendor, which allows the program to offer reduced cost installation through bulk purchasing. Through a competitive process, SolarFlair, based in Ashland, MA, was selected. They were also the selected installer for the communities of Arlington, Hopkinton, Mendon, Brookline, Carlisle-Chelmsford, Newton, and Quincy.
"We're excited to be the selected installer for Solarize Somerville, and look forward to speaking with any home or business owners that are interested in reducing their electric bills while also making a great investment," said Matt Arner, the owner and President of SolarFlair.
Quick facts:
Solar systems can be purchased outright (with a payback of about 4-5 years). The Mass Solar Loan program offers rates of 3.25% or less.
Or, for no money down owners can choose a power purchase agreement (PPA), where the system is owned and maintained by a third party, and residents buy back the electricity at a discounted price.
More on-site renewable energy is critical to reducing carbon emissions. It also saves money for residents.
Tax incentives for solar installations include:
Federal Tax Credit: A 30 percent federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is available for qualified residential and commercial projects
Massachusetts Personal Income Tax Credit: The lesser of 15% of the total cost of the solar electric system or $1,000, for qualified clean energy projects
Five-year Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS): Business owners can depreciate solar electric systems over a five-year schedule
For more information or to sign up for a free site consultation:
Visit the Solarize Somerville webpage at www.somervillema.gov/sustainaville/solarize for
Helpful information and FAQs
To contact a volunteer or Solar Coach Mary Mangan to discuss solar options and incentives
To set up an appointment for a free site consultation directly with SolarFlair
To find out about events
To volunteer for Solarize Somerville
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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
Solar map of Cambridge, MA
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Hey Cambridge residents!
Did you know the City of Cambridge is trying to win the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize? It was created to develop a cleaner and more efficient energy future. Energy efficiency and conservation are the best ways to save energy and minimize environmental impact. In that effort, Cambridge is hoping all residents will get a no-cost energy assessment in order to make their homes more efficient and comfortable. Let us know you're interested here: http://cambridgeenergyalliance.org/sign-up-for-an-assessment
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
Again, let us know you're interested here: http://cambridgeenergyalliance.org/sign-up-for-an-assessment and someone will be in contact with you shortly to give you personally tailored contact information on how you can get your no-cost home energy assessment. Renters are also eligible!
Any action to save energy in the home will help Cambridge win this competition while protecting the environment. For additional ideas on how to save energy, please see the Cambridge Energy Alliance website at http://cambridgeenergyalliance.org/resources/interactivehome
Please share with your Cambridge friends and family and ask them to get a free energy assessment!
Want to be more involved? Become a neighborhood Block Captain! Block Captains help their community members sign up for and complete no-cost home energy assessments through the MassSave program. Our team will give you the tools and guidance needed to recruit neighbors to get an assessment and improve the efficiency of their homes. Participation is welcome at whatever level you are able to commit to.
If you are interested in becoming a Block Captain, please fill out the form at http://tinyurl.com/blockcaptainsurvey and someone from the Cambridge Energy Alliance will be in contact with you shortly. If you know someone who might be interested, please let them know about this opportunity!
Questions? Contact jnahigian@cambridgema.gov
Cambridge Energy Alliance
@cambenergy
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Sunny Cambridge has just launched! Sunny Cambridge is the city-wide initiative that makes it easy for all types of residents to get solar power for their homes. Cambridge has lined up local solar installers through the EnergySage Solar Marketplace, which helps you request, receive, and compare solar quotes 100% online with support available every step of the way.
The City of Cambridge is working on many levels to reduce energy use and GHG emissions to make the city more sustainable. As a semifinalist in the nationwide competition for the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize, Cambridge Energy Alliance is encouraging residents to take actions to save energy, save money, and protect the environment. Get involved by signing up for a no-cost home energy assessment at the Cambridge Energy Alliance home page (www.cambridgeenergyalliance.org/winit)
and going solar at http://www.sunnycambridge.org
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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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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 - http://www.bnid.org/events
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.
Please feel free to email our organization at info@bnid.org if you have any questions!
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Boston Maker Spaces - 27 and counting: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
BASEN / Boston Solidarity Network Economy: http://ba-sen.tumblr.com
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston: http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
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Links to events at over 50 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
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
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
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 12 PM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
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