[act-ma] Energy (and Other) Events

George Mokray gmoke at world.std.com
Sun Mar 6 19:44:58 PST 2011


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 at world.std.com

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MIT

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Monday, March 07, 2011

Market Response Modeling: Quantifying the Technology and Policies  
Needed to Drive Global Zero-Carbon-Emission Building Infrastructure

Speaker: Dr. Kevin Otto, President, Robust Systems and Strategy LLC

Time: 12:30p–2:00p

Location: 7-431, AVT

Building Technology Spring Lecture Series

Buildings consume 38% of energy use globally, far more than the  
industrial, transportation or any other sector. Yet, unlike these  
other sectors, we have available today the technology to reduce  
building energy consumption to near net zero and thereby eliminate  
their net carbon contribution. Zero energy consuming buildings exist  
in all applications and in all climates, they work. We are not facing  
an unsolvable problem in creating energy efficient building  
technologies. We face a problem of creating demand for, delivering,  
purchasing, and operationally maintaining very energy efficient  
buildings. To quantify and explore industrial policy scenarios, a  
large scale simulation modeling effort was constructed, to simulate  
the impact on the global building stock of the construction and  
operation decisions of individual building owners and stakeholders.  
The results of any scenario simulated out to 2050 were compared with  
levels necessary to achieve global carbon reduction and stabilization.  
We also quantified that all current incentive programs used throughout  
Europe, the US and elsewhere to incentivize building owners to upgrade  
to more energy efficient materials and systems have little to no  
impact. Instead, we compute that whole-building incentive programs and  
building codes are uniformly necessary. These results will be reviewed.

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): Department of Architecture, Building Technology Program

For more information, contact:
Kathleen Ross
617 253 1876
kross at mit.edu

----------------------------

Monday, March 07, 2011

Electronics for Energy Efficiency

Speaker: Jason Stauth

Time: 3:00p–4:00p

Location: 38-401A

EECS Special Seminar

The growing demand for energy will result in dramatic changes to the  
way we generate and manage energy. This provides unprecedented  
motivation to explore technologies that can facilitate more efficient  
energy conversion, reduced consumption and waste, and support lower  
carbon energy sources. This talk will present a research framework for  
next-generation electronics for energy efficiency that merges efforts  
in highly-integrated power electronics, communications electronics,  
and embedded systems techniques. Future research areas include  
applications in automotive, energy storage, and distributed energy  
generation. Research themes include resonant and digital techniques  
that leverage high-energy-density passives and deep integration in  
modern semiconductor technologies. A commercial effort in distributed  
power management for photovoltaic systems will be discussed that  
combines efforts in power electronics, power-line communications, and  
networked instrumentation. This effort includes development of a novel  
resonant switched-capacitor power converter that can achieve effective  
conversion efficiency of 99.5% and can substantially improve lifetime  
energy capture in photovoltaic systems.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): EECS HQ

For more information, contact:
Mira Whiting
617-253-4657
mira at mit.edu

----------------------------

March 7, 2011

3:45pm / 4:15pm

Kolker Room, 26-414

"More Precious than Gold: Critical Elements for New Energy Technologies"

Robert Jaffe, MIT
I will report on a recently completed study jointly sponsored by the  
APS Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) and the Material Research Society  
(MRS). The twin pressures of increasing demand for energy and  
increasing concern about anthropogenic climate change have stimulated  
research into new sources of energy and novel ways to harvest,  
transmit, store, transform or conserve it. At the same time, advances  
in physics, chemistry, and material science have enabled researchers  
to identify chemical elements with properties that can be finely tuned  
to their specific needs and to employ them in new energy-related  
technologies. Elements like dysprosium, gallium, germanium, indium,  
lanthanum, neodymium, rhenium, or tellurium, which were once  
laboratory curiosities, now figure centrally when novel energy systems  
are discussed. Many of these elements are not at present mined,  
refined, or traded in large quantities. However new technologies can  
only impact our energy needs if they can be scaled from laboratory, to  
demonstration, to massive implementation. As a result, some previously  
unfamiliar elements will be needed in great quantities. We refer to  
these elements as energy-critical elements (ECEs). Although the  
technologies in which they are employed and their abundance in the  
Earth’s crust vary greatly, ECEs have many features in common. The  
purpose of the POPA/MRS study was to evaluate constraints on  
availability of energy-critical elements and to make recommendations  
that can help avoid these obstructions.

