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
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Index
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Monday, February 20
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12pm The KINGS of Africa’s Digital Economy Brown-Bag Lunch
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Tuesday, February 21
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8:30am Residential Solar Energy Systems
12pm A Few New Perspectives on Humanity and Earth’s Climate
12pm Internet Designers as Policy-Makers
12pm Ethnophytotechnology: Harnessing the Drug Discovery Potential of Ethnobotany with Biotechnology
12pm Energy Efficient Desalination and Water Reuse
12pm Dafna Linzer: Political Reporting from the Campaign Trail to the White House
1pm Virtual Meetup: Staying Safe - Overview of FREE Encryption Tools
1:30pm Downwind of the Flames: Investigating the Impact of Wildfires on U.S. Air Quality
4pm Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment
4:15pm Moving EPA Forward in an “Unhealthy” Climate
4:15pm What Can’t Happen Here? European Historical Perspectives on Current American Politics
4:30pm Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar: "Which Way for U.S.-Iran Relations under Trump -- and within the Middle East Cauldron?”
5pm Life Changing Bacon
5:30pm Tales from the Fields Event
6:30pm Sylvester Baxter Lecture: Kate Orff, “Toward an Urban Ecology”
6:30pm 2017 Marketing Trends: Fad or Future?
6:30pm Generation Revolution
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Wednesday, February 22
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12pm Progress Toward Wafer-Scale Thermionic Energy Converters
12pm Creating Deliberate Social Changes in Cities: Lessons from the MegaCities Project
4pm Weathering: Toward a Sustainable Humanities
4pm Self-Assembled Colloidal Crystals for Energy Applications
4pm LEGATUM CENTER SEED GRANT PRESENTATION & OPEN HOUSE
4pm Research in Action: Climate Initiatives Panel Discussion
4:15pm Valuing Nuclear Energy Risk: The Impact of the Fukushima Crisis on U.S. Housing Prices
4:30pm Poverty Traps, Resilience and Coupled Human-Natural Systems
6pm Next of Kin: Seeing Extinction through the Artist’s Lens
6pm Cybersecurity & Industry Vulnerabilities Tech Talk
6pm Arctic Ghosts: Ecocruising the Death Spiral
6pm The Future of the Conservative Agenda
6pm Embracing Arts and Medicine
6pm Sustainable Business Mixer
7pm Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction: A film followed by a panel discussion
7pm Nature's Temples: Complex Old Growth Forests
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Thursday, February 23
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7:45am Learning from the Past to Understand the Future of Ocean Ecosystems
4pm Safe Machine Learning
4pm Liberalism, Globalization, Populism and Nationalism in the World Today
5pm Race and Racism in the 2016 Presidential Election
5pm Meeting Future Food Needs: The Global Food System Under Climate Change
5pm Public Lecture by Yuval Levin - “In Pursuit of Solidarity in the Age of Trump”
5:15pm Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice: The Pragmatics of Embodied Solidarity in Theopolitical Space
5:30pm Racial Justice, Health Equity, and the Role of Government: Lessons from the City of Boston
6pm Sacred Nation: Chinese Museums and the Legacy of Empire
6pm La Buena Vida + Q&A w Avi Chomsky, on Coal in Colombia
6pm Fighting for Environmental Justice in the South Bronx
6pm Lecture by Kevin Birmingham: "Treason Is a Form of Obscenity”
6pm Smarter in the City Pitch & Demo Night
7pm Catalyst Conversations - This Land: Laura McPhee and Taylor Perron
8pm The Rumi Experience by duoJalal
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Friday, February 24 – Sunday, February 26
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MIT Fintech Hackathon
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Friday, February 24
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9:30am 2017 Impact Summit: Building a Better Future
11:30am Entrepreneurship Today: a talk with Joi Ito
12:30pm Global Food+ 2017 Symposium
4:15pm New Worlds, New Discoveries: A major leap in the search for life beyond our solar system
7pm Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future
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Saturday, February 25
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Conference on Poverty & Inequality
8am 26th Annual Dynamic Women in Business Conference
9am New Energy Master Plan Workshop
2pm Starr Forum: National Security & Civil Liberties: 1942 & 2017
4pm Richard Turner Inspirational Lecture & Demo
5pm "Music of the Marginalized": A Workshop and Concert Focused On Songs of Social Change
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Sunday, February 26
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1pm Activist Training: Clean Energy 101 & Learn to Lobby
5pm Intellectual Snob Meetup: What is There to Fear?
6pm Scenario 300 - How to Rapidly Move Carbon Out of the Skies and into the Ground
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Monday, February 27
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12pm Book Talk: Syria's Civil War and the Post-American Middle East
12:30pm THE 21st CENTURY CURES ACT: Implications for Research and Drug Development
1pm Open Science Framework Training
2pm Starr Forum: Behavioral Science and Nudges: Environmental Protection and Sustainability
4pm Common Ownership - joint with Harvard
4:30pm Distinguished Speaker Series - The Frontiers of Tsunami Hydrodynamics
4:30pm Kelman Seminar: The Media in the Age of Trump and Brexit
5pm An Evening with Bobby Seale
6pm Portraits of Oil Urbanism
6pm From Practice Room to Lecture Hall: How Science Learning and Music Learning Connect
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Tuesday, February 28
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12pm Speaker Series: Rick Stengel – Government and the Media
12pm Five Global Challenges and the Role of University
12pm Speaker Series: Rick Stengel
12:30pm A Productivity Revolution and Japan's Revitalization
1pm Hydroelectric power and indigenous health in the North
3pm Warm-route versus cold-route interbasin exchange in the meridional overturning circulation or why is the Atlantic saltier than the Pacific
4:15pm Inside Congress: The Inconvenient Truth
5pm Starr Forum: The Fight over Foreigners: Visas & Immigration in the Trump Era
5:30pm BOSTON SEMINAR: Designing for Flooding and Sea Level Rise
6pm Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality
6pm Edwidge Danticat Lecture: Doris Salcedo's Circles of Sorrow
6pm "The Robots are Coming"... Presentation at BU Robotics Lab
6pm Boston Green Drinks - February Happy Hour
6pm Civic Science Roundtable: THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND WHO WILL DECIDE?
6pm The Human Brain Project
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Tools for Understanding Propaganda and Media Manipulation
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Monday, February 20
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The KINGS of Africa’s Digital Economy Brown-Bag Lunch
Monday, February 20
12:00 pm
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett Street, Second Floor, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/02/Osiakwan#RSVP
Feel free to bring brown-bag lunch
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/02/Osiakwan at 12:00 pm
Eric Osiakwan, Managing Partner of Chanzo Capital
Eric Osiakwan is an Entrepreneur and Investor with 15 years of ICT industry leadership across Africa and the world. He has worked in 32 African countries setting up ISPs, ISPAs, IXPs and high-tech startups. Some of these companies and organizations are Angel Africa, Angel Fair Africa , Ghana Cyber City, PenPlusBytes, African Elections Portal, FOSSFA, WABco, GISPA, AfrISPA, GNVC, Internet Research, InHand, Ghana Connect. He serves on the board of Farmerline, Forhey, Teranga Solutions, Siqueries, Amp.it, SameLogic, eCampus, Bisa App and Wanjo Foods, - some of which are his investments.
He was part of the team that built the TEAMS submarine cable in East Africa and an ICT Consultant for the WorldBank, Soros Foundations, UNDP, USAID, USDoJ, USDoS as well as African governments and private firms.
He authored "The KINGS of Africa Digital Economy", co-authored the “Open Access Model”, “Negotiating the Net” – the politics of Internet Diffusion in Africa and “The Internet in Ghana” with the Mosaic Group. He was invited to contribute ideas to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa.
Eric is a Poptech, TED, Stanford, and MIT Fellow. He was previously a Berkman Klein Fellow at Harvard University.
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Tuesday, February 21
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Residential Solar Energy Systems
Tuesday, February 21
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EST
Boston Society of Architects/AIA, 290 Congress Street #200, Boston
You may be surprised to read that Eastern Massachusetts is a great location for solar energy. According to the Florida Solar Energy Center, our region has 88% of the solar capacity of central Arizona!
Andrew Wade of My Generation Energy (a local solar installer) will give general instruction in how solar energy systems work, the nuts and bolts of residential applications, and how to compute and obtain government-sponsored financial incentives for solar projects. He will also discuss some current issues—local and national—in solar technology.
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A Few New Perspectives on Humanity and Earth’s Climate
Tuesday, February 21
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Speaker: David Archer, U Chicago
When fossil fuel energy was discovered, the timing and intensity of the resulting climate impacts depended on what the natural CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was at that time, which could have been anything. The radiative forcing scales as the ratio of the fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere to the background, natural CO2 concentration. Assuming continued exponential growth in the fossil carbon in the atmosphere, altering the background concentration has the eect of dialing the radiative forcing and climate response back and forth in time. If the natural concentration had been a factor of two or more lower, the climate impacts of fossil fuel CO2 release would have occurred about 50 or more years sooner, making it much more challenging for the developing human society to scientically understand the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change in time to prevent it.
Now that we understand the situation, much of our decision-making progress involves money. The costs of cutting CO2 emissions (mitigation) can be balanced against a construct called the Social Cost of Carbon, which is formulated to represent future costs as their present-day equivalents using discounting, in order to compare fairly against the immediate costs of mitigation. U.S. EPA valued the SCC at about $40 / ton of CO2. I will show the derivation of a different but complementary number, the potential Ultimate Social Cost of Carbon to 5000 future human generations of the climate impacts from fossil CO2 release. Long term sea level rise of 50 meters provides the clearest impact. I get about $40k / ton CO2. The formulation treats humanity as any other component of the terrestrial biosphere, in an end-member case where we do not transcend biological limitations such as by soil and water availability. Costs are integrated through time based on the assumption that each generation of humanity values its world (whatever it may look like) equally to any other generation, in particular to our own.
About the Speaker
I have been a professor in the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago since 1993. I have worked on a wide range of topics pertaining to the global carbon cycle and its relation to global climate, with special focus on ocean sedimentary processes such as CaCO3 dissolution and methane hydrate formation, and their impact on the evolution of atmospheric CO2. I teach classes on global warming, environmental chemistry, and global geochemical cycles.
About the Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars take place on Monday from 12-1pm in 54-923. Lunch is provided after the seminars to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged. 2016/2017 co-ordinators: Tom Beucler (tbeucler@mit.edu), Deepa Rao (drao@mit.edu), Madeleine Youngs (myoungs@mit.edu) and Catherine Wilka (cwilka@mit.edu)
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Internet Designers as Policy-Makers
Tuesday, February 21
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room B010, Singer Classroom (lower level), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2017/02/Braman#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2017/02/Braman at 12:00 pm
Sandra Braman, Abbott Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University
Those responsible for technical design of the Internet are essential among the policy-makers for this large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure. Based on analysis of the RFCs (1969-1999), this talk looks at how these policy-makers thought and think about policy issues while addressing technical problems. Findings include basic design criteria that serve as constitutional principles; interactions between human and non-human users; tensions between geo- and network-political citizenship; early internationalization; and what Internet designers can teach us about decision-making under conditions of instability in everything from the design subject on.
About Sandra
Sandra Braman’s research has been supported by grants from the US National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Soros Foundation, and the First Amendment Fund. Braman’s book Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power, currently undergoing revision for a second edition, is in use around the world and is widely viewed as having defined the field of information policy. Other publications include the edited volumes Communication Researchers and Policy-Making, The Emergent Global Information Policy Regime, and Biotechnology and Communication: The Meta-Technologies of Information and over 100 refereed journal articles and book chapters. Braman created and launched the first graduate (postgraduate) program in telecommunications and information policy on the African continent while serving as Director and Visiting Professor at the University of South Africa. She has also served in the invited positions of Freedom of Expression Professor at the University of Bergen (Norway), Fulbright Senior Scholar at Södertörn University (Sweden), and Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). She conceived and edits the Information Policy Book Series at MIT Press, and is former Chair of the Communication Law and Policy Division of the International Communication Association and former Chair of the Law Section of the International Association of Media and Communication Research. In 2014 Braman was inducted as a Fellow of the International Communication Association.
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Ethnophytotechnology: Harnessing the Drug Discovery Potential of Ethnobotany with Biotechnology
Tuesday, February 21
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, HUH Seminar Room, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
John De La Parra, Northeastern University
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Energy Efficient Desalination and Water Reuse
Tuesday, February 21
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 1-150, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Emily Tow
Lunch & Learn
The MIT Water Club Lunch and Learn series provides students an opportunity to present their interesting water research or water-related project to other students.
Come join the MIT Water Club for an informative lecture on water research and a free lunch!
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Water Club
For more information, contact: Brendan Smith
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Dafna Linzer: Political Reporting from the Campaign Trail to the White House
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bell Hall, Belfer Building, 5th Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S) Dafna Linzer
COST Free
DETAILS Dafna Linzer is managing editor of politics for NBC News and MSNBC. She previously served as managing editor of MSNBC Online. Before joining MSNBC, she was an award-winning senior investigative reporter at ProPublica and is the author of “Shades of Mercy,” a series and e-book on racial bias in presidential pardons. Previously, she covered national security for the Washington Post and was a special projects reporter and foreign correspondent with the Associated Press, based in Jerusalem and at the United Nations.
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Virtual Meetup: Staying Safe - Overview of FREE Encryption Tools
Tuesday, February 21
1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
We will take a look at the FREE tools that you can use to maintain your privacy online, and discuss which ones are best for your needs.
Security and privacy - what does it mean to you in your everyday life? It used to be hard to use the tools that safeguard your identity and your information online. You had to be a pretty technical person - the good news is that it has gotten easier to be secure in your online persona.
These are some of the tools we will look at:
1. Off-the-Record (OTR) Messaging allows you to have private conversations over instant messaging.
2. Email Encryption using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. There is also the GnuPG system here: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en
3. Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity.
There are also some great apps for secure texting and secure phones that provide end-to-end encryption for your calls, securing your conversations so that nobody can listen in. There is no way to be bulletproof, but knowing about the options available can provide a measure of security. It is ultimately up to you to decide how much security you want.
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Downwind of the Flames: Investigating the Impact of Wildfires on U.S. Air Quality
Tuesday, February 21
1:30pm to 2:30pm
Harvard, Pierce Hall, 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Emily Fischer, Colorado State University
Speaker Bio: http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/faculty/fischer.php
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
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Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment
Tuesday, February 21
4:00p–5:30p
MIT, Building E62-650, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Amanda Agan (Rutgers University)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Microeconomic Applications
For more information, contact: economics calendar
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Moving EPA Forward in an “Unhealthy” Climate
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017, 4:15 – 5:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Littauer 166, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Gina McCarthy, Former EPA Administrator
COST Free and Open to the Public
CONTACT INFO deisy_carrera@hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS Can you get good things done in government these days?
We will discuss what it takes to make progress as a public servant working at the local, state and federal levels in today’s “unhealthy” climate. What skills, temperament and background are necessary to survive as a political appointee in the hot seat in an era of charged political rhetoric, fake news and alternative facts.
