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, November 27
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Applications of linear response functions in moist and jet dynamics
12:10pm Let the niche be functional: a process-based approach of the niche to forecast the fate of species in future climate
12:15pm Grapes from Zion: Biblical Prophesy and Quality Wine in the West Bank
4pm Is this an Epistemological Revolution? Big Data and the Philosophy of Science
5:30pm Combining Statistical Methods with Atmospheric Models for “Direct” Accountability Assessment
6:45pm Fifty Years Later: What American Politics Today Can Learn from the Legacy of Robert Kennedy
7pm Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age
7pm When Fandom Becomes Faith: Boston's Identity as a Sports Town
7pm Amanda Palmer: This Is Your Life - Christopher Lydon
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Tuesday, November 28
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12pm Waste Alliance Lecture: Magnomer - Attractive Recycling
12:15pm Displaced by Disaster: Climate, History, and Planning
12:30pm The UV Environment for Prebiotic Chemistry: Connecting Origin-of-Life Scenarios to Planetary Environments
1pm New Perspectives on Urban Heat
2pm Achieving Real Virtuality: Closing the Gap Between the Digital and the Physical
4pm The Time of Mute Swans: Remembering as a Cure for Global Political Plague
5pm Hollywood, The Press, and The President: If We Can’t Hold Them Accountable Who Will?
5:30pm Energy Storage: Navigating the Market and White Spaces
5:30pm U.S. PIRG Panel Discussion - Antibiotic Resistance: What Can We Do?
6pm authors@MIT: Brian Dear, The Friendly Orange Glow
6pm Cities as Laboratories for Innovation: What the Country Can Learn
6pm The Juno Mission to Jupiter: Unraveling the Secrets of a Giant Planet
6pm Criminalizing Poverty in America
6pm Boston Green Drinks - November Happy Hour
6:30pm Odd Couple: UV Radiation and the Origin of Life
6:30pm "Plastic China" screening with Director Q&A
7pm Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe
7pm A Carbon-Free and Climate-Ready Boston
7pm Epidemics, Conflict, and Caregiving Among Native Americans and Puritans
7pm The Environment as a Bridge to Peace in the Middle East: The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies as a Case Study
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Wednesday, November 29
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8:30am Boston Harbor Now: Harbor Use Public Forum
10am Carbon Pricing & Local Investment
12pm MTL Seminar Series: “Extending the Era of Moore’s Law”
12pm CRISPR Unleashed: New tools and applications in live-cell imaging
3:30pm Energy Systems Integration: An International and Institutional Challenge & Opportunity
4pm Hope and Despair: Communicating an Uncertain Future
4pm The Evolution of Gene Expression
6pm Innovative Uses of Data for Managing Boston Today, and in 2030
6pm Old North Speaker Series: Robert Forrant - Still They Persisted
6pm Screening of "The Final Year" and Q&A with Amb. Samantha Power
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Thursday, November 30
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8am Artificial Intelligence in Precision Medicine - Breakfast Briefing
12pm The quasi-legal challenge: Drug policy, Cannabis cultivation, and the environment
1pm Approaches for Involving Low-Income Communities with Solar
2pm xTalk: Interactivity & Connectedness in the Classroom: Digital Tools for Collaborative Learning
2:50pm What's Fair?
4pm Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Independent Not-For-Profit Research Institute for Social Good
4pm Focus on Russia: "The Rise and Fall of 'Russkii Mir' (Russian World), 2014-2017”
4:15pm Larry Diamond: Is There an Emerging Crisis of Liberal Democracy?
5pm Getting Good Stuff Done Collaboratively: Stakeholder Analysis & Engagement
5:30pm Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck
5:30pm Initial Coin Offerings: The Rise of Crypto Capitalism
6pm And the Band Played On? The looming crises of the 21st century and what what they mean for today’s young artists
6pm Draft CCPR Alewife Plan & Public Meeting
6pm Brandeis Innovation Showcase
6pm Civic Science Roundtable
6:30pm Are We The Enemy? The Neuroscience of Conflict and Empathy
7pm Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
7pm Aging with Wisdom: Reflections, Stories & Teachings
7pm Protecting Stellwagen Bank: A History of the Sanctuary – 25 Years and Moving Forward
7pm Out And Out: Ex-Muslims Normalizing Dissent
7pm Visual Trumpery: An evening with Alberto Cairo. How to fight against fake data and visualizations from the left and the right
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Friday, December 1
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10am Sustainable Communities and Zero Hunger
1:30pm Think Act Scale: Webcast on Meeting the Climate Change Challenge
7pm Happier?: The History of a Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America
7pm Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook
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Saturday, December 2
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3pm The Brain, Body and Mind Connection with Dr. Tanzi and Deepak Chopra
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Sunday, December 3
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2pm ON DISPLAY Global
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Monday, December 4
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Caroline Ummenhofer (WHOI)
12pm Mitigation Versus Solar Geoengineering: Role of Risk Aversion and Time Preference
12:10pm Trade-offs in Evolutionary Ecology
5pm Contested Environments: India’s Environmental Movement and the Politics of Change
6pm Fake News: Looking Critically at Modern Journalism
6pm Judith Barry: A Discussion of Several Research-Based Projects
6:30pm Compassion meditation: How it changes the brain and improves stress resilience
7pm Of Monarchs and Milkweed: A Story of Coevolution, Cultural History, and Conservation
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Tuesday, December 5 – Thursday, December 7
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2017 Community Food Systems Conference
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Tuesday, December 5
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7am Boston TechBreakfast: Advance2000, VQL, SMACAR Solutions, Perfectosoft, Exact Finance, Inc.
12pm Global Health & Ethical Challenges Panel: Get Good Stuff Done
1:30pm XCONOMY PRESENTS: WHAT’S HOT IN CYBERSECURITY
3pm Connecticut’s Low- and Moderate-Income Solar Customer Segmentation Analysis
5pm Jorge Cham from PhD Comics: Communicating Your Research
5:30pm Marijuana Technology
6pm 7TH ANNUAL STREETTALK 10-IN-1
7pm Cambridge Forum: Race Still Matters
7pm Civic Leadership Forum: "Diversity in Public Service”
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
25 Interrelations of the Platonic Solids
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Monday, November 27
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PAOC Colloquium: Applications of linear response functions in moist and jet dynamics
Monday, November 27
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Zhiming Kuang (Harvard)
About the Speaker
The main goal of my current research is to better understand and simulate how tropical convection interacts with the large-scale flow. This interaction is key to the tropical circulation, particularly the rainfall distribution and its variability. These issues are important to society. Variations in the Asian monsoon rain, for example, can bring droughts or floods and affect the lives of billions of people. Despite its well appreciated importance, our understanding of how tropical convection interacts with the large-scale flow remains poor, so does our ability to simulate this interaction. In our research, we use novel high resolution numerical model experiments, together with observational data analysis, to guide development of theoretical models. Besides the meteorological implications of tropical convection, we are also interested in its role in global chemistry.
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided 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.
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Let the niche be functional: a process-based approach of the niche to forecast the fate of species in future climate
Monday, November 27
12:10pm
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill, Jamaica Plain
Isabelle Chuine, CNRS Research Director at the Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle & Evolutive, France, Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow
More information at https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/research/research-talks/
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Grapes from Zion: Biblical Prophesy and Quality Wine in the West Bank
Monday, November 27
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Room 100F, Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with Ian McGonigle (Harvard, Anthropology).
The STS Circle at Harvard is a group of doctoral students and recent PhDs who are interested in creating a space for interdisciplinary conversations about contemporary issues in science and technology that are relevant to people in fields such as anthropology, history of science, sociology, STS, law, government, public policy, and the natural sciences. We want to engage not only those who are working on intersections of science, politics, and public policy, but also those in the natural sciences, engineering, and architecture who have serious interest in exploring these areas together with social scientists and humanists.
There has been growing interest among graduate students and postdocs at Harvard in more systematic discussions related to STS. More and more dissertation writers and recent graduates find themselves working on exciting topics that intersect with STS at the edges of their respective home disciplines, and they are asking questions that often require new analytic tools that the conventional disciplines don’t necessarily offer. They would also like wider exposure to emerging STS scholarship that is not well-represented or organized at most universities, including Harvard. Our aim is to try to serve those interests through a series of activities throughout the academic year.
Sandwich lunch is provided. RSVP required.
The Harvard STS Circle is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
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Is this an Epistemological Revolution? Big Data and the Philosophy of Science
Monday, November 27
4:00 pm to 6:30 pm
BU, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Cambridge
Co-sponsored with BU Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science and the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing, BU. Sabina Leonelli (Exeter), John Symons (University of Kansas) and others.
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Combining Statistical Methods with Atmospheric Models for “Direct” Accountability Assessment
Monday, November 27
5:30pm
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Dinner will be served.
Professor Cory Zigler, assistant professor of biostatistics at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
Presentation Abstract: Evaluating the health impacts of specific air quality interventions (sometimes referred to as “accountability assessment”) is fundamentally challenged by long-range pollution transport since interventions taken at specific locations can impact population health at great distances. To accommodate transport, many health impact investigations combine outputs from chemical transport models with “health effect” estimates from other (e.g., epidemiological) studies to indirectly infer the health impacts of interventions. This talk outlines the distinction between this “indirect” approach and one that more directly evaluates the health impacts of specific regulatory interventions. We describe ongoing projects related to the development of statistical methods for “direct” accountability assessment of the effectiveness of interventions, with a focus on studies that attempt to combine statistical methods for causal inference with (possibly simplified) knowledge of atmospheric processes. We illustrate with a source-oriented approach to estimating the association between coal power plant emissions and IHD hospitalizations among Medicare beneficiaries, and also outline ongoing statistical methods work for settings where pollution transport yields the setting of so-called “interference” between observations.
Presenter Bio: Dr. Corwin Zigler is an assistant professor of biostatistics at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He specializes in the development and application of Bayesian methods for causal inference in complex observational studies, with particular focus on policy evaluation and comparative effectiveness research. He directs one project of the EPA-funded Harvard/MIT Air Climate and Energy Center focused on evaluating health impacts of regulations targeting US power plants.
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Fifty Years Later: What American Politics Today Can Learn from the Legacy of Robert Kennedy
WHEN Monday, Nov. 27, 2017, 6:45 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics,
Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Human Rights Activist and Writer
Chris Matthews. Host, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Author, Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit
CONTACT INFO JFK Jr. Forum Office
617-495-1380
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Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age
Monday, November 27
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes mathematician, engineer, cybersecurity policy expert, and Tufts professor SUSAN LANDAU for a discussion of her latest book, Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age.
About Listening In
New technologies have provided both incredible convenience and new threats. The same kinds of digital networks that allow you to hail a ride using your smartphone let power grid operators control a country’s electricity—and these personal, corporate, and government systems are all vulnerable. In Ukraine, unknown hackers shut off electricity to nearly 230,000 people for six hours. North Korean hackers destroyed networks at Sony Pictures in retaliation for a film that mocked Kim Jong-un. And Russian cyberattackers leaked Democratic National Committee emails in an attempt to sway a U.S. presidential election.
And yet despite such documented risks, government agencies, whose investigations and surveillance are stymied by encryption, push for a weakening of protections. In this accessible and riveting read, Susan Landau makes a compelling case for the need to secure our data, explaining how we must maintain cybersecurity in an insecure age.
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When Fandom Becomes Faith: Boston's Identity as a Sports Town
Monday, November 27
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
BU, College of Arts & Sciences (CAS), 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 211, Boston
Cost: $5
The Daily Free Press invites you to attend the next event in its new "FreeP Talks" series!
“When Fandom Becomes Faith: Boston's Identity as a Sports Town” will explore the intrinsically connected nature of Boston’s identity with its franchise sports teams, with Chris Gasper (The Boston Globe), Jason Mastrodonato (The Boston Herald) and Scott McLaughlin (NESN), and moderated by the Daily Free Press’s own Jordan Green.
Gasper has been a full-time employee at the Globe since 2001, and a member of the Sports department since 2006. This year, he kicked off the Globe’s sports podcast, Season Ticket, as its host.
Mastrodonato joined the Herald in 2015, and has covered the Boston Red Sox since 2011. He began his sports journalism career by covering local high school sports on a personal blog.
McLaughlin is a digital content specialist at WEEI.com where he mostly covers hockey. Scott has been covering Boston sports since his time as a student journalist writing for The Daily Free Press.
This is a ticketed event, but seating is general admission on a first-come, first-served basis. Tickets are $5 for all attendees.
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Amanda Palmer: This Is Your Life - Christopher Lydon
Monday, November 27
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM EST
First Parish of Cambridge, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Harvard Square, Boston
Cost: $35
An evening of conversation and music with journalist and Open Source radio host Christopher Lydon and musician and artist Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls. This event will also be recorded for future release as a podcast.
Monday, November 27, 2017 at First Parish Church in Harvard Square, Cambridge.
Doors open 6.30pm. Interview starts 7.00pm.
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Tuesday, November 28
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Waste Alliance Lecture: Magnomer - Attractive Recycling
Tuesday, November 28
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Poorly designed packaging is the root-cause of low plastics recycling and environmental pollution. Magnomer uses cradle-to-cradle principles to redesign plastic packaging for better recyclability. Magnomer redesigns plastic packaging by adding visual functional magnetizable elements which complement brand designs and enable capture and recovery from waste streams. Come hear more about Magnomer from founder Ravish Majithia. Lunch will be provided!
Contact wastealliance@mit.edu with questions.
This event is brought to you by the MIT Waste Alliance, with sponsorship from the GSC Funding Board.