------------------------------

Monday, March 07, 2011

Water Footprint Analysis of Electricity Generation

Speaker: Michael Rutberg, Dept. Mechanical Engineering, MIT

Time: 4:00p–5:00p

Location: 3-343

Center for Energy and Propulsion Research Seminar Series

The interconnection between water and energy systems, or "water-energy  
nexus," is an area of increasing concern in many arid parts of the  
world. Withdrawal and consumption of water at electricity generation  
plants, mainly for cooling purposes, is a significant component of the  
water-energy nexus in the US and elsewhere. The existing field data on  
US power plant water use, however, is of limited granularity and poor  
quality, hampering efforts to track industry trends and project future  
scenarios. Furthermore, there is a need for a common quantitative  
framework on which to evaluate the potential of the many technologies  
that have been proposed to reduce water use at power plants. To  
address these deficiencies, we have created a system-level generic  
model (SGM) of water use at power plants that applies to a wide  
variety of generation technologies. The SGM is a computationally  
inexpensive analytical model that approximately reflects the physics  
of the key processes involved and requires a small number of input  
parameters; the outputs are water withdrawal and consumption intensity  
in liters per kilowatt-hour. This talk will first give a brief  
introduction to the water-energy nexus, focusing on water use at power  
plants, then describe the SGM and its application to water footprint  
data analysis and technology evaluation.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): RGD Lab

For more information, contact:
Patrick Kirchen

-----------------------------

Jiang Yang: "Shaping Information and Social Dynamics in Social Media:  
Incentive and Culture"
Monday, March 07, 2011 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Location:  MIT Media Lab, E14-633
Speaker:  Jiang Yang
Digital social media is revolutionizing the way people socialize and  
create/share information. Understanding and shaping this revolution  
calls for a new hybrid of research in technology, design, media,  
sociology, business, and economics. Yang will address how the two  
primary motifs in social media space—information and social dynamics 
—have been shaped by the complex interaction between incentive design  
and cultural context. In particular, in this talk she will discuss  
findings from several settings, including online forums, community  
based Q&A sites, and crowdsourcing websites. She will demonstrate that  
integrating diverse research methods is particularly desired to  
understand the full picture.

Understanding the co-evolvement between system design and  
participators’ human, social, and cultural factors can lead to  
discovering the major dimensions in the social media design space.  
Yang's goal is to identify and construct this design space to help in  
evaluating, suggesting, and guiding new design features. Finally, she  
will describe a few work-in-progress projects that extend her prior  
studies and design new social-information experiences for users.

Biography:
Jiang Yang is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan School of  
Information, specializing in human-computer interaction and social  
computing. She studies information and social dynamics in online  
social media, focusing on how system designs interact with human,  
social, and cultural factors. Her research involves developing hybrid  
research methodology to understand, evaluate, and design social media  
systems. Jiang received her master's degree in financial engineering,  
and bachelor's degree in information systems and communication from  
the University of Science and Technology of China, and has interned in  
IBM Research, Microsoft Research, and eBay Labs.

---------------------------------------


Monday, March 07, 2011

Collision 2 Lecture Series: Laurent Grasso

Speaker: Laurent Grasso

Time: 7:00p–9:00p

Location: E15-070, Bartos Theater

Collision 2: When Artistic and Scientific Research Meet
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The ACT Monday night lecture series Collision 2: When Artistic and  
Scientific Research Meet draws together artists and scientists from  
different disciplines to discuss artistic methodologies and forms of  
inquiry at the intersection of art, architecture, science and  
technology.

This series is part of AR - Artistic Research, a yearlong  
collaboration between the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology  
and Siemens Stiftung, Munich, co‑curated by ACT Director Ute Meta  
Bauer and Siemens Stiftung Curator of Visual Arts Thomas D. Trummer.  
The lecture series is also part of the related ACT course 4.365/4.366  
 From Bauhaus to Our House.