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What Can’t Happen Here? European Historical Perspectives on Current American Politics
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017, 4:15 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Adolphus Busch Hall, Lower Level Conference Room, 29 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
New Directions in European History Study Group
SPEAKER(S) David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History & Chair, History Department, Harvard University; CES Faculty Associate & Seminar Co-Chair
Peter E. Gordon, Amabel B. James Professor of History, Harvard University; CES Resident Faculty & Seminar Co-Chair
Mary D. Lewis, Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History, Harvard University; CES Resident Faculty & Study Group Co-Chair
Charles Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University; CES Resident Faculty
Derek Penslar, Visiting Professor of History, Harvard University; CES Resident Faculty & Study Group Co-Chair
CONTACT INFO Gila Naderi, Communications Manager
DETAILS Since the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States, a cottage industry of political classification and comparison has emerged. Terms like “fascism,” “authoritarianism,” “kleptocracy” and “demagoguery,” – to name just a few – have become commonplace in our political discourse. But what does it all mean? Are historical analogies, particularly to the European past, useful in trying to understand American politics today? Or is the Trump regime a class unto itself? Historians of Europe, Russia, and International Relations will share their perspectives on current U.S. politics in a roundtable format.
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Which Way for U.S.-Iran Relations under Trump -- and within the Middle East Cauldron?
Tuesday, February 21
4:30p–6:00p
MIT, Building E51-325, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Ali Banuazizi
One of the most vexing foreign policy issues during the Obama administration, the U.S.-Iran relations is likely to occupy a critical place on President Trump's foreign policy agenda. Aside from its stance on the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, against which Mr. Trump campaigned relentlessly, any major policy change toward Iran by the new administration, whether hostile or moderating, would have far-reaching ramifications for U.S.'s relations with Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and Turkey, as well as for the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The lecture will explore the likelihood and potential regional consequences of a major turn in U.S.-Iran relations under President Trump.
Ali Banuazizi is Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Director of the Program in Islamic Civilization & Societies.
Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar
The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar is organized under the auspices of the MIT Center for International Studies, which conducts research on contemporary international issues and provides an opportunity for faculty and students to share perspectives and exchange views. Each year the Bustani Seminar invites scholars, journalists, consultants, and other experts from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to MIT to present recent research findings on contemporary politics, society and culture, and economic and technological development in the Middle East.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies, Radius/T&C
For more information, contact: Dain Goding
617-252-1888
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Life Changing Bacon
Thursday, February 21
5pm
Tufts, CHAT Seminar Room, 48 Professors Row, Medford
Anthropologist Brad Weiss from the College of William & Mary discusses his book, "Real Pigs: Shifting Values in the Field of Local Pork" (2016, Duke University Press) about the politics of pigs and pork production in the North Carolina Piedmont. His talk is titled "Life Changing Bacon: Transgression as Desire in Contemporary American Tastes", and is sponsored by: Anthropology; Environmental Studies; Science, Technology, & Society; Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.
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Tales from the Fields Event
Tuesday, February 21
5.30 - 7 PM
MIT, Building E19-319, 50 Ames Street, Cambridge
RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/ZhnF7oc9V1YvTva92
Interested in presenting your IAP project in the Tales from the Fields Event or learning more about other waste and energy related projects? The MIT Waste Alliance and e4Dev bring together a lightning talk series for students to showcase multiple waste and energy related projects and share their insights.
This event is brought to you by the MIT Waste Alliance with sponsorship from Graduate Student Life Grants (GSLG).
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Toward an Urban Ecology …
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
6:30 PM
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Kate Orff MLA ’97, RLA, is the founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design studio based in New York City, and author of Toward an Urban Ecology, a book about the practice. SCAPE reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. A range of participatory and science-based strategies will be discussed and shown in the lecture through the lens of the office’s work, featuring projects, collaborators, and design methods that advance urban ecological design.
More information at http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/kate-orff-toward-an-urban-ecology/
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2017 Marketing Trends: Fad or Future?
Tuesday, February 21
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
General Assembly Boston Downtown, 125 Summer Street, Boston
Introduction
Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Podcasts, oh my… With the birth of so many new channels to host marketing content, where should we focus our energy?
Join GA and local marketing experts on February 21st as we discuss what 2017 marketing trends are just a fad and which ones are here for the long haul.
Why it Matters
Over the past few years content marketing has taken on a new meaning. Content is no long referring to just blogs or editorial content. Much like the birth of the 24hr/day news cycle, content is now being shared instantaneously around the clock through tools such as Facebook Live and Instagram stories.
It makes you beg the question is anyone out there? As we build out this ongoing stream of content, whether it is video or through podcasts, are people even listening? Are they following our ‘calls to action’? Are we seeing a return?
Takeaways
Hear from the experts as they engage in a friendly debate around the future of marketing and what trends are here to stay. Also learn tools to begin building these trends into your 2017 marketing strategy.
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Generation Revolution
Tuesday, February 21
6:30-9:30 PM
EMW Bookstore, 934 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge
We ask for a $5-10 donation to support the powerful work of these emerging filmmakers
In honor of Black History Month, SubDrift is excited to present the Boston premiere of "Generation Revolution," a feature-length documentary film that brings to screen the powerful story of London?s new generation of black and brown activists. View the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq0-BGmE9PQ
In an era of Brexit and Trump, it is important to consider how communities of color can stand in solidarity with each other both locally and globally, and how arts can be a vehicle for social change. The UK-based co-directors of "Generation Revolution," Usayd Younis and
Cassie Quarless (who are of South Asian and black descent, respectively), will be present for Q&A and discussion after the film.
More about "Generation Revolution" here: http://www.genrevfilm.com/
Subcontinental Drift Boston (SubDrift) is part of a national movement building creative community amongst local South Asians. Through regular open mics and other programming, we create space for powerful artistic expression and collaboration. All are welcome!
Follow us on Twitter/Instagram @subdriftboston
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Wednesday, February 22
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Progress Toward Wafer-Scale Thermionic Energy Converters
Wednesday, February 22
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 34-401, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Roger T. Howe (Stanford University)
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
617-253-0086
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Creating Deliberate Social Changes in Cities: Lessons from the MegaCities Project
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Graduate School of Design, Room 124, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
SPEAKER(S) Janice Perlman
DETAILS A lunchtime talk by Janice Perlman, author of "Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio De Janeiro," and founder of the Mega-Cities Project, which was initiated in 1987 to combine theory and practice in the search for successful approaches to improving urban management and the conditions of daily life in the world's largest cities.
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Weathering: Toward a Sustainable Humanities
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Stephanie LeMenager, 2016–2017 Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; Barbara and Carlisle Moore Distinguished Professor of English and American Literature and Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Oregon
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS In this talk, LeMenager will explain how the humanities can help shape modes of being human that are more ecologically connected and prepared for living with climate change. LeMenager will take the specific problem of drought as a touchstone from which to build out the concept of what she calls “H2O U,” a university dedicated to thinking through the effects of drought on what humanity is and can aspire to become.
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Self-Assembled Colloidal Crystals for Energy Applications
Wednesday, February 22
4:00 pm
MIT, Building 3-333, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Katherine graduated from Brown University in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and mathematics. After spending several months conserving artwork, Katherine subsequently joined the chemistry department at Harvard University, receiving her Ph.D. in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Joanna Aizenberg, studying how chemistry can be used to control the assembly processes of the porous, ordered structures known as inverse opals. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at MIT in the Electrochemical Energy Lab under Prof. Yang Shao-Horn, where she is developing materials for the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. In this talk, she will first discuss her PhD work using sol-gel chemistry to improve and expand the inverse opal assembly process, then provide an overview of the use of inverse opals in many energy-related applications.
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LEGATUM CENTER SEED GRANT PRESENTATION & OPEN HOUSE
Wednesday, February 22
4:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building E70-1275, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Join the Legatum Center team to tour the space, ask questions about the 2017-2018 Legatum Fellowship application, and learn more about how 2017 IAP Seed Grant travelers advanced their ventures in the developing world!
Please bring a photo ID to check in a the guest desk in the lobby.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
For more information, contact: Kavan O'Connor
617-324-1875
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Research in Action: Climate Initiatives Panel Discussion
Wednesday, February 22
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
BU, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 426, Boston
RSVP at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=sgxoeyrab&oeidk=a07edswj4u793bcec52
BU has played a critical role in contributing to two of Boston's signature climate initiatives: Climate Ready Boston and the Boston Climate Action Plan. Join the Boston University Initiative on Cities, the Pardee Center, the Institute for Sustainable Energy, and sustainability@BU for a panel discussion featuring BU researchers and more.
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Valuing Nuclear Energy Risk: The Impact of the Fukushima Crisis on U.S. Housing Prices (Jeffrey Zabel)
WHEN Wednesday, Wed, Feb 22, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
Harvard Environmental Economics Program
SPEAKER(S) Jeffrey Zabel
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Poverty Traps, Resilience and Coupled Human-Natural Systems
Wednesday, February 22
4:30PM
Harvard, Science Center Hall A, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
CHISTOPHER BARRETT, Deputy Dean and Dean of Academic Affairs, College of Business; Stephen B. & Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management and International Professor of Agriculture, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management; Faculty Fellow, David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, Cornell University.
Ecological Systems in the Anthropocene
The Harvard University Center for the Environment the latest installment of the Ecological Systems in the Anthropocence Lecture Series
About the Series:
Since the retreat of glaciers poleward over 10,000 years ago, humans have left an ever increasing fingerprint on ecological systems across the globe. The environment is now dominated by people—approximately 1/3 of land area has been transformed for human use and 1/4 of global productivity diverted to human consumption. While concepts such as wilderness attempt to escape this reality, there is virtually no habitat on earth devoid of some sign of humans influence on the globe—be it chemical, thermal, or a missing or introduced species. Today, this imprint is so pronounced that scientists are actively debating naming a new geological epoch demarcated by the sign of humans on the earth system itself: the Anthropocene.
In the shadow of this debate, the HUCE seminar series Ecological Systems in the Anthropocene will examine the future of social-environmental systems in a globe heavily impacted by humans. Each year the series will present a set of speakers and events (e.g., seminars, panels, debates) focused on one perspective under this theme.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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Next of Kin: Seeing Extinction through the Artist’s Lens
Wednesday, February 22
6:00 pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall (100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard Museum of Natural History invites you to a panel discussion with Carrie Lambert-Beattie, Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and History of Art and Architecture; Director of Graduate Studies, Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University; Christina Seely, Artist and Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Dartmouth College; Ross Virginia, Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science; Director, Institute of Arctic Studies, The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College; and moderated by Edward Morris, Artist; Professor of Practice, Department of Transmedia; Co-Director of The Canary Lab, Syracuse University; Co-Director of The Canary Project.
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Cybersecurity & Industry Vulnerabilities Tech Talk
Wednesday, February 22
6:00 PM
Laugh Boston, 425 Summer Street, Boston
Join Tech in Motion Boston for a tech talk on cybersecurity - Wednesday, February 22nd at Laugh Boston. Cybersecurity has been making headlines for quite some time, especially with the recent DDos attack. For this discussion, our expert panelists will provide an in depth look into this industry and its increasing importance.
Schedule
6:00 - Refreshments & Networking
7:00 - Panel Begins
7:30 - Q&A Session
8:00- Conclude Event
Speakers to be announced soon.
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Arctic Ghosts: Ecocruising the Death Spiral
Wednesday, February 22
6 pm
Harvard, Tsai Auditorium S010, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center welcomes Roy Scranton, Assistant Professor of English, University of Notre Dame, and author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization.
The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center is convened by Robin Kelsey (Dean of Arts and Humanities, Harvard University) and Ian Jared Miller (Professor of History, Harvard University).
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The Future of the Conservative Agenda
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR JFK Jr. Forum
Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Oren Cass, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute, Domestic Policy Director, Mitt Romney Presidential Campaign 2012
James Pethokoukis, Columnist and Blogger, American Enterprise Institute
April Ponnuru, Senior Advisor, Conservative Reform Network
Kristen Soltis Anderson (moderator), Co-Founder, Echelon Insights, Author, The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America, Institute of Politics Resident Fellow, 2014
CONTACT INFO JFK Jr. Forum
617-495-1381
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Embracing Arts and Medicine
Wednesday, February 22
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Le Laboratoire Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
Doors/Talk > 6:00pm/6:30pm
Speakers: Jay Baruch, MD, Rachel Balaban and Julie Strandberg
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Sustainable Business Mixer
Wednesday, February 22
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Haley House Bakery Café, 12 Dade Street, Boston
Cost: $10 - $20
Join SBN for a night of informal networking at Haley House Bakery Café in Boston! Learn more about Haley House's story, meet other local business leaders and enjoy some light local snacks. You will also have the chance to win awesome door prizes courtesy of SBN members including Cambridge Naturals, City Feed & Supply, and Curio Spice Company!
There will be open networking, light snacks & coffee, cash bar, and door prizes! Space limited so register now!
Special Guest:
Michelle Holliday, Co-Chair of the Local Sustainable Economies Conference, is trekking down to Boston all the way from Montreal to meet you! We're excited to connect with this inspired and inspiring international movement leader.
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Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction: A film followed by a panel discussion
Wednesday, February 22
7pm
NE Aquarium, Simons IMAX Theatre, One Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Michele Gomes and Jennifer Ting – Filmmakers
Panel discussion to follow with:
Dr. Charles Innis, Director of Animal Health, New England Aquarium
Constance Merigo, Marine Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation Manager, New England Aquarium
Bob Prescott, Sanctuary Director of Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, and NOAA’s Mass. (Quincy south) Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator
Kate Sampson, Sea Turtle Stranding Coordinator, NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region (VA through ME)
Late each autumn, hundreds of sea turtles strand on Cape Cod due to hypothermia. For more than 25 years, the New England Aquarium and the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuaryhave worked together to rescue, rehabilitate, and release thousands of these turtles, mostly Kemp ridleys. Over the last decade, the number of stranded turtles has steadily increased, but the late autumn of 2014 saw an unprecedented event as more than 1,200 cold-stunned sea turtles washed ashore. This massive wildlife emergency marshaled an inspiring response that reached from individuals to the federal government.
Fortunately, two independent filmmakers from Seattle, Michele Gomes and Jenny Ting, were on hand to document this phenomenon. They also traveled to Mexico and Texas to tell the larger natural history story of the world’s most endangered sea turtle and how humans pushed a healthy population to the precipice of extinction and are now slowly helping it to recover. Please join Michele and Jenny to view their film, “Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction,” with a panel discussion immediately following.
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Nature's Temples: Complex Old Growth Forests
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, 7 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops
DETAILS Nature's Temples: Complex Old Growth Forests
Joan Maloof, Professor Emeritus at Salisbury University, Maryland and Founder and Director, Old-Growth Forest Network
1 Session: Wednesday, February 22, 7:00–8:30pm
Location: Hunnewell Building, Arnold Arboretum.
An old-growth forest is one that has formed naturally over a long period of time with little or no disturbance from humankind. They are increasingly rare and largely misunderstood. Joan Maloof makes a heartfelt and passionate case for their importance, defining old-growth and providing a brief history of these fragile ecosystems that now exist only in scattered fragments. She will describe how the life forms in an undisturbed forest—including not only its trees but also its insects, plant life, fungi, and mammals—differ from the life forms in a forest manipulated by humans.
