Sunday, March 05, 2017

Energy (and Other) Events - March 5, 2017

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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Details of all these events are available when you scroll past the Index.

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Monday, March 6
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12pm  Carbon Prices, Preferences, and the Timing of Uncertainty
4pm  Interpretable and Scalable Deep Learning
5pm  Ocean Photography: Inspiring Conservation," a lecture by Keith Ellenbogen, underwater photographer
5pm  CEE C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series - Professor Ashok Gadgil - INVENTING ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID: SOME LESSONS LEARNT
5pm  Filming the Future from Berlin: Noncitizen Perspectives on Refugees in Crisis
5:30pm  Askwith Forums: A Conversation with Anne Holton, Champion for Public Education
6pm  Biology of Consciousness: William James to Richard Schultes and Beyond
6pm  Genomes are The Long Now -- w/ Mary Mangan
6pm  Godel's Incompleteness Theorems
6:30pm  Housing and Policy in an Aging America

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Tuesday, March 7 - Thursday, March 9
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Building Energy 2017

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Tuesday, March 7
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8am  Harvard-MIT Regulatory Science Symposium (all-hands meeting)
Go Boston 2030’s Action Plan
12pm  Farai Chideya and Zack Exley: Understanding the Electorate
12pm  Embedded Dangers: Revisiting the Year 2000 Problem and the Politics of Technological Repair
12:30pm  CDD Forum: Talk & Book Signing with Camilo Jose Vergara, Tracking Time
12:30pm  Miyazakiworld: Researching Popular Culture
4pm  Climate, Oceans, Human Health, and Cholera
4:15pm  War and the Soundscapes of Memory
4:30pm  Albert H. Gordon Lecture: The New World Order, Call for a Coordinated Global Response
5:30pm  Learning, Adaptation, and Climate Uncertainty: Evidence from Indian Agriculture
5:30pm  VR@MIT Presents: Creating the Matrix in VR w/ the Co-Founder of Improbable
6pm  The Press & The Presidency
6pm  Fingerprinting the oceans: A probabilistic assessment of 20th century sea-level
6pm  David Herskovits, “Against Mastery: On Knowing and Not-Knowing in the Theater”
6pm  Soap Box: Higgs Boson and Neutrinos
6pm  Art/Protest/Value: A Book Launch and Panel Discussion
6pm  INSIDE ELECTIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL VOTE
6:30pm  Dr. Willie Soon: Climate Change Realism - Greater Boston Tea Party

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Wednesday, March 8
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7:30am  Infrastructure, Smart Cities & Transportation Workshop
12pm A high-resolution look at the human cell: Introducing the Human Cell Atlas 
12pm  Racial Reconcilliation and Community Building in Mississippi
12:30pm  Thinking. Visually. Together.
12:30pm  The Transformation of Bogota
4pm  In search of a "Trump Doctrine": Change and Continuity in American Foreign Policy
4:51pm  On the Costs and Benefits of Mandatory Labeling, with Special Reference to Genetically Modified Foods (Cass Sunstein)
6pm  The Internet, Invisible Aircraft & Robots: The Future of Defense is Now

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Thursday, March 9
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11:45am  Food for Thought:  How a Greener Diet Can Transform you and the Planet
12pm  Climate Strategy During the Trump Years
4pm  Lecture Series : Talk by Dr. Simon Choong, International Desalination Association
4pm  Workshop on the Sustainability of the World's Food and Farming Systems
4pm  Sausage Making - The Art of Passing Clean Energy Legislation. A Case Study in Success: How Massachusetts Is Becoming #1 in Off-shore Wind Generation in the U.S.
4pm  Moscow and the Middle East: What Does Putin Want?
6pm  What Matters to Kids: Children & the News
6pm  Smarter in the City Pitch & Demo Night
6:30pm  Sustainability Collaborative with Neal Gupta
6:30pm  Women Take the Reel Film Festival screening of Jackson w/ film maker Maisie Crow
7pm  How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
7pm  MIT Hacking VR Speaker Series - The Art and Science of VR: A Conversation Between Storytellers and Scientists
7pm  Social Justice and the Built Environment

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Friday, March 10
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10am  MIT Reuse and Repair Fair
12pm  Water-Food- Climate Squeeze: Can we (Bio)Engineer Our Way Out?
3pm  Unlikely Partners:  Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China
4pm  #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media
5pm  What to Do, How to Live: Personal Activism for a Threatened Planet

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Saturday, March 11
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10am  Hack the Future of Agriculture and Water Systems
4:30pm  ACLU Resistance Training
8pm  Festival Jazz Celebrates Dominique Eade

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Monday, March 13
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12pm  PAOC Colloquium - Prof. Michael Tippett (Columbia University)
6pm  ACT MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES
6:30pm  A Cure for Alzheimer's Disease, 20 Years Early
7pm  Beauty and the Beast:  Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World
7pm  Refreezing the Permafrost

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Tuesday, March 14
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12pm  An Introduction to Media Cloud: Mapping the attention and influence of news
1pm  Saving Environment with IoT: Smart Watering with Predix
5:30pm  Innovating: A Doer's Manifesto
5:30pm  Exploring Class and Classism
6pm  Boston New Technology March 2017 Startup Showcase #BNT75
6:30pm  Faculty Speaker: Toward An Artificial Brain

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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:


On "Zinke's nixing of lead ammo ban may seem trivial, but lead poisoning kills 10 million animals…

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Monday, March 6
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Carbon Prices, Preferences, and the Timing of Uncertainty
Monday, March 6
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge 

with Gernot Wagner, Research Associate, Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy, and Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy, HKS. Lunch is provided. 

Energy Policy Seminar 

Contact Name:   Louisa Lund

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Interpretable and Scalable Deep Learning
Monday, March 6
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin G115, 33 Oxford St, Cambridge

Jimmy Ba, University of Toronto
Deep learning has transformed how we solve many of the core artificial intelligence tasks, including object recognition, speech processing, and machine translation, by using “black box” large-scale neural networks trained for weeks or months.  But to build a reliable, scalable and practical intelligence system reaching human-level performance, we need to address two of the most fundamental challenges in deep learning: interpretability and efficient learning.  In this talk, I will discuss my works that confront these challenges by first introducing a broad new class of visual attention models that can automatically discover human-like gazing patterns, and a new learning algorithm for these models by making connections between reinforcement learning and approximate probabilistic inference.  I will show the attention-based models can add a degree of interpretability to the current “black box” deep learning approaches.  I will then present a novel optimization algorithm that leverages distributed computing to significantly shortening the training time of the state-of-the-art large-scale neural networks with tens of millions of parameters.  I will discuss that how the advances in attention-based models and optimization algorithms can be successfully applied to domains such as computer vision, natural language processing, reinforcement learning and computational biology.

Speaker Bio:  Jimmy Ba is a PhD candidate supervised by Professor Geoffrey Hinton at the University of Toronto.  He also previously received a BASc (2011) and a MASc (2013) from the University of Toronto under Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Brendan Frey.  He is a recipient of the Facebook Graduate Fellowship.  His primary research interests are in the areas of machine learning, numerical optimization and neural networks.  During his PhD, he developed various novel visual attention models that are more expressive and interpretable than the standard convolutional neural networks.  He is broadly interested in questions related to sample efficient deep learning, reinforcement learning and Bayesian statistics.

Computer Science Colloquium Series

Contact: Gioia Sweetland
Phone: 617-495-2919

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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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Filming the Future from Berlin: Noncitizen Perspectives on Refugees in Crisis
Monday, March 6
5:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Damani Partridge
With students from Canada, the UK, the US, and over 15 refugees from Syria, Damani Partridge spent over a month making short films about pity, solidarity, flight, depression, gentrification, and the (im)possibility of simultaneously being an artist and a refugee. The first screening at Berlin's Moviemento theater was filled to capacity.

Open to: the general public
Cost: 0 
Sponsor(s): MIT Global Studies and Languages
For more information, contact:  Lisa Hickler
617-452-2676

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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 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,

Davíd 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 Davíd 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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Godel's Incompleteness Theorems
Monday, March 6
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Google, 355 Main Street, Cambridge 

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems are among the most famous results in modern mathematics.  They are often informally stated as follows:
1. Any formal system that can express elementary arithmetic contains statements that are "true but not provable".
2. Any consistent formal system that can express elementary arithmetic cannot prove its own consistency.

These informal statements, however, often raise more questions than they answer.  What exactly is a "formal system"? What does it mean for a statement to be "true but not provable"?  What does it mean to "express arithmetic", and why does arithmetic have anything to do with proof or consistency?

This talk will introduce the audience to the main ideas behind the incompleteness theorems.  We'll discuss the historical context in which the incompleteness theorems were discovered, develop the concepts necessary to properly understand what the theorems actually say, and present a sketch of the theorems' proof.

References: 

Bio:  Scott Sanderson is a Senior Engineer at Quantopian, where he is responsible for designing and implementing Python APIs for algorithmic trading. Prior to working at Quantopian, Scott studied Mathematics and Philosophy at Williams College, where he maintained an interest in the logical foundations of mathematics and computer science.

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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
SAVE on registration with orinituibak code:   BOS17FRIENDOFNESEA
Free trade show pass with promotional code:  BOS17FREETRADESHOW 

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Tuesday, March 7
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Harvard-MIT Regulatory Science Symposium (all-hands meeting)
Tuesday, March 7
8:00 AM – 5:30 PM EST
American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 136 Irving Street, Cambridge

Contact: hits@harvard.edu
This all-day day symposium will gather together the Boston-area community in regulatory science. The program will feature faculty speakers from multiple institutions across the full spectrum of regulatory science activities and will include active, moderated discussion to identify where the Center should focus in the coming year. 
The FDA defines regulatory science as “the science of developing new tools, standards, and approaches to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of all FDA-regulated products.” Within this guidance regulatory science will require many elements of translational medicine including innovation in measurement, trials focused on evidence generation and analysis of policies and their impact. This all-hands meeting will promote dialogue among Center members and build connections to other individuals in the broader research community. A summary paper will capture the major findings of the meeting and our agreed priority areas for 2017. 
If you are interested in speaking at this event, please contact Laura as soon as possible (laura_maliszewski@hms.harvard.edu).

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Go Boston 2030’s Action Plan
Tuesday, March 7
Boston Public Libray, Copley Square, Boston

The City’s long-range transportation plan could reshape our climate and our access to jobs, education, and opportunity. This all-day release event at the Boston Public Library’s main Copley Square site will feature Mayor Walsh at 11 am, a panel with transportation leaders at 6 pm, and all-day displays.

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Farai Chideya and Zack Exley: Understanding the Electorate
WHEN  Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S)  Farai Chideya and Zack Exley
DETAILS  Farai Chideya, Joan Shorenstein Fellow, senior writer at FiveThirtyEight.
Farai Chideya has covered every election since 1996 for outlets including CNN, NPR, and, in 2016, FiveThirtyEight, where she is a senior writer. Chideya is the author of six books, including Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters, The Color of Our Future and Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation about African-Americans. She was the founder and editor of PopandPolitics.com in 1995, an early political website and journalism training institute. She was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in the spring of 2012 and graduated from Harvard College in 1990. While at the Shorenstein Center, Chideya will write about the role of race and gender in political press coverage in 2016.
Zack Exley, Joan Shorenstein Fellow, political and technology consultant, advisor to Bernie Sanders’ campaign
Zack Exley is a political and technology consultant who worked as a senior advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign. He has worked as a labor organizer for SEIU, UAW and AFL-CIO, organizing director at MoveOn.org, director of online organizing and communications for John Kerry’s presidential campaign, co-founder and president of New Organizing Institute, and chief community officer and chief revenue officer for the Wikimedia Foundation. He has also worked at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy. While at the Shorenstein Center, Exley will write about the role of the news media in creating narratives around conservative Christians and secular progressives.