The lecture series is free and open to the public.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology presents its Monday night  
lecture series, Collision 2: When Artistic and Scientific Research Meet

Science & Fictions
Laurent Grasso, artist, Paris, France

Respondent: Stefan Helmreich, MIT Professor of Anthropology

Laurent Grasso will discuss the ideas and processes behind hisHAARP  
project (High Frequency Active Auroral research) eponymous of a  
research base in Gakona, Alaska. One side of this project was to  
display a scale reconstitution of the antenna array?s in the Palais de  
Tokyo, Paris, in 2009. He will also present, theStudies into the Past  
series, and the exhibition The Horn Perspective that took place at the  
Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2009. This exhibition partly deals with  
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson?s discoveries on cosmic microwaves  
(remains of the big bang) through The Horn Antenna. In 2008, Laurent  
Grasso was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize and in 2010 he  
was featured at The European Biennial of Contemporary Art: Manifesta  
8, Murcia, Spain.


Web site: http://visualarts.mit.edu/about/lecture.html

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology

For more information, contact:
Laura Chichisan Pallone
617-253-4415
clauraa at mit.edu

---------------------------

Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Supply Chain Innovation & Leadership Series
Roger Bloemen, Vice President Global Supply Chain, Solutia
“From Business Strategy to Supply Chain Strategy”
Time: 12-1pm
Location: E51-325

Roger Bloemen is Vice President, Global Supply Chain for Solutia.  He  
has degrees in Bio Engineering,  Industrial Engineering and Business  
Administration  from University of Leuven, Belgium. Roger has an  
executive MBA from Stanford University and gives frequent lectures on  
Supply Chain strategy at key business schools around the world.   Last  
year Solutia won the Belgian Pics Supply Chain award.

----------------------------------

Prof. Sheila Kennedy's lecture on PV Design applications

March 08, 2011  12:00p–1:00p

Sheila Kennedy, MIT Professor of the Practice of Architecture, will  
present design work that explores the new nexus of adaptable/ 
responsive design, soft ware, ?soft? solar materials and flexible  
electronics. This talk will focus on the challenges and opportunities  
of accelerating the wide spread use of organic thin film and  
generation 3 CIGs based solar cells. Drawing on the intersection of  
material research from coursework at MIT and real-world demonstration  
projects from her practice at KVA MATx, www.kvarch.net Kennedy will  
discuss how design innovation in architecture and building materials  
is creating new form factors and applications for solar energy,  
changing the configuration of public space in the built environment,  
and driving innovation in the creative economy. Keywords:  
architecture, innovation, flexible photovoltaics, flat to form  
manufacturing, craft and technical hybrids, prototyping.

With lunch.

Category:  lectures/conferences

Speaker:  MIT Faculty Profile: Sheila Kennedy, AIA http://sap.mit.edu/resources/portfolio/kennedy/

Location:  56-167

Sponsored by:  MIT Energy Campus Events

Admission:  Open to the public

For more information:  Contact Ines N.S Gaisset

ines_g at mit.edu

----------------------------------



Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Transportation at MIT Seminar: "System Design in an Uncertain World:  
Decision Support to Mitigate the Impacts of Convective Weather on Air  
Traffic"

Speaker: Richard DeLaura, MIT Lincoln Lab

Time: 4:00p–5:00p

Location: 3-270

Transportation at MIT Seminar Series

Transportation at MIT and the MIT Transportation Club are pleased to  
announce the continuation of the Transportation Seminar Series. All  
seminars this spring will be held in 3-270 on Tuesdays at 4pm.
This series will feature presentations by faculty researchers at MIT,  
as well as invited guest speakers from beyond the Institute. Please  
save the date for the following confirmed speakers:

3/15 Daniela Rus, MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

3/29 Noelle Eckley Selin, MIT Engineering Systems Division; Earth,  
Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

4/5 Daniel Roos, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering  
Systems Division

4/12 Youssef Marzouk, MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics

4/26 Jesse Kroll, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical  
Engineering