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Displaced by Disaster: Climate, History, and Planning
Tuesday, November 28
12:15pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, City Arena, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Please join DRAN for a two-part panel with insights from climate scientists, urban planners, and international development practitioners, exploring their views and experiences in the current and coming crisis of climate-induced displacement.
Part I will go through understanding the political, economic and historical contexts informing the impact by disasters on marginalized communities.
Part II will address how recovery and rebuilding approaches to affirm human rights and/or decrease the likelihood of future displacement.
Lunch will be served at 12:15.
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The UV Environment for Prebiotic Chemistry: Connecting Origin-of-Life Scenarios to Planetary Environments
Tuesday, November 28
12:30pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building 54-517, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
PICS Seminar: Sukrit Ranjan (MIT)
Recent laboratory studies of prebiotic chemistry (chemistry relevant to the origin of life) are revolutionizing our understanding of the origin of life (abiogenesis) on Earth just as telescopes capable of searching for life elsewhere are coming online. My work sits at the intersection of these revolutions. I examine prebiotic chemical pathways postulated to be relevant to the origin of life and identify the environmental conditions they require to function. I compare these environmental requirements to what was available on Earth and other planets, and use the comparison to improve studies of the origin of life on Earth, and explore the implications for the inhabitability of other worlds. My work 1) provides initial conditions for laboratory studies of prebiotic chemistry, 2) constrains the inhabitability of Mars and planets orbiting M-dwarfs, and 3) demonstrates the need for laboratory studies to characterize the sensitivity of putative prebiotic chemistry to environmental conditions, e.g the spectral shape and amplitude of UV irradiation.
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New Perspectives on Urban Heat
Tuesday, November 28
1 pm
Harvard Global Health Institute, 42 Church Street, Cambridge
Join the Harvard Global Health Institute for their Climate Change and Global Health series featuring Professor John Spengler.
We all recognize that our cities are getting hotter, but is our science informing important stakeholders and decision makers, such as designers, landscape architects, urban planners and public health officials? This presentation will share recent findings on extreme heat, sleep, cognitive function and health in different populations and settings. Also described is a newly developed planning tool that predicts the thermal experience of people can account for natural and building elements to better design public places now and in the future.
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Achieving Real Virtuality: Closing the Gap Between the Digital and the Physical
Tuesday, November 28
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Refreshments: 1:45 PM
MIT, Building 32- G449, Kiva/Patil, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Daniel Wigdor , Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Abstract: As digital interaction spreads to an increasing number of devices, direct physical manipulation has become the dominant metaphor in HCI. The promise made by this approach is that digital content will look, feel, and respond like content from the real world. Current commercial systems fail to keep that promise, leaving a broad gulf between what users are led to expect and what they see and feel. In this talk, Daniel will discuss two areas where his lab has been making strides to address this gap. First, in the area of passive haptics, he will describe technologies intended to enable users to feel virtual content, without having to wear gloves or hold “poking” devices. Second, in the area of systems performance, he will describe his team’s work in achieving nearly zero latency responses to touch and stylus input.
Speakers's Bio: Daniel Wigdor is an associate professor of computer science and co-director of the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto. His research is in the area of human-computer interaction, with major areas of focus in the architecture of highly-performant UI’s, on development methods for ubiquitous computing, and on post-WIMP interaction methods. Before joining the faculty at U of T in 2011, Daniel was a researcher at Microsoft Research, the user experience architect of the Microsoft Surface Table, and a company-wide expert in user interfaces for new technologies. Simultaneously, he served as an affiliate assistant professor in both the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and the Information School at the University of Washington. Prior to 2008, he was a fellow at the Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard University, and conducted research as part of the DiamondSpace project at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. He is co-founder of Iota Wireless, a startup dedicated to the commercialization of his research in mobile-phone gestural interaction, and of Tactual Labs, a startup dedicated to the commercialization of his research in high-performance, low-latency user input. For his research, he has been awarded an Ontario Early Researcher Award (2014) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Research Fellowship (2015), as well as best paper awards or honorable mentions at CHI 2016, CHI 2015, CHI 2014, Graphics Interface 2013, CHI 2011, and UIST 2004. Three of his projects were selected as the People’s Choice Best Talks at CHI 2014 and CHI 2015.
Daniel is the co-author of Brave NUI World | Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture, the first practical book for the design of touch and gesture interfaces. He has also published dozens of other works as invited book chapters and papers in leading international publications and conferences, and is an author of over three dozen patents and pending patent applications. Daniel’s is sought after as an expert witness, and has testified before courts in the United Kingdom and the United States. Further information, including publications and videos demonstrating some of his research, can be found on Professor Wigdor's website.
Contact: Linda Lynch, 617 715 2459, lindalynch@csail.mit.edu
Speaker URL: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~dwigdor/
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The Time of Mute Swans: Remembering as a Cure for Global Political Plague
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Ece Temelkuran, Turkish political commentator, journalist, and author
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish journalist and author. She was a columnist for 'Milliyet' (2000–2009) and 'Habertürk' (2009 – January 2012), and a presenter on Habertürk TV (2010–2011). She was twice named Turkey's "most read political columnist". Her columns have also been published in international media such as 'The Guardian' and 'Le Monde Diplomatique'. A graduate of Ankara University's Faculty of Law, she has published 12 books, including two published in English ('Deep Mountain, Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide', Verso 2010, and 'Book of the Edge', BOA Editions 2010). 'Deep Mountain' was written in 2008 when she was a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Her first novel, 'Muz Sesleri' (Banana Sounds), was published in 2010 and has been translated into Arabic and Polish; and her bibliography includes 'Ne Anlatayım Ben Sana!' (What am I Going to Tell You!, Everest, 2006), on hunger strikes by Turkish political prisoners. She was awarded the Human Rights Association of "Turkey's Ayşe Zarakolu Freedom of Thought Award" in 2008. Her more recent publications include: 'Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy' (2016), and 'Women Who Blow On Knots' (May, 2017).
Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.
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Hollywood, The Press, and The President: If We Can’t Hold Them Accountable Who Will?
Tuesday, November 28
5-6:30
Northeastern, ISEC auditorium, 805 Columbus Avenue, Boston
As Hollywood and Steven Spielberg prepare to release the movie The Post, starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, on the battle over the Pentagon Papers, join us for a behind-the-scenes discussion with the editors who made the decisions that made history... and helped Hollywood bring it to the screen. What lies ahead in the ongoing struggle between President Trump and the media?
Featuring:
Leonard Downie , former executive editor, The Washington Post, consultant to Steven Spielberg's The Post
Matt Storin, former editor, The Boston Globe
Woody Hartzog, Professor of Law, Northeastern University
Moderated by Jonathan Kaufman, Director, School of Journalism
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Energy Storage: Navigating the Market and White Spaces
Tuesday, November 28
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Wolf Greenfield, 600 Atlantic Avenue, 23rd Floor, Boston
Cost: $10 for Members; $30 Non-members: $10 for students
So you want to be in energy storage…..
A recent McKinsey article posits that energy storage is the next disruptive technology in the power sector. Energy storage—utility scale, behind the meter, co-located with offshore wind, embedded in equipment—has great potential to accelerate the transition to clean sources of energy. BUT, there are hurdles—chemistry and technology limitations, longer time-to-profitability than other tech investments and few market mechanisms to compensate companies trying to get to an acceptable ROI.
With the market clearly dominated by lithium ion batteries, Venture Capitalists have largely moved away from backing battery companies. However, the good news is that foundations, private equity, state funding and utility venture funds are filling the gap.
The other good news is that there is white space to be filled in this market. Technologies such as long duration storage, software and controls to coordinate renewables plus storage. Some startups are seeing success in these white spaces as evidenced by recent acquisitions.
During this program, two startups will describe their path from concept to commercialization and then they'll join the panel to explore how startups can navigate the current conditions in this very specialized market.
Specifically, we'll discuss:
What do storage customers want?
Where is there white space for entrepreneurs?
Who is providing financial backing?
What can we do to make non-Lithium ion technologies more practical and economically feasible?
How can new business models and market mechanisms, along with regulators make this a better environment?
What are possible exit strategies for start-ups?
Moderator
Ravi Manghani, Director, Director, Energy Storage, GTM
Speakers
Greg Cipriano, VP of Business Development and Co-founder, WattJoule
Daniel Hullah, Managing Director, GE Ventures
Kelly Warner, President, AMS
Dr. Kavita Ravi, Director of Emerging Markets, MassCEC
Agenda
5:30-6:00: Networking and Registration
6:00-7:30: Panel and Q&A
7:30-8:30: Networking with refreshments
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U.S. PIRG Panel Discussion- Antibiotic Resistance: What Can We Do?
Tuesday, November 28
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
This panel is bringing together a top restaurant chain company (Panera), doctors, journalists, researchers, and non-profits to talk about the health impacts of antibiotic resistance. It will be covering how we misuse antibiotics in our food system and medical system and will discuss best practices for phasing routine antibiotic use out of major meat supply chains.
Food provided by Panera Bread and beer and wine will be available for purchase.
Co-Sponsors: Harvard Food Law Society, Branchfood, Let's Talk About Food
Panelists:
Mindy Gomes-Casseres: Panera Bread’s Senior Manager of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability
Michael Gilmore (Ph.D.): Director of the Harvard Infectious Disease Institute and Founder of Boston Boston Area Antibiotic Resistance Network
Nicole Negowetti- Clinical Instructor at the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic; Previously Policy Director at Good Food Institute
Afrah Sait Mohammed: MD, FRCPC, ABIM Board Certified in Internal Medicine; Infectious Disease Fellow at Tufts Medical Center
Maryn Mckenna: Journalist and author who specializes in public health, global health, and food policy; Author of Big Chicken, Superbugs, and Beating Back the Devil
Matt Wellington: Antibiotics Program Director at U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Schedule:
5:30 pm: Doors open
6-7:15 pm: Panel discussion with time for audience questions
7:15-8:30 pm: Networking
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authors@MIT: Brian Dear, The Friendly Orange Glow
Tuesday, November 28
6:00pm
MIT, Building N50, The MIT Press Bookstore. 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The MIT Press Bookstore presents Brian Dear discussing his book, The Friendly Orange Glow, on Tuesday, November 28 at 6:00 pm at the Bookstore. 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.
At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers—some of them only high school students—in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers. Together, the PLATO community pioneered what we now collectively engage in as cyberculture. They were among the first to identify and also realize the potential and scope of the social interconnectivity of computers, well before the creation of the internet. PLATO was the foundational model for every online community that was to follow in its footsteps.
In The Friendly Orange Glow, Brian Dear at last reveals new perspectives on the origins of social computing and our internet-infatuated world.
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Cities as Laboratories for Innovation: What the Country Can Learn
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics,
Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Mayor Peter Buttigieg, South Bend, IN
Mayor Sly James, Kansas City, MO
Mayor Martin Walsh, Boston, MA
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, Baton Rouge, LA
Jorrit de Jong (Moderator), Faculty Director of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office
617-495-1380
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The Juno Mission to Jupiter: Unraveling the Secrets of a Giant Planet
Tuesday, November 28
6:00pm to 7:30pm
Jeremy Bloxham, Mallinckrodt Professor of Geophysics, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences; Dean of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Jupiter, the largest planet orbiting the sun, remains a profound mystery. In 2011, NASA launched the Juno mission spacecraft to explore the composition, inner structure, origin, and evolution of this giant planet. In July 2016, Juno entered Jupiter’s orbit. Jeremy Bloxham, co-investigator on the Juno mission, will draw on his role in studying Jupiter’s magnetic field and discuss why learning about Jupiter is so relevant to understanding the early history of our solar system and the conditions in which Earth was born.
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Criminalizing Poverty in America
Tuesday, November 28
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
Peter Edelman, Georgetown law professor and former advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, discusses key challenges raised in his new book, Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America, with Lisa Mullins, host of WBUR’s All Things Considered.
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Boston Green Drinks - November Happy Hour
Tuesday, November 28
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EST)
The Ginger Man, 148 State Street, Boston
Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community!
New Location! Take note that this is being held at a different location (The Ginger Man) than we normally hold Green Drinks! We will be in the back room - walk past the bar and you'll be there.
No October Green Drinks! Due to the timing of Halloween, we will NOT be holding a Green Drinks in October. But we'll be back to quench your thirst for sustainble conversation in November!
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.
Please note that our website is still experiencing difficulties. We are working on it, and apologize for the inconvenience!
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Odd Couple: UV Radiation and the Origin of Life
Tuesday, November 28
6:30 PM
Belmont Media Center, 9 Lexington Street, Belmont
Sukrit Ranjan, Ph.D., SCOL Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For life, ultraviolet radiation is a paradox. On the one hand, it is a component of the light that makes photosynthesis possible, and it stimulates health-related processes such as vitamin D and melanin. On the other hand, UV radiation is associated with health threats, such as skin cancer and some forms of blindness.
Is UV radiation involved in the emergence of life? Dr. Ranjan investigates the possible connection between UV and the emergence of life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. He and other astrobiologists expect that the emergence of life on any planet depends on a number of factors, including an optimal distance from its star, the relative heat of the star, and the necessary chemical ingredients for the formation of RNA, the basis of life. Dr. Ranjan focuses on UV radiation and whether red dwarf stars (M-stars) generate sufficient UV to trigger life. He is investigating several groups of interesting rocky planets associated with M-dwarfs. In this discussion, Dr. Ranjan explains why red dwarfs are of particular interest and what level of UV might be necessary to trigger the formation of life on a planet.
