Sunday, May 21, 2017

Energy (and Other) Events - May 21, 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) EventsGeo

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Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index

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Index
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Monday, May 22
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12pm  MIT FACULTY FORUM ONLINE: ROBOTS AND YOUR JOB
12pm  PAOC Colloquium - John Chiang (UC Berkeley)
8pm  'Refuge Through Music' presented by the Refugee Orchestra Project

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Tuesday, May 23
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7:30am  Massachusetts’ renewable energy outlook: Onshore, offshore and the transmission challenge
8:15am  Carbon to Buildings Symposium
8:30am  Cleantech Women: Breaking the Green Glass Ceiling
12pm  Creative Data Literacy: Bridging the Gap Between the Data-haves and Have-nots - a Brown Bag with Catherine D’Ignazio
12pm  Can We Talk?: An Open Forum on Disability, Technology, and Inclusion
4pm  Discovery of Bio-Instructive Materials
4:15pm  The U.S., China, and the Future of the Korean Peninsula
5:30pm  authors@mit - John Tirman - Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash
5:30pm  Is Seductive Design the Key to Sustainability?
6pm  Jewish Press in Contemporary Germany
6pm  Bringing the Changing Energy Landscape to Life – 2017 Annual Banquet
6:30pm  "Green" Batteries for Renewable Energy: How About Rhubarb?
7:30pm  From Talk to Action: Talking about Racism and Taking a Stand Against Hate

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Wednesday, May 24
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8:15am  Making Food Sustainable... In The City?
12pm  Exploring DSX, a Platform for Data Scientists using Open Source Technologies
2-5pm  Harvard Extension School ALM Sustainability Thesis Symposium 
5pm  Graham Allison and Samantha Power: The US, China, and Thucydides’s Trap
5:30pm  No Food to Waste: Addressing the Food Waste Crisis

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Thursday, May 25
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8:30am  Introduction to Living Building Challenge
11am  Free Listening on Boston Common
1pm  Crowd-Financing Solar for Nonprofits Serving Low-Income Communities
1pm  Lessons from the 2017 City Energy Efficiency Scorecard
1pm  SUSTAINnovate 2017
3pm  Through the Looking Glass with Virtual & Augmented Reality
5pm  Compassion Fatigue
5:30pm  Future of Farming: How Urban Agriculture Is Revitalizing Local Economies
6:30pm  Total Immersion: Building virtual reality environments for basic science and clinical research

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Friday, May 26
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4pm  Brains, Minds and Machines Seminar Series: Steps towards a vision-based assistant
7:30pm  Thrive w/ Ujima: Eating through Boston's New Economy

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Saturday, May 27
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10am  Substance abuse and mental health hacking group
1pm  Soil & Plant Health

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Tuesday, May 30
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6pm  Zebras and unicorns: Rare maladies and a physician-scientist's search for answers
6pm  EDUCATE BOSTON: THE FUTURE OF LEARNING IN THE HUB
6pm  Boston Green Drinks - May Happy Hour

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

Robert Heinlein on Ecology

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Monday, May 22
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MIT FACULTY FORUM ONLINE: ROBOTS AND YOUR JOB
Monday, May 22
12:00 PM to 12:45 PM (Note: Time is ET.)
Location: Online

Alumni in research/faculty roles at universities and colleges share their research on robotics in the workplace. Panelist lineup: 

Hal Varian '69, Chief Economist, Google; Professor Emeritus, University of California 
Mike Gennert '80, SM '80, ScD '87, Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute 
Lynn Wu '02, MNG '03, PhD '11, Assistant Professor, The Wharton School

Moderator: Wade Roush PhD '95, producer/host, Soonish


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PAOC Colloquium - John Chiang (UC Berkeley)
Monday, May 22
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Building 54-923 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge

Speaker: John Chiang, UC Berkeley
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. 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. 

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)
For more information, contact:  Tom Beucler

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'Refuge Through Music' presented by the Refugee Orchestra Project
WHEN  Monday, May 22, 2017, 8 – 9:30 p.m.
WHERE  First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Concerts, Music, Support/Social
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR  The Refugee Orchestra Project
DIRECTED BY  Lidiya Yankovskaya, conductor
TICKET INFO  Free, suggested donation
DETAILS  Instrumentalists and singers whose friends and families have fled to the U.S. to escape violence and persecution will perform works by composers such as Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, and Irving Berlin - all of whom are themselves refugees. The concert will showcase, through music, the positive impact those who have come to this country seeking safety and a better life have had on American culture and society. It is one of three fundraising events that the Refugee Orchestra Project is organizing this spring.
FEATURED SOLOISTS
Zhanna Alkhazova, Award-winning, NY-based soprano who has earned critical acclaim performing lyric and dramatic operatic repertoire.
Amal El-Shrafi, Award-winning, Palestinian-American soprano, acclaimed for her powerful stage presence and luscious tone.
Olga Lisovskaya, A native of Kiev, Ukraine and hailed by critics as a “wonderful coloratura soprano with the flexibility to caress the highest range notes”, Olga Lisovskaya regularly performs leading operatic roles and recitals with world-renowned artists.
FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
“This year’s social and political climate have made the Refugee Orchestra Project more relevant than ever before in its mission to demonstrate the critical role that refugees and immigrants play in our cultural landscape,” said Refugee Orchestra Project Conductor and Artistic Director Lidiya Yankovskaya. “I hope that those attending our performances will be reminded that our entire culture and society has been built on and strengthened by the diversity that refugees have brought to America for hundreds of years and continue to bring today.” - Lidiya Yankovskaya

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Tuesday, May 23
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Massachusetts’ renewable energy outlook: Onshore, offshore and the transmission challenge
Tuesday, May 23
7:30 AM – 9:30 AM EDT
Omni Parker House, 60 School Street, Boston

As Massachusetts reaches a critical juncture in procuring more renewable sources of energy, important questions are surfacing. Is Massachusetts best positioned to meet its long-term clean energy goals? Are the incentives in place to build transmission commensurate with the Commonwealth’s energy needs and the economic opportunity of widespread job creation? And what can Massachusetts learn from other states and countries that have embraced a clean-energy agenda?

Join us at the State House News Forum event on May 23, when leading energy experts explore these questions and more at this pivotal moment in Massachusetts’ energy history.

Panelists include:
Ed Krapels, CEO of Anbaric Development Partners
Ben Downing, VP of New Market Development, Nexamp
Judy Chang, Principal, The Brattle Group

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Carbon to Buildings Symposium
Tuesday, May 23
8:15 AM – 6:30 PM EDT
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

This symposium will gather leading companies and technical experts in the hydrocarbon, polymer and chemical sectors to discuss the potential benefits of bringing polymeric composites into mainstream use as a base-building and infrastructure technology. Architects, building engineers and building code specialists will contribute their insights as to how composites might be introduced in a much more systematic and effective manner than they have been to date: not merely as replacement component parts for an unchanged tectonic logic, but as holistic structure-envelope building methodologies.

For additional information on this event, please visit:
For the current agenda (subject to change), please visit:

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Cleantech Women: Breaking the Green Glass Ceiling
Tuesday, May 23
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EDT
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, 63 Franklin Street, 3rd Floor, Boston

Hear from a panel of women breaking through in the clean energy industry and how they're achieving their career goals.

Talk with industry movers and shakers, make professional contacts, share experiences with your peers and get inspired to take the next steps in your career.

Moderator:  Doug Banks, Executive Editor, Boston Business Journal
Panelists:  Rebecca Tepper, Energy Chief, Massachusetts Attorney General's Office
Wendy Rowland, Marketing Assistant, Hancock Software, Successful Women in Clean Energy graduate
Gail Greenwald, Partner, Clean Energy Venture Group

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Creative Data Literacy: Bridging the Gap Between the Data-haves and Have-nots - a Brown Bag with Catherine D’Ignazio
Tuesday, May 23
12:00p–1:00p
MIT, Buidling E25-401, 45 Carleton, Cambridge

Speaker: Catherine D'Ignazio
Communities, governments, libraries and organizations are swimming in data - demographic data, participation data, government data, social media data - but very few understand what to do with it. Though governments and foundations are creating open data portals and corporations are creating APIs, these rarely focus on use, usability, building community or creating impact. So although there is an explosion of data, there is a significant lag in data literacy at the scale of communities and citizens. This creates a situation of data-haves and have-nots which is troubling for an open data movement that seeks to empower people with data. But there are emerging technocultural practices that combine participation, creativity, and context to connect data to everyday life. These include data journalism, citizen science, emerging forms for documenting and publishing metadata, novel public engagement in government processes, and participatory data art. This talk surveys these practices both lovingly and critically, including their aspirations and the challenges they face in creating citizens that are truly empowered with data.

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free 
Sponsor(s): MIT Libraries
For more information, contact:  Kelly Hopkins
6172533044

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Can We Talk?: An Open Forum on Disability, Technology, and Inclusion
Tuesday, May 23 
12:00 pm
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Room 3018, third floor, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
This event will not be webcast. Video, audio, and a transcript will be available soon afterat https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/05/Canwetalk 

featuring Professors Elizabeth Ellcessor and Meryl Alper with guests 
This event is being co-hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and Harvard Law School Dean of Student's Office, Accessibility Services.