5/3 Joan Ogden, University of California (Davis), Environmental  
Science and Policy


Web site: http://transportation.mit.edu/live/news/1175-spring-2011-transportati
on-seminar-series

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free Admission to MIT and General Public

Sponsor(s): Transportation at MIT

For more information, contact:
Rebecca Fearing
6172533366
transportation at mit.edu

-------------------------------

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Organic and Dye Sensitized Solar Cells

Speaker: Mike McGehee, Associate Professor of Materials Science and  
Engineering and Director of the Center for Advanced Molecular  
Photovoltaics, Stanford University

Time: 4:15p–5:30p

Location: 66-110

MITEI Seminar Series
A year-long series of seminars given by leaders in the energy field  
sponsored by the MIT Energy Initiative.

Organic solar cells and dye sensitized solar cells are very promising  
because they can be deposited rapidly in roll-to-roll coating machines  
without expensive vacuum chambers or high temperature processing.  
Since they can be lightweight and flexible, it may soon be possible to  
roll them onto rooftops at a cost several times lower than is now  
possible with silicon or cadmium telluride solar cells. Since organic  
semiconductors do not contain any rare or toxic elements, such as  
indium, cadmium or tellurium, organic solar cells could be used to  
provide the world with a significant fraction of its electricity.

Open to: the general public

Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Jameson Twomey
617-324-2408
jtwomey at mit.edu

---------------------------
Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Legatum Lecture: 2010 Prosperity Index

Speaker: Dr. Ashley Thomas Lenihan & Jiehae Choi

Time: 5:00p–6:00p

Location: 32-144, Dessert Reception to follow

How do you define prosperity? We invite global economists, future  
policymakers, and transformative thinkers to join us and learn about  
the Legatum Prosperity Index. This quantitative tool is the world's  
only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing. The Index produces  
rankings based on the foundations of prosperity for 110 nations and  
covering more than 90% of the world's population.


Web site: http://legatum.mit.edu/choilecture

Open to: the general public

Cost: none

Sponsor(s): Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship

For more information, contact:
Agnes Hunsicker
617-324-2768
agnesh at mit.edu

-----------------------------

Has the Climate Change Debate Become Intractable?

March 09, 2011  11:45a–1:00p

Professor Hoffman will discuss the results of his work on breaking  
down the debate on climate change and understanding its deeper  
cultural, economic and political aspects. It is at this deeper level  
that individual and group acceptance or rejection of climate science  
lies. And solutions to breaking through to a social consensus on the  
issue lie at this level.

Lunch Provided

Category:  lectures/conferences

Speaker:  Andy Hoffman, visiting professor

Location:  E62-276

Sponsored by:  MIT Energy Campus Events

Admission:  Open to the public

For more information:  Contact Elaine T Lim

elim1 at mit.edu

Editorial Comment:  I saw Dr Hoffman speak on this topic last week and  
he has some pertinent things to say about the public debate on climate  
change.

-------------------------------------------



Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Patterns of Knowledge: Phase Transitions and Early Growth of Language  
Wikipedia Networks

Speaker: Dr. Gergana Bounova is a postdoctoral research associate at  
MIT. She is living and working in Berkeley, CA, and is also associated  
with the Biostatistics group at UC Berkeley.

Time: 12:00p–1:00p

Location: E51-325

Abstract: Wikipedia is the largest free encyclopedia on the internet  
where users contribute and edit articles over time. Since 2001 over 18  
million articles (3.5 million in English) have been contributed in  
about 280 languages. Wikipedia has become the de-facto reference  
knowledge capture platform online and there is substantial interest in  
understanding both its structure and evolution over time from a  
system's perspective. In this presentation I will summarize our recent  
work on the evolution of language Wikipedias as networks. 177 language  
Wikipedias (ex: French, Russian, etc.) are modeled as networks of  
articles connected by thematic hyperlinks. We study phase transitions  
in these 177 networks as they develop a giant component and become  
almost fully connected. Critical density and other metrics are  
correlated and compared to their corresponding random graph values. We  
also discuss patterns at large, concerning both the diversity and the  
commonality in the growth of language Wikipedias. Preliminary results  
on the existence of a "stable Wikipedia network topology" are discussed.