Background article about Dr. Ranjan: Ultraviolet Light Could Point the Way To Life Throughout the Universe: https://www.universetoday.com/137023/ultraviolet-light-point-way-life-throughout-universe/
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"Plastic China" screening with Director Q&A
Tuesday, November 28
6:30–8:45 pm
Harvard, Tsai Auditorium, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
After the screening, Director WANG Jiuliang will attend via Skype for a Q&A with the audience moderated by Professor ZHANG Ling of Boston College and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. The discussion will be interpreted by Canaan Morse, a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Literature at Harvard.
Boston-area premiere co-sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Environment in Asia Series, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies; and Emergent Visions Film Screening Series, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.
Free admission to the film screening is made possible through the generous support of the Harvard Global Institute.
About the Film: As the world’s biggest plastic waste importer, China receives ten million tons per year from most of the developed countries around the world. With high external costs impacting the local environment and health, these imports are reborn here in these plastic workshops into “recycled” raw materials for the appetite of China - the world factory. This waste is then exported back to where they came from with a new face such as manufactured clothing or toys. Following the daily lives of two families living in a typical plastic waste household-recycling workshop, PLASTIC CHINA explores how this work of recycling plastic waste with their bare hands takes a toll not only on their health, but also their own dilemma of poverty, disease, pollution and death.
About the Director: Director of the award-winning documentary film BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE, WANG Jiuliang graduated from the School of Cinematic Arts of the Communication University of China in 2007. From 2007 to 2008, he finished a set of photographic works about Chinese traditional superstitions. He started investigating landfill pollution around Beijing in 2008, and in 2011, finished BEIJING BESIEGED BY WASTE, a set of photographic works and a documentary with the same name. Since 2012, he has been working on and promoting the documentary PLASTIC CHINA.
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Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe
Tuesday, November 28
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes author, Vanity Fair editor, and former The Atlantic editor CULLEN MURPHY for a discussion of his latest book, Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Cartoon County
For a period of about fifty years, right in the middle of the American Century, many of the nation’s top comic-strip cartoonists, gag cartoonists, and magazine illustrators lived within a stone’s throw of one another in the southwestern corner of Connecticut―a bit of Bohemia in the middle of those men in their gray flannel suits.
Cullen Murphy’s father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the wildly popular comic strips Prince Valiant and Big Ben Bolt and was at the heart of this artistic milieu. Comic strips and gag cartoons read by hundreds of millions were created in this tight-knit group―Superman, Beetle Bailey, Snuffy Smith, Rip Kirby, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, Nancy, Sam & Silo, Amy, The Wizard of Id, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Family Circus, Joe Palooka, and The Lockhorns, among others. Cartoonists and their art were a pop-cultural force in a way that few today remember. Anarchic and deeply creative, the cartoonists were independent spirits whose artistic talents had mainly been forged during service in World War II.
Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs, cartoons, and drawings, Cartoon County brings the postwar American era alive, told through the relationship of a son to his father, an extraordinarily talented and generous man who had been trained by Norman Rockwell. Cartoon County gives us a glimpse into a very special community―and of an America that used to be.
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A Carbon-Free and Climate-Ready Boston
Tuesday, November 28
7pm
NE Aquarium, IMAX Theatre, One Aquarium Wharf, Boston
Austin Blackmon, Chief of Environment, Energy and Open Space for the City of Boston
Since 1991, Boston has experienced 21 events that triggered federal or state disaster declarations. For example, in 2011, Hurricane Irene caused downed trees and power outages across the city. In 2012, while Boston was spared the most devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy due to the storm missing Boston’s high tide by five hours, the city still experienced high winds and coastal flooding. As the climate changes, the likelihood of coastal and riverine flooding—as well as other hazards, like stormwater flooding and extreme heat—will increase.
The challenges from climate change are substantial and complex but can be addressed through bold and creative actions that support the city’s vitality and livability.
Boston can thrive in the coming decades if it takes action to adapt its people, its neighborhoods, and its economic and cultural assets, starting now. This work will be difficult, contentious, and complex. But if done well, it will not only create a resilient, climate-ready Boston, it will also dramatically improve the city and quality of life for all its residents.
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Epidemics, Conflict, and Caregiving Among Native Americans and Puritans
Tuesday, Nov 28
7:00 PM
Old State House Museum, 206 Washington Street, Boston
The arrival of Europeans brought a period of unprecedented suffering for the native tribes living in southern New England in the seventeenth century. Early encounters with passing ships set the stage with illnesses (“The Great Dying”) that killed many Massachuset and Wampanoag. Epidemics struck again in 1633 – just three years after the establishment of Boston – when smallpox spread from the colonists into Native American populations throughout the northeast.
While not nearly as deadly as the changes faced by Native Americans, life for the English colonists was also uncertain. For example, only half of the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth in 1620 survived the first winter. Over the next two decades, many of the colonists who settled Boston, Cambridge, and elsewhere suffered terribly from disease, malnutrition, and exposure.
The relationship of the Native Americans and Puritans during the early years of settlement was complex and often contradictory. Some Puritans celebrated the epidemics that killed many Indians and argued that God was clearing the way for growth of their “city on a hill.” But there are also many examples of empathy and caregiving between the groups during times of illness.
Both the causes of the epidemic and the human reactions were much more nuanced – and humane – than most people realize.
About the speakers:
David S. Jones, MD, PhD, is the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a historian and psychiatrist, he teaches history of medicine and medical ethics at both Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. His first book, Rationalizing Epidemics, examined the history of epidemics among American Indians.
Moderator: Nat Sheidley, PhD, is the Executive Director of The Bostonian Society
About Medicine and Mortality in 17th-Century Boston
Every fall, in honor of the naming of Boston, the Partnership of Historic Bostons hosts a series of free events exploring an intriguing aspect of Puritan life. This year’s theme is Medicine and Mortality in 17th-Century Boston. To see a list of the entire series of FREE events, please visit our website at http://www.historicbostons.org.
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The Environment as a Bridge to Peace in the Middle East: The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies as a Case Study
Tuesday, November 28
7-9 pm
Temple Israel, 477 Longwood Avenue, Boston
Rabbi Michael Cohen to speak
Arava founding faculty member Rabbi Michael Cohen will share his experiences and insights into how the Arava Institute has advanced cross-border environmental cooperation and discourse. This Institute is an environmental and academic institution in the Middle East, dedicated to preparing future leaders from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and around the world to cooperatively solve the regional and global challenges. Rabbi Cohen was the first full-time rabbi of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont and since 2000, he has divided his time between Vermont and Kibbutz Ketura, Israel. Click here for a flyer
For more information jewishclimateaction@gmail.com
(508) 358-5996
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Wednesday, November 29
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Boston Harbor Now: Harbor Use Public Forum
Wednesday, November 29
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EST
Leventhal Room at the Boston Harbor Hotel, Rowes Wharf, 50 Rowes Wharf, Boston
The November Harbor Use Forum will feature a presentation from the City of Boston's Mia Goldwasser and Kara Runsten focused on the new Climate Ready South Boston neighborhood-level resilience project and will include the key goals, ways to get involved, and questions for the group that will help inform the consultant team working on the project. The duo will also provide a brief overview of the latest East Boston and Charlestown CRB Boston report, released in late October.
The co-chair of BHN's Climate Task Force, Stephanie Kruel, will follow the City's team with a presentation of CTF's white paper on regulatory Instruments related to flooding in Boston.
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Carbon Pricing & Local Investment
Tuesday, November 29
10:00-11:30am
Are you wondering how implementing a carbon price can affect a state’s economy? CABA and Business Leaders for Climate Action (BLCA) is hosting a free webinar with experts with experience in finance & investments to speak on how carbon pricing can boost a state’s economy, and send a strong signal to SRI investors that a state is committed to clean & renewable energy.
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MTL Seminar Series: “Extending the Era of Moore’s Law”
Wednesday, November 29
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 34-401, Grier Room, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Tsu-Jae King, University of California Berkeley
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CRISPR Unleashed: New tools and applications in live-cell imaging
Wednesday, November 29
12pm
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Energy Systems Integration: An International and Institutional Challenge & Opportunity
Wednesday, November 29
3:30PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Mark O'Malley, Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University College Dublin (UCD); Founding Director, Electricity Research Center. (Speaker Bio)
Co-sponsored by the China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Consortium for Energy Policy Research, Harvard Kennedy School.
China Project Seminar
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
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Hope and Despair: Communicating an Uncertain Future
Wednesday, November 29
4:00PM
Harvard, Geo Lecture Hall (100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard University Center for the Environment presents the next and final installment of the Ecological Systems in the Anthropocene Series, "Hope and Despair: Communicating an Uncertain Future."
Featuring panelists:
Nancy Knowlton, Sant Chair for Marine Science, Smithsonian Institution
Cam Webb, Research Affiliate, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Nikhil Advani, Lead Specialist, Climate, Communities and Biodiversity, World Wildlife Fund
David Wallace-Wells, Author of "The Unhabitable Earth," New York Magazine
Moderated by Elizabeth Wolkovich, Assistant Professor, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
In an era of rising greenhouse gases, rising seas, and increasing numbers of species facing extinction, how do we inspire action? Two different answers to this question are prominent today. One is that we should better communicate the potential losses: depauperate faunas, massive human migration due to sea level rise, and heat waves and droughts that will reshape habitable regions of the Earth. The other is Earth optimism: communicating success stories and focusing on the potential for further improvements.
This panel brings together views from across this spectrum to ask how best to understand and communicate our environment’s uncertain future. If humans are unlikely to take action without hope, should scientists be providing more hope in their research and communication? If we are not sure how likely the best or worst-case scenario is, which do we focus on, and how do we communicate uncertainty?
Our panelists bring together a range of opinions and viewpoints. Nikhil Advani of the World Wildlife Fund has worked on projects across the globe that have led to both rural community and biodiversity success. Nancy Knowlton has worked closely on the ocean and earth optimism movements and herself has moved from lectures of `doom and gloom’ to stories of hope. In contrast, David Wallace-Wells penned a bleaker outlook in his article this summer, "The Uninhabitable Earth" in New York Magazine. Cam Webb penned "Engineering Hope" in Conservation Biology over 10 years ago. The article’s questions of how we do acknowledge and respect what we have lost while providing hope for the future remain, and are the focus of this panel.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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The Evolution of Gene Expression
Wednesday, November 29
4:00 pm
Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
As a Radcliffe fellow, Thomas Lenormand is working on the evolution of gene expression. For theoretical and historical reasons, modern evolutionary theory has little incorporated the detailed mechanisms of gene regulation. Gene expression regulation, however, is now central to most fields of biology. He plans to bridge this interdisciplinary gap and set the foundation of a comprehensive evolutionary theory of gene regulation evolution.
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Innovative Uses of Data for Managing Boston Today, and in 2030
Wednesday, November 29
6pm
Northeastern, West Village F, Room 20, 40A Leon Street, Boston
Nigel Jacob, Co-founder and Co-chair of the Mayor’s office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM)
Andrew Therriault, Chief Data Officer
Stefanie Costa Leabo, Deputy Director of Performance Management
Dan O’Brien, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Criminology and Criminal Justice; Co-Director, Boston Area Research Initiative
Christo Wilson, Assistant Professor; Director, BS in Cybersecurity Program, Northeastern University
Dietmar Offenhuber, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University
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Old North Speaker Series: Robert Forrant - Still They Persisted
Wednesday, November 29
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Old North Church, 193 Salem Street, Boston
Old North Foundation Speaker Series
Still They Persisted: What a 105 Year Old Strike in Lawrence, MA Can Teach Us About Organization and Social Change
Speaker: Robert Forrant
The 1912 Bread & Roses Strike in Lawrence, MA teaches us much about how positive social change is made. The persistence exhibited 105 years ago built strength out of diversity and won a hard fought strike against powerful woolen mill owners. Professor Forrant will discuss this impressive strike, proved effective largely due to its level of organization and collaboration across ethnic and gender lines. Thousands of workers—the majority women—engaged in a well-organized walkout, standing firm against entrenched mill owners and their militia and police. Workers maintained soup kitchens and nurseries for children. Meetings were simultaneously translated into nearly 30 languages. Representatives from every nationality formed a 50-person strike leadership group. Immigrant workers, male and female, stood together and won!
Join Robert Forrant and Bernard Trubowitz, museum educator, immediately following the lecture for a reception and Community Conversation focused on the state of labor in the United States today. How does our past inform the anti-worker, anti-immigrant climate we find ourselves in today? Registration is required for the second part of the evening.
Robert Forrant, on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell since 1994, is Distinguished University Professor of History and director of the department’s graduate program. A board member of the Lawrence History Center, he is on the editorial board of Mass Benchmarks, a joint publication of the UMass President’s Office and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. In 2012 he worked extensively on programs dedicated to the centennial anniversary of the Bread and Roses Strike. He has been principal historian on numerous projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lowell National Historical Park, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, which honored him with their public history commendation in 2015.
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Screening of "The Final Year" and Q&A with Amb. Samantha Power
WHEN Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Art Museums, Menschel Hall, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Film
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Harvard Art Museums
SPEAKER(S) Ambassador Samantha Power, "The Final Year" director Greg Barker
COST Free
TICKET INFO Free tickets for HUID holders available on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at noon on Tuesday, November 21 at the Harvard Box Office
CONTACT INFO adam_siegel@hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS During 2016, filmmaker Greg Barker gained behind-the-scenes access to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team — Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, confidant and speech writer Ben Rhodes, and others — for an unprecedented look at the shaping of US foreign policy. "The Final Year," to be released in 2018, shows us the humanity of these policymakers in times of breakthrough, setback, and tragedy.
There will be an exclusive advance screening of the film for the Harvard community on Nov. 29, followed by a Q&A with Amb. Samantha Power and Director Greg Barker.
