[act-ma] Energy (and Other) Events

Sun Mar 28 17:30:39 PDT 2010

MIT

Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and  
Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector
Speaker: Chris Knittel (UC Davis)

Time: 2:30p–4:00p

Location: E52-244

Automobiles on Steroids: Product Attribute Trade-Offs and  
Technological Progress in the Automobile Sector

Web site: http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/5429

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Energy & Environmental Economics at MIT

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Why Chemomechanical Design of  
Materials is Critical to Sustainable Transportation Infrastructure
Speaker: Krystyn Van Vliet, Materials Science and Engineering

Time: 4:00p–5:00p

Location: 3-270

Transportation at MIT Seminar Series

In Spring 2010, the Transportation at MIT seminar series continues by  
drawing knowledge from MIT research that is applicable to  
transportation. Our goal is to strengthen the community of MIT  
researchers by sharing information in the following areas: airlines,  
automation, behavior and economics, energy sources, environmental  
impacts, logistics and supply chains, networks, propulsion, system  
control, urban challenges, and vehicles.

Web site: http://transportation.mit.edu/events.php

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free Admission to MIT and General Public

Sponsor(s): Transportation at MIT

For more information, contact:
Rebecca Fearing
transportation at mit.edu

Tuesday, March 30, 2010
What should we humans do about climate change?
Speaker: Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher

Time: 6:00p–7:30p

Location: N51, MIT Museum

Professor Thomas Malone and Robert Laubacher of MIT?s Center for  
Collective Intelligence lead a hands-on, interactive session exploring  
how the collective intelligence of thousands of people (including you)  
can be harnessed to address global climate change.

Have a chance to play with the Climate Collaboratorium - an innovative  
on-line forum inspired by systems like Wikipedia and Linux - in which  
you can explore the impacts of proposed climate change policies,  
engage in on-line (and at the Museum, in-person) debates, and register  
your opinion on what we humans should do about global climate change.

The Collaboratorium is one project in MIT's Center for Collective  
Intelligence, whose primary research question is, How can people and  
computers be connected so that - collectively - they act more  
intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever  
done before? This event is in conjunction with the exhibition Sampling  
MIT.

Bring your laptop to use the system live. A limited number of MIT  
Museum computers will also be made available.

Web site:http://web.mit.edu/museum/programs/calendar.html#climate

Open to: the general public

Cost: free

Sponsor(s): MIT Museum

For more information, contact:
Josie Patterson
617-253-5927
museum at mit.edu

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Art in Action: How Artistic Projects Inspire New Perspectives in  
Planning
Speaker: Dietmar Offenhuber, Richard The, Sam Auinger, Bruce Odland

Time: 12:30p–2:00p

Location: 9-450

DUSP Speaker Series
Weekly Lecture Series of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.  
Light lunch served.

How can we consider art-related views on urban space? What are the  
ways that artists help us relate to and understand public space? Can  
art foster public interaction and communication? In this session, we  
will focus on art about public space instead of art in public space.  
We will showcase two positions of individual artists who focus on the  
use and understanding of public space and the social impacts of art.

Richard The: Richard is a media artist and interaction designer  
working at the MIT Media Lab and as part of the design studio The  
Green Eyl in Berlin. In his talk, he will discuss his approaches to  
design for new social interactions and situations in public space.
http://rt80.net/

O+A: The two composers and sound artists Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland  
focus on the sonic space of the city. In their large-scale  
installations, they investigate the relationship between architecture,  
sound and perception. Currently they focus on issues related to the ? 
sonic commons?.
http://www.o-a.info/

Moderated by Dietmar Offenhuber, PhD Candidate in DUSP and Researcher  
at the Senseable City Lab

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Department of Urban Studies and Planning

For more information, contact:
Ezra Glenn
617-253-2024
eglenn at mit.edu

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

MIT Energy Seminar: "Toward an Innovation Centered Climate Change  
Strategy."
Speaker: Daniel C. Esty, Yale University.

Time: 3:00p–4:30p

Location: E19-319

Prospects for a global agreement on climate change to supplant the  
Kyoto Protocol are now badly bogged down. The success of the  
international negotiations is deeply intertwined with the U.S.  
domestic political conversation around climate change. Unfortunately,  
the current legislative efforts seem unlikely to win the necessary  
majorities in the House and Senate. It is now time to think about  
alternative strategies. In this talk, I will argue that we need to put  
innovation at the center of our approach to climate change. Critical  
to this strategy realignment is a focus on getting a clear price  
signal on greenhouse gas emissions and a package of additional  
incentives that help to engage the full creative spirit of the country  
and the world in the effort to advance energy efficiency, explore  
alternative sources of power generation, and establish whether carbon  
capture and storage can be done cost effectively. This talk will  
examine the policy process that will be necessary to put forward such  
an innovation-centered approach to climate change.