Sponsored by MIT Engineering Systems Division and New England Complex  
Systems Institute (NECSI).

Food will be available at 11:30; lecture begins at noon.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Engineering Systems Division

For more information, contact:
Stefanie Koperniak
skoperni at mit.edu

---------------------------

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Humanitarian Speaker Series
Jason Phillips, Deputy Vice president, Field Operations, International  
Rescue Committee
“Humanitarian Action in a Changing World:  an NGO Practitioner’s  
View”
Time: 12-1pm
Location: E51-315

Jason Phillips currently works in New York as the Deputy Vice  
President- Field Operations, for the International Rescue Committee  
(IRC), one of the largest and oldest humanitarian private voluntary  
organizations in the United States. He supports 25 countries in the  
areas of logistics, finance, human resource, administration,  
information technology, security management and strategic planning. He  
also supervises the organization's international logistics operations.

Jason moved back to the United States after spending over 9 years  
living in and managing humanitarian operations in Africa. He has  
worked as IRC's Country Director in Sierra Leone and Kenya, and as a  
Program Coordinator in Kenya. Prior to joining IRC, Jason worked with  
the American Refugee Committee (ARC) in Uganda and Southern Sudan.

Prior to entering the humanitarian field Jason was a lecturer in the  
Political Science departments at Gettysburg College and The Johns  
Hopkins University. He also worked in the Private Placement and  
Leveraged Buyout department of Smith Barney, Harris Upham and Co, an  
investment bank, upon graduation from college.

--------------------------
Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Forensics, Detectors amd Deterrence: Integrating Technology with  
Policy to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

Speaker: Tom Bielefeld, Belfer Center, JFK School of Government,  
Harvard University

Time: 12:00p–1:30p

Location: E40-496

SSP Wednesday Seminar

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Security Studies Program

For more information, contact:
617-253-7529

----------------------------

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Building Suburbia: Seven Suburban Landscapes, Or Only Two?

Speaker: Dolores Hayden Professor of Architecture and Urbanism/ 
Professor of American Studies Yale University

Time: 12:30p–2:00p

Location: 9-450

Urban Studies and Planning Departmental Speaker Series
Weekly Lecture Series of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Dolores Hayden is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and Professor  
of American Studies. She is an urban historian and architect,  
president of the Urban History Association, and the author of many  
books about the history of the built environment in the United States.  
Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (2003) and  
A Field Guide to Sprawl (2004) are the most recent.

The Spring 2011 DUSP Speaker Series explores how each invited scholar- 
practitioner (or practitioner-scholar) has ?made sense? out of a  
complex socio-spatial phenomenon. In addition to conveying the  
substance of their work, the speakers have been asked to reflect on  
how they do what they do, bringing to life the ways that planners and  
designers use qualitative methods in their scholarship and/or  
practice. The subject matter ranges across all of the intellectual  
domains of the Department, and each topic engages the terrain of more  
than one DUSP program group. Please join us as we collectively make  
sense of contending efforts to plan post-Katrina New Orleans, the  
multiple rationales for community gardens and urban greening, the  
institutional management of poverty by the microfinance industry, the  
complex evolution of American suburbia, and the challenges of  
designing 21st century communities to serve low-income households.

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 09, 2011
"Water-associated diseases along the Nile River" - or - Why the World  
Health Organization (WHO) needs your help

Speaker: William Jobin, Blue Nile Associates

Time: 2:30p–3:30p

Location: 48-316

Environmental Fluid Mechanics / Hydrology Seminar series
Weekly presentations from local and international researchers in the  
fields of hydrology and environmental fluid mechanics.