Fee $10
Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277
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Thursday, February 23
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Learning from the Past to Understand the Future of Ocean Ecosystems
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 7:45 – 9:15 a.m.
WHERE Harvard Club, 374 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Washington Room
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Technology Assessment in Health Care Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Chris Bowler, Ph.D.
2016-2017 Grass Fellow, Radcliffe Institute
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France)
CNRS Director of Research, Institut de Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris
CONTACT INFO Debra Milamed
Tel. 617-327-5612
DETAILS Monthly meeting, Technology Assessment Seminar Series
Continental breakfast served
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Safe Machine Learning
Thursday, February 23
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Philip Thomas, Carnegie Mellon University
Machine learning algorithms are everywhere, ranging from simple data analysis and pattern recognition tools used across the sciences to complex systems that achieve super-human performance on various tasks. Ensuring that they are safe—that they do not, for example, cause harm to humans or act in a racist or sexist way—is therefore not a hypothetical problem to be dealt with in the future, but a pressing one that we can and should address now.
In this talk I will discuss some of my recent efforts to develop safe machine learning algorithms, and particularly safe reinforcement learning algorithms, which can be responsibly applied to high-risk applications. I will focus on a specific research problem that is central to the design of safe reinforcement learning algorithms: accurately predicting how well a policy would perform if it were to be used, given data collected from the deployment of a different policy. Solutions to this problem provide a way to determine that a newly proposed policy would be dangerous to use without requiring the dangerous policy to ever actually be used.
Speaker Bio: Philip Thomas is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Emma Brunskill. He received his Ph.D. from the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015, where he was advised by Andrew Barto. Prior to that, Philip received his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Case Western Reserve University in 2008 and 2009, respectively, where Michael Branicky was his adviser. Philip's research interests are in machine learning with emphases on reinforcement learning, safety, and designing algorithms that have practical theoretical guarantees.
Computer Science Colloquium Series
Contact: Gioia Sweetland
Phone: 617-495-2919
Email: gioia@seas.harvard.edu
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Liberalism, Globalization, Populism and Nationalism in the World Today
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Special Events
SPEAKER(S) Wang Hui, David Armitage, Malika Zeghal, Mahdav Khosla, and James Kloppenberg.
Moderator: Peter Bol, Harvard's Vice Provost for Advances in Learning and the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.
CONTACT INFO Molly Groome, molly_groome@harvard.edu.
DETAILS Liberalism, Globalization, Populism and Nationalism in the World Today
Across the world there has been a growing reaction against liberalism and globalization paired with a rise in populism and nationalism.
Speakers: Wang Hui on China, David Armitage on the UK and Europe, Malika Zeghal on the Mideast, Mahdav Khosla on South Asia and James Kloppenberg on the US.
Peter Bol, Harvard's Vice Provost for Advances in Learning and the Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, will moderate.
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Race and Racism in the 2016 Presidential Election
Thursday, February 23
5pm
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
The 2016 Presidential election brought issues of race and racism to the forefront of American politics and forced journalists to confront how to cover these topics without providing a platform for hate groups.
Slate chief political correspondent and CBS News political analyst Jamelle Bouie joins MIT Communications Forum's Seth Mnookin to explore how race and ethnicity framed the election and how journalists and content creators can improve coverage of these issues moving forward.
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Meeting Future Food Needs: The Global Food System Under Climate Change
Thursday, February 23
5:00PM TO 6:30PM
Harvard, Science Center Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Understanding the challenges associated with reliably providing food and nutrition in the context of a growing population and changing climate is integral when considering the global food system. The Future of Food Lecture Series, organized by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, highlights the interactions between agriculture and climate and their consequences for health and stability in an ongoing series of discussions with speakers from government, academia, and industry.
Learn more about the series and a schedule of future speakers.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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Public Lecture by Yuval Levin - “In Pursuit of Solidarity in the Age of Trump”
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 5 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Emerson Hall, Room 210, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
SPEAKER(S) Yuval Levin
CONTACT INFO Susan Cox, Communications and Events Coordinator, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 520N, Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617-495-1336
DETAILS Title: “In Pursuit of Solidarity in the Age of Trump”
The 2016 election revealed deep divisions in our country, and a widespread alienation from our governing institutions. But it also suggested a growing desire for solidarity and unity. That desire can easily point in dangerous directions, in different ways on the Left and the Right, yet properly harnessed it might also point the way toward an era of political renewal. How can we distinguish the peril from the promise?
Yuval Levin is the editor of National Affairs, a quarterly journal of essays on domestic policy and politics. He is also the Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a contributing editor to National Review and the Weekly Standard. He has been a member of the White House domestic policy staff (under President George W. Bush), executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and a congressional staffer. His essays and articles have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and others. He is the author, most recently, of The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism. He holds a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
LINK ethics.harvard.edu
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Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice: The Pragmatics of Embodied Solidarity in Theopolitical Space
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 5:15 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CSWR, Common Room, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Religion
SPONSOR Center for the Study of World Religions
CONTACT CSWR: 617.495.4495
DETAILS Please join us for the Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice. It will be delivered by Larycia Hawkins, Abd el-Kader Visiting Faculty Fellow at University of Virginia. The topic will be "The Pragmatics of Embodied Solidarity in Theopolitical Space".
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Racial Justice, Health Equity, and the Role of Government: Lessons from the City of Boston
Museums and the Legacy of Empire
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM EST
BU, Photonics Center (9th Floor), 8 Saint Marys Street, Boston
REDUCING HEALTH INEQUITIES: ADVANCING SOCIAL WORK’S ROLE SPEAKER SERIES
Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health and Macro Student Committee
"Racial Justice, Health Equity, and the Role of Government: Lessons from the City of Boston"
Janine Anzalota, MSW, MPH (BUSSW '04; BUSPH '06)
Executive Director, Mayor's Office of Fair Housing and Equity
Ilyitch Nahiely Tábora, MSW
Chief of Staff, Mayor’s Office of Health & Human Services
Rita Nieves, MSW, MPH, RN
Deputy Director, Boston Public Health Commission
Panel discussion moderated by Harold Cox, MSSW, Associate Dean for Public Health Practice, BU School of Public Health
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Sacred Nation: Chinese Museums and the Legacy of Empire
Thursday, February 23
6pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Magnus Fiskesjö
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La Buena Vida + Q&A w Avi Chomsky, on Coal in Colombia
Thursday, February 23
6p
Encuentro 5, 9 Hamilton Place Suite 2a, Boston
Learn about a delegation to Colombia
Colombia: The People Behind the Coal
June 18 - June 25
Screening of La Buena Vida (The Good Life, 1 hr 33 min, Spanish and
German, English subtitles, trailer: https://vimeo.com/118134553,
winner of Best Documentary in the 2016 Boston Latino International Film Festival
and Q&A with Avi Chomsky, Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University
The village of Tamaquito lies in the forests of Colombia. Here, nature provides the people with everything they need. But the Wayu community’s way of life is being destroyed by the vast and rapidly growing El Cerrejon coal mine. Determined to save his community from forced resettlement, young and charismatic leader Jairo Fuentes sets out to negotiate with the mine’s operators. They’re backed by powerful global resources companies such as Glencore, Anglo American and BHP Billiton
and communicating with their representatives isn?t easy. The villagers are promised the blessings of progress, but the Wayu place no value on modern, electrified houses on the so-called "better life." Instead, they embark on a fight to save their life in the forest, which soon becomes a fight to survive. "La Buena Vida" (The Good Life) is the story of the Wayu community, set against a global backdrop of rising energy consumption being driven by the pursuit of growth and affluence.
Here is a petition for you to consider signing on to that will be presented to the Colombian President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Juan Manuel Santos at the World Water Day on 22 March 2017.
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Fighting for Environmental Justice in the South Bronx
Thursday, February 23
6pm
MIT, Building 4-370, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Join us to hear the passion and power of Alexie Torres-Fleming during this lecture and meet-and-greet! Issues of environment and race are intimately tied. Over the past four decades, there has been substantial literature/research proving how communities of color are disproportionately affected by environmental pollution (water and air) and by climate change. Learn more about environmental and racial justice with a lecture by Alexie Torres-Fleming, writer, speaker, award-winner, and Executive Director of Access Strategies Fund, a Cambridge grant-making foundation that supports social justice nonprofits and promotes civic participation among women and communities of color.
Join us for a catalytic jumpstart to MIT climate and racial justice!!
Dinner will be served. Please RSVP by Monday, February 20.
We are proud to present the Forum on Racial and Environmental Equity and Justice, a compilation of key events at MIT focusing on environmental racism and justice. There are many organizations co-sponsoring these events, including Fossil Free MIT, Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA), Black Students' Union (BSU), the Environmental Policy and Planning Group (DUSP), Radius at MIT, the Latino Cultural Center (LCC), MIT's Philosophy Department and the Institute Community and Equity Officer (ICEO).
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Lecture by Kevin Birmingham: "Treason Is a Form of Obscenity”
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Barker Center 110, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Committee on Degrees in History and Literature
SPEAKER(S) Kevin Birmingham
DETAILS Kevin Birmingham will give History & Literature's Spring 2017 Distinguished Lecture. He is the author of The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses, a New York Times bestseller that received the PEN New England Award for Nonfiction in 2015 and the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2016.
LINK histlit.fas.harvard.edu
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Smarter in the City Pitch & Demo Night
Thursday, February 23
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, 2300 Washington Street, 6th Floor, Boston
Passionate about Entrepreneurship? Startups?
Want to hear about the latest innovations? Thinking of pursuing your own idea?
Come out to the Smarter in the City Pitch & Demo Night and see local innovative startups demo and pitch their business for the opportunity to win $10,000+ in prizes. You help decide the winner!
It's a great opportunity to network with fellow entrepreneurs, investors and community leaders.
Companies Pitching & Showcasing:
sumu.io
pulse247.net
foodtruckstars.com
scholarjet.com
Alumni Companies Showcasing:
thetechconnectioninc.com
myulink.co
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Catalyst Conversations - This Land: Laura McPhee and Taylor Perron
Thursday, February 23
7:00p–8:00p
MIT, Buildling E-15, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Renowned photographer Laura McPhee and MIT geologist Taylor Perron will share their concern for the American landscape through their respective projects and will discuss how they each bring awareness to the evolution of land and landscape. McPhees images invite contemplation about the unintended consequences of humanitys attempts to control and manage nature and ask how we use the earth and to what ends. Perron uses fieldwork, remote imaging techniques and computer simulations to discover how landscapes change through time. Many questions arise: How do scientists use images to evaluate and understand issues facing the environment? How do these same issues affect the choices made by artists like McPhee? How do both science and art bring awareness to the public, an awareness we need now more than ever?
Laura McPhee is noted for her stunning large-scale landscapes and portraits of the people who live and work in them. She is currently working in the desert west of the United States where she is chronicling visual stories about time, both geologic and human.
Taylor Perron is Associate Professor of Geology and Chair of the Program in Geology, Geochemistry and Geobiology at MIT. He studies how landscapes form and evolve on Earth and other planets, at scales ranging from ripples in sand to oceans on Mars.
Web site: https://listart.mit.edu/events-programs/catalyst-conversations-land-laura-mcphee-and-taylor-perron
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): List Visual Arts Center
For more information, contact: Emily Garner
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The Rumi Experience by duoJalal
Thursday, February 23
8:00p–9:30p
MIT, Building 14W-111, Killian Hall, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Speaker: duoJalal
A project that centers around the work of 13th century poet and mystic Jalal al-din Rumi, The Rumi Experience is the latest album from duoJalal. Coupled with spoken poetry of Rumi, duoJalal performs works by today's leading composers including works commissioned for the project by Evan Ziporyn and Lev Zhurbin. In the spirit of "sama", a deep listening to music and poetry, the audience will experience the true spirit of Rumi.
MIT Sounding
The 2016-17 season of innovative annual performance series MIT Sounding continues to blur the boundaries between contemporary and world music. Curated by Evan Ziporyn, Faculty Director of the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, this season of Sounding integrates the avant-garde sounds of ancient instruments and traditional practices with cutting-edge composition and technology to present various visions of a new, evolving music that defies genre.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Tickets: No registration necessary
Sponsor(s): CAST, Music and Theater Arts
For more information, contact: Leah Talatinian
617.253.5351
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Friday, February 24 – Sunday, February 26
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MIT Fintech Hackathon
Friday, February 24, 5:00 PM – Sunday, February 26, 12:00 PM EST
Cambridge Innovation Center, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Cost: $15
Please join us for the first annual MIT Fintech Hackathon! Create an interdisciplinary team of students and young professionals to take on challenges at the cutting edge of financial technology. Teams will get 30 hours to solve a variety of challenges to compete for over $10k in prizes. The event will feature a panel of expert judges, mentors from a variety of disciplines, and a chance to design something that will be used by sponsoring companies, TDBank and Prudential.
All students are welcome! Tickets are per person. Teams no larger than 4 people.
Please visit www.mitfintech.com for more details and regular updates!
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Friday, February 24
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2017 Impact Summit: Building a Better Future
Friday, February 24
9:30 AM – 4:30 PM EST
BU Trustee Ballroom, 1 Silber Way, 9th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2017-impact-summit-building-a-better-future-tickets-31394676322
Cost: $25 – $40
The fifth annual Impact Summit brings together local professionals and graduate students interested in a career with positive social or environmental impact. This year's Summit theme is "Building a Better Future."
The Impact Summit is a collaboration among Boston area Net Impact Chapters and will feature:
The opportunity to network and build connections with other like-minded individuals in the Boston area
Panel discussions on topics you care about
An incredible workshop on "Design Thinking & Rapid Prototyping"
Exhibitors from the for-profit, nonprofit, and government sectors
FEATURED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Bob Hemphill: Co-founder, AES Corporation and CEO, Sunshine Soldiers
Liz Powers: CEO, ArtLifting
IMPACT SUMMIT PROGRAM
Registration and Coffee: 9:30 – 10:00 a.m.
Opening Keynotes: 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.
Clare Connolly, President, Net Impact Boston
Bob Hemphill, Co-Founder, AES Corporation and CEO, Sunshine Soldiers
Panel Session I: 11:15 – 12:15 p.m.
Panel 1: Feeding our Communities: Corporate Citizenship through Product and Beyond
Panel 2: Making an Impact without the Title
Panel 3: The Role of Renewable Energy and Green Building Practices in Local Real Estate
Lunch: 12:15 - 12: 45 p.m.
Complimentary boxed lunch will be served
Summit Expo: 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
Panel Session II: 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.
Panel 4: Bridging the Skills Gap
Panel 5: Food Innovation
Panel 6: Sustainable Fashion
Break: 2:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
Panel Session III: 2:45 - 3:45 p.m.
Panel 7: Sustainable Water Systems
Panel 8: Corporate Sustainability
Workshop: Design Thinking & Rapid Prototyping: Stop PowerPointing everything to Death!
Closing Keynote: 4:00 - 4:30 p.m.