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/mitei/news/seminars/innovation-centered.html

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Tim Heidel
energy-events at mit.edu

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

IDEAS Competition Information Session
Speaker: Samantha Cooper

Time: 7:00p–8:00p

Location: 4-231

The world has problems. You have ideas. We have $50,000.

Come learn about the IDEAS Competition and how you can win up to $8000  
and make your innovative idea a reality!

The IDEAS Competition is an annual public service competition that  
provides an opportunity for members of the MIT community to develop  
creative ideas for projects that make a positive change in the world -  
locally, nationally or internationally.

Join us and learn more about the competition, how to enter, and how to  
write a strong proposal.

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/ideas

Open to: the general public

This event occurs on the 3rd of every month at 7:00p - 8:00p through  
March 3, 2010, and also on March 31, 2010 at 7:00p - 8:00p.

Sponsor(s): Public Service Center, Graduate Student Life Grants, MIT  
IDEAS Competition

For more information, contact:
Samantha Cooper
5-5474
coopers at mit.edu

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Energy 101: Nuclear Power
Speaker: Lara Pierpoint

Time: 12:00p–1:00p

Location: 37-212

Energy 101
Energy 101 is a lecture series put on by the MIT Energy Club focusing  
on the basic technology, policy, business, and economic issues  
surrounding many basic energy topics. Lectures will be held once or  
twice and month and are delivered by students.

Come hear a student who is an expert in nuclear power and the nuclear  
fuel cycle give a primer in nuclear power. Topics will include but are  
not limited to technology, economics, and regulation and policy  
surrounding this source of energy.

Food will be provided.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club

For more information, contact:
Tim Heidel
energy-events at mit.edu

Thursday, April 01, 2010

The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition and Digital Technologies
Speaker: Thomas Pettitt, University of Southern Denmark; Peter  
Donaldson, MIT Literature; James Paradis, MIT Writing

Time: 5:00p–7:00p

Location: 3-270

Is our emerging digital culture partly a return to practices and ways  
of thinking that were central to human societies before the advent of  
the printing press? This question has been posed with increasing force  
in recent years by anthropologists, folklorists, historians and  
literary scholars, among them Thomas Pettitt, who has contributed  
significantly to elaborating and communicating the version of this  
question named in the title of today's forum.

The concept of a "Gutenberg Parenthesis"--formulated by Prof. L. O.  
Sauerberg of the University of Southern Denmark--offers a means of  
identifying and understanding the period, varying between societies  
and subcultures, during which the mediation of texts through time and  
across space was dominated by powerful permutations of letters, print,  
pages and books. Our current transitional experience toward a post- 
print media world dominated by digital technology and the internet can  
be usefully juxtaposed with that of the period-- Shakespeare's--when  
England was making the transition into the parenthesis from a world of  
scribal transmission and oral performance.

MIT professors Peter Donaldson and James Paradis will join Pettitt in  
a discussion of the value of historical perspectives on our  
technologizing human present.

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Communications  
Forum

For more information, contact:
Brad Seawell
617-253-3521
seawell at mit.edu

Thursday, April 01, 2010

MIT Energy Club Lecture: "Engineering Sustainable Electricity  
Services--The Key Role of Systems Thinking and Automation" Prof.  
Marija Ilic, CMU
Time: 5:00p–6:00p

Location: 4-237

In this lecture we pose the problem of sustainable electricity  
services as a novel systems engineering design problem. We briefly  
summarize today's operating and planning practices and explain why  
these need fundamental changing in order to enable qualitatively  
different electricity services. In particular, we suggest that many  
new resources have characteristics, which are not generally known to  
the system operators, and are, therefore, currently not relied on for  
managing supply and demand in an often-congested electric network. The  
new resources are also highly variable and, as such, do not lend  
themselves to static feed-forward scheduling without near-real time  
automated feedback. Instead, a transformation of this operating and  
planning mode into an interactive multi-temporal, multi-spatial and  
multi-contextual system management is needed to accommodate ever- 
changing system conditions, often driven by many distributed actions.  
In order to enable a complex system with often-conflicting  
functionalities, such as reliability, security, short- and long-term  
efficiency, and sustainability, one must rely on prediction,  
adaptation and adjustments by all.