Space is limited, and tickets are required. Free tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis, beginning at noon on Tuesday, November 21, at the Harvard Box Office. Tickets must be picked up in person and are not available online or by phone. Limit of two tickets per person.
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Thursday, November 30
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Artificial Intelligence in Precision Medicine - Breakfast Briefing
Thursday, 30 November
8:00 – 10:00am EST
Morgan Lewis Boston, One Federal Street, Boston
Access AI is delighted to be hosting a Breakfast Briefing on Thursday 30 November in Boston. A panel of experts will discussing the role of Artificial Intelligence in precision medicine. The content is set to be really insightful and relevant for you.
The Discussion:
Examining the use of AI on clinical data to drive precision medicine for pharma and biotech
Analyzing the effectiveness, ROI and strategic impact of these emerging technologies
Overcoming key challenges and obstacles
Maximizing your existing data to enhance decision making and customization
Understanding the associated risks and related mitigation strategies
The Speakers
Dr. Tom Chittenden, Vice President, Statistical Sciences & Founding Director, Advanced AI Research Laboratory, Wuxi NextCODE
Dr. Olaf Bodamer, Associate Chief Division of Genetics and Genomics, Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School
Dekel Gelbman, CEO, FDNA
Breakfast pastries, coffee and various refreshments will be provided
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The quasi-legal challenge: Drug policy, Cannabis cultivation, and the environment
Thursday, November 30
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Anne Short Gianotti, Earth and Environment, Boston University
The cultivation and trafficking of cannabis and other drugs can have dramatic effects on land use and the environment. The evolving (and often conflicting) legal status of cannabis shapes what we know and do about these environmental effects. In this talk, I will discuss the relationships between cannabis cultivation, drug policy, and the environment in California. I will review what is known about the environmental effects of cannabis cultivation, discuss how the unique challenges of studying and governing a quasi-legal practice, and reflect on ways that ongoing regulatory changes may re-shape the industry.
Anne Short Gianotti is Assistant Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University. Her research investigates the social and political dimensions of conservation and natural resource management, and has spanned diverse topics including wildlife management, cannabis cultivation, and nonpoint source pollution. She holds a PhD and MS from UC Berkeley and a BS from Harvey Mudd College.
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Approaches for Involving Low-Income Communities with Solar
Thursday, November 30
1-2pm ET
Webinar
In this webinar, representatives from PosiGen Solar and GRID Alternatives, organizations with extensive experience bringing solar to low-income customers, will discuss how they engage with low-income customers and communities in order to spread the benefits of solar.
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xTalk: Interactivity & Connectedness in the Classroom: Digital Tools for Collaborative Learning
Thursday, November 30
2:00pm to 3:00pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Dr Keane, with colleagues Andrew Ringler and Mark Vrablic, will introduce some digital tools and classroom management strategies to have students learn-by-doing through content creation rather than consumption. Keane's team has built a simple system that allows students to design, create, and publish gesture-based, videogame-like simulations using the Microsoft Kinect. These simulations can allow users to 'play and experience' scientific concepts in a more tangible and kinesthetic manner. For example, we have built a 'molecular dynamics' simulation that shows a cluster of interacting molecules; to 'play' with the molecules, the user closes their hand in front of the screen to select a molecule and then drags the molecule to see how it affects the other molecules. This type of simulation can be used to introduce scientific concepts to the general public and incoming freshmen, or it can be used to further clarify the fundamentals for students who have already learned about the concept in a more traditional way.
Keane and his team used this framework to run a nine-day IAP project-based workshop where students formed small teams with diverse backgrounds to collaboratively create their own simulation for the system. They documented and published the workshop on OCW for others to draw from.
During this presentation, Keane, Ringler, and Vrablic will discuss their method of engaging students (some with no previous programming experience) in every stage of the ideation, design, creation, and testing of their team¹s project. They will discuss the importance of storytelling and collaboration while demonstrating how they use technology to facilitate this in a classroom. Part of the presentation will be an opprtunity to hear about the lead developer's own experience building this project as a UROP and running the IAP workshop.
The entire simulation system will be set up for use after the presentation and there will be ample time for attendees to 'play' with the current set of simulations.
Dr Kyle Keane is a lecturer in the department of Materials Science and Engineering. Andrew Ringler is an affiliate with DSME. Mark Vrablic is an MIT undergraduate majoring in EECS.
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What's Fair?
Thursday, November 30
2:50pm - 4:00pm
Tufts, Halligan 102, 161 College Avenue, Medford
Speaker: Cynthia Dwork, Harvard University
Data, algorithms, and systems have biases embedded within them reflecting designers’ explicit and implicit choices, historical biases, and societal priorities. They form, literally and inexorably, a codification of values. “Unfairness” of algorithms – for tasks ranging from advertising to recidivism prediction – has attracted considerable attention in the popular press. The talk will discuss the nascent mathematically rigorous study of fairness in classification and scoring.
Bio
Cynthia Dwork is the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School. She has done seminal work in disributed computing, cryptography, and privacy-preserving data analysis. Her most recent foci include stability in adaptive data analysis (especially via differential privacy) and fairness in classification.
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Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Independent Not-For-Profit Research Institute for Social Good
Thursday, November 30
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-G882 (Hewlett Room), 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: P. Anandan , MSR
Abstract: WIAI is a new philanthropic effort by the Wadhwani brothers, Romesh Wadhwani and Sunil Wadhwani, entrepreneurs of Indian origin living in the US. Our mission is to do research in AI, ML, Data Science and related areas that will address societal challenges in a variety of domains including (but not limited to) Education, Health, Infrastructure, and Agriculture. We plan to build a strong team of researchers dedicated to this mission and plan to take an approach that is strongly driven by societal use cases keeping in mind the feasibility of deployment at scale as the ultimate measure of impact. We intend to conduct our research in collaboration with scientists from Academia and the Industry, and will be guided by Government agencies and Non-Governmental organizations who have domain and field experience. We will also work with and leverage the expertise our partners for testing our solutions and for deployment at scale. The Institute will be headquartered in India and will begin its work by addressing opportunities for research on societal impact in India.
Bio: P. Anandan has recently joined the newly formed Wadhwani Institute of Artificial Intelligence as its CEO. Previous to this Anandan was VP for Research at the Adobe Research Lab India (2016-2017) and before that a Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director at Microsoft Research (1997-2016). Anandan was the founding director of Microsoft Research India which he ran from 2005-2014. Prior to this, Anandan was researcher at Sarnoff corporation (1991-1997) and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Yale University (1987-1991). His primary research area is Computer vision where he is well known for his fundamental and lasting contributions to the problem of visual motion analysis.
Anandan received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1987, a Masters in Computer Science from University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 1979 and his BTech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras, India in 1977. He is a distinguished alumnus of IIT Madras, and UMass, Amherst and is on the Nebraska Hall of Computing.
Contact: Stefanie S. Jegelka, stefje@csail.mit.edu
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Focus on Russia: "The Rise and Fall of 'Russkii Mir' (Russian World), 2014-2017"
Thursday, November 30
4:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Lucian Pye Conference Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Andrey Piontkovsky will discuss Russian efforts and Vladimir Putin's failure to propagate the myth of the "Russian World."
Piontkovsky is a Russian scientist, political writer, and analyst, Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow, and Free Russia Foundation Senior Adviser. He is the author of several books on the Putin presidency, including “Another Look Into Putin’s Soul” and “Russian Identity” published by Hudson Institute.
Beginning in 2014, Putin tried to persuade Ukrainians and the world that the Russian nation was divided and that Russia had to protect this "Russian world."
In 2016, he was charged with extremism and left Russia.
Co-Sponsors: MIT Security Studies Program, MIT Center for International Studies and MISTI Russia
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Larry Diamond: Is There an Emerging Crisis of Liberal Democracy?
WHEN Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center Foyer, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 200 North, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Info@ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS Join Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University for a discussion on whether there is an emerging crisis of liberal democracy. Scott Mainwaring, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor of Brazil Studies, Harvard Kennedy School, will moderate.
By some counts, we are now in the twelfth years of a global recession of freedom and democracy. For most of this period, this political recession has been mild and even debatable as to its net effect on democracy. However, with the failure of democracy in a number of important swing states, such as Thailand and Turkey; the questionable status of democracy in numerous others, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Kenya; the palpable decline of many third wave democracies, such as the Philippines and South Africa; the shattering corruption scandals that brought down the first elected women presidents of South Korea and Brazil; the erosion of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe; and the rise of illiberal populism even in long-established Western democracies, it is time to ask whether we are entering a global crisis of liberal democracy, and if so, why?
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Getting Good Stuff Done Collaboratively: Stakeholder Analysis & Engagement
Thursday, November 30
5:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 10-105, Vannevar Bush Room, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
All social innovation work takes place in the context of a particular culture, market, existing legal and policy framework, and intervention landscape where individuals, community groups, government and NGOs are working to achieve change. These stakeholders will influence whether an innovation takes hold. In this session we explore questions such as: Who are the various stakeholders for our work, and how might they influence or be affected by our initiatives? Who might be willing and effective partners? What factors do we need to consider in project design and rollout strategy? We will use stakeholder mapping tools to analyze the work of several ongoing projects to suggest strategies for stakeholder engagement.
Please be sure to RSVP here (so we can get an accurate count for dinner).
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Mathematics, Common Sense, and Good Luck
Thursday, November 30, 2017
5:30 pm Presentation
6:30 pm Networking Reception
Whitehead Institute, 455 Main Street, Cambridge
Dr. James H. Simons is the chairman of the Simons Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.
About Whitehead Connects
Whitehead Connects is an initiative that brings renowned biology and biotech leaders to Whitehead Institute for an engaging presentation and dynamic networking opportunity for participants. Following the free public lecture, participants will have the opportunity to meet Whitehead postdoctoral fellows and learn about their latest discoveries.
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Initial Coin Offerings: The Rise of Crypto Capitalism
Thursday, November 30
5:30 PM - 8:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.mitforumcambridge.org/event/initial-coin-offerings-the-rise-of-crypto-capitalism/
Cost: $25 Member; $45 Non-member; $5 Student member; $10 Student Non-member
Q: How does a blockchain startup raise more than $257 million in about a month of activity?
A: Initial coin offerings (ICOs) or token sales.
According to Autonomous Research, “Over $1.2 billion in Cryptocurrency was raised through Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”) in the first half of 2017, far outstripping venture capital investment into Blockchain and Bitcoin firms.”
ICO’s are no longer another over-hyped acronym. The market is being compared to the internet bubble of the late 90’s – a heady time for sure. ICOs have largely gone unregulated, but just this July, the SEC issued a report of investigation that determined that ICO tokens may be securities and therefore should comply with existing laws, “regardless of whether those securities are purchased with virtual currencies or distributed with blockchain technology.”
Things are moving quickly in this space so to make sense of what’s happening now and the possibilities for the future, we’re teaming up with the Government Blockchain Association of Boston to break it all down.
Whether you’re curious about, or embedded in, the world of ICO’s – we hope you will join us to learn more and network with some of the key constituents in this hot market.
Speakers
Christian Catalini, Assistant Professor, MIT Sloan & Principal investigator, MIT Digital Currencies Research Study
David Cotney, Board Member, Cross River Bank & Former MA Commissioner of Banks
Kavita Gupta, Founding Managing Partner, ConsenSys
Chetan Manikantan, Founder & CEO, Tengu
David Vorick, Co-Founder, Sia
Event Schedule
5:30 - 6:00pm - Registration & networking (light refreshments served)
6:00 - 8:00pm - Welcome & panel discussion
8:00 - 9:00pm - Beer, wine & networking
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And the Band Played On? The looming crises of the 21st century and what what they mean for today’s young artists
Thursday, November 30
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
NE Conservatory Student Life and Performance Center, Burnes Hall, 255 St. Botolph Street, Boston
Prior the presentation and Q&A session, Richard Heinberg will be joined by Carl Straussner for a violin-guitar duo.
And the Band Played On?
The looming crises of the 21st century and what they mean for today’s young artists
What does the rest of the 21st Century hold in store for us? If what we see all around us is any indication — growing climate-related disasters, economic inequality and stagnation, political divisiveness, and environmental stresses of all kinds — we are in for a bumpy ride.
Please join award-winning author, educator, and avid musician Richard Heinberg for an exploration of the sustainability crises of the 21st century and what unique challenges and opportunities these present for young artists.
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Draft CCPR Alewife Plan & Public Meeting
Thursday, November 30
6:00-8:00 pm
Russell Youth Center, 680 Huron Avenue, Cambridge
The draft Climate Change Preparedness and Resilience Plan for the Alewife area will be presented and discussed. The meeting will involve a brief overview and interactive stations to describe and discuss key aspects of the plan. The draft will be released in advance of the meeting and public comment period will run beyond the meeting. More details will be posted soon.
The City is developing a citywide Climate Change Preparedness & Resilience Plan starting with two neighborhood scale plans in the Alewife area and The Port before developing the full citywide plan.
More information at http://www.cambridgema.gov/cdd
Editorial Comment: Cambridge now has a flood map tool to see whether your neighborhood will be underwater during the coming years and decades: http://www.cambridgema.gov/Services/FloodMap
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Brandeis Innovation Showcase
Thursday, November 30
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Brandeis, Carl J. Shapiro Science Center, 415 South Street, Waltham
How is Brandeis changing the world? #DeisInno17 #BrandeisInnovates
Discover the many innovative and entrepreneurial ways the Brandeis community is making an impact at the 3rd annual Innovation Showcase. This cocktail reception will feature startups, inventions, social entrepreneurship, and scientific discoveries born out of the labs and classrooms at Brandeis University.