Can we talk? The question (a favorite prompt of the late comedian Joan Rivers) evokes a feeling of being intimately and sometimes uncomfortably open, frank, and honest, both with others and ourselves. This event, a conversation between Prof. Elizabeth Ellcessor (Indiana University) and Prof. Meryl Alper (Northeastern University, Berkman Klein Center ), points the question at the topic of disability, technology, and inclusion in public and private, and in digital and digitally-mediated spaces. Ryan Budish (Berkman Klein Center) and Dylan Mulvin (Microsoft Research) will serve as discussants.

Can we talk?, with respect to different degrees of potential access (in its social, cultural, and political forms) that new media constrains and affords for individuals with disabilities. Can we talk?, with respect to who does and does not take part in the ongoing research, development, and critique of accessible communication technologies. Can we talk?, with respect to whether or not talking, or its corollary "voice," is an adequate metaphor for conversation, participation, and agency?

Alper and Ellcessor and will draw upon their recent respective books, Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (MIT Press, 2017) and Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation (NYU Press, 2016). Both books will be available for purchase and signing.

If you have any questions about arriving at or getting into this event, please do not hesitate to reach out to Carey Andersen at candersen@cyber.law.harvard.edu or at 617-495-7547. Wasserstein Hall, Room 3018 is fully accessible.

About Elizabeth
Elizabeth (Liz) Ellcessor is an assistant professor in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Her research focuses on the ways that digital media technologies can both expand and limit people’s access to culture and civil society. Bringing together cultural studies, disability studies, and critical media industry studies, she uses a range of qualitative and historical methods. Focusing on those on the margins–particularly people with disabilities–exposes gaps in mainstream narratives about technological progress, user participation, and engagement with mediated culture.

Additionally, Liz has conducted research on performances of online identity, including social media celebrity, activism, and deception.

Liz teaches a range of courses, from introductory undergraduate courses in media studies to specialized doctoral seminars. Her courses aim to make the familiar strange, providing new details and perspectives with which students can reconsider taken for granted elements of their digitally mediated lives. Additionally, she uses strategies of universal design to make courses accessible for as many students as possible, incorporating captioned content, flexible assignment structures and timelines, and multiple forms of student participation.

Liz is a founding co-chair of the Media, Science, and Technology Studies scholarly interest group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

About Meryl
Meryl Alper is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University and a Faculty Associate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern, she earned her doctoral and master’s degrees from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies and History from Northwestern University, as well as a certificate in Early Childhood Education from UCLA.

Alper’s research explores the social implications of communication technologies for individuals with disabilities, children, and families. In particular, she studies the opportunities and challenges that media and technology provide young people with developmental disabilities and their families in the digital age. She integrates theoretical, empirical, and archival methods in this work and employs a historical, sociological, and critical/cultural perspective.

Alper has worked for over a decade in the children’s media industry. As an undergraduate at Northwestern, she was Lab Assistant Manager in the NSF-funded Children’s Digital Media Center/Digital-Kids Lab and interned in the Education & Research Department at Sesame Workshop in New York. Post graduation, she worked in Los Angeles as a Research Manager for Nick Jr., conducting formative research for the Emmy-nominated educational preschool television series Ni Hao, Kai-lan and The Fresh Beat Band.

Alper is the author of Digital Youth with Disabilities (MIT Press, 2014) and Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (MIT Press, 2017). Her research has been published in New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, and IEEE Annals of the History ofComputing, among other journals. She has been awarded four Top Paper awards by the International Communication Association for her sole-authored work across multiple ICA divisions. Her research and popular writing has also been featured in a range of venues, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, Motherboard, and Wired.

About Ryan
Ryan Budish is a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center.  Ryan joined the Berkman Klein Center in 2011 as a Fellow and the Project Director of Herdict.  In his time at Berkman Klein, Ryan has contributed policy and legal analysis to a number of projects and reports, and he has led several significant initiatives relating to Internet censorship, corporate transparency about government surveillance, and multistakeholder governance mechanisms.

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.

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Discovery of Bio-Instructive Materials
WHEN  Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE  Wyss Institute, Room 330, 60 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Research study, Science, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
SPEAKER(S)  Morgan Alexander, Ph.D., Professor of Biomedical Surfaces, University of Nottingham, UK; Director, EPSRC Programme Grant in Next Generation Biomaterials Discovery; Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award holder; Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator
COST  Free
DETAILS  Please join Dr. Morgan Alexander on Tuesday, May 23, from 4 – 5 p.m. as he discusses the development of bio-instructive materials and his work to improve upon them by screening 3-D libraries.
The biomaterials found in the clinic today are primarily chosen on the basis of their availability and mechanical properties rather than positive interactions with surrounding cells and tissues. Unfortunately, our understanding of the bio-interface is poor which hinders the design of new and better biomaterials

By adopting a high throughput materials discovery approach, Dr. Alexander and his team have identified bio-instructive materials with varied characteristics and for a variety of applications such as materials with pro- and anti-inflammatory characteristics towards modulating the human immune system in novel therapies and devices and materials resisting bacterial attachment and biofilm.

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The U.S., China, and the Future of the Korean Peninsula
WHEN  Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Ash Center foyer, 124 Mt Auburn Street, Suite 200N, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S)  Dr. Jin Park, a Public Policy Scholar in residence at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former member of the Korean National Assembly will speak. Ash Center Director Tony Saich will serve as respondent, and Ash Center China Programs Director Edward Cunningham will moderate.
COST  Free
DETAILS Join the Ash Center for a discussion on the U.S., China, and the Future of the Korean Peninsula with Dr. Jin Park, a Public Policy Scholar in residence at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former member of the Korean National Assembly. Dr. Park will be introduced by HKS graduate Julia Lee, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Ash Center Director Tony Saich will serve as respondent, and Ash Center China Programs Director Edward Cunningham will moderate.

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authors@mit - John Tirman - Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash
Tuesday, May 23
5:30p–6:30p
MIT, Building N50, The MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Speaker: John Tirman
The MIT Press Bookstore presents John Tirman, Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies, discussing his book "Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash" on Tuesday, May 23, at 5:30 pm at the Bookstore. 

Tirman's discussion of the resistance to immigration and immigrants couldn't be more timely. Illegal immigration continues to roil American politics, the uproar encouraged by the Trump administration. State and local governments have passed more than 300 laws that attempt to restrict undocumented immigrants' access to hospitals, schools, food stamps, and driver's licenses. And yet polls show that a majority of Americans support some kind of path to citizenship for those here illegally. What is going on? In "Dream Chasers," Tirman explains that the resistance is more cultural than political, stemming from fears that the white, Protestant "real America" is changing. 

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
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): The MIT Press Bookstore
For more information, contact:  The MIT Press Bookstore
617-253-5249

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Is Seductive Design the Key to Sustainability?
Tuesday, May 23 
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Wolf Greenfield, 600 Atlantic Avenue, 23rd Floor, Boston  (Note: yes, this is in the Federal Reserve Building!)
Cost:  $10 for Members; $30 Non-members: free for students

A discussion on how we might bring more design in energy and get mass market appeal for home efficiency, solar energy, electric vehicles and more

Design has long played a critical role in translating technology’s potential into desirable experiences for consumers, and viable opportunities for businesses. Today, as the decentralization of energy and the proliferation of related IoT devices increases, design and technology have the power to revitalize “forgotten” products, systems, and experiences - from thermostats to solar panels to power plants.

Currently, the energy conversation largely rests on climate change and economics as the drivers. To most beyond early adopters, this is not enough.

Can design’s influence bring more people into the energy world by tapping new emotions like desire, excitement or delight?

Join us as we discuss how we might bring more design in energy and get mass market appeal for home efficiency, solar energy, electric vehicles and more. Specifically, attendees will:
Gain exposure to a compelling new aspect of energy innovation
Realize how design can convert skeptical customers
Learn why well designed products that are energy efficient may not cost more than traditional designs
Learn how clean energy could transition from the early adopter market to mainstream

Speakers
Karl Langmuir, Design Director, Schneider Electric North America
Gian Pangaro, Creative Director, IDEO CoLab
Senthil Balasubramanian, Co-Founder, Sistine Solar
Jim Gordon, SmartFlower Solar
Ellen Watts, Co-Founder,  Architerra
Moderator  
Scott Clavenna, CEO,  Green Tech Media

Agenda
5:30-6 Networking and Registration
6-7:30: Panel and Q&A
7:30-8:30: Networking with refreshments

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Jewish Press in Contemporary Germany
Tuesday, May 23
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston

Please join us for a lecture on "Jewish Press in Contemporary Germany” to be given by Dr. Rafael Seligmann, the publisher of The Jewish Voice from Germany, at 6pm on Tuesday, May 23 at the Goethe Institut. Dr. Seligmann has written extensively on the Jewish experience in Germany both in fictional form as well as for leading German magazines and newspapers (Der Spiegel, Bild, and taz). Born in Tel Aviv in 1947, he moved to Germany with his family at the age of 10. 