Liz Powers, CEO, ArtLifting
Happy Hour: 4:30 p.m.
Location: Bertucci's, 533 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215
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Entrepreneurship Today: a talk with Joi Ito
Friday, February 24
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM EST
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Join us for a discussion with Joi Ito, the director of the MIT media lab, on his view of "Entrepreneurship Today". Lunch will be provided.
Joi's bio: Joi Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab, Professor of the Practice at MIT and the author, with Jeff Howe, of Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future (Grand Central Publishing, 2016).
Ito is chairman of the board of PureTech Health and serves on several other boards, including The New York Times Company, Sony Corporation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Knight Foundation. He is also the former chairman and CEO of Creative Commons, and a former board member of ICANN, The Open Source Initiative, and The Mozilla Foundation.
Ito is a serial entrepreneur who helped start and run numerous companies including one of the first web companies in Japan, Digital Garage, and the first commercial Internet service provider in Japan, PSINet Japan/IIKK. He has been an early-stage investor in many companies, including Formlabs, Flickr, Kickstarter, littleBits, and Twitter.
Ito has received numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute and the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement, and he was inducted into the SXSW Interactive Festival Hall of Fame in 2014.
Ito has been awarded honorary doctorates from The New School and Tufts University.
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Global Food+ 2017 Symposium
Friday, February 24
12:30–4:30 pm
Harvard, CGIS South Building, Tsai Auditorium (S010), 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Global Food+ 2017 is an event open to all that will feature an afternoon of “speed talk” presentations by two dozen top scholars in the Boston area. This event will highlight current research findings at the important nexus between food, agriculture, health, society, and the environment.
The twenty-four presenters include scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, economics, political science, history, sociology, engineering, biology, and environmental sciences. Each will deliver a seven-minute summary of his or her most recent research findings. The topics covered will include cultural practices and veganism, irrigation and food security, farm subsidies, GMOs, cropland productivity and climate change, food contamination, food waste, the environmental consequences of meat consumption, and rural poverty in Africa. A complete list of speakers and topics can be found on our Speakers page.
Following these presentations, Dr. Shenggen Fan, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), will give the keynote address. Dr. Fan will offer his views on what scholars from our Boston-area research institutions can provide in the larger global effort to understand and improve outcomes in food and farming. He is an economist with degrees from Nanjing Agricultural University and the University of Minnesota, and has been director general of IFPRI in Washington, DC, since 2009. He was appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Lead Group for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, and serves as an advisor to many national governments, including China, on policy matters surrounding agriculture, food security, and nutrition. In 2014 Dr. Fan received the Hunger Hero Award from the World Food Programme.
The conference conveners include a steering committee of both senior and junior scholars from Harvard, Tufts University, Boston University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with sponsorship from Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. For more information about food-related degree programs, courses, and events at these institutions, please visit our Partners page.
Free and open to the public
Share your thoughts and feedback, and continue the conversation on Twitter: #GlobalFoodPlus. The conference will also be broadcast live on the Weatherhead Center Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/WCFIA
More information at http://wcfia.harvard.edu/conferences/17_global-food-symposium
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New Worlds, New Discoveries: A major leap in the search for life beyond our solar system
Friday, February 24
4:15p–5:15p
MIT, Bullfinch 54-100, The Green Building Lecture Hall - Level LL (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Speakers: Michael Gillon, Principal Investigator of the SPECULOOS and TRAPPIST exoplanet searches, Research Scientist at the STAR Institute of the University of Liege, Belgium & Julien de Wit, Postdoctoral Associate in Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT
In the last two decades, thousands of planets have been found beyond our solar system. Among them, a few dozen are potentially habitable, i.e. they could harbor surface conditions suitable for life. However, until now, we have only been able to speculate, as detecting life on these planets was totally out of reach, even with the largest existing - or planned - telescopes. But a new project called SPECULOOS is changing the game, by detecting terrestrial planets around nearby small stars that are well-suited for the detection of life with current technology. Join us to hear about the latest findings of TRAPPIST, the prototype of SPECULOOS-and the path forward to studying these worlds, and identifying signs of life within the next generation.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact: Angela Ellis, Senior Development Officer
(617) 253-5796
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Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future
Friday, February 24
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Harvard Book Store welcomes JOI ITO—activist, entrepreneur, and director of the MIT Media Lab—and JEFF HOWE—Northeastern University professor and contributing editor at Wired—for a discussion of their book, Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future.
About Whiplash
"The future," as the author William Gibson once noted, "is already here. It's just unevenly distributed." Whiplash is a postcard from that future.
The world is more complex and volatile today than at any other time in our history. The tools of our modern existence are getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, just as billions of strangers around the world are suddenly just one click or tweet or post away from each other. When these two revolutions joined, an explosive force was unleashed that is transforming every aspect of society, from business to culture and from the public sphere to our most private moments.
Such periods of dramatic change have always produced winners and losers. The future will run on an entirely new operating system. It's a major upgrade, but it comes with a steep learning curve. The logic of a faster future oversets the received wisdom of the past, and the people who succeed will be the ones who learn to think differently.
In Whiplash, Joi Ito and Jeff Howe distill that logic into nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous period. From strategically embracing risks rather than mitigating them (or preferring "risk over safety") to drawing inspiration and innovative ideas from your existing networks (or supporting "pull over push"), this dynamic blueprint can help you rethink your approach to all facets of your organization.
Filled with incredible case studies and leading-edge research and philosophies from the MIT Media Lab and beyond, Whiplash will help you adapt and succeed in this unpredictable world.
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Saturday, February 25
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Conference on Poverty & Inequality
WHEN Saturday, Feb. 25, 2017
WHERE Harvard, John F. Kennedy School of Government
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Students for the Alleviation of Poverty & Social Inequality
SPEAKER(S) David Ellwood, Kristy Arnold, Portia Wu, William Beardslee
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Laura_Gates@hks18.harvard.edu
DETAILS "Preparing the President on Poverty and Inequality": 2017 will see the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. He will be inheriting a nation more besieged by extreme inequality than ever before in recent memory. Over the course of the conference, panels will engage both academics and practitioners on education, affordable housing, extreme poverty, and the mental and physical effects of poverty.
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26th Annual Dynamic Women in Business Conference at Harvard Business School
by Women’s Student Association, a Student Club at HBS
Saturday, February 25
8:00 AM – 6:00 PM EST
Harvard, Spangler Center, 117 Western Avenue, Boston
Cost: $36 – $56
The 26th Annual Dynamic Women in Business Conference will take place Saturday, February 25, 2017.
Hosted by Women’s Student Association (WSA), a Student Club at HBS, this conference is a powerful forum for women to learn from, share with, and inspire one another. This annual conference brings together over 1,000 women -- including students, alumnae, faculty, distinguished business leaders, and community members -- to explore the opportunities and challenges that women encounter in today’s business world.
This year's conference theme is "WOMEN EMPOWERED" More information can be found on our website:
If you are arriving early as a prospective or recently admitted student, you may also consider joining us on Friday, February 24th for a campus tour and information session.
We look forward to seeing you at the 26th Annual Dynamic Women in Business Conference!
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New Energy Master Plan Workshop
Saturday, February 25
9am – 5pm
All Saints Episcopal Church of the North Shore, 46 Cherry Street, Danvers
Many MA IP&L (Interfaith Power and Light) members have attended our Sustainable House of Worship (SHOW) workshop and taken basic energy efficiency actions: lighting upgrades, programmable thermostats, heating system upgrades. Many other actions, especially when it comes to improving the building envelope, require deeper knowledge and thoughtful planning.
MA IP&L is partnering with building science experts from DEAP Energy Group to launch this all day workshop to help our members gain more sophisticated technical analysis and long-term planning skills. Attendees will gain hands-on experience in drafting a step-by-step plan to dramatically lower carbon footprint and costs while executing the upgrades within budget and organizational constraints. Prior SHOW attendance is not required.
The workshop will be hosted by All Saints Episcopal Church of the North Shore, 46 Cherry Street, Danvers. There is no charge for this inaugural workshop.
More information and registration are here: http://bit.ly/EnergyPlanDanvers
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Starr Forum: National Security & Civil Liberties: 1942 & 2017
Saturday, February 25
2:00p–4:00p
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Nadeem Mazen, Ken Oye, Paul Watanabe
Starr Forum lecture/panel discussion to mark the 75th anniversary of the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II and to discuss the situation of ethnic and religious groups being targeted today.
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
Can't attend in person? Watch it on Facebook live or on-demand on YouTube.
For more information or accessibility accommodations please contact starrforum@mit.edu.
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, The New England Japanese American Citizens League, and The Asian American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston
For more information, contact:
617-253-8306
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Richard Turner Inspirational Lecture & Demo
Saturday, February 25
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Who is Richard Turner?
Gaming experts and gamblers know and respect Richard as a master Card Manipulator, who could take down any old-west casino or wipe out any high-stakes gambler. His unparalleled skill with a deck of cards has stirred and staggered audiences throughout the world. Featured on dozens of worldwide TV specials, documentaries, magazine cover stories, and profiled in hard cover publications, News Paper features, and TV commercials ranging from the topic on “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer in 2012 to the Harper Collins 2012 release of Fooling Houdini, he bamboozled Brad Pitt with his co-star Sean Penn in the 2011 Oscar-nominated movie “Tree of Life,” the 2012 documentary “The Magic Life,” “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” “World Geniuses” in Japan, to “That’s Incredible,” way back in 1982.
Open to public
For questions email poker-committee@mit.edu
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"Music of the Marginalized": A Workshop and Concert Focused On Songs of Social Change
Saturday, February 25
5:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Lesley University, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
In ages of uncertainty and conflict, music has been a comfort and catalyst of positive change to populations all over the world. On Saturday, February 25th, New York City-based folk rock band The Lords of Liechtenstein will present a free interactive program focused around the music of social change. They will provide a brief background on political musicians from all over the world, from Fela Kuti to Pete Seeger to Bob Marley, before leading the group in a songwriting workshop as the participants write their own political songs on topics of their choice. After a brief intermission, the band will present a concert of original music focused on socially conscious themes.
Schedule:
5:00 to 6:30 - Political Songwriting Workshop - University Hall room 2-048
6:30 to 7 - Break
7 to 8 - Concert - University Hall Amphitheater
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Sunday, February 26
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Activist Training: Clean Energy 101 & Learn to Lobby
Sunday, February 26
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST
Atlantic Wharf (Fort Point Room), 290 Congress Street, Boston
The incoming Trump Administration has made it clear they'll side with polluters and stand in the way of climate progress at every turn. To fight back we'll need every ounce of strength we can muster. We know you want to help, so we want to give you a road-map and the best tools for the job.
Join the Massachusetts Sierra Club for an afternoon activist training!
Sunday, February 26th -OR- Sunday, March 5th from 1pm - 4pm.
We're hosting two sessions of our activist training, which will get you up to speed on state clean energy policy and then give you the tools you need to effectively advocate with your elected officials.
Agenda:
Welcome and lay of the land
Overview: "Clean Energy 101"
Overview: "Demystifying elected officials"
Break-out session and practice by geography
Report back and next steps
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Intellectual Snob Meetup: What is There to Fear?
Sunday, February 26
5:00 PM
Back Bay Social Club, 867 Boylston Street , Boston
I'll be wearing a broad brimmed black hat; IF YOU DON'T SEE ME ASK AT RECEPTION
Oh and must I say it? Wear your most infamous fake mustaches, thin black ties, book bags, turtlenecks or buttoned down collars, and fold up sunglasses
*******Worried About You with the Rolling Stones, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86D9idBBYg8 ********
Fear- driven? We all live in fear to some extent... well, if we are healthy we are worried. A rainy day is gonna come, ready or not.
Recently the 9-11 anniversary event passed, and I went to a symposium. The talk was about terrorism. (I have got to include this: Intellectual Snob events require controversy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgrunnLcG9Q )
So there was the fear factor. But somebody bravely brought up: is that really what there is to fear? What about Fukushima which-- if it collapses which is inevitable-- (according to Christopher Busby, Arnie Gundersen, and Helen Caldicott) -- could make the northern hemisphere uninhabitable..? What about the Plymouth nuclear power plant 30 miles from Boston which is the exact same G.E. Mach 1 design and way overloaded with "spent" fuel which it was not designed for? Incidentally after posting this there appeared a front page article about the safety of this nuclear power plant on 8th December. In the Boston Globe.
What about retiring people's faith in the stock market, a form of gambling. What about the fact that the US dollar is a "Fiat" currency which has no intrinsic value if the dollar collapses? So what should we be afraid of?
The US debt which has been avoided in the discussions of the candidates meanwhile has gone up by an unbelievable amount to the point of beyond insolvency? Neither candidate will resolve it and that neither candidate cares. It is not discussed! Is that an agenda?
...IS IT RUSSIA!?!
The possible collision of Earth with an asteroid? Hula hoops? (That was a fear in the 50s) ... pogo sticks? Moon rocks? Oh I get it; we have got to be afraid of something right?
Please wear your most notorious fake mustaches this is an Intellectual Snob event!
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Scenario 300 - How to Rapidly Move Carbon Out of the Skies and into the Ground
Sunday, February 26
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
One, Fayette Park, Cambridge
Come join us for a potluck/discussion with our restoration ecologist Jim Laurie as we explore the bright side of global warming. What, you didn't know there was one? Well, there is!
By regenerating ecosystems we can pull gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere, where it's doing untold harm, and plant it in hungry, degraded soils around the planet, where it will do worlds of good.
There's easily enough room in the ground to store ongoing emissions (which we hope will go to zero quickly - but we're not counting on it) - and the legacy 200+ gigatons of carbon that's up there as well.
We can do this in a matter of decades, with so many benefits - addressing floods and droughts, bountiful food production, ample fresh water, thriving local economies, and more - that it's practically a no-brainer. It's inexpensive, low-tech, local, sustainable, and we have decades of experience around the world in all habitable environments. What are we waiting for?
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate's staff scientist, Jim Laurie, has figured a lot of this out - and he's happy to share with everyone who wants to learn.
Potuck 6:00-7:00 p.m. followed by discussion 7:00-9:00 p.m. at Helen Snively's place in Central Square.
Biodiversity for a LIvable Climate is a small non-profit so a $10 donation is requested, but no one will be turned away based on ability to pay.
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Monday, February 27
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Book Talk: Syria's Civil War and the Post-American Middle East
WHEN Monday, Feb. 27, 2017, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Taubman Building, Nye A. 5th Floor, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Middle East Initiative
SPEAKER(S) Author and Speaker Christopher Phillips, Moderator Stephen Walt
CONTACT INFO Christopher Mawhorter. Email: Chris_Mawhorter@hks.harvard.edu
Phone: 617-496-4190
DETAILS A seminar with Christopher Phillips, Senior Lecturer in the International Relations of the Middle East at Queen Mary, University of London and an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa programme on his latest book The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East.
Moderated by Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, HKS.