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Embedded Dangers: Revisiting the Year 2000 Problem and the Politics of Technological Repair
Tuesday, March 7
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C (Room 2036, second floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2017/03/Mulvin at 12:00 pm

with Dylan Mulvin, Postdoctoral Researcher at MSR New England 
More than any other recent event, the Year 2000 problem (better known as the Y2K bug) established the public awareness of the temporal and calendrical contingencies of computer systems. This talk revisits the Y2K bug to see what lessons can be drawn from this (non) event. Using archival research conducted at the Charles Babbage Institute, this talk undertakes an analysis of the Year 2000 Problem and the large-scale practices of technological repair and management that addressed it.

By recovering the organized response to the perceived threat of the Y2K bug, this project treats the crisis as one of the greatest, public-facing attempts to educate and train individuals and organizations to manage the unforeseen and potentially devastating effects old code can have on contemporary computerized infrastructures.

About Dylan
Dylan Mulvin is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a member of the Social Media Collective. He joined the collective after completing his PhD at McGill University. Dylan is a historian of technology, media, and computing whose work investigates the design and maintenance of new technologies.  He examines how engineers, scientists, technicians, and bureaucrats make decisions about how to develop shared understandings of the world.

He has published on  the history of video technology, television, and standards, and his work appears in Television & New Media, The Journal of Visual Culture, and The International Journal of Communication. He is co-editor, with Jonathan Sterne, of a special section of the IJOC on temperature and media studies. At MSRNE he is working on a history of the Year 2000 Problem, better known as the Y2K bug. This history attempts to recuperate the Y2K bug as a major repair event, an often overlooked milestone in public computer pedagogy, and one of the greatest recent efforts to train individuals, community groups, and policy makers in the management of precarious technological systems. A second project considers the history of light mitigation technologies—blue-blocking glasses and “night modes” for electronic devices—and the ethics and political implications of accounting for pain and harm in interface design.

Dylan’s research program combines methods from media studies, the history of technology, and infrastructure studies to show how technologies are made to appear seamless. His work shows how large-scale systems are built on decisions about micro-scale materials and protocols by drawing on archival methods to reveal how those who make new technologies model the world in usable ways. Infrastructures and standards shape what can be said and what can be represented and these systems are built on assumptions about the kinds of worlds we want to represent. To uncover these assumptions, this research studies the backstage negotiations that are necessary to make arbitrary decisions appear objective.

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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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Climate, Oceans, Human Health, and Cholera
WHEN  Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017, 4 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Northwest Building B101, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Planetary Health Alliance, Harvard Center for the Environment
SPEAKER(S)  Dr. Rita Colwell
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Erika Veidis, erikaveidis@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS  Lecture with a reception to follow.
Dr. Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation, is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Colwell’s research interests are focused on global infectious diseases, water, and health. She is currently developing an international network to address emerging infectious diseases and water issues, including safe drinking water for both the developed and developing world.

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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
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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Albert H. Gordon Lecture: The New World Order, Call for a Coordinated Global Response
WHEN  Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2017, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Malkin Penthouse, 79 JFK Street Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S)  Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Finance Minister of Indonesia
DETAILS  Against the backdrop of the New World Order, characterized by the rise of nationalism and protectionism, Indonesia has shown renewed commitment to global cooperation, while aggressively pursuing shared prosperity to improve the lives of all its people. Given its economic relevance and its strategic geographical position, what happens in Indonesia matters to the world. Indonesia is home to a quarter billion people, is the world’s largest predominantly Muslim nation, and is a member of the G20 with a trillion dollar economy. What is the response of Indonesia to the New World Order? How can global leaders respond to current events without destroying the engines of global prosperity? Addressing these questions is Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who is often included in the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful women. Prior to reclaiming her current position in 2016, Indrawati led the operations of the World Bank for six years as Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer. She also currently holds the Chairmanship of the Development Committee of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The Albert H. Gordon Lecture (est. 1987) focuses on the fields of finance and public policy with special attention to the internationalization of finance. Albert H. Gordon was instrumental in the rebuilding of the Wall Street firm, Kidder Peabody, after the stock market crash of 1929.

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Learning, Adaptation, and Climate Uncertainty: Evidence from Indian Agriculture
Tuesday, March 7
5:30 PM
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge

Namrata Kala is the 2015 Prize Fellow in Economics at Harvard University. Her research interests are environmental and development economics. Her current research projects include studying how firms and households learn about and adapt to environmental change, private sector returns to environmental technologies, and the returns to worker training and incentives.

She received her PhD in environmental economics from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale. She also holds a BA (Honors) in Economics from Delhi University, and an MA International and Development Economics from Yale University.

Abstract: The profitability of many agricultural decisions made in the developing world depends on farmers' abilities to predict the weather. In this paper, I study how farmers learn about a weather-dependent decision, the optimal planting time, using rainfall signals. To capture the potential uncertainty caused by climate change, I develop an empirical framework to estimate, and find support for, a general robust learning model in which farmers believe that the rainfall signals they observe are drawn from an unknown member of a set of (unspecified) stochastic processes near an approximating model. My estimates show that the learning behavior described by the model allows farmers to adapt more optimally (form better forecasts) relative to standard Bayesian learning which does not account for model misspecification.

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VR@MIT Presents: Creating the Matrix in VR w/ the Co-Founder of Improbable
Tuesday, March 7
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
MIT Stata Center, Room 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

If you haven't heard of Improbable, you're missing one of the most important VR companies in the world. There's a reason this London based company has raised $20M from Andreesen Horowitz and formed a groundbreaking partnership with Google. As described by Wired, Improbable technology will enable the recreation of the real world in VR. Improbable's tech could make the matrix a reality.

Come meet Co-Founder and CTO, Rob Whitehead, as he discusses the history of mass scale simulation and how Improbable is changing everything. Food will be provided. This lecture is open to the public. RSVP via Eventbrite is required for admission.

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The Press & The Presidency
Tuesday March 7  
6:00pm
Harvard, JFK Jr Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

Josh Earnest, White House Press Secretary (2014-2017)
Jessica Yellin (via Skype), Senior Fellow, USC Annenberg School of Journalism
Chief White House Correspondent for CNN in Washington, D.C.(2011 to 2013)
Harvard College ‘93
David Gergen (moderator), Public Service Professor of Public Leadership and
Co-Director, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School

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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.

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Soap Box: Higgs Boson and Neutrinos
Tuesday, March 7
6:00p–7:30p
MIT, Buildling N51, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Markus Klute, Associate Professor of Physics, MIT and Janet Conrad, Professor of Physics, MIT

Quantum Quandaries and Other Heavy Matters 
Join us for one or all three salon-style Soap Box Series events held 6-7:30 pm at the MIT Museum. Meet new people and learn about current research in the field. 

Moderator: David Kaiser, Professor of the History of Science, Professor of Physics, MIT 

Look at some of the stranger and more mysterious aspects of the physical universe, and add your voice to the discussion.

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free 
Sponsor(s): MIT Museum
For more information, contact:  Jennifer Novotney
6173247313

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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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INSIDE ELECTIONS AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL VOTE
Tuesday, March 7
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Cambridge Innovation Center Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
Cost:  $8 - $12

The Latest Research on Getting Environmentalists to Vote
Environmentalists aren’t voting as much as they ought to, but some recent advances offer hope for the future. Big data has completely revolutionized how modern political campaigns target and communicate with voters, and a new generation of behavioral scientists has thoroughly changed our understanding of why and how people decide to vote. These changes present a large number of counter-intuitive and exciting discoveries, while also suggesting both good and bad news for the environmental movement. With fresh data from the 2016 Presidential election, Nathaniel Stinnett will discuss how modern political campaigns identify and mobilize voters, and how that impacts environmental policy at the local, state, and federal level.

About Our Speaker
Nathaniel Stinnett is the Founder & CEO of the Environmental Voter Project, a non-partisan nonprofit that uses big data analytics and behavioral science to identify non-voting environmentalists and then get them to vote. Recently dubbed “The Voting Guru” by Grist Magazine, Stinnett was named one of the country’s 50 environmental visionaries. He has held a variety of senior leadership and campaign manager positions on US Senate, Congressional, statewide, and mayoral campaigns, and Stinnett is a frequent expert speaker on political strategy for campaign management trainings, issue-advocacy nonprofits, and top universities. Formerly an attorney at the international law firm of DLA Piper LLP, he is also widely recognized for this work as a land-use, environmental, and real estate attorney. Stinnett holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

The Environmental Voter Project Website:  http://www.environmentalvoter.org

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Dr. Willie Soon: Climate Change Realism - Greater Boston Tea Party
Tuesday, March 7
6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Lir Irish Pub & Restaurant, 903 Boylston Street, Boston

Professor Dr. Soon gives a multi-media presentation on the myths of Anthropogenic Climate Change

Dr. Soon will be one of the speakers (as was last month's guest, Tom Wysmuller) at the ICCC 12, March 23-24 in Washington DC, titled "Resetting US Climate Policy"

About Dr. Soon:  Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist and geoscientist, is a leading authority on the relationship between solar phenomena and global climate. Dr. Soon’s research specialty is the influence of changes in solar activity on the Earth’s climate and the study of solar-type stars. Since 1991, together with many distinguished co-authors, he has written more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and two scholarly books on these and related topics. His discoveries challenge computer modelers and advocates who consistently underestimate solar influences on cloud formation, ocean currents, and wind that cause climate to change. He has faced and risen above unethical and often libelous attacks on his research and his character, becoming one of the world’s most respected and influential voices for climate realism. 

Climate changes. Yes. But is it driven by human activity - is it "man made global warming?" This debate has been going on for decades, and it manifests itself in our governments (in)sincere attempt to "never let a [fabricated] crisis go to waste."

Mayor Marty Walsh and former Secretary of State John Kerry announced last June that Boston would host a climate summit between the US and China. (Mayor Walsh, Secretary Kerry Announce Boston Will Host 2017 US-China Climate Leaders Summit, City of Boston).

Traditional Boston Meeting notes:

We will again have a social hour at 6:30 pm and have the meeting begin at 7:30 pm.

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Wednesday, March 8
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Infrastructure, Smart Cities & Transportation Workshop
Wednesday, March 8
7:30a–7:00p
MIT, Building E52, 6th floor, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

Hosted by the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Parsons, the workshop will explore how the work conducted at MIT is applied within the engineering industry. As part of a collaboration between MIT and Parsons, the workshop will consist of presentations from MIT faculty about their research relating to infrastructure, smart cities and transportation, as well as brief talks from representatives from Parsons.

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
For more information, contact:  Allison Dougherty
6172537127 

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A high-resolution look at the human cell: Introducing the Human Cell Atlas 
Wednesday, March 8
12 noon Eastern
Webinar

Resolving the spatial distribution of the human proteome at a subcellular level greatly increases our understanding of human biology and disease. A high-resolution map of the human cell has been generated—part of the Human Protein Atlas database—that provides the in situ localization of 12,036 human proteins at a single-cell level, covering 30 subcellular structures, and enabling 14 major organelle proteomes to be defined. The high spatial resolution of the data has allowed the identification of novel protein components in all major organelles, as well as the characterization of fine cellular structures such as the cytokinetic bridge and nuclear bodies. An integrative approach to data generation includes strict validation criteria using gene silencing, paired antibodies, and fluorescently tagged proteins. The Cell Atlas reveals that approximately half of all proteins localize to multiple compartments and that many proteins show cell-to-cell variation in terms of protein abundance or spatial distribution. In this webinar, we will introduce the new Human Cell Atlas, outlining how it is being used to define the spatiotemporal organization of the human proteome at a subcellular level.

During the webinar, viewers will learn about:

The generation of the Human Cell Atlas and how its data was validated
The process for identification and characterization of the organelle proteomes
The identification and localization of proteins, particularly those showing complex distribution and cell-to-cell variations in expression.
The speakers will be available to answer your questions live during the broadcast!