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Bringing the Changing Energy Landscape to Life – 2017 Annual Banquet
Tuesday, May 23
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Holiday Inn Boston-Brookline, 1200 Beacon Street, Brookline

Power and Energy Society
2017 Annual Banquet – Come and join us for an evening of fun and networking!!!
Bringing the Changing Energy Landscape to Life
Featuring: Buffet style dinner, cash bar and live music by “Jazz in the Air”
Speaker: Rudolph (Rudy) Wynter, President & COO- FERC Regulated Business and New Energy Solutions, National Grid
Time: Pre-dinner drinks at 6:00PM, program commences at 6.30PM

Price: $35 per person or $270 per table of eight. $10 per student


*A small convenience fee will apply to online ticket transactions.

Checks are also acceptable. Please make the check payable to IEEE PES Boston Chapter and mail it to:
Babak Enayati
40 Sylvan Rd.
Waltham, MA 02451
Registration Closing Date and Time: 6PM on Sunday May 21, 2017

Visit IEEE PES Boston Chapter’s website for details! http://www.ieeepesboston.org/

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"Green" Batteries for Renewable Energy: How About Rhubarb?
Tuesday, May 23
6:30 PM
Belmont Media Center, 9 Lexington Street, Belmont

Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University.
Aspuru-Guzik Research Group

Renewable energy from resources such as solar and wind will require massive battery storage. There is an all-out effort to develop "green" batteries that are environmentally friendly. The search is on to produce power from organic molecules, and so plants are natural candidates. Who would have guessed that rhubarb offers real possibilities? Dr. Aspuru-Guzik, a member of the Harvard team that has been working on "organic megaflow batteries" and in this case, the “rhubarb battery.”

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From Talk to Action: Talking about Racism and Taking a Stand Against Hate
Tuesday, May 23
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Beacon Hill Friends House, 8 Chestnut Street, Boston

This interactive session is designed to look critically at racism in our communities and our nation by examining the roots of white supremacy and how the past impacts our present. Shay Stewart-Bouley is currently the Executive Director of Community Change Inc. , a nearly 50-year- old anti-racism organization based in Boston that organizes and educates for racial equity with a specific focus on working with white people.

Shay's talk is part of the Beacon Hill Friends House Spring Speakers Series, “Working for Racial Justice Today,” in which speakers from our community will look at the history of racism in Boston, New England, and around the world, and what we can do here and now to confront it.

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Wednesday, May 24
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Making Food Sustainable... In The City?
Wednesday, May 24
8:15 AM to 9:30 AM
Life Alive, Downstairs, 765 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

First Meetup for Sustainable Boston! Come by, grab a coffee, and let's discuss food! As one of the main pillars of survival it's critical to develop a healthy relationship to where our food comes from and where our scraps end up. This is especially a problem in urban environments where the integration of nearby farms into restaurants or grocery stores isn't seen as often as it should be. Is this a lack of people caring, or businesses caring? Or maybe just the lack of information and ease? Let's play around with some ideas and share experiences for what a sustainable urban food system would involve.

Life Alive in Cambridge is allowing us to use their space for this Meetup. Check out their website to learn more about how they've involved themselves in their community.

Drop by at anytime to join in on the conversation!!

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Exploring DSX, a Platform for Data Scientists using Open Source Technologies
Wednesday, May 24
12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

During this talk we will be demonstrating Data Science Experience (DSX), a Gartner's recommended collaborative platform with Data Science and Machine learning capabilities. If you are a data scientist using Open Source technologies such as python, R, Apache Spark and Tensorflow, join us to explore building models and the platform's unique capability to automatically identify and build models that can then be deployed in several contexts.

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Harvard Extension School ALM Sustainability Thesis Symposium 
Wednesday, May 24
2–5 pm
Harvard, Maxwell-Dworkin room G115 and lobby, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
To help get an accurate headcount for attendance, please RSVP here: http://tinyurl.com/ENVR-200-symposium-RSVP

Open to the Harvard community. Student presentations will be followed by a reception in the Maxwell-Dworkin lobby where light refreshments will be served.

For those of you who are unable to join on campus, the presentations will be livestreamed via Zoom. You can join the live stream at 2:00 p.m. on 5/24 by following the link below: https://zoom.us/j/299323662

This year's sustainability thesis research includes presentations from:
Meredith Amend: "Applying Ecological Gap Analysis as a Tool for Restoration Planning"
Ryan Cornell: "The Environmental Benefits of Electric Vehicles as a Function of Renewable Energy"
Elizabeth Nolan: "Vacant Land Conversion in Detroit, Michigan: A Spatial Analysis of Neighborhood Stabilization and Communal Access"
Ashley Poupart: "Life Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment of Local Wine Production and Consumption in Texas: Using LCA to Inspire Environmental Improvements"
Phillip Sexton: "Sustainability Analysis of the Commercial Winter Management Industry's Use of Salt"
Jay Squalli: "A Longitudinal U.S. State-Level Analysis of Organic Food Production and Greenhouse Gas Emissions"
Helen Silver: "Relating Soil Organic Carbon Increases to Available Water Storage and Drought Vulnerability in South-central Idaho"
Hala Srouji: "The Impact of Residential Water Price Increases and Subsidy Reductions on Elasticity of Demand in Abu Dhabi City"
Cathryn Buonocore: "Comparative Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Digital and Physical Distribution of Video Games in the United States"
Julia D'Costa: "A Watershed Moment: Development of a Multimetric Stream Index of Biotic Integrity to Assess the Ecological Integrity of the Credit River in Ontario, Canada"
Fraser Work: "Opportunities for Improved Warship Energy Efficiency: A Canadian Patrol Frigate's Operational Energy Use Patterns"
Mark Valen: "Economic Opportunities for Biomass Harvest of Invasive Giant Reed (Arundo donax L.) in Southern California as Feedstock for the Pulp and Paper Industry"
On behalf of the Sustainability program, congratulations to these students and all of the 2016-2017 graduates.

Editorial Comment:  The Harvard Extension School Sustainability program has some great teachers and some dedicated students.  Over the years, I’ve been very impressed with their work.

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Graham Allison and Samantha Power: The US, China, and Thucydides’s Trap
WHEN  Wednesday, May 24, 2017, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  The First Parish in Cambridge, 3 Church Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs - belfercenter.org
SPEAKER(S)  Samantha Power, (former United States Ambassador to the United Nations) 
Graham Allison (Director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs) 
COST  Free
TICKET INFO RSVP Required
CONTACT INFO Sharon Wilke, Associate Director of Communications, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Email: sharon_wilke@hks.harvard.edu
Phone: 617.495.9858
DETAILS  Is China serious about replacing the US as the dominant power in Asia for the foreseeable future? Could Americans accept becoming No. 2? Is war between Washington and Beijing inevitable?
Please join Samantha Power and Graham Allison for an exclusive conversation about these and other timely questions to mark the launch of Alison's new book, 'Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?'
Reception, sales, and signing will follow.

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No Food to Waste: Addressing the Food Waste Crisis
Wednesday, May 24
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Greentown Labs, 28 Dane Street, Somerville

Addressing the Food Waste Crisis for Investors, Corporates and Entrepreneurs
“If food waste globally were a country, it would be the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after China and the United States.”
A staggering forty percent of the U.S. food supply is never eaten, the equivalent of over $218 billion in value, according to the recent Trillium and NRDC study, “Assessing Corporate Performance on Food Waste Reduction: A Strategic Guide for Investors.” The social, environmental and financial consequences of this large scale waste are widespread and ultimately, from an investor’s perspective, represent risks that cannot be ignored.

Join WISE, BASIC, and Net Impact Boston for a unique, collaborative event hosted by Greentown Labs to explore corporate best practices for evaluating and reducing food waste, the U.S. roadmap to reduce food waste at the regulatory level, the implications for institutional investors and how we can each make a difference individually.
We will begin the evening with brief introductions, then we will break into round-robin discussions with attendees rotating in small groups to chat with the speakers. Light appetizers and refreshments, provided by Trillium and ReFED, will be served.

Agenda:
5:30-6:00 PM - Welcome & Introductions
6:00-7:00 PM - Speaker-led Breakout Discussions
7:00-7:30 PM - Networking

Speakers:
Moderator: Adam Rein, Managing Director at MissionPoint Partners
1- Allan Pearce, Shareholder Advocate at Trillium Asset Management
2- Chris Cochran, Executive Director at ReFED
3- Emma Brown, Creative Marketing and Event Coordinator at Bootstrap Composting
4- Josh Roach, Managing Partner at Loyd Capital Partners

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Thursday, May 25
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Introduction to Living Building Challenge
Thursday, May 25
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EDT
US Green Building Council MA Chapter HQ, 50 Milk Street, 16th floor "Edison" Conference Room, Boston
Cosst:  $50 – $65

Join us for an introductory session on the newest and most rigorous standard in high performance buildings today. If you are new to the standard or have a few unanswered questions come visit this session. We will be breifly covering projects in the Commonwealth and will have mediated discussion after the comprehensive presentation. 

The Living Building Challenge is the built environment's most rigorous performance standard. It calls for the creation of building projects that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature's architecture. Participants will gain a basic understanding of the Living Building Challenge - a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that addresses development at all scales. To be certified under the Challenge, projects must meet a series of ambitious performance requirements, including Net Zero Energy, Waste and Water, over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy. Participants will learn to describe the key components of the program and discuss the rationale for restorative design principles.