Meet our MakerLab and witness the application of emerging technologies across a wide range of subjects first-hand. Engage with the researchers, students, faculty and staff who are impacting the world in the business, sciences, technology and social sectors. You can also check out information tables from Boston's leading innovation organizations, including MassChallenge and MassBio.
Attendees will have the opportunity to join the entrepreneurial action and vote for the crowd favorite by “investing” in projects. Join us on November 30th and experience the Brandeisian innovative spirit as you network with Boston’s innovation community, indulge in refreshments, and have the opportunity to win prizes.
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Civic Science Roundtable
Thursday, November 30
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Dewick-MacPhie Conference Room, 25 Latin Way, Medford
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Are We The Enemy? The Neuroscience of Conflict and Empathy
Thursday, November 30
6:30pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building N51, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join Dr. Emile Bruneau, Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, to explore how human cognitive habits encourage bias, separation, and conflict. Can thinking about our own and others' experiences of conflict help us create new neural pathways to support empathy and reconciliation? Learn what happens in our brains in a virtual experience like "The Enemy."
Free. No pre-registration necessary.
This program is offered in conjunction with The Enemy, on view October 5, 2017.
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Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
Thursday, November 30
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes author, organizer, and police-misconduct attorney ANDREA J. RITCHIE for a discussion of her latest book, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color. She will be joined in conversation by Georgetown law professor PAUL BUTLER, author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men.
About Invisible No More
Invisible No More is a timely examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. Placing stories of individual women—such as Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall—in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, it documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of policing and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.
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Aging with Wisdom: Reflections, Stories & Teachings
Thursday, November 30
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Olivia Hoblitzelle
Combining elements of memoir and inspiring examples of lives well lived, Aging with Wisdom is that invaluable guide to the inevitable (if we’re lucky) process of aging with dignity and grace.
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Protecting Stellwagen Bank: A History of the Sanctuary – 25 Years and Moving Forward
Thursday, November 30
7pm
NE Aquarium, One Aquarium Wharf, IMAX Theatre, Boston
Richard Delaney, President and CEO of the Center for Coastal Studies, and Ben Haskell, Acting Superintendent of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary
More than 25 years ago, threats to an underwater bank at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay abounded. Construction teams considered the sand and gravel fair game for the Big Dig, and a developer posited a plan for a casino complex on an oil-rig-like platform. Luckily, whales, fish, and the backing of thousands of whale watchers, students, fishermen, and environmentalists sank those ideas. The productive region around Stellwagen Bank was designated a national marine sanctuary in 1992. Rich Delaney, President and CEO of the Center for Coastal Studies (which nominated Stellwagen Bank for sanctuary status), had served as director of the Mass. Coastal Zone Management Office during the process to create a sanctuary. Ben Haskell, the sanctuary’s acting superintendent, leads a team of researchers and educators who work to understand and protect this special place. They will provide a retrospective of the first 25 years of New England’s only national marine sanctuary and a vision for the next 25 years.
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Out And Out: Ex-Muslims Normalizing Dissent
Thursday, November 30
7:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building 2-190, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
How does Islam affect the conditions of equality? Can modern human rights flourish within a religious context? The panel of formerly Muslim atheists will discuss the intersection of equality and dignities for all with the dictates of Islamic ideology.
In collaboration with the Secular Society of MIT's "Out And Out" programme to support ex-theists, Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) will bring its "Normalizing Dissent" speaker tour to the MIT campus, to advocate for the ex-Muslim community, and to bring nuance to a conversation that is often dominated by cliché and obscurantism from bigots on one side and from apologists on the other.
This 4th episode of Out And Out will feature talks by Sarah Haider, Muhammad Syed, and Maryam Namazie on the subject of "Equality, Islam, and Human Rights", followed by audience Q&A.
WHEN: Thursday, NOV/30, 7pm - 9pm
WHERE: 2-190 (1st Floor, Building 2, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, https://whereis.mit.edu/?go=2)
Free entry. Free food.
Registration required at Eventbrite (use link in details)
Please bring identification and a copy of your Eventbrite registration.
Bags will be checked at the door.
The event will be audio+video recorded and photographed.
Speakers: Maryam Namazie
Maryam is an Iranian-born writer and activist. She is the Spokesperson for Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation, One Law for All and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She hosts a weekly television programme in Persian and English called Bread and Roses.
She is on the International Advisory Board of the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom, Euromind and Feminist Dissent; National Secular Society Honorary Associate; Honorary Associate of Rationalist International; Emeritus Member of the Secular Humanist League of Brazil; a Patron of London Black Atheists and Pink Triangle Trust, Humanist Laureate at the International Academy of Humanism and a columnist for the Freethinker.
Muhammad Syed
Muhammad is a human rights activist, writer, speaker and community organizer. He is the founder and president of Ex-Muslims of North-America (EXMNA), the first Ex-Muslim advocacy and community building organization in North America.
Muhammad has been a human rights activist for the past decade, with a focus on efforts to normalize religious dissent and promote acceptance of secularism in Muslim communities.
Sarah Haider
Sarah is an American writer, speaker, and activist. Born in Pakistan and raised in Texas, Sarah spent her early youth as a practicing Shia Muslim. In her late-teens, she began to read the Quran critically and left religion soon after.
In 2013, she co-founded Ex-Muslims of North America, where she advocates for the acceptance of religious dissent and works to create local support communities for those who have left Islam.
In addition to atheism, Sarah is particularly passionate about civil liberties and women’s rights.
Facebook event page: https://goo.gl/xbdSBD
More on EXMNA: https://www.exmna.org/
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Visual Trumpery: An evening with Alberto Cairo. How to fight against fake data and visualizations from the left and the right
Thursday, November 30, 2017
7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Northeastern, West Village F Room 20, 40 Leon Street, Boston
RSVP at http://bit.ly/NUcairo
Alberto Cairo, one of the foremost experts on data visualizations and the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami School of Communication, will lecture on many key issues facing journalists, researchers and designers in conveying clear, compelling and accurate data in a visual format.
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Friday, December 1
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Sustainable Communities and Zero Hunger
Friday, December 1
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, 1 Broadway, 12th Floor, Cambridge
Join the Legatum Center for an action-oriented conversation on how entrepreneurs are solving the challenges of UN Sustainable Development Goal #2: Zero Hunger and SOLVE's Sustainable Urban Communities Challenge.
Dr. Kevin Kung, Postdoctoral Associate, School of Engineering, MIT
Alexander Dale, Senior Officer, Sustainability Community, SOLVE
Anjuli Jain Figueroa, PhD Candidate, Environmental & Civil Engineering
Please bring a photo ID to check in at the guest desk in the One Broadway lobby.
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Think Act Scale: Webcast on Meeting the Climate Change Challenge
Friday, December 1
1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m. ET
to discuss ways we can think bigger, act boldly, and scale globally to meet today's climate challenge head-on.
Join my esteemed colleague, RMI Managing Director Miranda Ballentine and me as we discuss important insights coming out of COP23, the important role of city and corporate leaders in meeting climate goals, RMI's bold new five-year strategic plan, and actions we can all take to harness the growing global momentum toward clean energy future.
Together, we’ll address the energy topics that are front-of-mind such as:
What opportunities and challenges emerged from COP23?
Who is stepping up and moving forward the clean energy revolution in the U.S. and internationally?
What are the opportunities and challenges around rebuilding after disasters for resiliency and renewables?
What are the newest developments in corporate leadership and clean energy investment?
What should be leaders' top priorities in the next five years? And, what are RMI’s top priorities over the next five years?
During the webcast we'll also address your questions on energy, innovation, global market trends, and more which you can submit before 10 a.m. MT on November 30th by email, or by sharing on social media using #AskRMI.
Register today and join other bold leaders helping us create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future.
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Happier?: The History of a Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America
Friday, December 1
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes writer, historian, and Smith College professor DANIEL HOROWITZ for a discussion of his latest book, Happier?: The History of a Cultural Movement That Aspired to Transform America. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Happier?
When a cultural movement that began to take shape in the mid-twentieth century erupted into mainstream American culture in the late 1990s, it brought to the fore the idea that it is as important to improve one's own sense of pleasure as it is to manage depression and anxiety. Cultural historian Daniel Horowitz's research reveals that this change happened in the context of key events. World War II, the Holocaust, post-war prosperity, the rise of counter-culture, the crises of the 1970s, the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and the prime ministerships of Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron provided the important context for the development of the field today known as positive psychology.
Happier? provides the first history of the origins, development, and impact of the way Americans -- and now many around the world -- shifted from mental illness to well-being as they pondered the human condition. This change, which came about from the fusing of knowledge drawn from Eastern spiritual traditions, behavioral economics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and cognitive psychology, has been led by scholars and academic entrepreneurs, as they wrestled with the implications of political events and forces such as neoliberalism and cultural conservatism, and a public eager for self-improvement.
Linking the development of happiness studies and positive psychology with a broad series of social changes, including the emergence of new media and technologies like TED talks, blogs, websites, and neuroscience, as well as the role of evangelical ministers, Oprah Winfrey's enterprises, and funding from government agencies and private foundations, Horowitz highlights the transfer of specialized knowledge into popular arenas. Along the way he shows how marketing triumphed, transforming academic disciplines and spirituality into saleable products. Ultimately, Happier? illuminates how positive psychology, one of the most influential academic fields of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, infused American culture with captivating promises for a happier society.
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Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook
Friday, December 1
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
In the wake of tragic events in Charlottesville, VA, and Donald Trump’s initial refusal to denounce the white nationalists behind it all, the “antifa” opposition movement is suddenly appearing everywhere. But what is it, precisely? And where did it come from?
In a smart and gripping investigation, historian and former Occupy Wall Street organizer Mark Bray provides a detailed survey of the full history of anti-fascism from its origins to the present day — the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism in English. Based on interviews with anti-fascists from around the world, Antifa details the tactics of the movement and the philosophy behind it, offering insight into the growing but little-understood resistance fighting back against fascism in all its guises.
About the Author: MARK BRAY is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe who was one of the organizers of Occupy Wall Street. He is the author of Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street, and the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Critical Quarterly, ROAR Magazine, and numerous edited volumes. He is currently a lecturer at Dartmouth College.
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Saturday, December 2
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The Brain, Body and Mind Connection with Dr. Tanzi and Deepak Chopra
Saturday, December 2
3:00 PM to 7:30 PM (EST)
WGBH, 1 Guest Street, Boston
Please join us on Saturday, December 2nd at 3:00 pm for your chance to be part of a live studio taping of The Brain-Body-Mind Connection featuring Deepak Chopra, M.D., and Rudolph Tanzi, Ph.D.
We'll be taking some questions from the audience and would love to hear what you are curious about.
The Brain-Body-Mind Connection will help answer some of the biggest questions people have as they age – questions that are being asked in nearly every home in America.
What’s the single most important thing I can do to keep my brain healthy?
What can I do today to have more energy and sleep better?
Is there anything I can do to help prevent dementia?
I’ve always heard that we use only 10% of our brains – is that true?
These questions and many more will be answered by two of the pre-eminent leaders in the fields of brain-mind-body medicine and neuroscience in this electrifying, live, interactive presentation of The Brain-Body-Mind Connection.
At this special event, Dr. Rudy Tanzi and Dr. Deepak Chopra, both affiliated with Harvard Medical School, will share the stage as they introduce topics of practical interest and field your questions.
We really do hope you will be able to join us for this once in a lifetime opportunity. Enjoy a wine and cheese reception during intermissions. And as a special thank you for your participation, you'll also receive a copy of Deepak Chopra's and Dr. Tanzi's SUPER GENES: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Well-Being.
IMPORTANT NOTES
Age Restrictions: Audience members must be at least 21 years old and able to remain seated in the studio for the duration of the taping.
Use of Image: Studio tapings and the video of the audience members will be distributed in all media, including but not limited to television, websites and mobile devices. By entering the WGBH performance space, you allow WGBH to use your appearance and/or the appearance of minors in your charge you for broadcast on television and all manner of media.
Cell Phones: Cell phones can interfere with studio microphone audio frequencies. You will be asked to turn your phone completely off during the taping.
Cancellation: Seats must be filled for a successful production, so we ask that you make every effort to arrive on time. If circumstances arise, and you must cancel, please call us immediately at 617-300-5400, Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm.
Dress: Clothing featuring prominent commercial logos, slogans or objectionable messages will not be permitted in the studio. Please also avoid any seasonal garb and the color white if possible.
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Sunday, December 3
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ON DISPLAY Global
Sunday, December 3
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM EST
Boston Architectural College, McCormick Gallery, 320 Newbury Street, Boston
KAIROS Dance Theater, Transformative Culture Project and NuVu Studio are working together with Heidi Latsky Dance to bring ON DISPLAY GLOBAL to Boston on Sunday, December 3, 2017 from 2:00pm to 3:30pm for International Day of Persons with Disabilities. This performance, taking place at the McCormick Gallery at the Boston Architectural College at 320 Newbury Street, will include members of Boston’s disability, dance and fashion worlds, and be one of 30 performances taking place internationally.
ON DISPLAY by Heidi Latsky Dance, a deconstructed art exhibit/fashion show, raises questions about the body as spectacle and society’s obsession with body image. It transforms a cast of diverse and extreme bodies, some with disabilities, into a ‘sculpture court’ where the performers become living art. ON DISPLAY began as a simple human sculpture court and is now a movement, a growing portfolio of works that explores and demonstrates inclusion through art.
Heidi Latksy Dance is an award-winning NYC-based physically integrated dance company. The company’s ON DISPLAY installation has been performed at The Whitney Museum of Art, The United Nations and Lincoln Center Outdoors.