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THE 21st CENTURY CURES ACT: Implications for Research and Drug Development
WHEN Monday, Feb. 27, 2017, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Leadership Studio, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
SPEAKER(S) EXPERT PARTICIPANTS
Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer, American Cancer Society
Pamela Tenaerts, Executive Director of the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative
Jeffrey Drazen, Editor-in-Chief, The New England Journal of Medicine
Aaron Kesselheim, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Director of the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law
MODERATOR
Ed Silverman, Senior Writer, STAT
CONTACT INFO RSVP to attend studio audience: theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS
THE 21st CENTURY CURES ACT: Implications for Research and Drug Development
ForumHSPH.org
The passage of the 21st Century Cures Act has drawn both applause and criticism. A sweeping bipartisan effort with multiple components, the law dramatically boosts funding for medical research, particularly in areas such as cancer and brain disease. The law also relaxes regulatory processes for pharmaceuticals and medical devices. In doing so, the law’s supporters point to the potential for faster treatments benefiting from a streamlined approval process. Critics raise concerns that safety and efficacy might be compromised, with potentially devastating consequences. And the law also has been questioned for failing to explicitly address high drug prices, a growing public issue. These debates are unfolding as the Trump administration is expected to imminently announce its choice for a new FDA commissioner, who will head an agency directly impacted by the Cures act. In this Forum, experts will explore the implications of the law for biomedicine, regulation, pharmaceuticals and patient advocacy.
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Open Science Framework Training
Monday February 27
1pm - 4pm
Wolbach Library, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge
Please bring a laptop in order to fully participate.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: Workshop for increasing openness and reproducibility in quantitative research
Please join us for a workshop hosted by the Center for Open Science to learn the many simple actions researchers can take to increase the reproducibility of their work. The workshop will be hands-on. Using example studies, attendees will actively participate in creating a reproducible project from start to finish.
Topics covered:
Project documentation
Version control
Preregistration
Open source tools like the Center for Open Science’s Open Science Framework to easily implement these concepts in a scientific workflow
This workshop is aimed at faculty, staff, and students across disciplines who are engaged in quantitative research. The workshop does not require any specialized knowledge of programming. Participants will gain a foundation for incorporating reproducible, transparent practices into their current workflows.
Speaker: Courtney Soderberg
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Starr Forum: Behavioral Science and Nudges: Environmental Protection and Sustainability
Monday, February 27
2:00p–3:30p
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Cass R. Sunstein
Cass Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who was the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012.
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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Common Ownership - joint with Harvard
Monday, February 27
4:00p–5:30p
MIT, Building E52-432
Speaker: Martin Schmalz (University of Michigan)
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): IO Workshop
For more information, contact: economics calendar
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Distinguished Speaker Series - The Frontiers of Tsunami Hydrodynamics
Monday, February 27
4:30p–6:00p
MIT, Building 1-190, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Professor Costas Synolakis
The Frontiers of Tsunami Hydrodynamics discussion on state of the art hydrodynamics, referencing events such as Fukushima Dai Ichi Nuclear power plant accident.
C. C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series
The C. C. Mei Distinguished Speakers Series hosts renown scientists from all over the world to present their research in cross-disciplinary areas including civil and environmental engineering, bio-engineering, mechanical engineering, medical engineering, biology, environmental sciences, and other related fields.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering
For more information, contact: Carol Burke
617-324-7780
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Kelman Seminar: The Media in the Age of Trump and Brexit
Monday, February 27
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Harvard, CGIS South, Room S-010, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Featuring Speakers:
Helen Boaden, Spring 2017 Joan Shorenstein Fellow; Director, BBC Radio
Ann Marie Lipinski, Curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism
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An Evening with Bobby Seale
Monday, February 27
5:00pm
Lesley University, Washburn Auditorium, 10 Phillips Place, Cambridge
Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale discusses the Black Panther Party's pivotal movement during societal transgressions toward African-Americans.
Mr. Seale is the author of "Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers," published in October 2016. The book tells the story of the Black Panther Party, founded 50 years ago in 1966 by Seale and Huey P. Newton. The words are Seale's , with contributions by other former party members. Admired, reviled, emulated, misunderstood, the Black Panther Party was one of the most creative and influential responses to racism and inequality in American history. The advocated armed self-defense to counter police brutality, and initiated a program of patrolling the police with shotguns–and law books.
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Portraits of Oil Urbanism
Monday, February 27
6:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Speaker: El Hadi Jazairy, AKPIA@MIT Post-Doctoral Fellow & Research Scientist Center for Advanced Urbanism, MIT
AGA KHAN PROGRAM "AN EVENING WITH" LECTURE SERIES
SPRING 2017 AGA KHAN PROGRAM LECTURES
Open to: the general public
Cost: FREE
Sponsor(s): School of Architecture and Planning, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Department of Architecture
For more information, contact: Jose Luis Arguello
617-253-1400
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From Practice Room to Lecture Hall: How Science Learning and Music Learning Connect
WHEN Monday, Feb. 27, 2017, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE The Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Music
COST FREE
DETAILS What should a 200-person physics lecture and a one-on-one cello lesson have in common? More than you might think! Join Professor Logan McCarty and Project LENS for an evening of musical performance and discussion, where we'll explore what science pedagogy can learn from music pedagogy. This event is free and open to the public.
As Director of Physical Sciences Education at Harvard, Prof. McCarty is constantly seeking ways to improve student learning and engagement in the sciences. Project LENS is a performance collaborative that seeks to reveal connections between music and a wide variety of topics in the world beyond.
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Tuesday, February 28
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Speaker Series: Rick Stengel – Government and the Media
Tuesday, February 28
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Rick Stengel served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2014-2016. He was Time magazine’s 16th managing editor and has had a long and distinguished career as a journalist. At Time, he held positions as senior writer and essayist, and national editor. He has also written for The New Yorker, The New Republic, Spy, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. He has written a number of books including a collaboration with Nelson Mandela on Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Stengel was the president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center (2004-2006). While at the Shorenstein Center, he will lead a series of study groups on government and the press.
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Five Global Challenges and the Role of University
Tuesday, February 28
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room B010, Singer Classroom (lower level), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2017/02/DeMartin#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2017/02/DeMartin at 12:00 pm.
Berkman Faculty Associate, Juan Carlos de MartÃn
The world is facing five global challenges: democratic, environmental, technological, economical, and geopolitical. Challenges that will require both enormous amount of knowledge and citizens capable of using such knowledge in scenarios that today are hard to predict. The University is clearly the main institution that could help society on both counts. However, if University truly wants to maximize its social utility, it needs to question critically the last 30 years of its development and re-discover its roots, updating them for the 21st century.
About Juan Carlos
Juan Carlos De Martin is a Berkman Klein Faculty Associate and Faculty co-director of the NEXA Center for Internet & Society at the Politecnico of Torino, Italy, which he co-founded in 2006.
Juan Carlos De Martin is a computer engineering professor specialized on multimedia who is now focusing on the general theme of the interaction between digital technologies and society. His most recent main research interest is the future of university in the Internet age, a topic on which he published a book (in Italian, "Università Futura - Tra Democrazia e Bit", Codice Edizioni, 2017). Since Spring 2012 Juan Carlos has been teaching "Digital Revolution", a digital culture and skills course offered to first-year students at the Politecnico di Torino.
In 2012 he edited, together with Melanie Dulong de Rosnay, "The Digital Public Domain: Foundations for an Open Culture" (OpenBookPublishers, UK).
In 2003 he started to lead, together with prof. Marco Ricolfi, the Creative Commons Italy team. Between 2007 and 2011 Juan Carlos De Martin was the coordinator of COMMUNIA, the European thematic network on the digital public domain. Between 2007 and 2015 he was the president of the libraries of the Politecnico di Torino.
Before returning to Italy in 1998, Juan Carlos De Martin was a visiting researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara for two years and, after receiving his Ph.D. in Telecommunications at the Politecnico di Torino, he worked for two years in the research laboratories of Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas.
Juan Carlos De Martin also serves as member of the Scientific Board of the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia Treccani and of the Biennale Democrazia. He is a frequent op-ed contributor to "la Repubblica" and he often acts as a commentator in Italian media.
Juan Carlos De Martin is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and is the author, or co-author, of over 100 peer-reviewed conference papers, journal papers and book chapters.
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Speaker Series: Rick Stengel
Tuesday, February 28
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Rick Stengel served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2014-2016. He was Time magazine’s 16th managing editor and has had a long and distinguished career as a journalist. At Time, he held positions as senior writer and essayist, and national editor. He has also written for The New Yorker, The New Republic, Spy, Rolling Stone and The New York Times. He has written a number of books including a collaboration with Nelson Mandela on Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Stengel was the president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center (2004-2006). While at the Shorenstein Center, he will lead a series of study groups on government and the press.
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A Productivity Revolution and Japan's Revitalization
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Dale Jorgenson, Samuel W. Morris University Professor, Harvard University
Moderated by Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
COST Free and open to the public
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Hydroelectric power and indigenous health in the North
Tuesday, February 28
1 pm
Harvard Global Health Institute, 42 Church Street, Cambridge
Climate Change and Global Health Seminar featuring Harvard Professor Dr. Elsie Sunderland
Lunch provided
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Warm-route versus cold-route interbasin exchange in the meridional overturning circulation or why is the Atlantic saltier than the Pacific
Tuesday, February 28
3:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Paola Cessi, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Abstract: Among the processes attributed to the higher salinity of the Atlantic Ocean relative to the Pacific Ocean, several are associated with the Atlantic sinking of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), and the absence of an equivalent overturning in the Pacific. Ocean-only general circulation computations in an idealized domain with two basins connected by a circumpolar channel in the southernmost region focus on two important asymmetries preferring the Atlantic as the site for sinking: its narrower width and a connection with the Indo-Pacific at a subtropical latitude (the tip of South Africa) and at a subpolar latitude (the tip of South America). These computations, together with a simple conceptual model for the upper branch of the MOC illustrate the basic processes of interbasin exchange either through the connection at the subpolar latitude of the long continent (cold route'') or through the connection at the subtropical latitude of the short continent (warm route''). A cold-route exchange occurs when the short continent is poleward of the latitude separating the sub-polar and sub-tropical gyre (the zero wind-stress curl line) in the southern hemisphere, otherwise there is warm-route exchange. The predictions of the conceptual model are compared to primitive equation computations in a domain with the same idealized geometry forced by wind-stress, surface temperature relaxation and surface salinity flux. A visualization of the horizontal structure of the upper branch of the MOC illustrates the cold and warm routes of interbasin exchange flows. Diagnostics of the primitive equation computations show that the warm-route exchange flow is responsible for a substantial salinification of the basin where sinking occurs. This salinification is larger when the interbasin exchange is via the warm route, and it is more pronounced when the warm-route exchange flows from the wide to the narrow basin.
Harvard Climate Seminar
Contact Name: Sabinna Cappo
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Inside Congress: The Inconvenient Truth
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017, 4:15 – 5:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Institute of Politics, Littauer Faculty Dining Room (FDR), 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Law
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Congressman Christopher Shays
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO deisy_carrera@hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS When I was in third grade I became a voracious reader, consuming every kid's version of great Americans, and felt I wanted to be part of our government and its glorious history.
The 1960 Presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, his promotion of the Peace Corps, and his famous words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" only increased my enthusiasm, but it was not until I was in high school that I thought part of my government service might include running for public office.
Two years in the Peace Corps with my wife Betsi, eighteen months as a mayor's aide, thirteen years as a State Representative, twenty-one years as a Congressman, and two years heading the Commission on Wartime Contracting, were the result of my heartfelt desire, nurtured by devoted teachers, and a caring wife and parents.
With this as background, I hope to engage students from the perspective of elective office, and inspire a knowledge and appreciation of what it takes to be an engaged citizen, a persuasive public advocate, a dedicated government employee, and an effective elected official.
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Starr Forum: The Fight over Foreigners: Visas & Immigration in the Trump Era
Tuesday, February 28
5:00p–6:30p
MIT, Building E51-115, Wong Auditorium, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Baher Azmy, Jia Lynn Yang
Starr Forum panel discussion to address the migration issues in America under the new administration and President Trump
Panelists Include:
Baher Azmy, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights
Jia Lynn Yang, Deputy National Security Editor at the Washington Post
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
Can't attend in person? Watch it on Facebook live or on-demand on YouTube.
For more information or accessibility accommodations please contact starrforum@mit.edu.
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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BOSTON SEMINAR: Designing for Flooding and Sea Level Rise
Tuesday, February 28
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Atlantic Wharf, 290 Congress Street, Fort Point Room, Boston
Join us for the first in a four-part series of one-hour discussions hosted by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger this spring at Atlantic Wharf in Downtown Boston.
ABOUT THE FEBRUARY SEMINAR
Designing for Flooding and Sea Level Rise
presented by Aaron Lewis & Gregory Doelp
Changing FEMA maps, new requirements for resiliency, increasing attention on riverine and coastal flooding, rising sea levels … owners, government officials, and the design community are constantly challenged with new policy and research about climate change impacts and the adapting building performance expectations in this new environment.
This presentation provides an introduction to the design of buildings and other infrastructure for flooding. We will introduce FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas (SFHAs), building code requirements for SFHA zones, and the basic approaches for wet and dry floodproofing. We will also discuss the impacts of sea level rise and strategies for addressing sea level rise in building design and construction.
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Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality
Tuesday, February 28
6:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building N50, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Meryl Alper
The MIT Press Bookstore presents Meryl Alper, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University and author of Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (MIT Press), in conversation with Jennifer S. Light, Department Head and Professor of Science, Technology and Society at MIT, at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, February 28 at the MIT Press Bookstore.
Mobile technologies are often hailed as a way to "give voice to the voiceless." Behind the praise, though, are beliefs about technology as a gateway to opportunity and voice as a metaphor for agency and self-representation. In "Giving Voice," Meryl Alper explores these assumptions by looking closely at one such case--the use of the Apple iPad and mobile app Proloquo2Go, which converts icons and text into synthetic speech, by children with disabilities (including autism and cerebral palsy) and their families.
This event includes a book signing. Books will be on sale at the event for 20% off, or you can purchase an event ticket that includes a discounted book.
authors@mit
This event is presented by authors@mit, a lecture series co-sponsored by the MIT Libraries and the MIT Press Bookstore.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): The MIT Press Bookstore
For more information, contact: The MIT Press Bookstore
617- 253-5249
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Edwidge Danticat Lecture: Doris Salcedo's Circles of Sorrow
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Menschel Hall, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St.
*Please enter the museum through the entrance on Broadway.*
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Ethics, Exhibitions, Humanities, Lecture, Poetry/Prose, Religion, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Divinity School, the Latina/o Studies Working Group in the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights (FAS), and Instituto Cervantes.
SPEAKER(S) Edwidge Danticat
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Andrea Davies
DETAILS “There is no one writing in the English language today more precisely or more passionately articulating the exile’s experience than Edwidge Danticat.” -Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Edwidge Danticat brings her unparalleled gifts as a writer in touch with political violence and migration to respond to The Materiality of Mourning, Harvard Art Museum’s exhibition of the works of Columbian-born sculptor Doris Salcedo. Danticat’s lecture, “Doris Salcedo’s Circles of Sorrows,” reflects on the ethical and spiritual dimensions of memory and mourning.