The presenter - Celis Brisbin - will be returning from the Living Future unConference and will have exciting new updates to share!

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Free Listening on Boston Common
Thursday, May 25
11:00 AM to 1:30 PM
Boston Common at Park Street Station, Corner of Tremont Street and Park Street, Boston

We'll gather near the fountain by Park St Station
Come offer your listening ears and open heart to strangers on Boston Common.

All you need to do is create a sign, hold it up, and wait for people come talk to you.

It really is that simple, but if you've never offered free listening before, please read through the Urban Confessional Partner Guide to get a sense of how it works at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54e8d62ae4b0ed74440e870d/t/58cb45f0b8a79b5335464ad9/1489716721777/Urban+Confessional+Partner+Guide+%28English%29.pdf

You can also post questions to our Meetup group's Discussion Board if you'd like a bit of extra guidance.

IMPORTANT: This event is weather-dependent. When your RSVP, please let us know the best way to contact you in case of a change or cancellation.

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Crowd-Financing Solar for Nonprofits Serving Low-Income Communities
Thursday, May 25
1:00pm — 2:00pm ET
Webinar

Nonprofit community service providers that serve low-income communities have faced challenges in financing solar for their own facilities. These organizations’ lack of credit history, potentially unreliable revenue, and inability to take advantage of tax credits and accelerated depreciation can make traditional solar financing models a poor fit.

One answer that has emerged is “crowd-funding,” in which many individuals each provide a small amount of money for a project. Crowd-funding can involve donations, or it can involve investments, in which the individuals who participate expect a financial return. In this webinar, Andreas Karelas, the Executive Director of RE-volv, and Todd Bluechel, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales at CollectiveSun, will present two models that rely on crowd-funding to enable nonprofits to adopt solar. Mr. Karelas will discuss RE-volv’s model, which allows for crowd-sourced donations. Mr. Bluechel will discuss “CrowdLending,” one of CollectiveSun’s financing options that facilitates loans to fund solar projects after tax credits have been applied. Their presentations will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.  

This is one in a series of webinars presented by the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) as part of the Sustainable Solar Education Project on bringing the benefits of solar to low-income residents. The Sustainable Solar Education Project, funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative, is helping state and municipal officials to ensure distributed solar electricity is equitable and consumer friendly.  

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Lessons from the 2017 City Energy Efficiency Scorecard
Thursday, May 25
1:00 PM to 2:00 PM
Webinar

Want to learn how cities are reducing energy waste and becoming more sustainable? The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) invites you to a webinar on May 25th at 1:00 pm EDT to discuss the results of its recently released 2017 City Energy Efficiency Scorecard.

The City Scorecard assesses 51 large US cities on local government efforts to increase energy efficiency. ACEEE scores cities by evaluating them in five areas: government operations, community initiatives, buildings, utilities, and transportation. We identify cities that excel and those that need improvement. We highlight actions they can take to do better.

Boston, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland top the rankings of the 2017 edition, while Los Angeles, San Diego, Kansas City, and Phoenix are the most-improved since 2015. Join Dave Ribeiro, the lead author of the report, to learn about cities' achievements, scoring trends, and best practices any community can pursue.

Event Contact:  dribeiro@aceee.org

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SUSTAINnovate 2017
Thursday, May 25
1:00 PM – 3:30 PM EDT
CIC Boston, 50 Milk Street, Floor 1, Room Anchor, Boston
Cost:  $55

Join us! SUSTAINnovate 2017 
Sustainability & Innovation in K-12 Schools
Brought to you by Coalesce, The Campus Sustainability Accelerator
We invite administrators and sustainability coordinators to join a lively conversation and interactive dialogue to hear from experts in the sustainability field and connect with peers from independent schools to share best practices and return back to campuses with new resources, insights, and connections.
Agenda:
State of the Field Insights - Featured Speakers and Q&A
Peer to Peer Connections - Break Out Dialogues on Specific Sustainability Topics
Innovation Tour (Optional)

Featured Speakers and Innovation Tour:
Georges Dyer, Principal, Intentional Endowment Network The Intentional Endowments Network supports schools and other tax-exempt organizations in aligning their endowment investment practices with their mission, values, and sustainability goals without sacrificing financial returns.
Simca Horowitz, Eastern Mass Director, Massachusetts Farm to School Project Mass Farm to School works to increase healthy, locally grown food in schools and institutions.
Erika Eitland, Doctoral Student, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Center for Health and the Global Environment, whose mission is to draw the connection between human health and the health of the environment. Erika focuses on healthy school buildings
Wynn Calder, Principal, Sustainable Schools, consults with the Green Schools Alliance (GSA) and the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), which are supporting sustainable schools in a variety of ways, including an annual student leadership conference, a global education course for teachers, a green purchasing consortium, a new online sustainability assessment tool for schools, and more.

Light refreshments will be served.

Innovation Tour to follow: CIC Boston - More Innovation and Startups than Anywhere on the Planet! Attendees will be experience the vibrancy of the various floors and innovation spaces throughout the CIC. After exploring CIC Boston, participating attendees will jump on the Red Line and head to Kendall Square to join Venture Cafe gathering where drinks will be served.

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Through the Looking Glass with Virtual & Augmented Reality
Thursday, May 25
3:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Venture Cafe at Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th floor, 1 Broadway, Cambridge

‘Through the Looking Glass’ is Boston’s immersive enhanced reality event. It will address what the future of augmented, virtual and enhanced reality could look like, and how entrepreneurs and innovators might apply recent advances in the space to their organizations. Participants will be able to converse, connect, and immerse themselves in the technologies with a variety of demos and selection of educational sessions.

Through the Looking Glass is possible in collaboration with BostonVR and BostonAR Meetup Groups. RSVP for space here but walk-ins are welcome.

AGENDA
3:00 – 8:00 PM: Networking
3:00 – 5:00 PM: Office Hours – Entrepreneurs and prospective entrepreneurs can book 30-minute appointments to obtain advice from experts. Click here to book an appointment: http://vencaf.org/book-office-hours/
4:00 – 5:00 PM: Virtual Reality in Entertainment
5:30 – 6:30 PM: Enterprise Virtual Reality
5:30 – 6:30 PM: Communicating in an Augmented Reality Environment
5:30 – 7:30 PM: Startup Demos and Inventor Showcase – Entrepreneurs and corporate groups interested in demoing should apply here: http://bit.ly/vc-vr
6:45 – 7:45 PM: Augmented Reality Art as a Guerilla Medium
6:45 – 7:45 PM: TCN Roundtable

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Compassion Fatigue
Thursday, May 25
5:00:00 PM EDT - 6:00:00 PM EDT
Webinar

Compassion fatigue is a term that describes the way caregivers who are constantly giving are frequently at risk for mental instability and illness. Compassion fatigue symptoms are displays of chronic stress including isolation from others, poor self-care, excessive blaming, or substance abuse. Recognition that one may have compassion fatigue can lead to insights of past difficulty, greater self care, and eventually healing and recovery.  Both family members of, and professionals working with, individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) will benefit from recognition of this concept and tools to intervene in strengthening their status as supports to those with BPD.

Speaker:  Lois W. Choi-Kain, MEd, MD, Director, Adult Borderline Center and Training Institute; Medical and Program Director, Gunderson Residence, McLean Hospital, Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

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Future of Farming: How Urban Agriculture Is Revitalizing Local Economies
Thursday, May 25
5:30-7:30PM
The KITCHEN at Boston Public Market 100 Hanover Street Boston

Description:  As populations grow, our urban areas are tasked with many differing goals: create jobs, grow the economy, but at the same time make the city "greener" and more sustainable for the environment and human well-being. Now more than ever, it’s critical to change what we eat and how it’s made. Food justice, climate change, social impact, and health concerns make food an integral part of our everyday lives. Food entrepreneurs have the opportunity to make a difference beyond our dinner plate.

Over the past five years, Massachusetts has become the national incubator for innovative business solutions to climate change and social community challenges. Join Climate Action Business Association and Green City Growers for a special panel discussion on the importance of reinvestment into local food community.

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Total Immersion: Building virtual reality environments for basic science and clinical research
Thursday, May 25
6:30pm
Aeronaut Brewery, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville

Researchers from the STRIVE Center


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Friday, May 26
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Brains, Minds and Machines Seminar Series: Steps towards a vision-based assistant
Friday, May 26
4:00p–5:00p
MIT, Building 46-3002, MIT Singleton Auditorium, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Speaker: Kevin Murphy (Google)
Biography: Kevin Patrick Murphy was born in Ireland, grew up in England (BA from Cambridge), and went to graduate school in the USA (MEng from U. Penn, PhD from UC Berkeley, Postdoc at MIT). In 2004, he became a professor of computer science and statistics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. In 2011, he went to Google in Mountain View, California for his sabbatical. In 2012, he converted to a full-time research scientist position at Google. Dr. Murphy is the author of the textbook entitled "Machine Learning: a Probabilistic Perspective" (MIT Press, 2012).