Audience experience: ON DISPLAY allows performers and the public to fully witness each other, elevating and celebrating the act of looking within a clear context. When visitors come into the exhibit, they feel like they are walking into a permanent installation; there is no beginning, middle or end. And like a sculpture court, there is an invitation to explore, to get up close with one sculpture, to back away and take in the entire installation. For audience members and performers alike, ON DISPLAY provides a safe place to stare.
Short film about ON DISPLAY: https://goo.gl/ZPgiab
Heidi Latsky Dance: www.heidilatskydance.com/
Transformative Culture Project: www.tcproject.org/
KAIROS Dance: www.kairosdancetheater.org
NuVu Studio: https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/
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Monday, December 4
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PAOC Colloquium: Caroline Ummenhofer (WHOI)
Monday, December 4
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Caroline Ummenhofer’s lab works all over the world, including Australia, East Africa, India, Indian Ocean, the Indo-Pacific and North Atlantic region, Southeast Asia, and the Southern Hemisphere extratropics. We are looking primarily at climate variability and change in the hydrological cycle, with an eye towards rainfall variability and drought, Indian Ocean and monsoon dynamics, impacts of climate on agriculture and health, and biological-physical interactions.
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided 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.
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Mitigation Versus Solar Geoengineering: Role of Risk Aversion and Time Preference
Monday, December 4
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
with Mariia Belaia, Post-doctoral Fellow, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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Trade-offs in Evolutionary Ecology
Monday, December 4
12:10PM
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Anurag Agrawal, Professor, Cornell University
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
Contact Name: arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu
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Contested Environments: India’s Environmental Movement and the Politics of Change
Monday, December 4
5:00PM TO 7:00PM
Harvard, Emerson Hall, Room 105, 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge
The STS Program at HKS presents a lecture by Sunita Narain, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, and a panel discussion featuring Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, Harvard University; Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law and Director, Environmental Law Program, Harvard Law School; David S. Jones, A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine, Harvard University, as part of the Science & Democracy Lecture Series.
Abstract: The Indian environmental stories that are making international headlines are the ghastly air pollution and the nation's inability to control filth, garbage and sewage that are overwhelming its cities, rivers and fields. The other narrative linking India to the rest of the world is that India is the major villain in climate change. I ask, can India can beat the pollution game by following the trajectory of the western world? Won't capital and resource-intensive methods of environmental management simply add to the burden of inequality, and so to unsustainability? Also, is India the villain or the victim in international climate politics? Are there lessons in India for the global community in its fight against climate change? I will discuss how democracy and dissent must work together so that the environmentalism of the poor dictates the politics of change. Not just change in India, but change in the world.
Sunita Narain is a writer and environmentalist. In 2016 she was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. In 2005 she was awarded the Padma Shri (a top civilian state prize) by the Indian government. She also chaired the Tiger Task Force at the direction of the Prime Minister, to evolve an action plan for conservation in the country after the loss of tigers in Sariska. She has received the World Water Prize for work on rainwater harvesting and for its influence in building paradigms for community-based water management. She was a member of the Prime Minister’s Council for Climate Change and the National Ganga River Basin Authority. She has been with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi since 1982. She is currently director general of the Centre, treasurer of the Society for Environmental Communications, and editor of the fortnightly magazine, Down To Earth.
Contact Name: Shana Ashar
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Fake News: Looking Critically at Modern Journalism
Monday, December 4
6:00pm
Cambridge Community Television, 438 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP to Keaton Fox at 617-661-6900 or email keaton@cctvcambridge.org
Cost: $30 - $60
In this course, we will critically analyze media coverage of current happenings in our world.
We will examine its strengths and weaknesses and the implications these have on our society.
2 sessions - Mondays - December 4th and 11th - 6-9pm with Patricia Egessa
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Judith Barry: A Discussion of Several Research-Based Projects
Monday, December 4
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, ACT Cube (E15-001) 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Judith Barry utilizes a research-based methodology to explore a wide range of topics. Both the form and the content of her work evolve as the research proceeds. She often makes use of installation, in various forms and including exhibition design, as a way to combine many of her disparate interests. These immersive environments are based on experiments incorporating architecture, sculpture, performance, theatre, film/video/new media, graphics, and interactivity.
Since her first performances in the late 1970’s, Judith Barry has produced unique, habitable, visual environments that are activated by the viewer. Each of her projects aims to provide new ways for engaging conceptually and visually within a space.
This lecture is part of the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT)'s Fall 2017 Lecture Series.
More information at http://act.mit.edu/projects-and-events/lectures-series/about-pages/fall-2017-about-series/
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Compassion meditation: How it changes the brain and improves stress resilience
Monday, December 4
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard, Smith Campus Center (Bock Room), 75 Mt Auburn Street, 6th floor, Cambridge
Suggested donation for general attendance is $15. CE credits are available for a fee of $30.
with Gaelle Desbordes, PhD
What is compassion? Can we become better at it? Emerging scientific research suggests that compassion is a skill which can be trained through contemplative practices such as compassion meditation. This presentation will provide an overview of the current state of compassion research, including recent studies suggesting that compassion training may yield to changes in the brain and to improved stress resilience. Challenges associated with measuring compassion will also be discussed.
At the end of this event, participants will be able to:
1. explain how compassion is investigated in the laboratory
2. describe compassion meditation training
3. discuss recent scientific findings on compassion meditation
Gaëlle Desbordes, Ph.D., is on the research faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-Harvard-MIT Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. There she investigates different types of meditation practices (e.g. mindful attention, compassion) from a neuroscientific perspective. Her main ongoing study is a clinical trial of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for major depression. As a member of the Mindfulness Research Collaborative, she is also part of a research program to study the impact of mindfulness training on self-regulation and adherence to medical regimen. Her work with David DeSteno and Paul Condon to investigate how meditation training increases compassion was published in the journal Psychological Science and has been featured in the New York Times and on WBUR.
Continuing Education:
Continuing Education (CE) credits available for psychologists, licensed mental health counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and nurses. Please see details at http://meditationandpsychotherapy.org/lecture-series.
Fees:
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Of Monarchs and Milkweed: A Story of Coevolution, Cultural History, and Conservation
Monday, December 4
7:00PM TO 8:30PM
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
Cost: $0 - $10
The Arnold Arboretum welcomes Anurag Agrawal, PhD, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, who will give a talk on "Of Monarchs and Milkweed: A Story of Coevolution, Cultural History, and Conservation."
What if your host truly didn’t want you to visit? Found you intolerable, in fact, and didn’t want you to stay? You’d think that you’d be kicked out, but that isn’t the case with monarch butterflies and the common milkweed that supports their life cycle. Using striking visual imagery, evolutionary biologist Anurag Agrawal will speak about some of the natural history of monarchs and milkweed, the cultural importance of milkweed’s toxins, and the current predicament of monarch declines. Dr. Agrawal is an award-winning scientist and educator, who has delved deeply into the coevolution of plants and animals. His book, Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution, will be available for purchase and signing.
Fee Free Arnold Arboretum member and student, $10 nonmember
Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.
Contact Name: Pam Thompson
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Tuesday, December 5 – Thursday, December 7
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2017 Community Food Systems Conference
Tuesday, December 5, 8:00 AM – Thursday, December 7, 4:00 PM EST
Boston Park Plaza, 50 Park Plaza, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2017-community-food-systems-conference-registration-36585468120
Cost: $50 – $310
Exploring the intersection of food security, social justice, and sustainable agriculture
Conference Highlights
Keynote and plenary sessions on food security, social justice and sustainable agriculture.
Keynote speaker: Winona LaDuke, award-winning environmentalist and political activist working and residing on the White Earth reservation in Northern Minnesota; founder of White Earth Land Recovery Project and the Indigenous Women’s Network; and active author and speaker
Plenary panelists:
Diana Robinson, Campaign and Education Coordinator at Food Chain Workers Alliance, a lead organization of the HEAL Food Alliance
Malik Yakini, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network
Aleya Fraser, Farmer & Educator, founder of Black Dirt Farm Collective
Moderated by Andy Fisher, Co-Founder of the Community Food Security Coalition and author of Big Hunger
50+ workshops, lightning talks, and networking sessions focused on food justice, policy, best practices, experiential education, sustainability, economic development, building community, and promoting access to healthy food in underserved communities.
Exhibit hall for leading non-profit, academic, business and government organizations in the community food field.
Field trips to see community food systems work in action at various Boston-area organizations.
Pre-conference trainings and forums geared toward targeted audiences for delving deeper into specific food systems work.
Meals featuring locally-grown foods and a reception at Boston Public Market.
Workshop presentations will span the following topics:
Community Partnerships / Farm-to-All / Food Justice / Movement Building / Social Enterprise / Policy / Measuring Impacts / Labor / Youth
More information at https://nesfp.org/community-food-systems-conference-2017
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Tuesday, December 5
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Boston TechBreakfast: Advance2000, VQL, SMACAR Solutions, Perfectosoft, Exact Finance, Inc.
Tuesday, December 5
7:00 AM
O’Reilly’s, 2 Avenue de Lafayette, 6th floor, 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.
G2 Tech Group - Managed DevOps for startups and small businesses
hedgehog lab - hedgehog lab is a technology consultancy that designs and builds great apps for mobile
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Global Health & Ethical Challenges Panel: Get Good Stuff Done
Tuesday, December 5
12:00pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
What are common ethical challenges in global health experiences? How should a student prepare in advance, act while in-country, and work with program advisors? Join a workshop in which we address some of the ethical issues that arise when students participate in global health experiences in resource-limited settings. Students, hosts, MIT program staff, and faculty all need to examine potential ethical dilemmas, power dynamics, safety issues, and cultural context. While the focus is on global health, the lessons apply to health experiences in the US.
We will explore:
guiding principles established in the medical field and within education abroad, and how these are viewed in the context of medical school applications.
how the “do no harm” principle applies in global health
facilitating productive and sustainable partnerships in global health
examples of ethical challenges that the panelists have faced
Panel Speakers
Dr. Howard Heller - MIT Medical and Harvard Medical School
Dr. Anjali Sastry - MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Rich Fletcher – MIT Tata Center, D-Lab, Media Lab
Bryan Ranger – The Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Media Lab, D-Lab
RSVP Here: https://goo.gl/Pjrp2u
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XCONOMY PRESENTS: WHAT’S HOT IN CYBERSECURITY
Tuesday, December 5
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
WGBH, 1 Guest Street, Boston
Cybersecurity continues to be top of mind for business leaders, technologists, and consumers. From the latest catastrophic data breach to crippling Internet attacks and cyber warfare, no data or network seems safe. Now, Boston-area cybersecurity companies are working to advance the state of the art in security automation, behavioral analytics, anti-phishing systems, and other arenas. At the same time, venture investment is flowing into hot sectors like cryptocurrencies, blockchain and identity management, and deception tech.
How are cybersecurity companies and their customers adjusting to an era of widespread hacking and threats? What new technologies and cyber risks are coming down the pike for organizations of all sizes? And, as investment in security tech seems to be peaking again, what are the greatest opportunities and pitfalls for startups and venture capitalists? Xconomy’s second annual cybersecurity conference in Boston will convene business and technology leaders to discuss these topics, and much more.
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Connecticut’s Low- and Moderate-Income Solar Customer Segmentation Analysis
Tuesday, December 5
3-4pm ET
Webinar
The Connecticut Green Bank engaged the marketing firm C+C to perform a customer analysis to identify the segments of Connecticut’s LMI population most likely to adopt solar. In this webinar, speakers from the Connecticut Green Bank and C+C will share the results of their analysis and insights for a national audience.
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Jorge Cham from PhD Comics: Communicating Your Research
Tuesday, December 5
5:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Jorge Cham will relay his experiences creating successful science communication projects (videos that have been viewed by millions of people and a book release from Penguin Random House). He will convey how he communicates his passion for engaging with the public and exploring the unknown.
Jorge holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from Stanford University and is the creator of Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics), the popular comic strip about life (or the lack thereof) in Academia.
Often called the "Dilbert of academia,” PHD Comics appears online where it is read by over 6 million visitors a year from over 1000 universities worldwide.
Sponsored by the MIT Graduate Student Council (GSC), Global Education & Career Development Career Services (GECD), and the MIT Office of the Vice President for Research
Pre-registration is requested (but not required) via CareerBridge.
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Marijuana Technology
Tuesday, December 5
5:30pm to 8:00pm
MIT Stata Center, E32-123 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Cost: $10 - $45
Few can deny the expansive growth and attention the legal cannabis industry is experiencing right now. Despite the still nebulous policy and politics surrounding the industry, companies are innovating and cashing in on the opportunities in cannabis.
According to CannabisNewsWire, “Estimates by Forbes put the legal cannabis market at a value of $7.2 billion (per a February 2017 report), and the market is expected to generate more jobs than government, manufacturing, or utilities in the coming years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
The market reach extends well beyond the medical and recreational sale of the finished product itself. There are opportunities for entrepreneurs in manufacturing, cultivation, extraction, testing, and distribution. Some examples include:
Greenhouse automation
Extraction hardware
Smart grow monitors
Seed to sale software
App development
Machine learning for optimal medical dosing
…and the list goes on
On December 5th we’re bringing together leading investors, entrepreneurs and scientists to learn more about the opportunities to get involved in the cannabis industry and discuss how entrepreneurs can have an impact.