Danticat’s books include Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah's Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner, and The Dew Breaker. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures, Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She has written six books for young adults and children, as well as a travel narrative. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow and the 2016 recipient of the Toni Morrison Award.
LINK hds.harvard.edu…
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"The Robots are Coming"... Presentation at BU Robotics Lab
Tuesday, February 28
6:00 PM
BU Robotics Lab, 750 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Cost: $5
Artificial Intelligence Event in Partnership with Boston University Robotics Department.
We are excited to present our 4th event in the Series on "Real-Life Examples of Cognitive Computing."
The event will include leading robotics speakers and tours of the Boston University Robotics Lab (http://sites.bu.edu/robotics/) and Engineering Product Innovation Center (https://www.bu.edu/eng/current-students/epic/).
Seating is limited, so we're requesting a $5 reservation fee to secure your spot. Looking forward to seeing you at this exciting event!
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Boston Green Drinks - February Happy Hour
TueSDAY, February 28
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Scholars, 25 School Street, Boston
Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community!
Boston Green Drinks builds a community of sustainably-minded Bostonians, provides a forum for exchange of sustainability career resources, and serves as a central point of information about emerging green issues. We support the exchange of ideas and resources about sustainable energy, environment, food, health, education.
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Civic Science Roundtable: THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND WHO WILL DECIDE?
Tuesday, February 28
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
DeWick Conference Room, 25 Latin Way, Somerville
As an epidemic of deaths linked to opioid overdose grips our society, doctors, patients and policy makers are facing great pressures as they try to balance the management of two complex conditions, addiction and chronic pain.
As policy makers struggle to control the abuse of opioids, has the pendulum swung too far, depriving patients of needed pain relief?
If access to pain relief is a human right, who is responsible to determine what happens next?
Guest Scientist- Daniel Carr, MA, MD, DABPM, FFPMANZCA (HON)
Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts Medical School
Program Director, Pain, Research Education & Policy
President, American Academy of Pain Medicine
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The Human Brain Project
Tuesday, February 28
6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
swissnex Boston, 420 Broadway, Cambridge
Join Christoph Ebell, Executive Director at the Human Brain Project (HBP), for a talk on the structure and current developments of the Project, one of the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship.
The HBP, a 10-year multinational European brain research initiative, has the aim to advance neuroscience and medicine, and to create brain-inspired information technology. To do so, it targets the reconstruction of the brain’s multiscale organization. It uses productive loops of experiments, medical data, data analytics, and simulation on all levels that will eventually bridge the scales. The HBP IT architecture is unique, utilizing cloud-based collaboration and development platforms with databases, workflow systems, petabyte storage, and supercomputers. The HBP is developing toward a European research infrastructure advancing brain research, medicine, and brain-inspired information technology. It is also looking to expand research synergies and contacts at the international level.
Free and open to the public.
Event program
6.00PM Doors open
6.30PM Remarks and Q&A by Christoph Ebell, Executive Director, Human Brain Project
9.00PM Doors close
Speaker bio
Christoph Ebell is the Executive Director at the Human Brain Project, where he heads the management unit of this large and ambitious European Flagship project. Prior to this position, he served as the Science and Technology Counselor at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C. During his diplomatic posting, he connected Switzerland and the United States in the fields of science, technology, innovation, higher education, as well as professional education. Before his posting in the United States, Chris worked at the Department of Economic Affairs in Bern, Switzerland, where he headed the international cooperation section for innovation, education and international organizations. Specializing in innovation policy issues, he was a delegate at the OECD Committee for Science and Technology Policy, UN commissions, and a member of several expert working groups, including the expert panel on the OECD Innovation Strategy. Prior to that, Chris built up extensive experience with R&D-related EU institutions and multilateral cooperation mechanisms both on a European and global level with an emphasis on advanced manufacturing. He began his career at the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation, Switzerland’s innovation funding agency. Before his career in the government services, Chris studied Physics and Humanities, did research in American and International studies and culture, in Switzerland and at Harvard University. He received Masters degrees from the University of Bern and from the University of Illinois at Chicago and taught at the University of Basel.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, March 1
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Local Food Trade Show
Wednesday, March 1
8:30 AM to 2:00 PM
Northeastern, Curry Center, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston
This event is intended for commercial buyers, not individual consumers.
The Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts (SBN) is offering our 5th Local Food Trade Shows. The 2016 Local Food Trade Shows are designed to facilitate connections and stimulate business relationships between producers and wholesale buyers of local food, with a focus on specialty crop food products in Massachusetts.
Local Specialty Crop Trade Show
Exhibitors will include New England based farmers, produce distributors and local specialty crop producers (products made with 50% or more specialty crops also qualify). Please view the USDA definition of specialty crops here. This Trade Show is sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources. Exhibition booths are free for specialty crop farmers and other specialty crop producers.
Local Food Trade Show
This trade show is open to all non-specialty crop food producers including meat and dairy farms, fisheries, baked goods and other added value producers. Exhibition booths are $125.00. *$25 Discount for SBN Members
The Specialty Crop Trade Show is made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MassGrown).
Click HERE for a list of 2015 Trade Show Exhibitors and Attendees!
Scroll down for a list of 2016 Exhibitors and Attendees!
Who should attend?
Any wholesale buyers, who are interested in purchasing Massachusetts or New England-produced food items. These buyers can be supermarkets, co-ops, restaurants, hotels, institutions, schools, food processors in search of ingredients, distributors, or anyone else interested in local purchasing options. This event is intended for commercial buyers, not individual consumers.
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Atmospheric Pollution in Urban Areas: Implications for Air and Water Quality
Wednesday, March 1
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
BU, Pardee House, 67 Bay State Road, Boston
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Authoritarian Audiences and Government Rhetoric in International Crises: Evidence from China
Wednesday, March 1
12:00p–1:30p
MIT, Building E40-496, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Jessica Chen Weiss
SSP Wednesday Seminar
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for International Studies
For more information, contact: Elina Hamilton
253-7529
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Activating Populism: The Role of Blame Attribution
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 1, 2017, 2:15 – 4:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CES, 27 Kirkland Street, Harvard University, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Hoffmann Room
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Populism, Nationalism and Radical Politics Study Group; Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
SPEAKER(S) Kirk Hawkins, Associate Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University;
Ryan Enos (Discussant) Associate Professor of Political Science, Government Department, Harvard University
CONTACT INFO Anna Popiel, apopiel@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Scholars have long known that the rhetoric of populist politicians is an important part of their appeal; however, less is known about how that rhetoric operates. Drawing on data from two large experiments conducted with American adults, we show that survey questions encouraging individuals to consider political problems within a dispositional blame frame activates latent populist attitudes, while an encouragement to consider these same problems in a situational blame frame does not. In our second experiment, we connect this framing change to voting intentions and find that subjects exposed to dispositional frames are more likely to express support for Donald Trump and less likely to express support for Hillary Clinton than subjects exposed to situational frames. Importantly, the impact of framing is contingent on pre-existing populist attitudes; subjects with moderate levels of populist attitudes are much more likely to demonstrate an increase in expressed populism and support for Trump.
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Un/Sound Music, Un/Stable Ground: Music, Disaster, and Development in Haiti
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 1, 2017, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Music
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Rebecca Dirksen, 2016–2017 Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; Assistant Professor, Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Rebecca Dirksen is completing a book about musical models of grassroots development in Haiti before and after the earthquake of 2010. In this lecture, Dirksen will explain how this work moves beyond simply examining how ordinary Haitian citizens use musical dialogue to critique infrastructural weaknesses and abuses of authority to demonstrating how a growing number of social and civic groups employ music as an explicit and fundamental tool for strengthening their communities.
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LAYER UPON LAYER: EXPERIENCE, ECOLOGY, ENGINEERING, HERITAGE, AND (MOST OF ALL) HISTORY IN THE MAKING OF CHINA’S AGRICULTURAL TERRACES”
Wednesday, March 1
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Harvard, CGIS South Room S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Sigrid Schmalzer, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Professor Schmalzer’s research focuses on social, cultural, and political aspects of the history of science in modern China. Her first book, The People’s Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2008 and won the Sharlin Memorial Award from the Social Science History Association. Her second book, Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China, was released by University of Chicago Press in 2016 (a podcast interview with Schmalzer about the book is available from the New Books Network). She is also the co-editor of a volume intended for the undergraduate classroom titled Visualizing Modern China: Image, History, and Memory, 1750-Present. Her shorter writings have been published in numerous edited volumes and scholarly journals, including Isis, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, East Asian History, and Geographical Review. She was also the lead organizer for a conference held at UMass 11-13 April 2014, “Science for the People: The 1970s and Today,” which brought together students, scholars in Science and Technology Studies, and former members of the 1970s-1980s group Science for the People and is archived here: http://science-for-the-people.org. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the Social Science Research Council, the American Philosophical Society, and the D. Kim Foundation.
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Nature's Present: Environmental Crossroads in 21st Century India
Wednesday, March 1
4:15PM
Harvard, CGIS-S030, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
with Mahesh Rangarajan (Ashoka University)
History & Economics Seminar
Contact Name: histecon@fas.harvard.edu
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On a World Climate Assembly and the Social Cost of Carbon (Martin Weitzman)
WHEN Wednesday, Wed, March 1, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
Harvard Environmental Economics Program
SPEAKER(S) Martin Weitzman
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Democratic Transition And The Rising Tide Of Majoritarianism: Comparing The Cases Of Greece And Turkey
Wednesday, March 1
4:30 – 6 p.m.
Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
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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World History and Earth History: Perspectives on Our Time
Wednesday, March 1
5 – 7 p.m.
Harvard, CES, 27 Kirkland Street, Harvard University, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Lower Level Conference Room
The Annual History and Theory Lecture
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Silhouette as art and entertainment: featuring UK artist Charles Burns
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 1, 2017, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Houghton Library, Edison and Newman Room
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library
SPEAKER(S) Charles Burns, silhouette artist
DETAILS Silhouette as art and entertainment: featuring UK artist Charles Burns
Join us for an engaging lecture and live demonstration of a lost art. The art of cutting profile portraits with scissors is a craft with a fascinating past. Charles Burns, aka The Roving Artist, will trace the history of the silhouette through the centuries, drawing on examples from the Houghton Library collections, and share his revival of it as an art and entertainment for the twenty-first century.
As the UK’s busiest silhouette artist, Charles Burns has cut over 150,000 profiles, including portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, President Clinton, and many more.
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Future Retail
Wednesday, March 1
6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Harvard, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
How will the future of retail be different in this century than it has been in the past? In recent years, our traditional concepts of retail commerce have radically changed through technology and online shopping. What will be the next phase in this evolution, and how will our experience of the physical environment—as well as that environment itself—be transformed? Moderated by Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of Harvard GSD and Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design.
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Ways of Being in the World
Wednesday, March 1
7 PM
3 Church Street, Cambridge
Krista Tippett, host of award-winning NPR program “On Being“, discusses her latest book Becoming Wise: an inquiry into the mystery and art of living.
In 2014, Tippett received the National Humanities Medal at the White House for ‘thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.’
Krista Tippett program, On Being, “shines a light on the most extraordinary voices on the great questions of meaning for our time. Scientists in a variety of fields; theologians from an array of faiths; poets, activists, and many others have all opened themselves up to Tippett’s compassionate but searching conversation. In Becoming Wise, Tippett distills the insights she has gleaned from this luminous conversation in its many dimensions into a coherent narrative journey, over time and from mind to mind, into what it means to be human. Critics says the book is “a master class in living, individually and collectively. Wisdom emerges through the raw materials of the everyday.”
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Extreme Measures
Wednesday, March 1
7 PM - 8 PM
The Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Jessica Zitter M.D.
An ICU and Palliative Care specialist featured in the Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary Extremis offers a framework for a better way to exit life that will change our medical culture at the deepest level.
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The Art and Science of Growing Native Plants from Seed: Why, When, and How
Wednesday, March 1
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Randi Eckel, Founder of Toadshade Wildflower Farm
As we incorporate more native plants into our landscapes, there are so many good reasons to use plants propagated from seed. But wild plants have evolved with a dizzying array of mechanisms, including chemical-induced dormancy and mandatory cold stratification, to ensure that their seeds disperse, persevere, and germinate at just the right time under natural conditions. These mechanisms are not in place to frustrate would-be plant propagators, but must be understood by gardeners to successfully grow native plants from seed. Come for a far-reaching discussion of the issues surrounding seed collection, procurement, and propagation, with information that will encourage the novice and challenge the professional alike.
Randi Eckel has been studying native plant seed propagation and plant-insect interactions for over thirty years. She is the founder of Toadshade Wildflower Farm, which supplies both seeds and plants of species native to eastern North America.
This lecture co-sponsored by the Friends of Fresh Pond Reservation.
More information at http://grownativemass.org/programs/eveningswithexperts
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Thursday, March 2
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U.S. Ocean and Coastal Policy in the 21st Century: Reflections of a government policy analyst turned PhD student
Thursday, March 2
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford.
Lindsey Williams, Natural Resources and Earth System Science Program, University of New Hampshire
Over 50% of the U.S. population lives in coastal areas which make up less than 17% of our total land area. Coastal areas are engines of the economy and are also critical areas for important ecological processes. To understand these systems as complex social-ecological systems, we must explore the legal and institutional frameworks that guide our actions in coastal and ocean areas. In her talk, Lindsey Williams will provide an overview of ocean and coastal law and policy in the U.S. while also discussing her own research and the educational and professional career that lead her there.
Lindsey Williams is a PhD student in the interdisciplinary Natural Resources and Earth Systems Science (NRESS) Program at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) where she also serves as a lecturer in marine policy. Lindsey received her B.A. in Biology with a minor in Environmental Studies from Colby College in 2002 and her Master of Marine Policy from the University of Delaware in 2009. Prior to pursuing her PhD at UNH, Lindsey worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in several roles primarily focused on policy, budget, and communication around coastal management and science issues. Her current research interests include community interactions with the environment, environmental justice, negotiation and dispute resolution, and the role of science in policy and management.
Watch it live from your computer or smart phone:
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Hidden Air: Urbanization, the Built Environment and Indoor Air Quality in China
Thursday, March 2
3:30PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with Gary Adamkiewicz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and Exposure Disparities, Department of Environment Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
China Project Research Seminar
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
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Metropolitan Area Planning Council Open House
Thursday March 2,
4:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST
Metropolitan Area Planning Council, 60 Temple Place, Boston
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council will be holding an Open House on Thursday, March 2, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and we would love for you to attend!
Join MAPC to explore our offices, meet our staff, and learn about our work. Enjoy a raffle, prizes, and refreshments!
Come to 60 Temple Place any time between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to learn about how we can benefit your community.
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MIT Water Lecture Series : Workshop by CUAHSI
Thursday, March 2
5:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building 4-231, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Speaker: CUAHSI
Cutting edge research surrounding interdisciplinary topics such as the food-energy-water nexus requires a combination of finding, managing, and analyzing data from multiple sources. This challenge has led the National Science Foundation to make strategic investments in developing community data tools that focus on water data because it is a central need for many of these research topics. CUAHSI (The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc.) is a non-profit organization funded by the National Science Foundation to aid students, researchers and educators in using and managing data to support their research in water resources.