Brains, Minds & Machines Seminar Series 
(This seminar series was formerly known as "Brains & Machines Seminar Series.")This seminar series is organized by the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM) which is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), under a Science and Technology Centers (STCs): Integrative Partnerships award, Grant No. CCF-1231216.Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research
For more information, contact:  Kathleen D. Sullivan

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Thrive w/ Ujima: Eating through Boston's New Economy
Friday, May 26
7:30 - 10pm 
Dudley Cafe, 15 Warren Street, Roxbury
Cost:  $40 – $85

Dudley Cafe x Olio Culinary Collective present THRIVE w/ UJIMA PROJECT a 5 course culinary journey inspired by Boston's New Economy 
Join Ujima Project for a memorable dining event by Olio Culinary Collective, Boston's premiere worker owned catering co-op. 
5 course tasting menu ($85)*
optional full drink pairing ($40)

Hear updates from Ujima Project leaders on a growing vision to build a People's Economy in Boston

With a special presentation by Yotron the Don, Dudley Cafe's artist of the month

*sliding scale available for Ujima volunteers
**dietary restrictions can be accommodated


THRIVE w/ UJIMA PROJECT
Menu Preview 

Five course menu by Aaron Tanaka, Olio chef and Ujima Project co-founder,
drawing inspirations from Ujima's thriving network of businesses and organizations. 

Course 1
"Steak & Eggs"
seared steak or beet tartare
quail egg
puffed corn wheel
pickled radish
community cress
(inspired by Bowdoin Bike School) 

Course 2 
"Thriving Garden"
roasted mushrooms & asparagus
fingerling potatoes
charred scallion soil 
garden chimi (from Haley House farm)
white truffle aioli
(inspired by Haley House, CERO Co-op) 

*menu subject to change

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Saturday, May 27
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Substance abuse and mental health hacking group
Saturday, May 27
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM EDT
Cambridge Innovation Center, 1 Broadway, 4th floor, Cambridge

UNLIMITED snacks and drinks will be provided. 
Substance abuse and mental health working group is a meetup with a simple purpose: Brainstorm and code together, on substance abuse and mental health related projects. We will meet every Saturday in the month of May (6th, 13, 20 and 27th of May) and you will get a chance to showcase your work on June 1st at our Narcotic addiction event. We are expecting an attendance of 100 to 150 people and we will pick a winner during that event. The winner also gets to be on our equity crowdfunding platform.

HOW DOES THIS WORK? 
You can brainstorm or hack on anything! Any language, framework, public/open-source, personal, etc.
You don’t have to have an idea to hack on! You’re more than welcome to come just to pair with someone.
Start off with a quick round of introductions, to say who you are, what you’re working on, and if you’d like help with your idea.
You DONT have to know computer programming, you can inspire others through your vision. You can hack for the whole day (10 am to 4 pm) or join anytime.

Please tweet about this event using @HealthInnoBos and join us on Facebook and LinkedIn
We will be meeting at the Cambridge Innovation Center every Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm on the FOURTH FLOOR.
Will your project be the next big thing?, let's find out on our June 1st Narcotic addiction event.
See you on Saturday!

Call Kal at 617-863-0109 for access

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Soil & Plant Health
Saturday, May 27 
1pm - 4pm
Franklin Park Zoo, One Franklin Park Road, Boston

Join Dan Kittredge of the Bionutrient Association for a discussion on how you can grow healthier, better tasting food crops by helping plants achieve their full genetic potential through ecological management. During this talk, participants will also receive a general introduction to the growing of bionutrient-dense food.

About the Speaker
Executive Director of the Bionutrient Food Association, Dan is passionate about raising the quality of nutrition in our food supply through collaboration with committed individuals, businesses, and organizations that support the value of people growing and eating really good food. His experience managing organic farms and developing sustainable agriculture techniques has connected him to farmers in Central America, Russia, India and the United States.

Offered in partnership with the Boston Food Forest Coalition, this spring series of workshops and talks focus on urban sustainability and permaculture principles. Workshops are designed to provide participants with hands-on opportunities to put their newly acquired knowledge into practice.

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Tuesday, May 30
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Zebras and unicorns: Rare maladies and a physician-scientist's search for answers
WHEN  Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE  Broad Institute, 415 Main Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Broad Institute
SPEAKER(S)  Anna Greka
COST  Free
DETAILS  Roughly one in every ten people around the world suffers from a rare disease—and those are just the ones that researchers and clinicians know about. Physician-scientist Anna Greka will talk about the steep uphill battles facing rare disease patients when it comes to getting diagnosed and finding treatment options, her own work studying and treating rare kidney diseases, and the insights that rare disease research can provide into treatments for more common disorders.

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EDUCATE BOSTON: THE FUTURE OF LEARNING IN THE HUB
Tuesday, May 30
6 – 8 pm EDT
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
By signing up for this event, you're giving our sponsors permission to contact you about upcoming events and promotions.

Kim Lucas , Civic Research Director, Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics
Rahn Dorsey, Chief of Education, City of Boston
David Leonard, President, Boston Public Library

Join SPARK Boston and GA for a Chief Chat with Boston’s first ever Chief of Education Rahn Dorsey, BPL President David Leonard, and New Urban Mechanics’ Civic Research Director Kim Lucas as we discuss the future of learning in Boston. 

Why It Matters?
Boston has some of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country (and there’s a few household names across the river, too). But our city is also home to many other educational opportunities that, for many Bostonians, are favorite hidden gems. Whether you’re new to the Hub or a born-and-bred Bostonian, there’s plenty to explore to advance your career, learn a new skill, pick up a second (or third!) language, and more. 

With these resources and opportunities in mind, Mayor Walsh hired Boston’s first ever Chief of Education Rahn Dorsey and challenged him to connect these many pieces, supporting a lifelong learning environment for all residents. 

What You Will Takeaway?
Insight into the city’s vision for relevant, accessible lifelong learning
A list of great (often free!) places for you to go get skills
An interest for further exploring the city’s wide-ranging experiential learning opportunities
New understanding of how Boston’s educational assets fit together 

About the Speakers
Kim Lucas, Civic Research Director, Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics
Kim’s life has centered around questions, and she brings this expertise to her work as MONUM’s Director of Civic Research. Part researcher, part practitioner, and part muppet, Kim has consistently kept one foot in the ivory tower and one foot on the ground, pairing research with practice to seek real solutions to social policy and planning problems. Questioning who we think of as ‘expert’ and how stakeholders identify ‘value’ are two common threads that pervade her work. Kim holds a BA in Psychology and Sociology from UCLA, an MA in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning and Child Development from Tufts University, and puppies anytime she can. She is presently a PhD candidate in Social Policy and Sociology at Brandeis University; her dissertation is an economic sociological exploration of the ‘value’ of the early childhood workforce.

Rahn Dorsey, Chief of Education, City of Boston
Rahn Dorsey is Boston’s first-ever Chief of Education. Mayor Walsh appointed him in September 2014. His charge is to set a strategic agenda for the city to improve the quality of instruction and student support across Boston’s educational ecosystem and better integrate school, community and work-based learning opportunities. As Chief of Education, Rahn collaborates with young people, parents, educators, K-12 and higher education leaders and nonprofit and private sector innovators to develop strategies that fully bring learning to life in Boston.

David Leonard, President, Boston Public Library
David Leonard, President of the Boston Public Library, leads the 170-year old institution, one of Boston’s great educational, cultural and civic treasures. David began working at the BPL in 2009, bringing a wealth of experience from the technology, management and consulting fields. Appointed president by the Library’s Board of Trustees and Mayor Martin J. Walsh in June 2016, David’s focus is on developing the BPL as a twenty first century institution providing dynamic library experiences to the residents of Boston, of Massachusetts and beyond.

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Boston Green Drinks - May Happy Hour
Tuesday, May 30
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Scholars, 25 School Street, Boston

Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community!

Boston Green Drinks builds a community of sustainably-minded Bostonians, provides a forum for exchange of sustainability career resources, and serves as a central point of information about emerging green issues. We support the exchange of ideas and resources about sustainable energy, environment, food, health, education.

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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, May 31
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Leading Communication Strategy: Research Findings at Northeastern University
Wednesday, May 31
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Northeastern, Alumni Center at Columbus Place, 716 Columbus Avenue, Boston

Please join us for a night of networking and communications industry conversation. 
Dr. Carl Zangerl is the Faculty Director of Graduate Communication and Human Resource Management programs at Northeastern University. In developing a management track for the Organizational and Corporate Communication master’s program, Dr. Zangerl and Zorana Mihic, a student in the program, investigated the skills and competencies required of communication leaders.
They will discuss the major research findings, including:
Review of major trends in the communication field
The attributes and competences in demand for communication leaders
Perspectives of current leaders of the communication function
Educational implications
You will have the opportunity to speak with Northeastern faculty, industry professionals, and alumni from the Corporate and Organizational Communication program. 

Food and drinks will be served (alcoholic drinks for purchase).