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Racial Reconcilliation and Community Building in Mississippi
WHEN  Wednesday, Mar. 8, 2017, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Hauser Hall, Room 104, Harvard Law campus, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mississippi Delta Project, Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S)  Melody Frierson, William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation
DETAILS  Join us for lunch and a discussion with Melody Frierson, Youth Engagement Coordinator at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. Melody will present on the Winter Institute’s innovative programs to support a movement of racial equity and wholeness, focusing on the power of youth engagement to build the next generation of social justice advocates and leaders.

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Thinking. Visually. Together.
Wednesday, March 8
12:30 - 1:30pm
Lesley, University Hall Lower Level, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Artist and curator Deborah Davidson, biologist Albert Liau, and scientist, artist and activist David Morimoto

Visual Literacy Institute Fellows, Deborah Davidson and Albert Liau will engage with Professor David Morimoto, to explore ideas of visual literacy through the “lens” of patterns in nature. Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. As infants, we learn to read images months before we become verbal and years before we attempt to become fluent in written language. From a young age, a great deal of educational emphasis is placed on identifying words and understanding their meanings. We also need to learn to identify, read, and understand images – to become literate in visual language – in order to participate effectively in our increasingly image-saturated culture. 

David Morimoto
 received his PhD in Biology with a focus on animal behavior, ecology, and conservation biology from Boston University. He currently directs Lesley University’s Natural Science and Mathematics Division and teaches courses in research, natural history, complexity, and biology. He has studied birds in Massachusetts and South America and is currently doing urban ecology studies of birds in Cambridge. He has traveled extensively in exploration of the natural history of the world. He was elected as an inaugural National Leadership fellow of the SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities) program in 2008 and co-developed a national award winning semester long study abroad program to Guyana, South America. His interests include natural history, teaching, complexity theory, writing, indigenous knowledge as it intersects with modern science, drawing, sculpting, and poetry. He is currently working on a book entitled Random Walk in a Small World, which will focus on the unifying features of nature and how new perspectives incorporating this understanding are needed to help us solve the critical problems of our time.

Albert Liau
 
Drawing upon a background in social enterprise, Liau endeavors to infuse design thinking and Lean Startup methodologies into higher education pedagogical practices. He currently teaches Biology and Environmental Science classes in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Lesley University, where he is Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Lesley University.

Deborah Davidson is a curator, artist and educator. Deborah received her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University and B.A. from Binghamton University. She is founder and director of Catalyst Conversations, devoted to the dialogue between art and science. She also teaches, maintains a studio practice and directs the Suffolk University Gallery. Her work is in many private and public collections, including Yale University, Wellesley College, Boston Public Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Houghton Library, Harvard University. She has had solo exhibitions at the Danforth Museum of Art, Kingston Gallery, Oresman Gallery, Smith College and the Nesto Gallery, Milton Academy. Awards include Finalist, Brother Thomas Fellowship, Artist in Residence, Northeastern University, and a Berkshire Taconic A.R.T. grant.


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The Transformation of Bogota
Wednesday, March 8
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 9-451, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Join us at the first lecture of the DesignX Entrepreneurs in Design Lecture Series.

The Transformation of Bogota
Bogota is undertaking an ambitious plan to transform its ecological structure into a series of public parks that dramatically alter the accessibility of public space and nature to its 9 million inhabitants. The plan, if successful, will triple the ratio of effective public space in the city. Taller 301 is working with the municipality and the Mayor of Bogotá in the designs of the main ecological structure by blurring the lines between urban planning and landscape design. 
Taller 301´s lecture will explain the bases of the plan and show some of the projects being designed at this precise moment 

Taller 301
Architects Julian Restrepo and Pablo Forero founded Taller 301in Bogotá, Colombia. They are a team of people who are developing creative ideas adjusting to context and constraints. They don’t have a style, but rather a method. A team fascinated with the transformative power of ideas and how they can help improve people’s lives. 
Their practice has led them to work in Ukraine, Peru and Russia. However, recent socio economic and political developments have shifted their focus back to Colombia. The country is currently undergoing an important transition from decades of internal civil war to a stable post-conflict era. Taller 301 is trying to build new inclusive and ambitious projects that motivate deep and lasting socio-economic and cultural transformations. 
Today, they are working with the municipality of Bogotá on the transformation of the main ecological structure of the city into a series of public parks that change the relationship between nature and the city´s inhabitants.

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In search of a "Trump Doctrine": Change and Continuity in American Foreign Policy
WHEN  Wednesday, Mar. 8, 2017, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Littauer Faculty Dining Room (FDR), 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S)  IOP Fellow Jon Finer
COST  Free and open to the public
DETAILS  President Trump's foreign policy views have been much-debated but remain largely inchoate. His career prior to the presidency leaves few clues as to what his approach to national security issues might be. The campaign that brought him to power largely focused on domestic issues. And the opening days of any president's tenure are probably not the best time to draw firm conclusions.
The study group will examine the Trump Administration's nascent foreign policy, as it unfolds in real-time, by focusing on at six traditional areas of focus: Russia, the Middle East (Syria and Iran), Climate Change, Asia, and trade policy. In each case, students will discuss and seek to understand the Obama Administration's approach, and assess early indications of (and implications for) continuity and change by the Trump Administration. An objective would be, by the end of the study group, for students to be able to describe the new Administration's foreign policy with as much precision as possible and to distill from this examination what could someday come to be known as a "Trump Doctrine," encapsulating the new Administration's worldview.

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On the Costs and Benefits of Mandatory Labeling, with Special Reference to Genetically Modified Foods (Cass Sunstein)
WHEN  Wednesday, Wed, March 8, 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)  Cass Sunstein

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The Internet, Invisible Aircraft & Robots: The Future of Defense is Now
Wednesday March 8
6:00pm
Harvard, JFK Jr Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

A conversation with
Dr. Steven H. Walker, Acting Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Michael Sulmeyer (Moderator)
Director, Cyber Security Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

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Thursday, March 9
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Food for Thought:  How a Greener Diet Can Transform you and the Planet
Thursday, March 9
11:45AM
MIT, Building E62-250, 100 Main Street, Cambridge

What:  Dr. Joanne Kong has been praised throughout the country as an advocate for plant-based nutrition, centered ethically in raising awareness that greater compassion for animals and our planet is vitally necessary for transformative growth and positive world change. This presentation addresses the critical impacts that animal agriculture and meat consumption have upon the environment, the sustainability of our plant, and our health. Going greener with your diet is an opportunity to become more consciously aware of our choices and connections to the world around us, and create powerful, positive change. Joanne Kong has been praised throughout the country as an advocate for plant-based nutrition, with recent presentations at Yale University, Tufts University, Ohio State University and Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Climate Strategy During the Trump Years
Thursday, March 9
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford

Ken Kimmell, President, Union of Concerned Scientists
The presidency of Donald Trump poses significant uncertainty about the extent to which the United States will continue to make progress on addressing climate change. Ken Kimmell will explore how the incoming administration might rollback policies that have been put in place to address climate change, and make it more difficult for future administrations to address the issue. He will also discuss the progress that is being made in states and regions of the country and the improving economics of clean energy. He will highlight the strategies that the Union of Concerned Scientists and others are likely to employ to limit the damage to our climate objectives and build upon the progress that is being made.

Ken Kimmell is the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based nonprofit that combines the knowledge and influence of the scientific community with the passion of concerned citizens to build a healthy planet and a safer world. Mr. Kimmell has more than 30 years of experience in government, environmental policy, and advocacy. He is a national advocate for clean energy and transportation policies and a driving force behind UCS's "Power Ahead" campaign to build a large and diverse group of clean energy leadership states. Prior to joining UCS he was the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), Mr. Kimmell has also served as general counsel at the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's administration, and spent 17 years as the director and senior attorney at a Boston-based law firm specializing in environmental, energy, and land-use issues. He earned his bachelor's degree at Wesleyan University and his law degree at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Watch it live from your computer or smart phone:

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Lecture Series : Talk by Dr. Simon Choong, International Desalination Association
Thursday, March 9
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Buiding 4-231,

Speaker: Dr. Simon Choong
International Desalination Association's Young Leaders Program (YLP) allows emerging desalination leaders to connect, advance their careers, and promote interest in desalination around the world. The goals of this exciting initiative are to help promote opportunities in the industry, support career advancement, and provide a forum for communication and the exchange of ideas among young professionals and the industry at large. Come join Simon Choong, the Regional Coordinator in North America, to learn more about the opportunities with YLP.

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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Workshop on the Sustainability of the World's Food and Farming Systems
WHEN  Thursday, Mar. 9, 2017, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, GCIS South Building, 1730 Cambridge Street, Room S250, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
SPEAKER(S)  Nina Gheihman
Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology Department, Harvard University.
CONTACT INFO Heather Conrad
DETAILS  Veganism in Vogue?
Comparing a Cultural Practice in the United States, France, and Israel

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Sausage Making - The Art of Passing Clean Energy Legislation. A Case Study in Success: How Massachusetts Is Becoming #1 in Off-shore Wind Generation in the U.S.
Thursday, March 9
4:00PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer 275, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

with Michael A. Costello, Partner at Smith, Costello & Crawford, and Matthew Morrissey, Vice President, Deepwater Wind
This is Session 5 of the series Get Out in Front of the Mob and Call it a Parade: What Electric Utility Executives and Those Who Regulate Them Can Do to Accelerate Adoption of Clean Energy. The series is led by John DeVillars, Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

In the summer of 2016 the Massachusetts Legislature passed and Governor Baker signed into law the Omnibus Energy Bill which requires Massachusetts utilities to purchase 1600MW of electricity from wind farms to be constructed off the coast of Massachusetts over the next 6-8 years. This will be the largest portfolio of off-shore wind projects in the country and represents the most significant advance in wind energy development in the United States since the creation of the wind energy production tax credit 25 years ago. The architects and engineers of the strategy that produced this result will present a behind-the-scenes look on how they got the job done. It's a terrific story that provides valuable lessons for what it takes to pass clean energy legislation in a complex political environment.

Electric Utility Study Group

Contact Name:   Dan Peckham

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Moscow and the Middle East: What Does Putin Want?
Thursday, March 9
4:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building E40-496, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Mark Katz
Putin's fear of "democratic revolutions" as well as the Obama Administration's pullback from the Middle East gave Moscow both motive and opportunity to pursue an assertive policy in this region. But aside from intervening in Syria in defense of the Assad regime against its opponents, Moscow has sought to avoid firmly choosing sides in the region's many other conflicts and rivalries. Moscow has sought instead to build and maintain good relations with opposing sides. Why Putin has taken this approach, how successful it has been, and what Moscow's prospects in the region during the Trump era are will be discussed in this talk by long time Russia-Middle East observer, Mark N. Katz.

Focus on Russia 
Focus on Russia is a speaker series highlighting events of interest concerning Russia and the rest of the world.

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Security Studies Program
For more information, contact:  Harlene Miller
617-258-6531

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What Matters to Kids: Children & the News
Thursday March 9
6:00pm
Harvard, JFK Jr Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

Jill Abramson, Former Executive Editor, The New York Times
Noah Oppenheim, President, NBC News   
Sacha Pfeiffer, Journalist, Boston Globe
Jim Steyer, Founder & CEO, CommonSense.org 
Richard Weissbourd, Senior Lecturer on Education and Faculty Director, Human Development and Psychology, Harvard Graduate of School of Education
Nicco Mele (moderator), Director, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

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Smarter in the City Pitch & Demo Night
Thursday, March 9
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, 2300 Washington Street, 2nd 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
Mbadika

Judges
Amiee Sprung
Meredith McPherron

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Sustainability Collaborative with Neal Gupta
Thursday, March 9
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Venture Cafe at Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th floor, 1 Broadway, Cambridge

This presentation by Neal Gupta will discuss evidence of global climate change through visual construction of some key indicators: sea ice, sea level, CO2, global temperature; also images from representative locations. The talk will explore the geochemical basis for transformation of plant derived organic matter upon burial, the formation of non-renewable energy resource in sediments and the onset of petroleum generation.
The largest producers of energy related CO2-China, USA and India contribute approximately 28%, 15% and 6% of global CO2 emissions. Two of these, India and China are developing nations with a large economic footprint also. 