Moderator:
Vinit Nijhawan, Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Academic
Speakers:
John de la Parra, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University
Richard Gibble, Investment Analyst, FlowPoint Capital Partners, LP
Jonathan Wani, Director of Client & Community Relations, MCR Labs
Russel Wilenkin, Regional Sales Manager, Flow Kana
Event Schedule
5:30 - 6:00pm - Registration and Networking
6:00 - 8:00pm - Welcome & Panel Discussion
8:00 - 9:00pm - Networking
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7TH ANNUAL STREETTALK 10-IN-1
Tuesday, December 5
6pm – 8:30pm
Old South Meetinghouse, 310 Washington Street, Boston
Cost: $0 - $15
Save the date! Join us as we invite 10 innovative transportation tinkers and community thinkers to take the stage and share their big ideas. Don't miss it!
More information at http://www.livablestreets.info/7th_annual_streettalk_10_in-1
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Cambridge Forum: Race Still Matters
Tuesday, December 5
7pm
3 Church Street, Cambridge
Political activist, author and university professor Cornel West will speak at Cambridge Forum on Tuesday, December 5 about his national best-seller Race Matters. First published in 1993 on the one-year anniversary of the L.A. riots, the book has since become a groundbreaking classic on race in America.
Race Matters speaks to despair, black conservatism, myths about black sexuality, the crisis in leadership in the black community, and the legacy of Malcolm X. Now more than ever, Cornel West argues, Race Matters is a book for all Americans, as it helps us to build a genuine multiracial democracy in the new millennium.
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Civic Leadership Forum: "Diversity in Public Service”
Tuesday, December 5
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
UMass, 100 William T. Morrissey Boulevard, Campus Center 2nd floor, Conference Room (2540), Dorchester
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/civic-leadership-forum-diversity-in-public-service-tickets-40047243383
Do you want to involve and thrive to be a leader in civic engagement? Do you want to find out how diversity influences public service? Do you want to know the value you will create as a civic activitiest to the organization and community?
Come join us to learn from these three highly achieved and incredible individuals about their journeys for public service!
The Honorable Fernande (Nan) R.V. Duffly, Associate Justice, She rose from a refugee child to become the first Asian American judge in the highest court in Massachusetts.
Anping Shen ran a successful campaign and elected as the school committee member in Newton.
Vatsady Sivongxay, 2017 Candidate for Cambridge City Council, Staff for Tito Jackon, Once served as a staff for a Boston City Council and continues to serve as a community leader!
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, December 6
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Conventional Conflicts with Nuclear-Armed Powers: Prospects for Escalation Control
Wednesday, December 6
12:00-1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Pye Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Jasen J. Castillo, Texas A&M
Under what conditions could the United States control escalation in a conventional conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary? The possibility that a dispute between the U.S. and a nuclear-armed opponent remains a contingency policy-makers and military planners should consider. There is growing work on the pathways to nuclear escalation during a conventional conflict, but less on how these armed disputes could end. This paper will explore some of the conditions that favor successful escalation management and the conditions that could make escalation control extremely difficult. The paper also assesses possible U.S. responses to nuclear use by an adversary.
Jasen J. Castillo is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University's George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service. He came to the Bush School after serving on the staff of the Policy Planning Office in the U.S. Department of Defense. Before then, he worked at the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Defense Analysis. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.
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China's Top 1000 and 10,000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program: Effectiveness, Compliance, and Lessons
Wednesday, December 6
3:30PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard-China Project hosts Cao Jing, Visiting Scholar, Harvard-China Project; Associate Professor, Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University
China Project Seminar
Sponsored by China Project, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Contact Name: Tiffany Chan
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The Tanner Lectures on Human Values: Bryan Stevenson, Social Justice Action: How We Change the World
WHEN Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, 4 – 7 p.m.
WHERE First Parish in Cambridge, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Humanities, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center and the Office of the President at Harvard
SPEAKER(S) Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, author of Just Mercy
Introductions by Drew G. Faust, President, Harvard University; and Homi K. Bhabha, Director, Mahindra Humanities Center. Panelists: Nancy Gertner, Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; U.S. District Judge (Retired); Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies and the Department of Philosophy, Harvard University; and Carol S. Steiker, Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=mahindra
TICKET INFO Admission is free. Tickets required. Limit of 2 tickets per person. Tickets available by phone, online (for a fee), and in person at the Harvard Box Office – Farkas Hall, 10 Holyoke St., Cambridge beginning Wednesday, November 29. Tickets valid until 3:45PM.
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-0738
DETAILS This event will consist of a 4 p.m. lecture and 5:45 p.m. panel discussion.
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson recently won an historic ruling in the U.S. Supreme Court banning mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and has been awarded 29 honorary doctorate degrees. He is the author of award winning and New York Times bestseller, Just Mercy.
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MIT FinTech $10K Business Plan Competition, 2017
Wednesday, December 6
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
MIT, Samberg Conference Center Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mit-fintech-10k-business-plan-competition-2017-tickets-39821419939
The annual MIT FinTech Business Plan Competition is here! Join the 3rd edition and watch some of the best FinTech ideas from MIT and Harvard compete for $10K in prizes. There will be a showcase of business ideas in front of a prestigious judging panel composed of faculty, industry professionals, and investors followed by a cocktail reception. Don't forget to cast your vote for the audience choice award!
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Nick Montfort, The Future
Wednesday, December 6
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $0 – $12.75
The MIT Press Bookstore presents Nick Montfort, Professor of Digital Media at MIT, discussing his book The Future on Wednesday, December 6, at 6:00 pm at the Bookstore. 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.
In this volume of the MIT Press's Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned.
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X years later: Japanese Documentary Screening with Reception and Discussion
Wednesday, December 6
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Emerson Urban Art, Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston
Schedule
6 - 6:45 pm Reception at Emerson Urban Art: Media Art, Gallery 25 Avery Street, Boston MA 02111
7 - 8:30 pm Screening (doors open 6:30 pm)
at Bright Family Screening Room, Paramount Center, 559 Washington Street, Boston MA 02111
8:30 - 9 pm Panel Discussion at Bright Family Screening Room
Boston Japan Film Festival presents " X YEARS LATER 2014" at Emerson College. Directed by Hideaki Ito, documentary, 90 minutes, Japan, 2014.
In the aftermath of WW2 the Bikini Atoll was used by the United States as a testing ground for Nuclear and Thermonuclear technology until 1957. In 1954 the largest test - the detonation of a Hydrogen bomb in Operation Castle Bravo - resulted in a significant amount of fallout that impacted inhabited areas. Among the exposed in the incident was the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru with a crew of 23, who at the time was outside of the "danger zone" declared by the US Government. While history has documented the plight of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, the reality is many other boats also outside the "danger zone" were similarly exposed. Now 59 years later, a documentary crew in Japan revisits the incident and interviews surviving fishermen, including some from other Japanese boats in the area, to bring to light an ordeal whose full impact has been kept in the dark by both the US and Japan governments.
Discussion moderated by Visual and Media Arts professor John Gianvito at Emerson College.
The director, Mr. Hideaki Ito and a victim family, Ms. Misa Kawaguchi will come from Japan and attend the discussion.
Free admission, open to the public.
Sponsored by
Department of Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College
International Graduate Student Organization
Films from the Margin
“X YEARS LATER 2014” is an edited version of award-winning film “X YEARS LATER”(2012) and clips from a TV program.
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Editing Our Evolution: Rewriting the Human Genome
Wednesday, December 6
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Museum of Science, One Science Park, Boston
As gene editing techniques become more refined, the possibility of editing the human genome is moving from science fiction to reality. What should we do with this power? Many in the scientific community are calling for strict regulations on the use of this technology, while others are excited about the possibilities. Should we create babies who will never know disease? Should we stick to smaller changes, like lowering the rates of breast cancer by eliminating mutations? Or should we call for society to ban human gene editing? Who should decide? How can we maximize benefits from these scientific advances while minimizing the harm that might come from them?
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Thursday, December 7 & Friday, December 8
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Northeastern North America Climate Summit
Thursday, December 7 & Friday, December 8
MIT
The New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers will convene a regional climate change summit hosted by MIT. Michael Bloomberg will be the keynote speaker.
More information at http://climatesummit.mit.edu
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Thursday, December 7
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PIC Meeting Pipeline Protest
Thursday, December 7
10 AM - 12 PM
Boston City Hall, room 801, Boston
The National Grid fracked gas pipeline through the Back Bay is scheduled to be considered at the next Boston Public Improvement Commission (PIC) hearing. Rumor has it that the PIC will grant permits, despite the fact that the promised public meeting(s) will not be scheduled before January. We are calling for a large crowd of passionate activists to testify as to why this project is a bad idea for the downtown area, for the city of Boston as a whole, for the state, the region, and the planet. Be there, and spread the word!
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The impact of airports on air and life quality in surrounding communities
Thursday, December 7
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Neelakshi Hudda, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tufts University
Aviation emissions impact air quality at global, regional and local spatial scales. What does the presence of airports close to home mean to communities living near airports? Neelakshi Hudda will review the impacts at local scale; the adversely impacted air quality or noise elevation zone may extend tens of kilometers downwind of the airports and encompass large populations in urban areas. She will also discuss the impacts of living in noisy vicinity of airports has on quality of life in residential communities around airport and associations with socioeconomic status.
Neelakshi Hudda’s main area of research interest is urban air pollution with a particular focus on ultrafine particles. Her work on the full extent of elevated ultrafine particle concentrations in Los Angeles neighborhoods downwind of LAX caused an immediate change in the study of and health concerns for ultrafine particle concentrations near large airports. In Boston, she used several years of air pollution data and found a significant relationship between Logan aviation activities, wind direction and elevated neighborhood and residential pollution levels.
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Holding Algorithms Accountable
December 7
2:50pm - 4:00pm
Tufts, Tisch 304, 35 Professors Row, Medford
Speaker: Cathy O’Neil
Abstract
In this talk, mathematician, data scientist and author Cathy O'Neil will outline the kinds of problems we face with powerful, opaque, and unfair algorithms being deployed against workers, consumers, and citizens. She will talk about the technical approaches we could take to addressing the problems, with existing examples of algorithmic auditing as well existing holes in the literature. She will also discuss what kind of inquiry could or should take place in academia versus industry or Washington D.C..
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How the struggle to define magic shaped the modern world
Thursday, December 7
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, E51-275, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Graham M. Jones, Associate Professor of Anthropology, MIT
Focusing on scenes of intercultural performance in colonial Algeria, this talk explores how nineteenthcentury French conceptions of modernity emerged from efforts to distinguish between magical entertainment and magical ritual. What is the postcolonial legacy of these distinctions?
More information at http://mitgsl.mit.edu/news-events/how-struggle-define-magic-shaped-modern-world
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The Emotional Politics of Piracy, Or Why We Feel Intellectual Property Infringement as National Trauma
Thursday, December 7
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114. 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Embracing the recent turns toward the study of public feelings, this talk examines the emotional politics of intellectual property “piracy.” Situating the figure of the pirate within larger narratives of Americanness, meritocracy, hard work, and postrace advanced in political speeches and media representations, it reads public feelings about the exceptional inventiveness and industriousness of US workers as context for intellectual property policy. Specifically, couching piracy as the unjust theft of the work of industrious and uniquely creative Americans fosters sentiments of pride, entitlement, resentment, and anxiety. When taken together, these public feelings transform intellectual property infringement into racialized piratical trauma, which threatens the very fabric of the nation. The everdayness and banality of piratical trauma fuels desires for intellectual property maximalism and intellectual property criminalization, which reproduce the very conditions which gave rise to the trauma.
Anjali Vats is Assistant Professor of Communication and African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College and Assistant Professor of Law, by courtesy, at Boston College Law School. She is currently working on a monograph entitled Created Differences: Intellectual Properties and Racial Formation in the Making of Americans which considers how intellectual property discourses shape our understandings of race, citizenship, and the capacity to engage in valuable intellectual labor. She has published articles in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication, Culture & Critique, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Southern Communication Journal. She has also co-authored law review articles in the Duquesne Law Review and Wayne Law Review. In 2016, Professor Vats was awarded an AAUW Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Exemplary Diversity Scholar Citation from the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan. Prior to teaching, she clerked for the Honorable A. William Maupin of the Supreme Court of Nevada.
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The Ecologies of Film Noir; or, Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene
WHEN Thursday, Dec. 7, 2017, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Carpenter Center B04, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Film and Visual Studies Colloquium in conjunction with the Boston Cinema/Media Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Jennifer Fay, Vanderbilt University
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authors@MIT - Joi Ito with Tim O'Reilly, WTF: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
Thursday, December 7
6:00pm
MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cost: $10
The MIT Press Bookstore presents Joi Ito and Tim O'Reilly discussing O'Reilly's new book WTF: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us, on Thursday, December 7, at 6:00 pm at the Bookstore. This event includes a book signing. Books will be on sale at the event and for pre-purchase online for 20% off, or you may purchase an event ticket for $10.
WTF? can be an expression of amazement or an expression of dismay. In today’s economy, we have far too much dismay along with our amazement, and technology bears some of the blame. In this combination of memoir, business strategy guide, and call to action, Tim O'Reilly, Silicon Valley’s leading intellectual and the founder of O’Reilly Media, explores the upside and the potential downsides of today's WTF? technologies.
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The Resistance Movement: What antibiotic resistance means for medicine
Thursday, December 7
6:30pm
Aeronaut, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville
William Hanage
More information at http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/science-by-the-pint/
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Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News
Thursday, December 7
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning poet and critic KEVIN YOUNG for a discussion of his latest book, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. This event is co-sponsored by Mass Humanities.
About Bunk
Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution.
Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.
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Society of Professional Journalists Panel: Covering Sexual Assault
Thursday, December 7
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM EST
BU, College of Arts and Sciences, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 522, Boston
The New England Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) is hosting a panel on covering sexual assault. panelists will include: Boston Globe Spotlight reporter Jenn Abelson, who covered sexual abuse at New England Boarding Schools.