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Spring 2017 Food Entrepreneur Showcase
Wednesday, May 31
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, 1 Memorial Drive #1, Cambridge
Cost:  $10 – $50

Join us on Wednesday, May 31st for the Slow Money Boston Entrepreneur Showcase at the Microsoft NERD Center. We will provide a light supper and a cash bar.
PARTICIPATING ENTREPRENEURS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON.
We will be bringing together investors, sustainable food entrepreneurs and leaders working together to rebuild our local food system. Learn about investment opportunities and how you can participate in rebuilding local economies based on the principles of soil fertility, sense of place, care of the commons and economic, cultural and biological diversity.
For questions, email slowmoneyboston@gmail.com

For Investors: The Entrepreneur Showcase will provide access to sustainable food and farming businesses at different stages of development from start-up to expansion of existing businesses. The businesses and initiatives are also seeking different levels of financing — from small loans to major capital. Slow Money Boston encourages investors of all resource levels to attend including institutional, individual, accredited, and unaccredited investors. This showcase event is not an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities.

For Entrepreneurs: The Showcase is a tightly produced event. Each entrepreneur will have five minutes and 6 slides to tell their stories, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A from the audience. Presenters will also benefit from the networking opportunity specifically designed to encourage and elevate investor dialog. Throughout the event, your collateral will be available for attendees, and you will be mentioned in all promotional materials for the event. It is free to apply, but costs $50 to present and take advantage of this exciting opportunity.

The Entrepreneur Showcase offers all the advantages of a traditional venture fair and many more. Because of the shared vision that brings us all together, it is an unparalleled opportunity for you to build relationships with investors and entrepreneurs from all over the region. Even if you are not an investor or presenting entrepreneur, we welcome and encourage your participation in the event!

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Joe Gould's Teeth
Wednesday, May 31
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost:  $18.50 (online only, book-included) - On Sale April 25, 2017 $5.00 - On Sale May 9, 2017

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed Harvard historian JILL LEPORE—author of National Book Award finalist Book of Ages and The Secret History of Wonder Woman—for the paperback release of her latest book, Joe Gould's Teeth, the tale of her search for the long-lost, century-old manuscript called "The Oral History of Our Time."
About Joe Gould's Teeth

Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the twentieth century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and Ezra Pound. Gould began his life’s work before the First World War, announcing that he intended to write down nearly everything anyone ever said to him. "I am trying to preserve as much detail as I can about the normal life of every day people," he explained, because "as a rule, history does not deal with such small fry." By 1942, when The New Yorker published a profile of Gould written by the reporter Joseph Mitchell, Gould’s manuscript had grown to more than nine million words. But when Gould died in 1957, in a mental hospital, the manuscript was nowhere to be found. Then, in 1964, in "Joe Gould’s Secret," a second profile, Mitchell claimed that "The Oral History of Our Time" had been, all along, merely a figment of Gould’s imagination. Lepore, unpersuaded, decided to find out.  

Joe Gould’s Teeth is a Poe-like tale of detection, madness, and invention. Digging through archives all over the country, Lepore unearthed evidence that "The Oral History of Our Time" did in fact once exist. Relying on letters, scraps, and Gould’s own diaries and notebooks—including volumes of his lost manuscript—Lepore argues that Joe Gould’s real secret had to do with sex and the color line, with modernists’ relationship to the Harlem Renaissance, and, above all, with Gould’s terrifying obsession with the African American sculptor Augusta Savage. In ways that even Gould himself could not have imagined, what Gould wrote down really is a history of our time: unsettling and ferocious.

Editorial Comment:  Two from Joe Gould's Teeth by Jill LePore (NY:  Alfred A Knopf, 2015 ISBN 9781101947586)
(page 92)  Joe Gould:  “My muscular coordination is poor.  As you know I am left-handed in both hands…”
(142)  Joe Gould:  “You solve the problem of escape by being an expatriate," he’d once written to [Ezra] Pound.  “I am an extempore.”  He believed he lived outside of time.  He believed he’d escaped.

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Zebras and unicorns: Rare maladies and a physician-scientist's search for answers
WHEN  Wednesday, May 31, 2017, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE  Broad Institute, 415 Main Street, Cambridge,
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Broad Institute
SPEAKER(S)  Anna Greka
COST  Free
DETAILS  Roughly one in every ten people around the world suffers from a rare disease—and those are just the ones that researchers and clinicians know about. Physician-scientist Anna Greka will talk about the steep uphill battles facing rare disease patients when it comes to getting diagnosed and finding treatment options, her own work studying and treating rare kidney diseases, and the insights that rare disease research can provide into treatments for more common disorders.

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MIT Technology Review's 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017
Wednesday, May 31
6:00p–8:00p
Broad Institute 415 Main Street, Cambridge
Cost:  $20 Members; $45 Non-members: free for students

Speaker: Jason Pontin, Editor of MIT Technology Review Magazine,
Which of today's emerging technologies have a chance of solving a big problem and opening up new opportunities? 

Join us as Jason Pontin, Editor of MIT Technology Review Magazine, walks us through their picks for the "10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2017" and why everyone should be paying attention to them now.

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free for Students; $20 MITEF Members: $45 non-members
Tickets: online
Sponsor(s): MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge
For more information, contact: Amy Goggins
617-253-3937

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Using Social Media for Activism
Wednesday, May 31
6:00PM - 9:00PM
Cambridge Community Television, 438 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge , MA
Cost:  $10 - $20

Activists are increasingly using the power of social media to raise awareness about particular issues and to raise funding for their cause.

In this workshop, you will explore several case studies of effective social media campaigns employed by activists and will discuss the future trends in social media activism. Basic knowledge of or involvement with social media platforms is strongly recommended.

Register Today!
contact Keaton Fox at 617-661-6900 or email keaton@cctvcambridge.org

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Hope in a New Ecology
Wednesday, May 31
7:00–8:30pm
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
Cost:  $0 - $5

Oswald J. Schmitz, PhD, Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University
Anthropocence—the “Age of Humans”—is the scientific name for our new future, in which humankind is the dominant force of nature that stands to determine our ecology and therefore the fate of all life on Earth. To many, Anthropocence foreshadows widespread extinction of species and loss of global sustainability. But, this needn’t be. Scientist and author Oswald Schmitz will discuss how the science of ecology is evolving to provide new understanding about how humans can engage with the natural world to maintain and enhance our planet’s environmental performance and ensure a sustainable future for all life on Earth. His book, The New Ecology: Rethinking a Science for the Anthropocene will be available for purchase and signing. 
Fee Free member and student, $5 nonmember 

Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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Thursday, June 1
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What's next for whole genome sequencing?: Moving from research to diagnostics and beyond 
Thursday, June 1
12 noon Eastern
Webinar

As the throughput of next-generation sequencers continues to improve and the cost of reagents declines, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes increasingly cost-effective, making it a realistic possibility for use in a clinical setting. In this webinar, our speakers will discuss how they see WGS evolving as it moves closer to the clinic, highlighting the pros and cons of a whole-genome approach versus a targeted approach. They will also address the hurdles currently slowing implementation of WGS in the clinic, including the lack of reimbursement from medical insurance, the need to achieve the desired sequencing depth in the most cost-effective manner, and how best to manage the huge amounts of data generated.
During the webinar, the speakers will discuss:
The potential of WGS for cancer diagnosis
Challenges and solutions for research applications of WGS
The improved diagnostic utility of WGS compared to the current standard-of-care genetic testing.
The panel will answer questions from the online audience live during the broadcast.

Speaker: Shashikant Kulkarni, MS, Ph.D. FACMG, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
Speaker: Christian Marshall, Ph.D., The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada
Moderator: Sean Sanders, Ph.D., Science/AAAS, Washington, DC

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Community Solar for Low- and Moderate-Income Consumers
Thursday, June 1
1:00pm — 2:00pm ET
Webinar

Because community solar can be made accessible to renters and can include flexible terms, it holds promise for spreading the benefits of solar to low- and moderate-income (LMI) consumers. In this webinar, guest speakers from Solstice and from Alpine Bank will present two financially sustainable models for making community solar more available to LMI consumers.

Kelly Roache, Senior Program Manager at Solstice, will discuss Solstice’s efforts to develop new underwriting practices that might help moderate-income customers qualify for community solar, while keeping risk low for the large investors who provide the initial funding.

David Miller, Senior Vice President at Alpine Bank, will discuss Alpine Bank’s project, in which the bank bought shares in a community solar project and donated them to a community organization, which in turn allotted the monthly bill credits to low-income households.

These presentations will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.

This is one in a series of Sustainable Solar Education Project webinars on bringing the benefits of solar to low-income residents. The Sustainable Solar Education Project, funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative, is helping state and municipal officials to ensure distributed solar electricity is equitable and consumer friendly.

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Health Innovators presents: From All Sides - Opioid Addiction
Thursday, June 1
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Pivotal, 255 Main St. 6th floor, Cambridge, MA 02142

Welcome to Health Innovators multidisciplinary panel discussion on Opioid Addiction.
Our goal is to bring together members of our community to network and learn more about the current state of Opioid Addiction: policy, research, treatment as well as challenges that patients, researchers, and providers are experiencing so that our audience can gain more awareness, and move to design and build solutions to help combat this public health crisis affecting the people of our community.
We will be featuring a multidisciplinary panel of local experts such as policy creators, substance abuse recovery providers as well as patient population representatives so that we can empathetically illuminate the perspectives and challenges each of these different stakeholders experiences.
6 pm Doors open - refreshments and networking
6:15 pm Panel Introductions
7:00 pm Moderator-curated questions
7:30 pm Audience Questions
8:00 pm - Refreshments and networking
Stay tuned for panel participants.
We recognize that the issue of Opioid Addiction is a sensitive issue affecting many in our community and expect all event participants to bring compassionate intent to the table.