The evidence, cause, effects and signs of climate change will be presented and the solutions that scientist agree upon through energy innovations, mitigations and adaptations.

The Sustainability Collaborative was spurred as an outgrowth of the Sustainability unConference and aims to provide an ongoing platform for collaboration, connections, and solutions generation. Rotating sustainability advocates are given the chance to facilitate group discussion around central sustainability themes ranging from hunger alleviation to impact investing. The goal is to raise awareness within the innovation community while strengthening the social impact ecosystem.

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Women Take the Reel Film Festival screening of Jackson w/ film maker Maisie Crow
Thursday, March 9
6:30p–9:30p
MIT, Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Pizza will be served at 6:30, Film screening begins at 7:00pm 

Speaker: Maisie Crow
Jackson is an intimate, unprecedented look at the lives of three women caught up in the complex issues surrounding abortion access. Set against the backdrop of the fight to close the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson captures the essential and hard truth of the lives at the center of the debate over reproductive healthcare in America.

Women Take the Reel Film Festival 
WOMEN TAKE THE REEL is a FREE roaming film festival SPONSORED BY: MIT Program in Women's and Gender Studies; the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies; Boston College Women's and Gender Studies Program; Boston University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; Brandeis University Women's and Gender Studies Program; Northeastern University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; Simmons College Department of Women's and Gender Studies; Tufts University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; UMass Boston Women's and Gender Studies Department; Emerson College Department of Visual and Media Arts; and Lesley University.

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and open to the public
Sponsor(s): WGS, Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies
For more information, contact:  Emily Neill
617-253-2642

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How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
Thursday March 9
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline

In her new book, psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett sheds light on the science of emotion – its relationship to rational thought, individuals’ control over their urges, and the broader implications emotionality has for life.

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MIT Hacking VR Speaker Series - The Art and Science of VR: A Conversation Between Storytellers and Scientists
Thursday, March 9
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
MIT, Building E14-633 , 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge

How does our brain react to VR? How can neurobiology help us tell more effective stories? What can scientists learn from VR storytelling? And how do creative VR makers work with scientists to push the limits of immersive experiences?
What are the affordances and impact of VR from narrative and scientific perspectives?
This interdisciplinary panel brings together VR creators whose stories focus on real human lived conditions, Arnaud Colinart of Notes on Blindness and Kalina Bertin of Manic, with two researchers who explore the impact of VR on the brain, Mayank R. Mehta, professor of neurobiology and Heidi Boisvert, creative technologist and artist.
About the Speakers:
Arnaud Colinart is Creative Director and Co-Producer of the award-winning VR experience Notes On Blindness (Sundance New Frontier 2016, Kaleido VR Festival, Tribeca Film Festival 2016, SXSW 2017 Innovation Awards VR/AR Finalist) which offers a journey into a world beyond sight, through the diary recordings of a man slowly going blind. Colinart is producer and creative director at AGAT Films & Cie / EX NIHILO, an award winning production company based in Paris, France.
After completing her degree in film production in Montreal, filmmaker Kalina Bertin quickly realized that if she didn’t set out to understand the mental illness in her family it would destroy her. This process gave birth to her documentary film Manic, which explores the legacy of bipolar disorder in her family. Aiming to build empathy and awareness toward such a complex condition, she currently is directing a virtual reality project which will enable the viewer to explore the world of manic depression from within. Both projects are produced by Montreal based production company EyeSteelFilm.
Heidi Boisvert (PhD) creates groundbreaking games, web interactive, augmented reality and transmedia storytelling experiences for social change, as well as large-scale networked performances in dance and theatre using bio-creative technology. She co-founded XTH, a company creating novel modes of expression through technology and the human body. She is currently designing an Empathy Engine and Media Machine to translate the knowable underlying mechanisms of empathy into an engine to simulate the variables that move us to act.
Mayank R. Mehta, M.Sc., Ph.D. heads the Keck center for Neurophysics and a Professor of Neurology, Physics, and Astronomy at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His recent research investigates how neurons create the perception of space-time. His laboratory measures how individual neurons react to virtual reality and the potential consequences.
About the Moderator:
Sandra Rodriguez, PhD, is a creative director (interactive and film) and sociologist of new media technology. A Lecturer/Visiting Scholar at MIT Open Doc Lab, she currently teaches MIT’s very first course in Virtual Reality (as part of the Oculus NextGen program). Having worked on independent documentary short and feature films for the last 15 years, she is also now the Head and Creative Director of a new Creative Reality lab at EyeSteelFilm, a Montreal based production company, exploring new ways to tell compelling human stories.
For the series program, visit http://arts.mit.edu/hacking-vr

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Social Justice and the Built Environment
Thursday, March 9
7pm
EF Education First - Boston Office, 2 Education Circle, Cambridge

What is the role of architects and designers in relation to the Muslim travel ban, the border wall proposal, and the shooting of Trayvon Martin? How does the physical fabric of our community reinforce poverty, hinder education, and reduce life-expectancy? Shawn will review his research in these topics, and put forward his proposals for the role of designers in resisting injustice, and promoting social equity.
Speakers
SHAWN HESSE | Architect & Sustainability Consultant at emersion DESIGN
Shawn Hesse is an architect and sustainability consultant who leads the Boston office of emersion DESIGN, an architecture and sustainability consulting firm committed to advancing clients that advance society.
He in an ambassador for the JUST organizations program, founded the Living Building Challenge Collaborative in Boston, and Chairs the USGBC Massachusetts Chapter.
Shawn is a member of the LEED Technical Working Group where he is writing social equity credits for future versions of LEED, and is on the national board of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, working to promote human rights through design.
Agenda
7:00 - 7:30pm Food & drinks
7:30 - 8:15pm Social Justice and the Built Environment
8:15 - 8:30pm Shoutouts
8:30 - 9:00pm More booze & Fun

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Friday, March 10
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MIT Reuse and Repair Fair
Friday, March 10
10:00a–5:00p
MIT, W-20, Lobby, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Come to the first floor of the Student Center for a day of reuse and repair! For more information: web.mit.edu/recycling 

ANY BRAND CLOTHING REPAIRS - 10am to 5pm, the Patagonia Worn Wear Crew will be here to fix (and teach you to fix!) any clothing that you have 
CHOOSE TO REUSE CLOTHING SWAP - 11am to 2pm, get free clothes! you don't have to bring to get 
ELECTRONIC SELF-SERVICE REPAIRS - 11am to 2pm, featuring techniques and tools from iFixit (including free replacement iPhone batteries!) 
REFLEECE - 11am to 2pm, make a new item using fleece (supplies provided) 
TRIVIA WHEEL - 11am to 2pm, test your MIT knowledge and win prizes from Klean Kanteen 

And other booths managed by campus sustainability groups! 

This event is sponsored by the below: 
Recycling and Materials Management Office 
GSC Sustainability 
UA Sustainability 
Environmental Solutions Initiative 
Office of Sustainability 
Sloan Sustainability Initiative 
Working Green Committee 
Parking and Transportation

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Working Green Committee, Staff for Sustainability
For more information, contact:  Ruth T. Davis
617-253-7299

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Water-Food- Climate Squeeze: Can we (Bio)Engineer Our Way Out?
Friday, March 10 
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, Pierce Hall, 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Praveen Kumar, UIUC
Providing water and food for a global population of nine billion under an uncertain and changing climate remains one of the most formidable challenges facing scientists, engineers, and social scientists alike. The inter-dependence of water, food and climate systems makes addressing such challenges very difficult due to complex trade-offs. Using simulations of whole canopy photosynthesis we show that it is possible to construct new whole plant architecture that increases crop productivity while at the same time reducing its water use. Additionally, it is also possible to reduce surface temperatures by increasing the albedo, that is, the fraction of sunlight reflected by the crop surface, through this architecture, thereby providing an offset to global warming. Since agriculture is the largest user of water, such solutions can provide a significant strategy for addressing emerging sustainability challenges. Such bio-engineering solutions offer the possibility of benign geo-engineering approaches by taking advantage of croplands across the global landscape that are already being modified year after year through new variety of seeds.

Speaker Bio:  Praveen Kumar holds a B.Tech. (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India 1987), M.S. (Iowa State University 1989), and Ph.D. (University of Minnesota 1993), all in civil engineering, and has been on the UIUC faculty since 1995.  He is also an Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Atmospheric Science.  His research focus is on complex hydrologic systems bridging across theory, modeling, and informatics. He presently serves as the Director of the NSF funded Critical Zone Observatory for Intensively Managed Landscapes, which is part of a national and international network. He is also a co-lead on two large NSF supported SEAD and Brown
Dog projects for the development of cyber-infrastructure for structured and unstructured long- tail data, respectively.  He has been an Associate of the Center for Advanced Studies, and two-times Fellow of the National Center for Super Computing Applications. He is an AGU Fellow and the recipient of the Xerox Award for Research, and Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising. From 2002-2008, he served as a founding Board member for CUAHSI, a consortium of over 110 universities for the advancement of hydrologic science. From 2009-2013 he served as the Editor-in- Chief of Water Resources Research, the leading journal in the field with about 500 published articles per year. Prior to that he also served as the Editor of Geophysical Research Letters, a leading journal for inter-disciplinary research. He presently serves as the intellectual leader and Program Advisor for a large effort in India aimed at capacity building through novel approach to research and international collaboration to address the most vexing water problems.

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Unlikely Partners:  Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China
Friday, March 10
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store welcomes Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar JULIAN GEWIRTZ for a discussion of his book, Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China.

About Unlikely Partners
Unlikely Partners recounts the story of how Chinese politicians and intellectuals looked beyond their country’s borders for economic guidance at a key crossroads in the nation’s tumultuous twentieth century. Julian Gewirtz offers a dramatic tale of competition for influence between reformers and hardline conservatives during the Deng Xiaoping era, bringing to light China’s productive exchanges with the West.
When Mao Zedong died in 1976, his successors seized the opportunity to reassess the wisdom of China’s rigid commitment to Marxist doctrine. With Deng Xiaoping’s blessing, China’s economic gurus scoured the globe for fresh ideas that would put China on the path to domestic prosperity and ultimately global economic power. Leading foreign economists accepted invitations to visit China to share their expertise, while Chinese delegations traveled to the United States, Hungary, Great Britain, West Germany, Brazil, and other countries to examine new ideas. Chinese economists partnered with an array of brilliant thinkers, including Nobel Prize winners, World Bank officials, battle-scarred veterans of Eastern Europe’s economic struggles, and blunt-speaking free-market fundamentalists.
Nevertheless, the push from China’s senior leadership to implement economic reforms did not go unchallenged, nor has the Chinese government been eager to publicize its engagement with Western-style innovations. Even today, Chinese Communists decry dangerous Western influences and officially maintain that China’s economic reinvention was the Party’s achievement alone. Unlikely Partners sets forth the truer story, which has continuing relevance for China’s complex and far-reaching relationship with the West.

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#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media
WHEN  Friday, Mar. 10, 2017, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE  Friday, March 10, 2017 at 4:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West A (Room 2019, second floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/03/Sunstein#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/03/Sunstein at 4:00 pm

GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Information Technology, Law, Research study, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
SPEAKER(S)  Author Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School
DETAILS  As the Internet grows more sophisticated, it is creating new threats to democracy. Social media companies such as Facebook can sort us ever more efficiently into groups of the like-minded, creating echo chambers that amplify our views. It's no accident that on some occasions, people of different political views cannot even understand each other. It's also no surprise that terrorist groups have been able to exploit social media to deadly effect.
Welcome to the age of #Republic.
In this revealing book, Cass Sunstein, the New York Times bestselling author of Nudge and The World According to Star Wars, shows how today's Internet is driving political fragmentation, polarization, and even extremism—and what can be done about it.
Thoroughly rethinking the critical relationship between democracy and the Internet, Sunstein describes how the online world creates "cybercascades," exploits "confirmation bias," and assists "polarization entrepreneurs." And he explains why online fragmentation endangers the shared conversations, experiences, and understandings that are the lifeblood of democracy.
In response, Sunstein proposes practical and legal changes to make the Internet friendlier to democratic deliberation. These changes would get us out of our information cocoons by increasing the frequency of unchosen, unplanned encounters and exposing us to people, places, things, and ideas that we would never have picked for our Twitter feed.
#Republic need not be an ironic term. As Sunstein shows, it can be a rallying cry for the kind of democracy that citizens of diverse societies most need.