This hands-on workshop will demonstrate data tools and resources that are available through the CUAHSI community that could help students, researchers, and educators discover new data, publish data, or collaborate with others around data and models. Participants will be guided through an activity that uses CUAHSI-supported tools and focuses on one water and energy related case study.
MIT Water Club Spring Lecture Series
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Water Club
For more information, contact: Krithika Ramchander
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Using Data to Predict Fate: Future Insight or Folly?
Thursday, March 2
5:15-6:45 PM
Harvard, William James Hall, B1, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
Presentations
Jerome Kagan, PhD
John Gabrieli, PhD
John Quackenbush, PhD
Judith Edersheim, JD, MD
Each speaker will give a brief presentation and then participate in a panel discussion moderated by Joshua Buckholtz, PhD. A reception will follow the event.
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Future of Food and Nutrition
Thursday, March 2
5:30pm to 7:00pm
Tufts, Behrakis Auditorium, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, 274 Tremont Street, Boston
The Tufts NewTrition event series uses a TED talk-style format to allow entrepreneurs, researchers, and students to share ideas about the future of food and nutrition. We will be hosting an evening event with speakers from Red's Best, the Daily Table, the BU Gastronomy Department and our very own Tufts community.
Reception to follow. We hope to see you there!
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Goldsmith Awards Ceremony 2017
Thursday, March 2
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, Littauer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
The presentation of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Book Prize, and the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Finalists for the Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Sarasota Herald-Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. Learn more about their stories here: https://shorensteincenter.org/2017-goldsmith-awards-finalists/
This event will be ticketed. Tickets are free, but will be distributed by lottery. Enter the lottery on the Institute of Politics website before Sunday, February 26, 2017 at midnight. Winners will be notified via email on Monday, February 27th. Winners must pick up their tickets at the Institute of Politics on Monday, February 27th between Noon-5:00 p.m. and Tuesday, February 28th between 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. No exceptions.
This event will also be live-streamed.
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Civic Science Roundtable: THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND WHO WILL DECIDE?
Tuesday, February 28
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
DeWick Conference Room, 25 Latin Way, Somerville
As an epidemic of deaths linked to opioid overdose grips our society, doctors, patients and policy makers are facing great pressures as they try to balance the management of two complex conditions, addiction and chronic pain.
As policy makers struggle to control the abuse of opioids, has the pendulum swung too far, depriving patients of needed pain relief?
If access to pain relief is a human right, who is responsible to determine what happens next?
Guest Scientist- Daniel Carr, MA, MD, DABPM, FFPMANZCA (HON), Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts Medical School, Program Director, Pain, Research Education & Policy, President, American Academy of Pain Medicine
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Life in Picoseconds Opening Reception
Thursday, March 2
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Le Laboratoire Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
6:00 PM Doors Open
6:45 PM Welcome by David Edwards and Concert featuring ECCE Ensemble
Life in Picoseconds, the 23rd experiment at Le Laboratoire, is a collaboration between French design team Millimetre, video artist and scientist Charles Reilly, artist Daniel Faust, artist and researcher Anna Ondaatje, and Le Laboratoire founder David Edwards. Integral to the Life in Picoseconds experience is an extraordinary new form of digital representation, the Atom Screen. With the Atom Screen, still and moving images appear on swirls of particles that move in chaotic and prescribed ways between glass panels, producing unusual, abstract, and realistic representations that convey emotive, artistic, and scientific impressions.
The Atom Screen represents a new impressionistic movement in digital screen technology that departs from the advance of digital screens toward hyper-realistic representation.
In the exhibition, several works by New York-based photographer/artist Daniel Faust, taken from his recent exhibition Silicon in San Jose, California, appear next to a large vertical Atom Screen. These images, depicting starkly poetic moments and visions of Valley reality, appear on the Atom Screen as superpositions on randomly scattered particles that cover fractions of the screen surface, which disintegrate and reconfigure from minute to minute.
Further into the exhibition, a second, larger Atom Screen hangs in the center of the gallery. Particles rush in ceaseless motion and provide a kind of thermal agitation to the original film Life in Picoseconds by Charles Reilly.
Reilly’s film is a molecular simulation of a protein molecule unfolding in the picosecond time-frame of molecular life. Here the Atom Screen provides a more realistic atomistic relief and a here-not-here quantum perspective on the molecular unfolding process. Visitors can walk around the Atom Screen and observe Life in Picoseconds as a positive or negative moving image or sit and experience the entire unfolding process, which lasts around 20 minutes.
Life in Picoseconds is an interdisciplinary exploration of aesthetic representation in the digital medium where the substrate becomes an active partner to the projected digital image, in the way analog materials participated in the abstraction of modern art.
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The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing
Thursday, March 2
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning translator and author DAMION SEARLS for a discussion of his latest book, The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing.
About The Inkblots
In 1917, working alone in a remote Swiss asylum, psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach devised an experiment to probe the human mind: a set of ten carefully designed inkblots. For years he had grappled with the theories of Freud and Jung while also absorbing the aesthetic movements of the day, from Futurism to Dadaism. A visual artist himself, Rorschach had come to believe that who we are is less a matter of what we say, as Freud thought, than what we see.
After Rorschach’s early death, his test quickly made its way to America, where it took on a life of its own. Co-opted by the military after Pearl Harbor, it was a fixture at the Nuremberg trials and in the jungles of Vietnam. It became an advertising staple, a cliché in Hollywood and journalism, and an inspiration to everyone from Andy Warhol to Jay Z. The test was also given to millions of defendants, job applicants, parents in custody battles, and people suffering from mental illness or simply trying to understand themselves better. And it is still used today.
In this first-ever biography of Rorschach, Damion Searls draws on unpublished letters and diaries and a cache of previously unknown interviews with Rorschach’s family, friends, and colleagues to tell the unlikely story of the test’s creation, its controversial reinvention, and its remarkable endurance—and what it all reveals about the power of perception. Elegant and original, The Inkblots shines a light on the twentieth century’s most visionary synthesis of art and science.
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Friday, March 3 - Saturday, March 4
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MIT Energy Conference
Fri, Mar 3, 2017 8:00am
Sat, Mar 4, 2017 10:00am
Boston Marriott Cambridge, 50 Broadway Cambridge
RSVP at http://mitenergyconference.org/
As the largest student-led energy conference in the US, the MIT Energy Conference has become a premier event to connect professionals, policymakers, academics, and students in the energy industry. More changes have occurred in the global energy sector in the past decade than in the 100 years prior. In its 12th edition, the MIT Energy Conference main theme is centered on the interconnection between activities, technologies, and geographies, addressing the idea that small, distributed impacts can generate big solutions. We will bring together leaders and visionaries from industry, government, the scientific community, and the private sector that are looking at the whole value chain in a holistic way, and can speak about and debate the development of these complex interactions, which are redefining the future of energy worldwide.
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Friday, March 3
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2017 Goldsmith Seminar on Investigative Reporting
Friday, March 3
9:00 am - 10:30 am
Harvard, Malkin Penthouse, Littauer Building, 4th Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
A panel discussion with the winner and finalists of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Journalists from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Sarasota Herald-Tribune and The Wall Street Journal will discuss the making of their investigative reports.
Featuring:
Shane Bauer, senior reporter, Mother Jones
David Cloud, reporter, Washington bureau, Los Angeles Times
Sam Roe, investigative reporter, Chicago Tribune
Josh Salman, investigative reporter, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Michael Siconolfi, editor, investigations, The Wall Street Journal
Carrie Teegardin, investigative reporter, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nicco Mele, Shorenstein Center director, moderator
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Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Start-up Culture for Security and Development
Friday, March 3
12 – 1:15 p.m.
Harvard, Perkins Room (R-415), 4th Floor Rubenstein, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Steven Koltai is an expert on international entrepreneurship ecosystem development. He is currently Managing Director of Koltai & Company, an entrepreneurship program development consultancy. At Brookings, Koltai is pursuing a project and book provisionally titled: “World Peace through Entrepreneurship.”
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Socially Assistive Robotics: Creating Robots That Care
Friday, March 3
12:30pm to 2:00pm
Harvard SEAS, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Maja Mataric, University of Southern California
Annual Dean's Lecture on Computational Science and Engineering.
Socially assistive robotics (SAR) is a new field of intelligent robotics that focuses on developing machines capable of assisting users through social rather than physical interaction. The robot’s physical embodiment is at the heart of SAR’s effectiveness, as it hinges on the inherently human tendency to engage with lifelike (but not necessarily human-like or otherwise biomimetic) agents. People readily ascribe intention, personality, and emotion to robots; SAR leverages this engagement stemming from non-contact social interaction involving speech, gesture, movement demonstration and imitation, and encouragement, to develop robots capable of monitoring, motivating, and sustaining user activities and improving human learning, training, performance and health outcomes. Human-robot interaction (HRI) for SAR is a growing multifaceted research area at the intersection of engineering, health sciences, neuroscience, social, and cognitive sciences. This talk will describe our research into embodiment, modeling and steering social dynamics, and long-term user adaptation for SAR. The research will be grounded in projects involving analysis of multi-modal activity data, modeling personality and engagement, formalizing social use of space and non-verbal communication, and personalizing the interaction with the user over a period of months, among others. The presented methods and algorithms will be validated on implemented SAR systems evaluated by human subject cohorts from a variety of user populations, including stroke patients, children with autism spectrum disorder, and elderly with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
Lunch will be served from 12:30-1pm, on a first-come, first-served basis. The talk will begin promptly at 1pm.
Speaker Bio: Maja Matarić is professor and Chan Soon-Shiong chair in Computer Science Department, Neuroscience Program, and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California, founding director of the USC Robotics and Autonomous Systems Center (RASC), co-director of the USC Robotics Research Lab and Vice Dean for Research in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She received her PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT in 1994, MS in Computer Science from MIT in 1990, and BS in Computer Science from the University of Kansas in 1987.
She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the IEEE and AAAI, and recipient of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics & Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM), the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Innovation, Okawa Foundation Award, NSF Career Award, the MIT TR35 Innovation Award, and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Career Award. She served as the elected president of the USC faculty and the Academic Senate. At USC she has been awarded the Viterbi School of Engineering Service Award and Junior Research Award, the Provost's Mentoring Award and Center for Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship, the Mellon Mentoring Award, the Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Service Award, and a Remarkable Woman Award. She is featured in the science documentary movie "Me & Isaac Newton", in The New Yorker ("Robots that Care" by Jerome Groopman, 2009), Popular Science ("The New Face of Autism Therapy", 2010), the IEEE Spectrum ("Caregiver Robots", 2010), and is one of the LA Times Magazine 2010 Visionaries.
Contact: Natasha Baker
Phone: 617-496-2623
Email: nrbaker@seas.harvard.edu
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Film Screening: 13th a Documentary by Ava Duvarney
Friday, March 3
7:00p–9:00p
MIT, Building E-15, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
America makes up 5% of the worlds population, yet locks up 25% of the worlds prisoners. Ava DuVernays documentary 13th provides an in-depth look at the United States prison system within the context of this nations history of racial inequality.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Melina Abdullah, Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, organizer with Black Lives Matter, and interviewee from the film 13th.
*pizza served at 6:30pm
WOMEN TAKE THE REEL is a FREE roaming film festival.
SPONSORED BY: MIT Program in Womens and Gender Studies; the Graduate Consortium in Womens Studies; Boston College Womens and Gender Studies Program; Boston University Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; Brandeis University Womens and Gender Studies Program; Northeastern University Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; Simmons College Department of Womens and Gender Studies; Tufts University Womens, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; UMass Boston Womens and Gender Studies Department; Emerson College Department of Visual and Media Arts; and Lesley University.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): List Visual Arts Center
For more information, contact: Emily Garner
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Saturday, March 4
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Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference
Saturday, March 4
8:00-5:00 pm
Northeastern University, Boston, MA
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/5th-annual-massachusetts-urban-farming-conference-tickets-29806740764
Cost: $80.12
The 5th Annual Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference (UFC) is designed to advance the opportunities and address the barriers involved in cultivating a resilient and thriving Urban Farming sector. The UFC is a multi-sector stakeholder forum designed to share information regarding what is currently happening in Massachusetts. The UFC fosters solutions, sustainable networks and business relationships.
The UFC brings together participants representing all aspects of Urban Farming including, but not limited to, farmers (including roof top, chicken, bees, etc.), land trust managers, policy makers, commercial buyers, foundations, investors and all others. The 5th Annual Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference is comprised of interactive panels, demonstration workshops, expert discussions on diverse and relevant topics with distinguished Conversation Leaders and one of the best networking opportunities for this sector.