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Poetry and the Ocean | Robert Pinsky & Stefan Helmreich
Thursday, June 1
7-8pm
MIT, Building E15, Bartos Theatre, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge

As sea levels are rising, we are in a moment of global change and climate crisis. Our relationship to the ocean has been altered dramatically and continues to do so. Renowned poet Robert Pinsky and MIT anthropologist Stefan Helmreich will discuss, imagine and invoke the ocean; Pinsky acting as the poetic voice through his choice of poems, will be the “hub” of the conversation and Helmreich’s comments and responses as the “spokes”. In this way they will summon the rich history of our relationship to the sea, both benign and dangerous. The voice of the poems will iterate the sounds of the water.

Robert Pinsky grew up within the sound of the ocean in Long Branch, New Jersey, He is a poet, essayist, translator, teacher, and speaker. His first two terms as United States Poet Laureate were marked by such visible dynamism—and such national enthusiasm in response—that the Library of Congress appointed him to an unprecedented third term. Throughout his career, Pinsky has been dedicated to identifying and invigorating poetry’s place in the world. Known worldwide, his work has earned him the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize, Italy’s Premio Capri, the Korean Manhae Award, and the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago, among other accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.

Stefan Helmreich received his PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University and prior to coming to MIT held fellowships at Cornell, Rutgers, and NYU. His research has examined how biologists think through the limits of "life" as a category of analysis. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (University of California Press, 2009) is a study of marine biologists working in realms usually out of sight and reach: the microscopic world, the deep sea, and oceans outside national sovereignty. This book, winner of the 2010 Senior Book Prize from the American Ethnological Society, the 2010 Gregory Bateson Book Prize from Society for Cultural Anthropology, and the 2012 Rachel Carson Book Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science, charts how marine microbes are entangled with debates about the origin of life, climate change, property in the ocean commons, and the possibility of life on other worlds.

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Friday, June 2 
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EBC Energy Resources Program: Advanced Metering Infrastructure – The Challenges of Implementation
Friday, June 2 
7:30 AM to 10:30 AM
Brown Rudnick LLP, One Financial Center, Boston 
Cost:  $25 - $100

Advanced Metering Infrastructure: It seems so important to the electric industry – yet why has it not been deployed more broadly in the Northeast?

Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI or so called “smart metering”) is viewed across the electric utility industry as an important means to change the way electricity is used and managed. Meters that allow interaction with the utility, that can respond to price signals instantly, that could integrate and coordinate the electric usage of appliances and the grid, could have wide ranging benefits, but also unintended implications. It could be the enabler to create new utility models, new services for consumers to control and manage their energy usage, opportunities for distributed energy developers, new energy efficiency services, and innovative initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, deployment of AMI has been slow in coming. The possibilities of the clean tech industry seem limitless, and yet almost completely unfulfilled due to the lack of AMI.

This EBC Energy Resources program will examine the benefits and possibilities of AMI and why we have not seen widespread deployment in the Northeast. Speakers from different perspectives in the industry will provide their views.

Continuing Education Certificates are awarded by the EBC for this program (2.5 training contact hours). 

Event Contact:  ebc@ebcne.org

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Coffee with Congressman Joe Kennedy III
Friday, June 2 
8 AM - 9:30 AM
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline

Hosted by Brookline Chamber of Commerce
Coffee and Conversation with Congressman Joe Kennedy III including a Congressional Update and Q & A. Co-hosted with Town of Brookline and LWVBrookline. 

$5 paid in advance, $10 paid at door. 
Same prices for Chamber Members and General Public.

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Screening Chinese Pollution Documentary "Under the Dome”
Friday, June 2
6:30p–8:30p
MIT, Building NW86, Multipurpose room, 70 Pacific Street, Cambridge

Chai Jing 2015 documentary about pollution in China The film criticises energy companies, steel producers and government inability The film combines narration with interviews and factory visits Viewed by more than 300 million people Food and drinks to be served

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): GSC Funding Board
For more information, contact:  Javier Crespo

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Saturday, June 3
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Civic Imagination: Designing and Building a Better Future
Saturday, June 3 
8:30am
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston

Designing and building a better future.
Join Boston Civic Media’s third annual conference for a day of inspiring keynotes, presentations and networking with peers and community leaders around igniting civic creativity. Dive into topics including media literacy, youth-led advocacy, DIY activist technologies, and creative storytelling. We’ll also be announcing the first ever inter-campus curriculum addressing climate change.

Each year, Boston Civic Media convenes its growing network of faculty, students, activists, journalists, policymakers and nonprofits all invested in "civic media,” or media that creates social change through art, design, and technology. Our theme for this year’s conference is Civic Imagination and we have an incredible lineup of presenters to share new strategies, insights and approaches for collectively re-imagining public life in Boston.

All are welcome to attend!

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MIT Internet of Things Hackathon
Saturday, June 3
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-124 and 32-144, Ray and Maria Stata Center.32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Are you passionate about solving problems with tiny computers? Then come to MIT Internet of Things Hackathon, where we’ll task participants with building innovative IoT devices!

At the MIT Internet of Things Hackathon, you will build IoT devices that can “sense, connect, infer, and act.” Participants will be free to envision and build any device they see representing that mission, and that combine hardware, software, and data science. Participants will be able to join teams or participate independently. 

Early participants get TI Launchpads, Particle Internet Buttons, and Electric Imp Explorer Kits while supplies last. We encourage all participants to bring any hardware they think might be necessary for their projects. 

The hackathon will take place on Saturday June 3, 2017, and will include students from the MIT Internet of Things Bootcamp taking place May 29 – June 3, 2017. 

The hackathon will be in classrooms 32-124 and 32-144 in the Ray and Maria Stata Center (Building 32). Breakfast and lunch will be served. 

Hackathon winners will be determined by a panel of judges comprised of MIT faculty and IoT professionals and entrepreneurs.

If you any questions, please email bootcamp@mit.edu

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Cambridge Arts River Festival 
Saturday, June 3
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 
Along DCR Cambridge Parkway and Lechmere Canal Park adjacent to CambridgeSide, Cambridge


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Sunday, June 4
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Sharon McGregor: From Turf to Paradise - In your own backyard (or window box)!
Sunday, June 4, 2017
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
One Fayette Park, Cambridge
Potuck 6:00-7:00 p.m. followed by discussion 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Biodiversity for a LIvable Climate is a small non-profit so a $10 donation is requested, but no one will be turned away based on ability to pay. 

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate has a profound, even gripping, story to tell.  It is a story people want to hear because it is positive, hopeful, inspirational!  The story’s overriding message is that humans can turn the climate crisis around if we join together, role up our sleeves, and get right to ecological restoration at the local, regional, and continental scales. 

Sharon McGregor, Board Member of Bio4Climate, will present a PowerPoint presentation telling this story as she interprets it.  She will briefly present the climate urgency most of us know well as a backdrop to the nature solutions we all need to understand and participate in.  She will highlight how she implemented a nature solution benefiting climate in her own back yard, by transforming it from a monoculture monotone lawn to the vibrant colorful and biodiverse ecosystem it once was. Sharon will introduce a new approach to decision making, which she says everyone should apply to their own decision-making in the home and workplace, and in general daily living.  This decision-making approach places biodiversity and ecosystem health at the forefront of our decisions. 

Sharon will lead us in discussion to get everyone thinking about:  What is our story?  What should the “I want to read that” title be?  Are the main chapters identified and are they included in our story, or are we missing something?  What are the most important parts of the story we want our varied audiences to hear?  How do we best tell the most important parts of the story in a way that people understand and are motivated to act?  How do we tell the story to the press, so that they want to report on it and do so in a way that will inspire new, aggressive actions on the nature part of the solution to the climate crisis, while maintaining (and inspiring even greater) momentum on the emissions side. 

Come hear the story and help complete it. 

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Monday, June 5, 9:00 AM - Friday, June 9, 5:00 PM (EDT)
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2017 Investigative Reporting Certificate Workshop
Monday, June 5, 9:00 AM - Friday, June 9, 5:00 PM (EDT)
New England Center for Investigative Reporting, 640 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Cost:  $25.00

NECIR’s Investigative Journalism Certificate Program is aimed at recent graduates and working journalists who are interested in pursuing a career in investigative journalism, or utilizing the skills obtained for a variety of different career fields. This week-long workshop is taught by an experienced faculty of Boston University journalism professors and award-winning reporters. 

Participants will spend a week at The New England Center for Investigative Reporting, based at Boston University’s College of Communication, learning valuable investigative reporting skills. Upon successful completion of the program, participants will be awarded a certificate from NECIR and Boston University.