Boston Globe reporter Kay Lazar, who covered allegations of abuse and misconduct by faculty at Berklee College of Music.
Boston Globe reporter Devra First, who covered allegations of sexual harassment in Boston's restaurant industry.
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented victims of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
Attorney Robert Bertsche, a media and first amendment lawyer for Prince Lobel Tye.
The event is cosponsored by the Boston University SPJ student chapter, Prince Lobel Tye, the New England First Amendment Coalition and the New England Newspaper & Press Association.
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Friday, December 8
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Atmospheric and Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Friday, December 8
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Johannes Orphal, Director, Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, will lead this Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar.
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Contact Name: Brenda Mathieu
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IoT Disruption in the Digital Economy
Friday, December 8
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-333, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join Kaan Terzioglu, CEO, Turkcell and Brian Subirana, Director of the MIT Auto-ID Lab where IoT was invented, to learn about innovation in the telecom industry digital ecosystem.
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Race, Politics, and Social Media: A Symposium
Friday, December 8
12:30 PM – 5:00 PM EST
BU, George Sherman Union Conference Auditorium, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Given its complete saturation of our cultural and political landscape, social media has quickly migrated from a utopian mode of communication and community building to a sign of the perverse marriage of capitalism, celebrity culture and narcissism; in other words, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. are now more likely to be described as problem than the solution they once purported to be. However, it also remains true that such platforms and technologies operate as a historically unparalleled sphere of communication for marginalized peoples and communities both globally and locally. This symposium takes African-American social media use as a lens to explore the linkages between race, activism and social media.
Featured Scholars:
Dr. Aleia Brown - Program Manager at the Humanities Action Lab at Rutgers-Newark; ACLS Fellow
Dr. Jacob GHroshek - Associate Professor of Emergying Media Studies at Boston University
Dr. Robert Eschmann - Assistant Professor at the Boston University school of Social Work
Dr. Desmond Patton - Assistant Professor at the Columbia School of Social Work
Keynote Speaker:
Feminista Jones - Social Worker, Feminist and Community Activist
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MIT D-Lab Fall Student Showcase
Friday, December 8
5:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building N51-310, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd floor, Cambridge
Final presentations and working prototypes from current MIT D-Lab students from these D-Lab classes: D-Lab: Development, D-Lab: Gender & Development, D-Lab: Schools, D-Lab: Supply Chains, D-Lab: WASH + Enviroment, Design for Scale, Development Ventures!
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Winona LaDuke: Celebrating a Decade of Community Conversations
Friday, December 8
7:00 PM – 11:00 PM EST
First Church In Jamaica Plain, 6 Eliot Street, Boston
Cost: $10 – $100
The Jamaica Plain Forum is 10 years old!
Join us as at "Celebrating a Decade of Community Conversations" on Sunday, November 5th, featuring Winona LaDuke of Honor Our Earth as keynote speaker.
Winona LaDuke is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two time vice presidential candidate for the Green Party.
This timely event celebrates the ten years of the Jamaica Plain forum providing a space for our community to speak up and have the conversations on the great issues shaping our neighborhood and our planet. It has showcased a long list of incredible individuals who dare to pose the important questions of our time. It has also been a space to simply remind us of our connection to each other. Lastly, it has brought our community closer in a profound and meaningful manner.
An essential driving force for this celebration is to show our immense appreciation to the First Church in Jamaica Plain UU for not only providing the space to gather all these years but also the support and solidarity we have been endowed. Our ambitious goal is to provide First Church with new furnishings.
Special supporter reception will be held at 5 pm. Book signing and after party following the main event.
Join us to celebrate our past and look to the future!
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Saturday, December 9
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Playing For The Planet
Saturday, December 9
7:00 pm
The Community Church Of Boston, 565 Boylston Street (Copley Square), Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/playing-for-the-planet-world-music-against-climate-change-tickets-39368096035 or http://www.warrensenders.com/journal/playing-for-the-…er-9-2017-boston/
Cost: $20; $15 students & seniors
Saturday, December 9, the sixteenth “Playing For The Planet” benefit concert showcases master musicians from three different musical traditions, in a benefit for the environmental advocacy group 350MA.org.
Come and hear Rob Flax' genre-bending solo performance, the enthralling and hypnotic music of the Hurdy-Gurdy Band, and the exquisite ragas of master sitarist Jawwad Noor.
For further information, please call 781-396-0734.
“Playing For The Planet: World Music Against Climate Change” is the sixteenth concert in an ongoing series of cross-cultural events produced by Boston-area musician and environmental activist Warren Senders. These concerts were conceived as a way for creative musicians to contribute to the urgent struggle against global warming. Their beneficiary, 350MA.org, is focused on building global consensus on reduction of atmospheric CO2 levels — action which climatologists agree is necessary to avoid catastrophic outcomes.
Jawwad Noor: Sitar
Jawwad Noor was initiated into sitar by Ustad Alam Khan of Lahore.
He went on to become a disciple of the world’s leading sitarist, Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, under whose exacting standards he extensively studies the melodic and rhythmic foundations of the music and trains to play the sitar in the vocal idiom.
Jawwad has been bringing his impassioned performances to audiences regularly and widely for many years. He is a senior instructor of the Shahid Parvez Khan Academy, and teaches at the LearnQuest Academy of Music. On December 10, he will be accompanied on tabla by Harsha Hampapura, who first studied with Shri Ram Hegde Keremane, and has been learning the Punjab style from Shri Anup Joshi for the past 6 years.
Rob Flax' One-Man Band
Multi-instrumentalist Rob Flax describes his music in a concise way: “I play things with strings, I hit stuff, and I sing.” Behind this simple tag line lies a rich depth of genre-bending, from classical and jazz violin to bluegrass fiddle, to blues and rock influences, and beyond. In his “One Man Band” shows, Rob uses a looper pedal and other effects to transform his violin into an entire symphony of sounds.
“Rob’s unique blend of ancient and modern brings the violin into the 21st century with a dazzling array of digital technology seamlessly mated to the traditional world of wood, gut, and bone.” —Stuart Rosenberg, WMFT
The Hurdy-Gurdy Band
The Hurdy-Gurdy is a mechanical violin played all over Europe since the Middle Ages. It combines drones, melody and percussive rhythms to cast a powerful spell on listeners.
The Hurdy-Gurdy Band was formed in 1979 by Donald Heller and Anicét Mikolai. Since then, they have performed throughout Europe, Canada and the United States.
Inspired by the traditions of the itinerant (and sometimes pitifully poor) Hurdy-Gurdy players heard in the streets of 18th Century Paris and London, the Hurdy-Gurdy Band breathes new life into an all but lost art.
On December 9 they will be joined by their son Julien Heller, on violin.
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Ubuntu - A Celebration of South Africa
Saturday, December 9
7:30 PM
First Parish Unitarian Universalist, 630 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington
Ubuntu! We welcome you! Join SANS for a joyful choral concert celebrating the South African spirit of "Ubuntu," evoking "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity."
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Monday, December 11
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The Intersection of IoT and Robotics: How Sensors, Data, and Intelligence Are Redefining Industry
Monday, December 11
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Alley Powered by Verizon, 10 Ware Street, Cambridge
Cost: $95 - $195
Agenda:
10:00am–10:30am
Registration & Networking
10:30am–11:30am
Opening Keynote: Lisa Seacat DeLuca, Distinguished Engineer, IBM
11:30am-11:45am
Tech Talk: Smart Agriculture
Speaker: Abbas Bagasra, DMTS, Verizon Communications
11:45am-12:30pm
Lunch & Networking
12:30pm-12:45pm
Tech Talk: Data Privacy Ownership & Ethics
Speaker: Lily Lim, Attorney, Finnegan
12:45pm-1:00pm
Tech Talk: Cybersecurity in Industrial Internet of Things
1:00pm-2:00pm
Smart Cities Panel: Thinking Outside the Box
Moderator: Setrag Khoshafian, Chief Evangelist and VP of BPM Technology, Pegasystems
Panelists:
Nigel Jacob, Co-Chair, Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics, City of Boston
Subu Ramasamy, Senior Global Product Manager, Connected Lighting Systems, Philips Lighting
Connecting physical objects, from vehicles to telephone poles, has been made more accessible due to the lower costs of sensors and increased computing power. Our panelists will talk about the power of connecting these objects and what the future will bring.
2:00pm-2:15pm
Break
2:15pm-3:15pm
Panel: How IoT and Robotics are Redefining Manufacturing
Panelists:
Pulkit Kapur, Senior Industry Manager for Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Mathworks
Yavor Kolarov, Product Group Marketing Manager, Digital Systems Business Unit, OSRAM
Rony Kubat, Co-founder, Tulip
Walter Vahey, President of Systems Test Group, Teradyne
Manufacturers are entering a new era where robotics and IoT are essential to remain competitive. Connected devices and collaborative robots are converging to escalate productivity, helping their customers and their bottom line. Our panelists will talk about how these pieces come together, the implementation, and the return on investment.
3:15pm–3:45pm
Closing Keynote: Colin Angle, CEO, iRobot
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PAOC Colloquium: Alison Gray (Princeton)
Monday, December 11
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided 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.
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Plasticity in Polygonum: Eco-Devo Insights to Adaptive Diversity
Monday, December 11
12:10PM
Harvard, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Boston
Sonia Sultan, Professor, Wesleyan University, will discuss "."
Arnold Arboretum Research Talk
Contact Name: arbweb@arnarb.harvard.edu
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The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983–1992
Monday, December 11
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5 - $32.25 (online only, book-included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning writer and editor TINA BROWN—former editor-in-chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and The Daily Beast—for a discussion of The Vanity Fair Diaries: 1983–1992.
About The Vanity Fair Diaries
Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood.
The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.
Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions―the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In the diary's cinematic pages, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life. Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman's journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter.
Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a compulsively fascinating and intimate chronicle of a woman's life in a glittering era.
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Reality and Truth in Contemporary Journalism
Monday, December 11
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reality-and-truth-in-contemporary-journalism-registration-39694260602
Dan Balz, Chief Correspondent at The Washington Post, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, University of Pennsylvania professor of communication, and Tom Nichols, author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, discuss reality and truth in contemporary media with Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College professor of history.
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Climate Ready Boston South Boston Open House
Monday, December 11
6pm - 8pm
Mass Bay Credit Union, 147 West 4th Street, South Boston
Climate Ready Boston is the Mayor's ongoing initiative to help the City grow and prosper in the face of climate change. Through the Climate Ready South Boston project, we are working to better understand current and future flood risks in South Boston, and develop strategies that protect the neighborhood.
Join us on December 11th for our first community open house about the vision for a Climate Ready South Boston. Meet the project team, ask questions, and give feedback to the design team.
The event is open house style, and we recommend you plan to attend for about 30 minutes anytime between 6-8pm.
Climate resiliency planning is happening in Boston’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, such as East Boston, Charlestown, and now South Boston. Your participation will help us develop climate resilience solutions that improve your neighborhood.
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Tuesday, December 12
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Lived Botany: Settler Colonialism, Household Knowledge Production, and Natural History in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania
Tuesday, December 12
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts Hannah Anderson, University of Pennsylvania with comment by Thomas Wickman, Trinity College. Free and open to the public. A light sandwich supper will follow.
Boston Environmental History Seminar
Contact Name: seminars@masshist.org
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CABA & Climate XChange's Holiday Party
Tuesday, December 12
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
131 Cambridge St, 131 Cambridge Street, Boston
It’s that time of year again! The temperature is dropping, the days are becoming shorter, and 2017 is coming to a close. But before the year ends, we’re gathering to reflect on what we’ve accomplished in 2017 with the people who helped make those achievements possible. Please join us at the Old West Church for an evening of food, drinks, and good company.
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Mass Innovation Nights 105: Relativity Whiskey at WeWork Mass Ave
Tuesday, December 12
6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
We Work, 625 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Smooth and well balanced: that is the theme for our December event. Our sponsor, Relativity from Edrington, the New American whiskey will be on hand and pouring at WeWork Mass Ave. in Cambridge. They're doing something special with their website- a puzzle that gives you a chance to win a branded hat (can you hack the puzzle for a secret prize?).
The Cambridge WeWork is the location for our December 12th TUESDAY (yes, note it is TUESDAY not our usual night) #MIN105! You can relax with a glass of whiskey and check out the 11 cool and innovative products that will be showcased.
Check out the new PRODUCTS and
VOTE for your favorites - click on the words VOTE HERE (found on this page to the immediate left) and once on the product voting page, click LOVE IT (only four times)!
RSVP to attend the event on Tuesday, December 12th (free to attend and open to all)
See who else is planning on attending (click the ATTENDEES tab)
Help spread the word - blog, tweet (using the #MIN105 hashtag), like and post!
Support local innovation -- network and have fun at the same time!
Don't miss it -- TUESDAY, December 12th 6pm-8:30pm for Mass Innovation Nights #105!
(855) 593-9675
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Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT84 (21+)
Tuesday, December 12
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Foley Hoag, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
Cost: $12.00 /per person
This event is 21+. Find our check-in table in the lobby and present your valid photo identification to pick up your name tag.
Come learn about 7 innovative and exciting technology products and network with 150 attendees from the Boston-area startup community! Dinner, beer, wine and more are included.
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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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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
Solar map of Cambridge, MA
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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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"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.
Play the game at http://www.doublecoconut.com/climate/
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://calendar.mit.edu
MIT Energy Club: http://mitenergyclub.org/
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Microsoft NERD Center: http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
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