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What to Do, How to Live: Personal Activism for a Threatened Planet
Friday, March 10
5:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building w20-202, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Part II of the MIT Reuse and Repair Fair is a panel discussion by three environmental activists: Rick Ridgeway, Adam Werback, and Scott Briscoe. Sponsored by the Waste Alliance and the Environmental Solutions Initiative 

Register through the eventbrite link by March 8, 2017 

RICK RIDGEWAY is Patagonia's Vice President of Public Engagement. His magazine articles have appeared in National Geographic and he is the author of six books, including Seven Summits, The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and 
Below Another Sky. National Geographic honored him with its 'Lifetime Achievement in Adventure' award. 

ADAM WERBACH, a lifelong environmental activist, is working to stop new efforts to gut the Paris Climate Accord, build the Dakota Access Pipeline, and destroy the Environmental Protection Agency. Werbach was elected president of the Sierra Club when he was 23 years old. As a student, he was a leader in the fight to create Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks. 

SCOTT BRISCOE has been involved in adventure sports and the outdoors for 27 years. He is a recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, and a member of the first African American team to climb Denali. Scott has worked with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) to share his Denali experience with over 15,000 youth of color 
throughout the country.

-for-a-threatened-planet-tickets-32185390369
Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Working Green Committee, Staff for Sustainability

For more information, contact:
Ruth T. Davis
253-7299

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Saturday, March 11
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Hack the Future of Agriculture and Water Systems
Saturday, March 11
10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Impact Hub, 50 Milk Street, Boston

PLEASE READ TILL THE END - IMPORTANT INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM ABOUT ATTENDING THE EVENT.

Watersheds are essential to the overall health of an ecosystem. The way we develop, manage, and respond to the needs of local watersheds has a direct correlation to the quality of our drinking water, recreation, and wildlife habitat. 

In the face of changing climate threats and improving technology, the time to innovate the way we manage and monitor our watersheds is now!

We are convinced that the OpenIDEO Boston community can come up with ideas that can help agricultural and water systems bear the stresses of climate volatility - water excess, runoff, pooling, infiltration, erosion, scarcity - with greater efficiency, lower cost, and in a commercially sustainable model!

The submitted solutions will incorporate cutting edge technology such as predictive data, IOT sensors, Low Power Wide Area Networks, and natural / organic processes.

This OpenIDEO challenge is sponsored by GoodCompany Ventures, Comcast, and the William Penn Foundation.  

The two top submissions will be fast-tracked to the Climate Ventures 2.0 Accelerator, which will award 10 companies with a $25,000 GCV Impact Grant.

COME PREPARED! Here are a few things you can do to ensure that you’re well prepared for our fast-paced session:
1. LOG INTO https://openideo.com/ and create an account for yourself (you can sign up with your google or facebook account) - This will take you 30 seconds and is the platform for you to share your ideas with people all around the world.  
2. READ the challenge brief for the Water Resilience Challenge at : https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/water-resilience/brief - This will take you 2 minutes  
3. SHARE: We need to identify concrete problems to solve in order to design appropriate solutions. We will do our best to gather experts and inspiration to kick-start the session on March 11, but we hope you can help us in this process!

We therefore encourage you to share any facts, data or watershed related problems you know about in our inspiration google folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzIo5hwctL1lYzd4MjhsZGYtcDA?usp=sharing (you will also find the general facts and data presented during the info session in that folder).

Feel free to create new documents, sheets, etc. Just make sure your titles are as informative as possible!

We really look forward to seeing you!

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ACLU Resistance Training
4:30 to 6:30pm
Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street, Copley Square (above the Globe Restaurant), Boston

On March 11, the ACLU is holding a Resistance Training. This event will  launch People Power, the ACLU’s new effort to engage grassroots  volunteers across the country and take the fight against Donald Trump’s policies not just into the courts, but into the streets. We’re organizing grassroots events in communities across the country to watch the livestream together. Please join us!

When Donald Trump rolled out his first attempt at instituting a Muslim ban, the ACLU beat him in the courts. I hope he enjoys losing, because with the launch of People Power, the ACLU’s new grassroots organizing arm, we're going to take our fight to the streets.

So far more than 500 people have signed up to host organizing meetings in every state of the country, but we need more. We need to do something big. Something so big that it sends an unmistakable message about our collective commitment to defending the Constitution, our values, and our future.

Check the website to host your own event!

*Sign up to learn more about People Power and the Resistance Training livestream on March 11 at 5pm ET.* We?ll follow up with you about opportunities to volunteer and attend events near you.

Any questions please contact the ACLU at Contact us at 

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Festival Jazz Celebrates Dominique Eade
Saturday, March 11
8:00p–10:00p
MIT, Building w16, Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge

Go Gently to the Water, Celebrating Dominique Eade. MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble. Frederick Harris Jr., music director. Dominique Eade, guest vocalist-composer, with the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble, Liz Tobias, director. The MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble collaborates with the stellar Boston-based vocalist-composer and esteemed New England Conservatory educator Dominique Eade. The concert will feature music by Eade, Horace Silver, Thad Jones, Charles Mingus, and others. 

About Dominique Eade 
The daughter of an American Air Force officer and a Swiss mother, Eade grew up in a musical household and spent much of her childhood moving within the US and in Europe. She studied piano as a child and decided she was going to be a singer in the second grade. Eade picked up guitar as a young teenager, learning folk, pop and jazz songs and writing some of her own. She played her first gigs in the coffee houses of Stuttgart while in high school there. Later, as an English major at Vassar, Eade sang for a time with a jazz group, Naima, which also included Poughkeepsie native Joe McPhee. Eade transferred briefly to Berklee College of Music, and then finished her degree at New England Conservatory, where pianist Ran Blake became an important mentor and performing colleague. Eade stayed in Boston after graduating and soon after began teaching at NEC. She was an active performer on the vibrant Boston jazz scene in the 80's, forming groups with Boston-based artists.

Open to: the general public
Tickets: mitmta.eventbrite.com
Sponsor(s): Music and Theater Arts
For more information, contact:  Clarise Snyder
617-253-3210

Editorial Comment:  Dominique Eade is a remarkable vocalist and musician.  Well worth hearing and listening to.

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Monday, March 13
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PAOC Colloquium - Prof. Michael Tippett (Columbia University)
Monday, March 13
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge

Speaker:  Prof. Michael Tippett, Columbia University
My research focuses on the predictability and variability of the climate system, with emphasis on the application of statistical methods to data from observations and numerical models.

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ACT MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES
Monday, March 13
6:00p–8:00p
MIT, Building E15-001, 20 Ames Street, Wiesner Building, Cambridge

Speaker: TANIA BRUGUERA

ACT Lecture Series

artworld agent, agent of social change 
counter-intel, counter-aesthesis 
insinuation, infiltration 
artist, provocateur 

What makes a double agent in art? What drives them? ACT's Spring 2017 Monday Night Lecture Series, Double Agents, invites three renowned artists whose respective works provoke and thrive in the tension between competing systems of power, production, and exhibition. At play in these discussions is the role of ethics in political art amidst shifting forms of governance, suppression, and repression.

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and open to the public 
Sponsor(s): MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, CAMIT
For more information, contact:  Marion Cunningham
617-253-5229

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A Cure for Alzheimer's Disease, 20 Years Early
Monday, March 13
6:30pm
The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville

Dr Jonathan Jackson

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Beauty and the Beast:  Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World
Monday, March 13
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store welcomes Harvard University's MARIA TATAR—the John L. Loeb Professor of Folklore and Mythology and Germanic Languages and Literatures and editor and translator of The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, and The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition—for a discussion of the Penguin Classics edition of Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World.
About Beauty and the Beast

Nearly every culture tells the story of Beauty and the Beast in one fashion or another. From Cupid and Psyche to India’s Snake Bride to South Africa’s “Story of Five Heads,” the partnering of beasts and beauties, of humans and animals in all their variety—cats, dogs, frogs, goats, lizards, bears, tortoises, monkeys, cranes, warthogs—has beguiled us for thousands of years, mapping the cultural contradictions that riddle every romantic relationship.

In this fascinating volume, preeminent fairy tale scholar Maria Tatar brings together tales from ancient times to the present and from a wide variety of cultures, highlighting the continuities and the range of themes in a fairy tale that has been used both to keep young women in their place and to encourage them to rebel, and that has entertained adults and children alike. With fresh commentary, she shows us what animals and monsters, both male and female, tell us about ourselves, and about the transformative power of empathy.
This edition of one of our most beloved and elemental fairy tales—in versions from across the centuries and around the world—is published to coincide with Disney’s live-action 3D musical film starring Emma Watson, Ian McKellen, Ewan McGregor, Audra McDonald, Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, and Emma Thompson.

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Refreezing the Permafrost
Minday, March 13
7:00PM
Harvard, Geological Museum, Haller Hall (100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Can we refreeze the Siberian permafrost? Biodiversity for a Livable Climate hosts Luke Griswold-Tergis, documentary filmmaker, who will explore this question and discuss his filming of Sergei Zimov, a Russian scientist who has brought large herbivores to an area of Siberia's tundra known as Pleistocene Park to study their impact on vegetation growth and soil temperature. Zimov is finding that where the animals are concentrated, the permafrost tends to remain frozen. There is almost twice as much carbon frozen in the ground as there is in the atmosphere; Griswold's introduction to Zimov's unique biological approach to keeping it there is timely and important. His research is highly regarded in Russia and globally.


Contact Name:  Paula Phipps

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Tuesday, March 14
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An Introduction to Media Cloud: Mapping the attention and influence of news
Tuesday, March 14
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Classroom 3018 (third floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/luncheons/2017/03/MediaCloud at 12:00 pm

with Natalie Gyenes and Anushka Shah 
Media Cloud is a web-based, open-source tool that tracks media conversations across the globe. A project hosted by the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Harvard Berkman Klein Center, the platform uses big data to aggregate and analyze news content from over 50,000 digital sources. The Media Cloud research team has used this suite of tools to explore a number of issues, from how gender based violence is covered in different media ecosystems, and the presence of public health echo chambers online, to understanding coverage around free basics in India. This conversation will begin with an introduction to Media Cloud and an overview of some of our research findings. We will then move into a use-case demonstration and workshop to explore how Media Cloud may be useful for your own research. 

About Natalie
Natalie is a researcher working at the intersection of health and human rights, and will conduct research with the Berkman Klein Center and the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media. She will focus on how digital media portrays and influences issues of global health equity and access, human rights and social norms, and will explore how Media Cloud can be more useful for non-profits and intergovernmental organizations.

About Anushka
Anushka has a background in data science and media research, and is currently based in Cambridge at the Media Lab. Her primary focus at Civic Media is applying these disciplines to Indian and African media as part of the Media Cloud project.
Anushka's interest is understanding how the news covers specific topics and the effect of different narratives on civic engagement. The long term objective of such analysis is to aid the reverse engineering of both non-fiction and fiction media content to better affect citizen knowledge and participation.
Anushka grew up in India and has previously worked with various non-profits, development agencies, and political parties on ground in rural and urban India.

Media Cloud blog for more information about their research projects: http://mediacloud.org/category/research/

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Saving Environment with IoT: Smart Watering with Predix
Tuesday, March 14
1:00 PM

Learn how IoT and Predix are fighting droughts in California using the Smart Watering System developed at the San Francisco University.