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Tuesday, June 6
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Boston TechBreakfast: Palatine Analytics, JustHuynh Inc., Kinetica, ErgoSensePro
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
8:00 AM
Red Thread, 101 Seaport Boulevard, Boston

Interact with your peers in a monthly morning breakfast meetup. At this monthly breakfast get-together techies, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs share learn from their peers through show and tell / show-case style presentations. 
And yes, this is free! Thank our sponsors when you see them :) 

Agenda for Boston TechBreakfast: 
8:00 - 8:15 - Get yer Food & Coffee and chit-chat 
8:15 - 8:20 - Introductions, Sponsors, Announcements 
8:20 - ~9:30 - Showcases and Shout-Outs! 

[EVENT_AGENDA] 
~9:30 - end - Final "Shout Outs" & Last Words  Boston TechBreakfast Sponsors: 
ConferenceEdge - EVENTS to the power of Edge
DLA Piper (Boston) - DLA Piper is a global business law firm that provides corporate, IP, capital raising and other legal advice to technology startups and high growth businesses.
hedgehog lab - hedgehog lab is a technology consultancy that designs and builds great apps for mobile

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World Efficiency Solutions
Tuesday, June 6
2 - 4pm
Prime, BOSTON

Please join us for a Working Session with international delegates in preparation of World Efficiency Solutions.

The purpose is for everyone to share their projects and solutions, which deserve to be included in the World Efficiency Low-Carbon and Resource-Efficient Marketplace.

#WEteam will be at this working session in order to help prepare and maximize your involvement in the event, as well as gather your feedback and insights on what is the most relevant for you.

ABOUT WORLD EFFICIENCY SOLUTIONS: 
With more than 20,000 participants, World Efficiency Solutions will be the premier global market place for governments, businesses, financiers and civil society stakeholders committed to accelerating the deployment of low-carbon and resource-efficient solutions.

World Efficiency Solutions is a Five-dimensional International Event from 12th to 14th December in Paris that will include:
SUMMIT – an international conference in partnership with World Climate Ltd, giving the stage to world leaders, experts and top speakers
VIPs – a dedicated platform to connect with relevant stakeholders, and to book meetings with registered participants and our VIPs.
SHOWCASE – a promotion package designed to help eco-innovative companies bring their solutions to the market
EXPO – 500 exhibitors presenting innovative and pioneering solutions
TRAINING – certified training programs designed to enhance personal skills

For any questions, please contact: prime@innovation-prime.com

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Energy Efficiency and CleanTech TECHMEETING powered by the OIC
Tuesday, June 6
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Workbar Cambridge, 45 Prospect Street, Cambridge

CleanTech, Smart Energy, Smart Building, Resource Efficiency, Energy Efficiency

During this TechMeeting we will hear from leading research labs, innovative startups and large corporations on the future of Energy Efficiency and CleanTech.  

05:30 pm Registration  
06:00 pm Introduction -  Open Innovation Club
06:10 pm Panel on the Future of Energy Efficiency and CleanTech
Moderator:  David Miller, Executive Managing Director, Clean Energy Venture Group
Massimiliano Pieri, VP for Cooperation with MIT, ENI
Stéphanie Gay, Director, World Efficiency Solutions & Pollutec
Ben Sampson, Director, Energy Ventures, GE Ventures
06:40 pm 6+ Startups Pitches (3 min pitch and 1 min Q&A
WattJoule, enVerid, and more.
07:30 pm Networking cocktail  

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Earth Night
Tuesday, June 6
6:00PM TO 8:30PM
The New England Aquarium, 1 Central Wharf, Boston

The Environmental League of Massachusetts (ELM) hosts a cocktail party for a healthy environment and clean energy future. 



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Clearing the Air: Carbon & Health
Tuesday, June 6 
6:00PM TO 8:30PM
The Venture Cafe, Cambridge Innovation Center, 1 Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
Cost:  $8 - $12

The key to convincing the public and politicians that we need to move forward more rapidly with climate solutions may in fact not come from climate concerns and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at all.

The most compelling arguments may arise from what are referred to as the "co-benefits" of reducing fossil fuel emissions. These include reduced heart and lung diseases, lower asthma rates, fewer missed work and school days and fewer premature fatalities - all of which disproportionately harm vulnerable communities. The harms to us and to our families are in the here and now and thus for most people, demand more immediate attention.

On June 6th, we'll explore the connections between health, climate change and fossil fuel burning and provide you with more tools to speak to the public, your employers, customers, friends, families... and especially to your elected officials.

Guest Speakers

Jonathan Buonocore, Sc.D. of the Harvard Center for Health & the Global Environment at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Jonathan’s research topics range from improving understanding of health and environmental risks pipelines, underground gas storage, and other midstream oil and gas infrastructure, to understanding health “co-benefits” of the U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan and different energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, to helping to understand the health implications of fires in Indonesia. Jonathan received his doctoral degree from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Environmental Science and Risk Management in November 2013.

In April of this year, Jonathan completed a study on the health co-benefits of carbon pricing in Massachusetts, which quantifies health savings of nearly $3 billion over the course of a bill now before the State Senate. Jonathan has also just won a grant to explore the use of drones to assess air quality near fossil infrastructure sites like pipelines, compressor stations, refineries, etc.

Dr. Brita Lundberg, Mass. Medical Society, Environmental and Occupational Health Commission & Green Newton
Brita is an infectious disease specialist and patient advocate who is actively working to apply health and toxicology research to transparently assess the risks associated with fossil fuel infrastructure. She is currently engaged in an effort to advocate for Comprehensive Health Impact Assessments - not solely an Environmental Impact Assessment – for the siting and expansion of natural gas infrastructure, particularly when it is situated close to densely populated communities such as West Roxbury and Weymouth.

Contact Name: 
Eric Grunebaum

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The Reality of CO2’s Influence on Sea-Level and Weather Events - Greater Boston Tea Party
Tuesday, June 6
6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Lir Irish Pub & Restaurant, 903 Boylston Street, Boston

Tom Wysmuller will be discussing The Reality of CO2’s Influence on Sea-Level and Weather Events.

Thomas Wysmuller trained as a meteorologist at New York University and at the Royal Dutch Weather Bureau in Amsterdam. He then worked for five years at NASA before, during, and after the moon landings. A fuller biography can be found here at Heartland's International Conferences on Climate Change website (ICCC 12 being held March 23-24 in Washington DC).

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).

Boston has its own "Climate-Ready Boston" initiative to deal with the effects of Climate Change. In particular, they have Climate Projections (link) prepared by their own working group.

Tom Wysmuller will attempt to bring some sanity to the hyperbole which is commonplace in the political discussion and media today. With a change in administrations, President Trump has already removed references to Climate Change from the White House web site. That is a good start, but the debate (and most likely protest) will continue unabated.

This is a first in a series of discussions we will be hosting. Stay Tuned!!

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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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Cambridge Coalition Solar Access Campaign is part of the DOE SunShot Solar in Your Community Challenge with a goal of 40 new solar electric systems installed in Cambridge, with a focus on serving low-to-moderate income communities.

Coalition partners include Green Cambridge, which works to create a more sustainable city and to protect the environment for the health and safety of all, Resonant Energy, a community-based solar developer, Solstice, helping every single household in America go solar, and Sunwealth, a solar investment firm.


hat tip Cambridge Civic Journal 

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Resource
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"Greening Our Grid" Report Released April 24, 2017

MAPC is excited to announce the release of “Greening Our Grid,” a fact sheet and a case study detailing MAPC’s strategy to use municipal aggregation to help build new renewable energy in New England. 

“Greening Our Grid” highlights MAPC's work with the City of Melrose as a case study for MAPC's innovative green municipal aggregation strategy. Melrose recently completed its first year of implementation. The city’s results demonstrate that economic and environmental goals can be met simultaneously, and provide a compelling example for others to follow. 

The case study and fact sheet further describe the renewable energy strategy overall, why it can have a real impact on our electricity grid, and MAPC’s program to help other municipalities follow Melrose's lead. Arlington, Brookline, Gloucester, Hamilton, Millis, Somerville, Sudbury, and Winchester are poised to roll out their green aggregations within the year. 

MAPC believes that municipal aggregation offers an opportunity for communities to leverage the collective buying power of their residents and businesses to transform our electric grid to cleaner sources of energy, while also providing cost savings and price stability for electricity. The fact sheet and case study will be useful tools for cities and towns that are exploring green municipal aggregation, as well as for those that already have active aggregation programs.

Check out “Greening Our Grid” today at http://www.mapc.org/greening-our-grid, and contact Patrick Roche, MAPC Clean Energy Coordinator, at proche@mapc.org for more information about MAPC's program.

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Cambridge Climate Change Game

Extending our work on face-to-face games, the MIT Science Impact Collaborative has developed a digital game on the health impacts of climate change that you can play alone on your computer or on your mobile phone. The game should take about 10-20 minutes. We would appreciate it if you could play the game at your convenience.


Any and all feedback on the game should be directed to Ella Kim at ella@mit.edu.  

Thank you for your time and consideration!

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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha@sbnboston.org

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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas.   Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities.  Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers.  Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs

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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development - http://www.bnid.org/events
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
Please feel free to email our organization at info@bnid.org if you have any questions!

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Boston Maker Spaces - 41 (up from 27 in 2016) and counting:  https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
Solidarity Network Economy:  https://ussolidarityeconomy.wordpress.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
Take Action MA:  http://takeactionma.com


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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