We introduce a Dynamic Monitoring and Decision Systems (DYMONDS)  
framework as one such possible interactive framework in support of on- 
line sensing and decision making at various industry layers capable of  
meeting multiple metrics.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club

For more information, contact:
MIT Energy Club
energyclub at mit.edu

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Social Venture (Entrepreneurship & Financing)
Speaker: Una Ryan, Bill Rodriguez, David Steinmiller

Time: 5:00p–7:00p

Location: E25-117

Global Health at MIT

Featuring the perspectives of physicians, engineers, and non-profit- 
sector directors, this panel discussion about the inception,
development, and funding of a health-related start-up focusing on  
patients in the developing world will provide insights into the  
importance of product design criteria, intellectual property  
considerations for products being sold
in the developing versus the developed world, and business model  
adoption, underscoring the tension between ethical and financial  
considerations in this sector.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Global Health at MIT, Graduate Student Life Grants, MIT  
Public Service Center

For more information, contact:
Michael Goldberg
michaelg at mit.edu

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Goldstein Lecture in Architecture, Engineering, and Science
Speaker: David MacKay, "Sustainable Energy--without the hot air,"  
Physicist and Chief Scientific Advisor, Dept of Energy and Climate  
Change, London; Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge

Time: 6:30p–8:30p

Location: 34-101

Co-sponsored by the Department of Architecture and the MIT Energy  
Initiative (MITEI)

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture

For more information, contact:
617-253-7791

Editor's Comment:  A lot of people are looking forward to hearing  
David MacKay.  This may be a very informative event.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Arundhati Roy in Conversation with Noam Chomsky
Speaker: ARUNDHATI ROY with Noam Chomsky

Time: 3:30p–5:00p

Location: 26-100, Video overflow room 34-101

Please join us for a conversation with Arundhati Roy, author of The  
God of Small Things and Field Notes on Democracy, and MIT professor of  
Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, author of Hegemony or  
Survival and the forthcoming book, Hopes and Prospects, as they  
discuss the threats to democracy in the United States, India, and  
worldwide.
THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR THIS EVENT. WE WILL,  
HOWEVER, HAVE VIDEO OVERFLOW ROOMS SET UP. PLEASE SEE OUR WEBSITE FOR  
FURTHER INFORMATION. NO ONE WILL BE ADMITTED TO 26-100 WITHOUT A  
TICKET. THANK YOU.

Web site: web.mit.edu/tac

Open to: the general public

Cost: n/a

Tickets: cenglish at mit.edu

Sponsor(s): The Technology and Culture Forum at MIT, MIT Program in  
Women's and Gender Studies

For more information, contact:
Patricia-Maria Weinmann
617-253-0108
weinmann at mit.edu

Friday, April 02, 2010

Reception: Water Walkers: Portraits of Ghana's Street Vendors
Time: 4:00p–6:00p

Location: 7-238, Rotch Gallery (Rotch Library)

Photos by Melissa Haeffner (G). Through digital storytelling, this  
project presents the daily experience of water vendors as they  
negotiate their way through spatial dimensions of traffic and market,  
home and school.

Haeffner's self-published book of the same title will be sold at the  
reception. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Pure Home  
Water, to continue distribution of clean water in Ghana.

Exhibit on view April 1-30.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT Libraries

For more information, contact:
Jolene de Verges
617/258-5593
jdeverge at MIT.EDU

Harvard

Art, Public Space and New Media
WHEN
Mon., Mar. 29, 2010, 4 p.m.
WHERE
Room 133, Barker Center, 12 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA
TYPE OF EVENT
Art/Design, Humanities, Presentation/Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Humanities Center
SPEAKER(S)
Artists Tobias Putrih (Boston-Ljubljana); Michael Meredith, and  
Helidon Gjergji (New York-Naples-Tirana). Moderated by Svetlana Boym.
COST
Free and open to the public
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~humcentr/

Climate Change & the Media: "Techno-Optimism or Pessimism? 'Fixing'  
the Planet's Climate Problems"

WHEN
Wed., Mar. 31, 2010, 1 – 2:30 p.m.
WHERE
Bell Hall, Belfer 5th floor, Harvard Kennedy School
TYPE OF EVENT
Environmental Sciences, Presentation/Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR
Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and  
Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S)
Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine; Jeff Goodell, author of "How to Cool the  
Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate"
COST
Free to the public
CONTACT INFO
Cristine_Russell at hks.harvard.edu
NOTE
Refreshments will be served.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/news_events/calendar.html