Overview
The environment-related problems are getting bigger and very serious, so there is an urgent need to solve this problems as soon as possible. One of the biggest environmental problem we are facing today is the need to fight droughts. With the growth of Internet of Things, different IoT solutions come to the rescue and create a high variety of solutions that could help cope with these environmental issues.

In this webinar, Abhilash Shrivastava will provide the detailed overview of the IoT application that could help to handle droughts. He will explore how to solve the water shortage problem using the Predix platform and how to reduce costs. This solution can be implemented at small homes as well as at large businesses.

You will learn:
How IoT solutions can cope with droughts—tracking weather data (humidity, temperature, etc.), collecting and examining it, and generating appropriate triggers/actions.
A real use-case and a working demo of Smart Watering System with the usage of GE Predix services.
How to optimize capital allocation by cutting down water bills and avoid lawn destruction due to over-soaking.

Who should attend?
Anyone who is eager to learn how Internet of Things and platforms like GE Predix are changing the world by automating various real-life industry scenarios.

About the Presenter
Abhilash Shrivastava is a web developer at Storied with 5+ years of development experience under his belt. He is also a Graduate Research Assistant at San Francisco State University, serving as a Special Assistant for Data and IT at the Campus Academic Resource Program. At a recent Predix hackathon, his team got the third place in the overall category and also grabbed the categorial prize for the “Most Effective Use of Predix Services.”

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Innovating: A Doer's Manifesto
Tuesday, March 14
5:30p–6:30p
MIT, Building N50, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Luis Perez-Breva
The MIT Press Bookstore presents innovator and entrepreneur Luis Perez-Breva, Lecturer and a Research Scientist at MIT's School of Engineering, discussing his book, Innovating: A Doer's Manifesto for Starting from a Hunch, Prototyping Problems, Scaling Up, and Learning to Be Productively Wrong, at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, March 14, at the Bookstore. 

In Innovating, Luis Perez-Breva describes a different approach to innovation--a doer's approach developed over a decade at MIT and internationally in workshops, classes, and companies. He shows that to start innovating it doesn't require an earth-shattering idea; all it takes is a hunch. Anyone can do it. By prototyping a problem and learning by being wrong, innovating can be scaled up to make an impact. 

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.

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): The MIT Press Bookstore
For more information, contact:  The MIT Press Bookstore
253-5249

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Exploring Class and Classism
Tuesday, March 14
5:30 pm - 9:00 pm
BEST Hospitality Training Center (Dudley Square), 2201 Washington Street, Boston
Events
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Why is class often so difficult to talk about?
How do the effects of class differences impact our work, our work relationships and our workplaces?
Why is it important to collaborate across class divisions to create more unity, especially in these times?
What is your class story?

Discuss these questions and more at our upcoming open workshop on Tuesday, March 14th. These workshops provide a forum to learn about the effects of class differences and to look at how we all have been affected by class divisions.

Class Action has spent 13 years developing creative ways of asking questions, sharing personal experiences and helping people to engage with issues of class in a meaningful way. Our popular education workshops are highly interactive, engaging and focused on learning from one another in the room.

In this workshop, participants will explore:
How class identities affect our lives, our work and our relationships
How race intersects with class
How we can become more inclusive with others from different class backgrounds than ourselves and why that’s important
How we can build community with people from all class backgrounds
If you have been thinking about bringing Class Action to your workplace, group or religious community, this is an opportunity not to miss. You can come and try a workshop to see how it could be useful for your situation.

Pizza and refreshments will be served upon arrival.

Facilitators
Denise Moorehead
Born into a lower middle class family, Denise Moorehead was raised in Western Massachusetts as an only child for 11 years. Her parents, both “strivers” increased their educational and earning power in conjunction with opportunities previously unavailable to African-Americans thanks to the civil rights movement. They were able to offer Denise dance and instrument lessons, summer camp, French camp and more. As a young child, she was often in the company of upper middle class children in these settings and working class and lower middle children in her neighborhood. Her parents prepared her to fit in with all groups. Today, Denise is a marketing, communications and training strategist working with nonprofits and small businesses as the principal of Moorehead Creative Solutions. She recently cofounded UU Class Conversations, which provides training and organizing support to Unitarian Universalist congregations and organizations working to make the denomination more class-inclusive.

Joanie Parker
Joanie grew up in Pittsburgh, the hometown of her parents, with a father who was raised owning class and a mother raised working class. Throughout her life, she was always trying to figure out why some people were left out and others weren’t in society. She decided to become an elementary school teacher to provide an environment where children could feel good about themselves. From there she was trained as a machine operator and worked in a factory for 10 years and was very involved with her union. Over the past 30 years, she has worked in the labor movement and has been actively involved in work to end racism. Currently, she is coordinating a Mentoring Program through the Women’s Institute for Leadership Development (WILD). She is also committed to working with individuals and groups on the effects of our class backgrounds and how we can actively work to end classism.

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Boston New Technology March 2017 Startup Showcase #BNT75
Tuesday, March 14
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Foley Hoag, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston

Foley Hoag is in the Seaport West building (entrance on B Street). Please bring identification and check in at our desk in the lobby. Then, take an elevator to the 13th floor. Enter the glass doors and walk down the hall to your right.
Free event! Come learn about 7 innovative and exciting technology products and network with the Boston/Cambridge startup community! 

Please click here to share/tweet our event with your network. 

Each presenter gets 5 minutes for product demonstration and 5 minutes for Q&A.  Please follow @BostonNewTech and use the #BNT75 hashtag in social media posts. We'll retweet you!

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Faculty Speaker: Toward An Artificial Brain
WHEN  Tuesday, Mar. 14, 2017, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE  The Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Science, Special Events
COST  Free and open to the public
DETAILS  The brain is powerful biological computer–capable of taking in a flood of information from our senses, and transforming it into thought and action. Could computer algorithms be programmed to work the same way?
David Cox, Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Computer Science, will explore this idea during the upcoming “Faculty Speaker: Toward an Artificial Brain.”
Cox will talk about the ARIADNE project—a multi-university effort to study a living animal brain like never before to figure out how it learns. This project will create some of the largest neuroscience datasets ever collected, and could give computers new abilities to learn and perceive the way our brains do.

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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, March 15
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Boston Sustainability Breakfast
Wednesday, March 15
7:30 AM – 8:30 AM EDT
Pret A Manger, 101 Arch Street, Boston

Join us every month for Net Impact Boston's informal breakfast meetup of sustainability professionals for networking, discussion and moral support. It's important to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones out there in the business world trying to do good! Feel free to drop by any time between 7:30 and 8:30 am.

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Redefining Dance & Disability - Lecture/Demo with AXIS Dance Company
Wednesday, March 15
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
BU School of Medicine, 72 East Concord Street, Hiebert Lounge, 14th Floor, Boston

Part of the AXIS Dance Company Residency at BU March 13-18. AXIS Dance Company was founded in 1987 and has paved the way for a powerful contemporary dance form called physically integrated dance, which features dancers with and without disabilities. AXIS’ list of collaborators includes Bill T. Jones, Stephen Petronio, Ann Carlson, David Dorfman, Meredith Monk, and Joan Jeanrenaud. AXIS has toured major dance venues and festivals in more than 100 cities nationwide as well as internationally to Europe and Russia. Their work has been honored with seven Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and the company was featured twice on FOX TV’s So You Think You Can Dance. This event is free, but you must RSVP - space is limited.

Phone 617.358.0489
Contact Email artsinbu@bu.edu
Contact Organization BU Arts Initiative
Fees Free

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Forging Intelligent Systems in the Digital Era
Wednesday, March 15
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 34-401, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Dr. Gary Patton (GlobalFoundries)
The pace of technological change is evolving faster than businesses can adapt, setting the stage for a new era of innovation in the electronics industry. This pace is accelerating as we enter an era of ubiquitous computing, with sensors on our bodies, in our homes and offices, and all over our cities. For the semiconductor industry, digitization, connectivity, and the Internet of Things now promise to be the enablers for the next phase of growth. However, the industry has reached a new level of maturity that demands new innovations in computing, connectivity, integration and ultra-low power applications. One technology doesn???t fit all. Although traditional Moore's Law scaling is still important for semiconductor technology progress, the complexity of technology development requires a new paradigm of silicon scaling and changing market needs require innovation in differentiated silicon technology as well as system-level integration. 

The industry is pursuing numerous technologies that will continue conventional scaling as well as expand beyond it. This presentation will examine the economic trends reshaping the industry, explore opportunities and approaches that can extend scaling, highlight the role of collaborative innovation to meet technical challenges and provide insight into GLOBALFOUNDRIES??? vision to enable the technology for a new digital era.

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

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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The impact of decarbonization policies on electric system operating characteristics
Wednesday, March 15
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 66-110, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge

Speaker: John Deutch
In this seminar, Professor John Deutch introduces a simple model of an electricity market with competing nuclear, renewable, and natural gas generation to explore the operating characteristics that result from the imposition of five alternative policies intended to reduce CO2 emissions and/or increase renewable generation. He uses a static equilibrium analysis of supply and demand to compare the operating characteristics of an electricity system from the imposition of each new policy measure; the range of CO2 emission reductions proves to be surprisingly large. Given the values of the parameters assumed, Deutch finds it is unlikely that replacing a renewable portfolio standard by a carbon-free portfolio standard would be sufficient to encourage deployment of new nuclear electricity generation.

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free 
Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative
For more information, contact:  MITEI Events

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Reducing Emissions by Pricing Carbon: How Microsoft and Yale are leading the charge 
Wednesday, March 15
4:00-5:30 pm
BU, Metcalfe Trustee Center, 1 Silber Way, 9th floor, Boston

Please join the Boston Green Ribbon Commission and Boston University for a panel discussion on Internal Carbon Fees. 

From college campuses to Davos, carbon pricing is a policy instrument regarded by climate scientists, economists, and political and business leaders as an important part of efforts to mitigate global climate change. 

We have an exciting panel: 
Microsoft's TJ DiCaprio will explain how in its first four-and-a-half years the company's carbon pricing program changed the company’s culture, reduced carbon emissions by 9.5 million metric tons, purchased more than 14M MWh of renewable energy, helped reduce energy consumption more than 10% across the Redmond campus, and impacted more than 7 million peoples’ lives in emerging nations. TJ is Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability at Microsoft. 

Yale's Casey Pickett will present the experience and results of the Yale 2015/2016 pilot program and what comes next, following the leadership decision to use the campus as a test bed for carbon pricing. Casey is Director of the Carbon Charge at Yale. 

BU's Kenneth Pucker will discuss effective carbon pricing and organizational behavior based on accurate measurement of climate impacts. Ken is the former COO of Timberland and Lecturer, Organizational Behavior, at the Questrom School of Business. 

ProPublica's Andrew Revkin will moderate. Andy is Senior Reporter on Climate Change at ProPublica and former environmental reporter at The New York Times, where he wrote the Dot Earth Blog. 

This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.

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2017 Boston Kickoff
Wednesday, March 15
5:30pm - 8:30pm
Greentown Labs, 28 Dane Street, Somerville
Cost:  $10 - $20

Join us for an awesome night of cleantech community networking leading up to the Cleantech Open 2017 Accelerator program.
Entrepreneurs, students, savvy technologists, investors, professionals, and other interested parties all welcome!

At the launch party you'll be able to:
Connect with Boston's top innovators, supporters, and thought leaders in the cleantech space.
Get exposure by giving your 1 minute elevator pitch in front of judges and potential teammates (if you're ready!).
Listen to past competitors as they share their experience with Cleantech Open.
Celebrate our amazing community!  