Conference Schedule:
SESSION 1: 8:45-9:45 am
Aquaponics and Vermicomposting for Urban Farms
Dr. Joe Buttner, Professor, Salem State University (Facilitator)
James Carnazza, Founder and President, Full Circle Earth
Anastasia Perullo, Salem State University
Laura Presutti, Salem State University
CommonHood: Agriculture Supported Communities
Bruce Fulford, Owner, City Soil & Greenhouse LLC (Facilitator)
Danielle Andrews, Dudley Farm Manager, The Food Project
Cara Snajczuk, Co-Manager, Haley House Urban Farm
Glynn Lloyd, Founder and CEO, City Fresh Foods
Greg Watson, Director for Policy and Systems Design, Schumacher Center for a New Economics
Technical and Financial Resources Available from the USDA Service Center Agencies
Christine Clarke, State Conservationist, Natural Resources Conservation Service -USDA (Facilitator)
Mia Halter, District Conservationist, NRCS
Jeff LaFleur, Executive Director, MA Association of Conservation Districts
Dawn Pindell, Outreach Specialist, for CT,MA, RI, USDA Farm Service Agency
Irrigation Systems for Urban Farms
Curtis Stone, Green City Acres, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
Commercial Kitchens; Strengthening Our Local Food Economy
Sarah Brezniak, Principal, Captus Group LLC (Facilitator)
Jen Faigel, Executive Director, CommonWealth Kitchen
John Waite, Executive Director, Franklin County Community Development Corporation
Chef Talk: Getting Your Product into Restaurants
Didi Edmonds, Chef and Author (Facilitator)
Alex Crabb, Chef, Asta, Boston
Peter Davis, Chef, Henrietta’s Table/Charles Hotel
Tristam Keefe, Famer, Urban Farming Institute
Irene Li,Co-Owner, Mei Mei Street Kitchen & Restaurant
Steve Verrill, Owner, Verrill Farm
Regenerative Placemaking
Emmanuel Pratt, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Sweet Water Foundation
Keynote: 9:55-11:00 am
Farming in the City
Curtis Stone, Green City Acres, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
SESSION 2: 11:10-12:10 pm
Film Showing: "Arc of Justice" and Discussion of Community Land Trusts
Barbara Knecht ,Registered Architect, Urban Farming Institute (Facilitator)
Tony Hernandez, DNI Director of Operations & Stewardship, Dudley Street Neighbors Incorporated
LaShawn M. Hoffman, Managing Partner, Hoffman & Associates, Atlanta, GA
Rural and Urban Farms: Building Partnerships and New Market Models
Stevie Schafenacker, Technical Assistance Coordinator, Local Hero Program, CISA (Facilitator)
Lydia Sisson, Founding Co-Director, Mill City Grows
Mark Smith, President, Brookwood Community Farm
David Dumaresq, Farmer, Farmer Dave's
Karen Washington,Farmer and Co-Owner Rise&Root Farm. Co-Founder BUGS(Black Urban Growers)
Youth in the Food System: Jobs Beyond Fast Food
Francey Slater, Founding Co-Director, Mill City Grows(Facilitator)
Shavel’le Olivier,Co-Chair/Youth Coordinator, Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition
Juana Lopez, Green Team Member, Groundwork Lawrence
Youth Participant, UTEC, Lowell
Jackson Renshaw, Co-Owner, Fresh Food Generation
Heather Conley,Community Food Manager. Groundwork Lawrence
The Economic Impact of Cultural Crops
Frank Magnan, PhD, Stockbridge School of Agriculture, UMass Amherst
Maria Moreira, Executive Director and Co-Founder, World Farmers
Rafael Herrero, Director of Agriculture and Environment, Nuestras Raices
Protecting Intellectual Property in Urban Farm & Food Businesses
Mary Rose Scozzafava, Ph.D, Partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Urban and Small Farm Financing 101
Ruth Goldman, Program Officer, Merck Family Fund(Facilitator)
Gerard Kennedy, Director, DACTA, Massachusetts Department of Agriculture Resources
Christine Kimball, Loan Specialist, Rural Development, USDA
Samantha Stoddard, Loan Officer, Farm Credit East, ACA
MA Local Food Plan and the Role of Urban Agriculture
Winton Pitcoff, Director, Massachusetts Food System Collaborative
Lunch: 12:10-1:30 pm
Session 3: 1:30-2:30 pm
Food Sovereignty, Urban Agriculture and Neighborhood Impacts
Catherine Sands, Director, Fertile Ground (Facilitator)
Bayoán Rosselló-Cornier, Community Organizer & Planner, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative
Emmanuel Pratt, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Sweet Water Foundation
Karen Washington,Farmer and Co-Owner, Rise&Root Farm. Co-Founder BUGS(Black Urban Growers)
Cultivating Success with Immigrant Farmers
Jessy Gill, Program Director, World Farmers (facilitator)
Rafael Herrero, Director of Agriculture and Environment, Nuestras Raices
Immaculate Nyaigoti, Outreach Specialist, World Farmers
Janel Wright, Farmer Training Program Manager, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project
Greenhouse Management
David Dumaresq, Farmer, Farmer Dave's
Crunching the Numbers to Crush Your Season
Curtis Stone, Green City Acres, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
Soil Fertility
Frank Magnan, PhD, Stockbridge School of Agriculture, UMass Amherst
Season Extension: Techniques and Tools
Greg Maslow, Farm Manager, Newton Community Farm
The Case for a Smarter and More Integrated Agriculture Industry
Henry Gordon Smith, Managing Director, Blue Planet Consulting
Session 4: 2:45-3:45 pm
Diversifying the Field: Stories From the Front Lines
Shani Dowd, Director of Culture InSight, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation (Facilitator)
Rose Gonzalez, Community Engagement Director, Groundwork Lawrence
Talib Toussaint Paskins, Food Justice and Market Manager, Gardening the Community
Anne Richmond, Co-Director of Administration and Finance, Gardening the Community
Youth and Entrepreneurship: Models for Success
Dave Maden,Founding Trustee, UFI (facilitator)
Michael Barnett, Professor of Science Education and Technology, Boston College
Ed Frechette, CIO, UTEC, Lowell
Maya Paul, YouthGROW, Worcester
Agribusiness, Outreach and Marketing
Michelle Cruz, Business Development & Outreach Manager, Farm Fresh Rhode Island
Georgina Sarong, Farmers Markets Program Manager, Farm Fresh Rhode Island
Boost Your Farm Power With Chickens!
Khrysti Smyth, Founder, Yardbirds Backyard Chickens
Intensive Crop Production Systems for Urban Farms
Curtis Stone, Green City Acres, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
Food Safety/FSMA: Everything You Need To Know
Michael Botelho, MDAR, Commonwealth Quality Director
Closing Keynote: 4:15- 5:15 pm
Civic Synergy and Urban Agriculture: Democratizing Food Production
Greg Watson, Director for Policy and Systems Design, Schumacher Center for a New Economics
Back by popular demand: Karen Washington, Co-Owner, Rise & Root Farm; Co-Founder, Black Urban Growers
More on Opening Keynote Presenter:
Curtis Stone, Green City Acres, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Returning to the MA Urban Farming Conference, Curtis will be the morning Keynote and will also lead several sessions throughout the day. He has traveled around the world, presenting 3-5 day workshops to help urban farmers become more successful and profitable; we are really excited that he will be with us for the 2017 UFC! Many of last year’s attendees have remarked on how they have incorporated techniques and best practices gleaned from his presentations, that said, March 4, 2017, you’ll have another opportunity to learn how you too can build a viable and profitable urban farming operation.
Rose Arruda, Urban Agriculture Coordinator, Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources
251 Causeway Street, Suite 500, Boston, MA 02114
Desk 617-626-1849
Cell: 617-851-3644
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Monday, March 6
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Ocean Photography: Inspiring Conservation," a lecture by Keith Ellenbogen, underwater photographer
Monday, March 6
5:00PM
Radcliffe, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
Introduction by John Huth, Codirector of the science program at the Radcliffe Institute and Donner Professor of Science in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Join acclaimed photographer Keith Ellenbogen as he showcases his beautiful and compelling images and stories of environmental and marine science expeditions from around the world. He will explore the artistry of ocean-based wildlife photography, the technical challenges of underwater environments, the intersection between art and conservation, and how photography can spark positive social change. Ellenbogen will also feature his recent exploratory work using high-speed photography and 360-degree immersive camera systems to capture images and stories in new and exciting ways.
This event is free and open to the public. Doors open at 4:45 p.m.; lecture begins at 5 p.m.
Part of the 2016–2017 Oceans Lecture Series. A larger, one-day public symposium on the topic took place on Friday, October 28, 2016.
Oceans Lecture Series
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CEE C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series - Professor Ashok Gadgil - INVENTING ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID: SOME LESSONS LEARNT
Monday, March 6
5:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building 1-190, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Professor Ashok Gadgil
The "bottom of the pyramid" is the largest and poorest socioeconomic group on the planet - billions of individuals who make less than USD 2.50 per day. Many grave problems faced by this population have technological solutions, but while the science is universal, specific technologies and their social placement are commonly quite different from what is applicable in the first world. Prof. Gadgil has a successful history of work in this area. In this seminar he will describe his approach and illustrate it with some of his work towards providing safe drinking water to this population.
C. C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series
CEE-DSS: C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series
The C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series, based in CEE, brings exciting speakers from around the world to the MIT community at large. For the full list of events, see: https://sites.google.com/site/mitcedss/cee-dss
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering
For more information, contact: Carol Burke
6173247780
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Askwith Forums: A Conversation with Anne Holton, Champion for Public Education
WHEN Monday, Mar. 6, 2017, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT Alumni, AskWith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME Roger Falcon
CONTACT EMAIL askwith_forums@gse.harvard.edu
CONTACT PHONE 617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS Speaker: Anne Holton, former secretary of education, Commonwealth of Virginia
Moderator: Deborah Jewell-Sherman, Ed.M.’92, Ed.D.’95, professor of practice, HGSE; former superintendent, Richmond Public Schools, Commonwealth of Virginia
Holton will be joined by Jewell-Sherman for a conversation about making a difference in the educational experiences and outcomes for all young people. Holton has devoted her career to serving as an advocate for Virginia’s families and children through a number of roles, including as a juvenile court judge, First Lady of Virginia, and Virginia’s Secretary of Education. She recently was appointed to Virginia's Board of Education. She also served as director of the Great Expectations program, an initiative that helps young people aging out of foster care obtain higher education through Virginia's community colleges. Holton, the wife of Senator Tim Kaine (VA), 2016 Democratic vice-presidential candidate, will share her perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing public education today.
This forum is held in conjunction with the Women in Education Leadership, Programs in Professional Education convening.
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Biology of Consciousness: William James to Richard Schultes and Beyond
Monday, March 6
6:00 PM
Harvard Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge,
DavÃd Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, Harvard Divinity School and the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Brian D. Farrell, Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; Professor of Biology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
How do biological and cultural forces shape the development of consciousness? In this interdisciplinary dialogue, Brian Farrell and DavÃd Carrasco will draw on the work of two earlier Harvard professors—psychologist William James and ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes—to consider whether culture is fundamentally biological, or whether the biology of consciousness is shaped by experience. The speakers will reflect on James’ “religious propensities” and Schultes’ study of psychoactive substances among Indigenous peoples in exploring the biological and cultural doors of perception.
Presented in collaboration with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology.
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Genomes are The Long Now -- w/ Mary Mangan
Monday, March 6
Doors open at 6pm. Program starts at 6:45pm.
Back Room at The Burren,247 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville
Price: $15.00 /per person includes free drink
Students free with school ID
Mary Mangan will speak on "Genomes are The Long Now".
The genomes of organisms around us today, and some of those that are no longer alive, carry crucial information about our past and also frame our future directions. In addition, it’s also becoming possible to “Revive and Restore” lost species. Organizing and visualizing DNA sequence data is key to using it effectively to understand the history of life of this planet, and for potentially using it to create new variations with impacts on our health and environment. In this talk, Mary Mangan will demonstrate how researchers currently access species genomic data in the UCSC Genome Browser (genome.ucsc.edu). Highlights of some revealing and important projects will be included, as well as some potential trip-wires in personal genomics data that services like 23andMe provide.
Mary has been fascinated with biology since spending summers at Hampton Beach engrossed by the tide pools. This led to degrees in Microbiology, Plant Cell Biology, and eventually a PhD in Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology. Moving to computational biology, bioinformatics and genomics as those fields emerged, she finds databases are the new tide pools for her. And new waves keep washing interesting things in. For some publications, you can see her Google Scholar profile [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rHeltqQAAAAJ].
The Long Now Boston Meetup Group is organizationally independent but philosophically aligned with The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. The mission of the organization is to encourage longterm thinking and responsibility and to inspire, cultivate and nurture a cultural re-imagination of the future. Long Now Meetup Groups are forming in cities around the world to celebrate this vision. Through events like this fans of the foundation engage with The Long Now's mission.
***Walk-ups are welcome and students are free, but please, if you know you are going, and paying, register early so we can plan accordingly.***
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Housing and Policy in an Aging America
WHEN Monday, Mar. 6, 2017, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Stubbins Room, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
SPEAKER(S) Ann Forsyth: Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design; and Principal Investigator, Health and Places Initiative (HAPI)
Ashish Jha: Professor of Health Policy, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director, Harvard Global Health Institute; and Internal Medicine physician, VA Boston Healthcare System
Emi Kiyota: 2017 Loeb Fellow and President and Founder of Ibasho, which partners with local organizations and communities to design and create socially integrated and sustainable communities that value their elders
DETAILS As the baby boom generation ages, the US population aged 65 and over is expected to grow from 48 million to 79 million, one in five Americans will be older than 65, and one in three households will be headed by someone older than 65. Surveys indicate that most of these people want to remain in the current homes for as long as possible. However, the country currently lacks the accessible housing units and supportive social services needed to accommodate these desires. Panelists will discuss the projected growth in older Americans and explore how policymakers, planners, and public health professionals could work to address the challenges that growth will produce.
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Tuesday, March 7 - Thursday, March 9
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Building Energy 2017
Tuesday, March 7 - Thursday, March 9
Seaport World Trade Center, Boston
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Tuesday, March 7
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CDD Forum: Talk & Book Signing with Camilo Jose Vergara, Tracking Time
Tuesday, March 7
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The MIT Dept of Urban Studies and Planning, City Design and Development group, is pleased to feature Photographer Camilo José Vergara to discuss his new book and the culmination of 40 years of work, Tracking Time: Documenting America's Post-Industrial Cities.
Spring 2017 City Design and Development Forum
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning, City Design and Development
For more information, contact: Sonny Oram
6172535115
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Miyazakiworld: Researching Popular Culture
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Susan Napier, Professor of Japanese Studies, Department of International Literary and Cultural Studies, Tufts University
Moderated by Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
COST Free and open to the public
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War and the Soundscapes of Memory
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Music
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Jeremy Eichler, 2016-2017 Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; Chief Classical Music Critic, Boston Globe
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS As the generation with a living memory of the Second World War recedes, Boston Globe music critic and cultural historian Jeremy Eichler asks us to open our ears. By exploring how the wartime past has been inscribed in music, Eichler makes the case for hearing history, and for reclaiming the power of sound as a unique carrier of meaning about the past. Register online and join us.
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Fingerprinting the oceans: A probabilistic assessment of 20th century sea-level
Tuesday, March 7
6:00 PM
Harvard Herbaria, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Carling Hay will join us in March to discuss her recent work using probabilistic assessments to better estimate 20th century sea-level.*
Recent estimates of 20th century global mean sea-level rise are in the range[masked] mm/yr. However, these estimates use a temporally and spatially sparse network of observations that may result in a biased estimate due to the incomplete sampling of a global field. In this talk I will present a multi-model Kalman smoother (KS) technique that addresses the above challenges. The techniques naturally accommodate spatio-temporal changes in the availability of observations and use models of the underlying physical processes responsible for sea-level change to exploit both the spatial and temporal information within the observations of the sparsely-sampled global field. Our results provide new estimates of the spatial and temporal variability in global mean sea level since 1900.
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David Herskovits, “Against Mastery: On Knowing and Not-Knowing in the Theater”
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017, 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Humanities, Lecture, Special Events, Theater
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Center at Harvard and the American Repertory Theater
SPEAKER(S) David Herskovits, Founder/Artistic Director, Target Margin Theater
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-0738
DETAILS Free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/against-mastery-knowing-and-not-knowing-theater
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Art/Protest/Value: A Book Launch and Panel Discussion
Tuesday, March 7
6:00p–8:00p
MIT, Building E-15, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
This visual arts summit offers an open discussion to explore how the visual arts provides lessons for understanding protest, value and change in todays volatile world.
This program serves as the book launch for The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, which is a collection of essays by 40 visual artists. The publication will be available for purchase at the event.
Panelists
Sharon Louden
Sharon M. Louden is an artist, educator, advocate for artists, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books.
Hrag Vartanian
Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, a publication he created in 2009 in response to the changes in the art world, publishing, and the distribution of information.
Julia Kunin
Julia Kunin lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.F.A. from The Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers. Julia Kunins work is represented by Sandra Gering Inc. Gallery where she had a solo show entitled Les Guerilleres, in 2015.
Moderator: Ian Condry
Professor, Global Studies and Languages, MIT, and author of The Soul of Anime and Hip-Hop Japan.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): List Visual Arts Center
For more information, contact: Emily Garner
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Opportunity
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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. 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/
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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