Agenda:
5:30-6:15pm Networking
6:15pm Welcome from Host
6:30pm Welcome from Cleantech Open
6:45pm Alumni Lightning Talks
7:00-7:20pm Pitch Competition
7:30-8:30pm Open Networking

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Tiny Cells, Global Impact: A Journey of Discovery with a Microbe from the Sea
Wednesday, March 15
6:00 PM
Harvard, Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Sallie W. Chisholm, Institute Professor, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
Phytoplankton–microscopic photosynthetic cells–form the base of ocean food webs. They are responsible for half the photosynthesis on Earth and thus play a central role in our planet’s metabolism. Discovered only three decades ago, Prochlorococcus is the smallest and most abundant member of the phytoplankton, manufacturing billions of tons of living biomass each year. Sallie Chisholm will discuss how this tiny microbe has helped scientists to understand the forces that shape ecosystems and to appreciate their genetic diversity.

The Evolution Matters Lecture Series is supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. 


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Thursday, March 16
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Industry driving environmental excellence
Thursday, March 16
12:00-1:00pm 
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford

Sheryl Corrigan, Director of environmental, health and safety, Koch Industries
With the industrial sector responsible for nearly 35% of U.S. energy consumption, large-scale industrial innovation made possible by neglect of the environment is unacceptable. Simultaneously addressing environmental needs, business growth priorities and consumer demand is a difficult balancing act — so how can companies find success within this framework? More importantly, how will it impact businesses moving forward? Today's most successful industry leaders invest in identifying game-changing efficiencies that, in turn, deliver in-demand products and services using fewer natural resources. Whether it's establishing programs that reduce waste in supply chains or creating a team of experts who drive energy efficiency programming, businesses are in a race to produce while minimizing their environmental footprint. Businesses that come closest to achieving success have embedded environmental stewardship and being a responsible operator as part of their core business management philosophy. Join Sheryl Corrigan for a discussion on how business, like Koch Industries are addressing that challenge.

Sheryl Corrigan is the director of environmental, health and safety for Koch Industries, Inc., driving discovery of excellence and innovation opportunities, and providing oversight of Koch companies' environmental performance. Previously, Ms. Corrigan was senior vice president of environmental, health and safety for Flint Hills Resources, LLC; a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Before joining Koch, Ms. Corrigan was commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, advising the governor and helping set the strategic direction for the state on environmental matters. She has also worked for 3M in a number of positions focusing on environmental, health and safety operational excellence. Ms. Corrigan earned a bachelor's degree in geology from the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology.

Watch it live from your computer or smart phone:

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From Stereopticon to Telephone: The Selling of the President in the Gilded Age
Thursday, March 16
5:00p–6:30p
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge

Charles Musser
Contrary to our received notions on the newness of new media, the presidential campaigns of the late nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of media forms as advisers and technicians exploited a variety of forms promote their candidates and platforms, including the stereopticon (a modernized magic lantern), the phonograph, and the telephone. In the process, they set in motion not only a new way of imagining how to market national campaigns and candidates; they also helped to usher in novel forms of mass spectatorship. Analogies to presidential campaigns in the 21st century are inevitable--and will not be avoided. The presentation comes out of Charlie Musser's new book, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (University of California Press). 

Charles Musser is professor of Film & Media Studies, American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including the now-classic The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. His most recent documentary is Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch (2014).

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies/Writing
For more information, contact:  Andrew Whitacre
617-324-0490

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There will be blood: Human genetic studies of blood production and disease
WHEN  Thursday, Mar. 16, 2017, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE  Broad Institute Auditorium, 415 Main Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Broad Institute
SPEAKER(S)  Vijay Sankaran
COST  Free
DETAILS  Every second, without thinking, our bodies produce millions of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. If this process goes awry, devastating blood disorders can occur, including anemia and leukemia. Vijay Sankaran is interested in how this process happens normally and how it can be perturbed in disease. He will discuss work from his laboratory that provides insight into the process of blood cell production, and talk about how these findings are leading to the development of improved treatments for blood diseases such as sickle cell disease and thalassemia.

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From Stereopticon to Telephone: The Selling of the President in the Gilded Age
Thursday, March 16
5:00p–6:30p
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge

Charles Musser
Contrary to our received notions on the newness of new media, the presidential campaigns of the late nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of media forms as advisers and technicians exploited a variety of forms promote their candidates and platforms, including the stereopticon (a modernized magic lantern), the phonograph, and the telephone. In the process, they set in motion not only a new way of imagining how to market national campaigns and candidates; they also helped to usher in novel forms of mass spectatorship. Analogies to presidential campaigns in the 21st century are inevitable--and will not be avoided. The presentation comes out of Charlie Musser's new book, Politicking and Emergent Media: US Presidential Elections of the 1890s (University of California Press). 

Charles Musser is professor of Film & Media Studies, American Studies and Theater Studies at Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including the now-classic The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. His most recent documentary is Errol Morris: A Lightning Sketch (2014).

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies/Writing

For more information, contact:
Andrew Whitacre
617-324-0490

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BOSTON SEMINAR: Combatting Rising Heat & Rising Demands on Energy Usage
Thursday, March 16
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Atlantic Wharf, 290 Congress Street, Fort Point Room, Boston

Join us for the next seminar in our series, “Climate Ready? Designing for Extreme Weather,” hosted by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger this spring at Atlantic Wharf in Downtown Boston.  

ABOUT THE SERIES
Climate Ready? Designing for Extreme Weather 
Boston, like other cities, has identified climate change as a potential threat to our city. Boston’s recently issued Climate Projection Consensus identified four potential impacts (extreme temperatures, extreme precipitation, relative sea level rise, and coastal storms), which drive three major climate hazards: coastal and riverine flooding, stormwater flooding, and extreme heat. Design and construction methods will need to change in response, both to protect our buildings and infrastructure, and also to help limit the built environment’s contribution. Join us for this four-part seminar series that explores the issues of designing for extreme weather, both at an individual and a community level.

ABOUT THIS SEMINAR
Combatting Rising Heat and Rising Demands on Energy Usage 
Arfa Aijazi, Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. and Master of Science Candidate, MIT and James Dolan, Principal-in-Charge of Energy Engineering Services, OLA Consulting Engineers 
The Northeast is getting hotter with more extreme heat days and longer heat waves. This increases building energy demands, especially in urban settings. In response, we continue to emphasize better building performance to counteract rising cooling costs with more efficient mechanical systems and better functioning building envelopes. Designs are also evolving to limit solar heat gain, explore alternative air circulation options, and consider on-site energy and cooling options to limit impact. But what is really achievable?
This presentation looks at overall strategies for improving building energy performance, and specific options for limiting heat gain and improving cooling efficiency.

Participants will earn 1.0 AIA CES Learning Unit (LU/HSW) for their attendance.

EVENT DETAILS
SCHEDULE
5:30 - 6:00PM Registration & Refreshments
6:00 - 7:00PM Presentation & Discussion
7:00 - 7:30PM Cocktail Reception

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Architecture Lecture with Tarik Oulalou and Linna Choi: Territories of Disobedience
Thursday, March 16
6:00p–8:00p
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

MIT Architecture Lecture Series

Part of the MIT Department of Architecture Spring 2017 Lecture Series

Web site: architecture.mit.edu/lectures
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture
For more information, contact:  Irina Chernyakova
617-253-4416

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Civic Science Roundtable: GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS: UNCERTAIN CHOICES IN THE FACE OF UNCERTAIN HARMS
Thursday, March 16
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
DeWick Conference Room, 25 Latin Way, Somerville

Ethical, legal and other societal values underlie public debate and decision-making about genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In the face of the uncertain harms of GMOs, we need to further discuss the consequences and impact of this technology.

We will explore the question, how can non-scientists and consumers unravel the scientific complexities of GMOs and enter into dialogue with scientists and policy-makers in ways that build trust to better inform decisions about the future use of GMOs?

Guest Scientist- Prof. Sheldon Krimsky, Lenore Stern Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, Adjunct professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine

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The Conservation of Devil Rays
Thursday, March 16
7pm
NE Aquarium, Simons IMAX Theatre, Aquarium Pier, Boston

Daniel Fernando; Co-founder of Blue Resources; Associate Director of The Manta Trust; Ph.D. student at Linnaeus University; New England Aquarium Marine Conservation Action Fund Fellow

Devil rays, also known as mobula rays, are closely related to the more iconic and better known manta rays. In recent decades, all these species have been facing increasing threats driven by unsustainable target and bycatch fisheries, seeking to supply the international demand for their dried gill plates in Chinese medicine. Growing awareness and concerns for the survival of these species resulted in some level of international protection. However, further work is required. Daniel Fernando tells us about his research efforts to better understand these animals and about his work to promote their conservation.

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Friday, March 17
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MacVicar Day 25th Anniversary Symposium
Friday, March 17
2:00p–4:00p
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge

Join us for the 25th Anniversary of the MacVicar Faculty Fellows program as we celebrate excellence in undergraduate teaching at this year's symposium. 

Reception to follow.

Open to: the general public
Cost: $0.00 
Tickets: n/a 
Sponsor(s): Office of Faculty Support
For more information, contact:  Piero Chacon
617-253-9763

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PSFC Seminar: Introduction to hadrontherapy and how it can benefit from superconductivity today and in the future
Friday, March 17
3:00p–4:00p
MIT, Building NW17-218, 175 Albany Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Eric Forton
Plasma Science and Fusion Center Seminar Series

Born in the middle of the 20th century, proton/hadron therapy has slowly developed. But today, the market recently picked up momentum and new clinical facilities are opened every year. 

The initial idea of hadron therapy is the same as for conventional radiation therapy: a particle beam delivers a high dose to the patient tumor with as little as possible stray dose to the surrounding tissues. But hadrons do not interact with matter through the same mechanisms as photons do. Hadron therapy therefore leverages on the way hadrons interact with matter in order to increase treatment efficiency and reduce side effects. 

In this seminar, an introduction to hadrontherapy and the way dose is delivered to the patient will be presented. This introduction will be followed by a view on the market players and insights on their current systems and solutions. The way superconductivity is used in these systems will be discussed, highlighting how and why it could be useful or not, as well as the challenges to be addressed.

Web site: IBA
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Plasma Science and Fusion Center
For more information, contact:  Paul Rivenberg
617-253-8101

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Food Fights and Culture Wars
Friday, March 17
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge

In this eclectic book of food history, Tom Nealon takes on such overlooked themes as carp and the Crusades, brown sauce and Byron, and chillies and cannibalism, and suggests that hunger and taste are the twin forces that secretly defined the course of civilization. Through war and plague, revolution and migration, people have always had to eat. What and how they ate provoked culinary upheaval around the world as ingredients were traded and fought over, and populations desperately walked the line between satiety and starvation.

Parallel to the history books, a second, more obscure history was also being recorded in the cookbooks of the time, which charted the evolution of meals and the transmission of ingredients around the world. Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste explores the mysteries at the intersection of food and society, and attempts to make sense of the curious area between fact and fiction.

Beautifully illustrated with material from the collection of the British Library, this wide-ranging book addresses some of the fascinating, forgotten stories behind everyday dishes and processes. Among many conspiracies and controversies, the author meditates on the connections between the French Revolution and table settings, food thickness and colonialism, and lemonade and the Black Plague.

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Saturday, March 18
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TEDxBU Spring 2017
Saturday, March 18
10:00 AM – 5:30 PM EDT
BU, Questrom Auditorium, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Cost:  $15.50

Join us for a day of community growth, discussion, and showcase on the TEDx platform! The theme for this year is 'LANDSCAPE, Giving Context to Our Potential'.
Listen to influencers in our community discuss a broad range of topics with the express purpose of growing together. We're also going to be showcasing our talent via some performances! During breaks, enjoy networking opportunities and breakout activities to get deeper into the discussion. Interact with our sponsors who will be supplementing the event with more activities and giveaways. Lunch and light snacks included!

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Our Creation Care Leadership Through Organizing
Saturday March 18 (March 25, April 1, April 8)
1 pm to 5 pm
Bethel AME, 40 Walk Hill Street, Embassy Room, Youth Center, Jamaica Plain

MA Interfaith Power & Light is introducing a new experiential and relational program designed to enable people of faith to become active and effective leaders in the fight against climate change. Our Creation Care Leadership Through Organizing training recognizes that values and emotions are key elements that facilitate action.

The four afternoon workshops will enable you to:

• Identify the actions that your faith, values and passions call you to take;
• Work with the psychology of facing of climate change in order to move from awareness to acceptance to action;
• Use the power of public narrative to invite others to join you in collective action;
• Build strong teams with shared norms and clear roles;
• Organize strategically with specific goals and a realistic timeline; and
• Develop relationships that will continue after the program.

Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Minister of Ecological Justice, Bethel A.M.E. Church
Vince Maraventano, M.Div., Executive Director, MA Interfaith Power & Light
Emily Kirkland, Director of Organizing, 350 Mass. for a Better Future
Andy Gordon, Legislative Coordinator, 350 Mass. for a Better Future

Experienced organizers from 350 Mass for a Better Future will teach the skills needed to carry out the values-based organizing model developed by Marshall Ganz of Harvard University. Facilitators trained in ministry will draw on the values articulated by Laudato Si', and the wisdom of Joanna Macy needed to support sustained engagement. There will be an optional time for meal fellowship.

The program will mainly benefit those wanting to lead activities within communities of faith. It will also be extremely valuable to those beginning or already engaged in advocacy and activism in the larger community

Saturday 3/18, 3/25, 4/1 & 4/8 from 1 pm to 5 pm

Where: Bethel AME, 40 Walk Hill St, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130; Embassy Room, Youth Center.

Register today at: http://conta.cc/2kIahUg

Registration limited and available on first come first served basis.

No Fee. 2 Participants per congregation recommended – no more than 3. A light meal will be served. Convenient to MBTA Orange Line, Forest Hills station and buses.

All faiths welcome!

For more information contact: Vince Maraventano: vince@MIPandL.org or 617-244-0755

Co-sponsors: Environmental Ministries, MACUCC; Creation Care Ministries, TABCOM

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Monday, March 20
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PAOC Colloquium - Brian Rose (U Albany)
Monday, March 20
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge

About the Speaker
I am broadly interested in the behavior of the climate system at the global scale. My research is oriented toward fundamental questions such as: What factors control the global mean temperature and its equator-to-pole gradient? Why has Earth's climate been more variable during some periods of the deep geological past than others? Is the climate unique, or does the Earth system possess multiple equilibria? By studying the fundamental underlying rules governing the climate system, we build a deeper understanding of the past and future evolution of climate on Earth, and other planets as well.

Attempting to answer these questions inevitably involves studying the often-surprising interactions among different components of the climate system: atmosphere, ocean, ice, etc. I have broad training in both atmospheric science and oceanography, and I am particularly interested in coupled atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics over long time scales. I also have a special interest in polar climate and ocean-sea ice interaction.

My work typically takes a building blocks approach, trying to build understanding of the complex climate system through judicious simplication. I explore ideas using hierarchies of idealized atmosphere-ocean models, ranging from simple mathematical descriptions to complex coupled numerical calculations.

Some specific ongoing research interests and projects include:
Modeling the effects of ocean heat transport and heat uptake on surface temperature and climate sensitivity
The dynamics of past warm climates
Multiple equilibria in the climate system
Ocean - sea ice interaction in cold climates
Oceanography of Snowball Earth
The observed vertical structure of heat fluxes into the Arctic

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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Limits of Bioenergy for Carbon Mitigation
Monda, March 20
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge 

with Alexandre Strapasson, Giorgio Ruffolo Research Fellow in Sustainability Science/Environment and Natural Resources Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS. Lunch is provided.

Energy Policy Seminar 

Contact Name:  Louisa Lund

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xTalks/DUET "Evaluating Learning with Evidence - Not Just Course Evaluation Forms"
Monday, March 20
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 10-105, Bush Room, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: Prof David Pritchard

The xTalks series provides a forum to facilitate awareness, deep understanding and transference of educational innovations at MIT and elsewhere. We hope to foster a community of educators, researchers, and technologists engaged in developing and supporting effective learning experiences through online learning environments and other digital technologies.

"Evaluating Learning with Evidence - Not Just Course Evaluation Forms"

Sponsor(s): Office of Digital Learning, xTalks: Digital Discourses, Teaching and Learning Laboratory
For more information, contact:  Molly Ruggles
617-324-9185

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John T. Dunlop Lecture in Housing and Urbanization: Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh
WHEN  Monday, Mar. 20, 2017, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, 48 Quincy Street, Piper Auditorium, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
SPEAKER(S)  Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh
DETAILS  Since taking office in 2014, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has made his mark in Boston and, increasingly, on the national stage as well. A former leader of Boston's construction trade unions who also served as a state representative, Walsh has made housing and community development central to his efforts to ensure that Boston is a "thriving, healthy, and innovative" city with "equality and opportunity for all."
In 2014, the new administration released "Housing a Changing City: Boston 2030," which stated that Boston needed to create 53,000 housing units to accommodate the city's growing population. The city is expected to soon top 700,000 people for the first time since the 1950s and, in keeping with this plan, had permitted almost 20,000 new units by 2016 and was reviewing plans for about 20,000 more.
The city, which built a state-of- the-art shelter for homeless people, is also developing strategies to effectively end chronic homelessness and has launched Imagine Boston 2030, which will produce Boston's first comprehensive plan in over 50 years.
In addition, the Walsh administration has undertaken notable efforts to keep Boston at the forefront of the global innovation economy, to strengthen its schools, expand opportunities for historically disadvantaged communities, improve police-community relations, and address Boston's troubled history of race relations.
In recent months, Mayor Walsh has also emerged as an important voice in national debates about immigration and other key federal policies and programs that could greatly affect residents, neighborhoods and communities in Boston and other cities.

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Tuesday, March 21 
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Japan, South Korea, and the Nuclear Umbrella
WHEN  Tuesday, Mar. 21, 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)  Terence Roehrig, Professor of National Security Affairs and Director, Asia-Pacific Studies Group, U.S. Naval War College
COST  Free and open to the public

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5th Annual Massachusetts Water Forum
Waste Not, Want Not:   Water & Wastewater in Our Commonwealth
Tuesday, Mar 21
1:00 PM
BSA Space, 290 Congress Street, Boston

The 5th Annual Massachusetts Water Forum, hosted by the Foundation for a Green Future, Inc. in honor of World Water Day, will carry through on this year's theme of water and wastewater as the Commonwealth prepares for numerous challenges ahead.
The forum will encourage all participants to pose questions, add their insights, and think about new designs, systems and resource uses. 
Participants may join us for one or more segment of this program.

5th Annual Massachusetts Water Forum Program
1:00 pm Opening Remarks
Fred Laskey, Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
1:15 pm Keynote Speaker, Kate Kennen, ASLA. Founder/Owner of Offshoots, Inc.
Kate Kennen, ASLA, is a dynamic speaker, thinker and doer. She will bring a host of innovative ideas about solving wastewater issues along with beautiful images to inspire. Founder of award-winning design practice focused on productive planting techniques and phytotechnology consulting, Offshoots, Inc. and coauthor of acclaimed book, PHYTO: Principles of Site Remediation & Landscape Design, Ms. Kennen brings a fresh perspective to the world of water and wastewater.
1:50 pm Panel Discussion Begins
Austin Blackmon, City of Boston, Chief of Environment, Energy and Open Space
Dr. Wafa Koelbel, Geo-Technical Engineer
Kate England, Boston Water & Sewer Commission
Prof. Joseph Hunt, Harvard University Extension School
3:00 pm Networking Break
3:15 pm Breakout Sessions
Breakout Session 1: Wastewater Innovation
Ben Myers, Sustainabilty Manager, Boston Properties
Jeremy Lacey, CEO, Phoenix Revolution,Inc.
Maureen Albright, Director of Engineering, TAJ Hotel
Chitra Dwarka, Biomimicry Roraima of Guyana
Breakout Session 2: Design and Legislation
Scott Bishop, Northeastern University/Bishop Land Design 
Breakout Session 3: Resilient Water Systems: Keep Wastewater out of Our Groundwater
Kate Kennen, ASLA, CEO and Founder, Offshoots,Inc.
Dr. Wafa Koelbel, Geo-Technical Engineer
Breakout Session 4: Wastewater for Food & Energy
Bruce Fulford, Principal, City Soil
Franziska Amacher,FAIA, Amacher & Associates, Architect
5:00 pm Networking Reception

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Driving Change: Autonomous & Electric Vehicles
Tuesday, March 21 
5:30 PM - 8:00 PM
MIT, Building 32, Room 123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Cost:  $0 - $30 

Warning: The Future of Transportation is Closer Than it Appears

A CleanTech event
‘A transportation revolution is underway and the main question about autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is “how fast are they coming?” The forecast is that AVs are expected to constitute around 50% of vehicle sales, 30% of vehicles, and 40% of all vehicle travel by 2040’ - Journal of Modern Transportation, Dec 2016

There has been much discussion of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology and the potential benefits to our everyday transportation lives, but what about the impact of AVs on our infrastructure?  What are the implications on the built environment, and energy?  How will we prepare and what are the opportunities for innovation?

This panel will explore how rapidly evolving technological advances in the transportation sector will impact mobility and energy consumption in urban centers. Specifically, the benefits of vehicle autonomy, vehicle electrification, sharing and scenarios where unintended consequences may bring new challenges.

Moreover, autonomous vehicles may increase safety and provide mobility to those who cannot drive, but that may increase the number of vehicles on the streets, worsening traffic in urban centers and increasing energy consumption.

Join our discussion to learn about the following issues and pose your own questions:

How will the grid adapt to enable electric vehicles?
Will electric vehicles (EV’s) become an extension of the grid, providing power and battery support? Will this enable new revenue streams and financing models?
Are advanced transportation solutions likely to increase or decrease CO2?
What can cities do to set a firm foundation for autonomous vehicles, how long might that take in a city like Boston, what steps are involved?
Will AV’s involve new ownership models: shared, public, private?
Panelists

Jane Lappin, Director, Public Policy and Government, Toyota Research
Ryan Chin, CEO, Optimus Ride
Josh Westerhold, Renault-Nissan Alliance Future Lab
Nikolaus Lang, Senior Partner and Managing Director, Boston Consulting Group
Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CIO, City of Boston
A companion MITEF event to be held on April 6, 2017 will delve deeper into Wireless Charging which could be a key enabling infrastructure technology for electric vehicles. More info coming soon!

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Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing
Tuesday, March 21
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
BU Hillel Foundation, 213 Bay State Road, Boston

While the macro-level mechanics and structures of genocide are most often our focus of study, at its heart, genocide happens because individual humans choose to kill other individual humans in large numbers and over an extended period of time. Who are the killers on the frontlines of genocide and how are do they come to do such extraordinary evil? Based on interviews with over 200 rank-and-file perpetrators, this presentation will focus on the ordinary origins of these killers and the processes by which they become capable of such atrocities. Understanding these processes can be vital to resolving current conflicts as well as preventing the future occurrence of genocide. 
Dr. James Waller is Cohen Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, home to the nation’s only undergraduate major in Holocaust and genocide studies. He also serves as Director of Academic Programs for the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation. His most recent books include Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (2007) andConfronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide (2016), both published by Oxford University Press.

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Connecting with Inner Peace in an Agitated World
WHEN  Tuesday, Mar. 21, 2017, 7 – 9 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Andover Chapel, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Religion
SPONSOR Buddhist Ministry Initiative
CONTACT Julie Barker Gillette: 617.496.5586
RELIGIOUS TRADITION  Buddhist
DETAILS   H.E. Dza Kilung Jigme Rinpoche is a Tibetan meditation master known for his depth, sincerity, and delightful warmth.  His 2015 book The Relaxed Mind: A Seven-Step Method for Deepening Meditation Practice is the fruit of 17 years' teaching in the West.

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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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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/
Sustainability at Harvard:  http://green.harvard.edu/events
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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