The several dams, reservoirs, irrigation systems and cataracts along  
the Nile River from Uganda to Egypt are home to the most important  
water-associated diseases in Africa, namely malaria, Snail Fever,  
River Blindness, and a new one: Rift Valley Fever. We?ll take a tour  
down the river starting at Lake Victoria in Uganda, and cover the  
nature of these tropical diseases, and the habitat requirements of the  
mosquitoes, aquatic snails and blackflies which spread them. Then we  
will look at the role that engineers and hydrologists have had in  
their control. Since construction of the Panama Canal in 1910 and  
creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1945, engineers have had  
an important role in controlling these diseases, but in recent years  
they have gradually been displaced by medically-oriented physicians at  
WHO in Geneva. Then a growing financial crisis at WHO has disabled  
most of their original broad-based strategies, and has reduced the WHO  
effort to repeatedly offering medication to people already infected.  
Thus we might be able to assist WHO in tackling these diseases, by  
proposing preventive measures which are relatively permanent. Examples  
will be given of dams and irrigation systems which have caused  
epidemics, and also of dams and other hydraulic structures which have  
eliminated important foci of these diseases. These examples might help  
us to develop design parameters for disease prevention, and could  
suggest research on new environmental control methods.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Civil and Environmental Engineering

For more information, contact:
Sheila Anderson
617-258-5554

sherah at mit.edu

------------------------------

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Environmental Inspections in Mexico

Speaker: Andrew Foster (Brown)

Time: 2:30p–4:00p

Location: E51-376

Environmental Inspections in Mexico

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MIT/Harvard Development & Environment Seminar

For more information, contact:
Theresa Benevento
theresa at mit.edu

-----------------------------

Wednesday, March 09, 2011MacVicar Day 2011

"Energy Education Showcase: Preparing Tomorrow's Leaders"

Time: 2:30p–5:00p

Location: 32-155

Each year, MacVicar Day honors the memory of Margaret MacVicar '64,  
Sc.D. '67, MIT's first Dean for Undergraduate Education and Student  
Life, by recognizing the significant achievements made at MIT to  
enhance undergraduate education and by exploring the next steps forward.

 From 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM, a panel of MIT faculty who teach subjects  
within the Energy Studies program will share their insights into the  
benefits and challenges of such interdisciplinary teaching and the  
goals and pedagogies of their specific subjects, highlighting the rise  
of energy literacy at MIT. A question and answer period will follow  
the panel remarks.

 From 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM, Energy Student Groups and Energy UROP  
participants will display posters in the Stata TSMC Lobby where  
refreshments will be served.

All are welcome!


Web site:http://web.mit.edu/provost/macvicar/macvicarday2011.html

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): MacVicar Fellows, Teaching and Learning Laboratory, Office  
of the Dean for Undergraduate Education

For more information, contact:
Leann Dobranski
253-3371
leann at mit.edu

-----------------------------

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Science, Technology, Policy Crossroads

Time: 4:00p–7:00p

Location: The Broad Institute - 5 Cambridge Center

This year?s symposium will comprise a introductory statement by a DC  
senior policy practitioner, a panel discussion by senior faculty  
members in the field of science and technology policy from both MIT  
and Harvard, break-out sessions on a variety of policy questions, and  
a reception with time for socializing and networking. The focus of  
this year?s Crossroads symposium is biotechnology policy. However,  
biotech will serve only as an example or basis for the deeper  
questions of how science, technology and policy can and should interact.


Web site: http://stpcrossroads.org/

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free

Sponsor(s): TPSS, Science Policy Initiative

For more information, contact:
Nathaniel R Twarog
ntwarog at MIT.EDU

------------------------------

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Civic Media Session: "Civic Tools: The Latest from the Center for  
Future Civic Media"

Speaker: Featuring C4FCM's groundbreakers

Time: 5:00p–7:00p

Location: 32-141

In this annual tradition, see open-to-the-public demos of the latest,  
greatest civic media tools from researchers at the MIT Center for  
Future Civic Media, the leader in cutting-edge community-based  
technology.

You'll see ways to hack bus data, how to make your own high-res map  
imagery on the cheap, brand new techniques for making websites that  
can call regular phones, and lots more.


Web site: http://civic.mit.edu/event/civic-media-session-civic-tools-the-latest-from-the-center-for-future-civic-media

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Center for Future Civic Media

For more information, contact:
Andrew Whitacre
(617) 324-0490
awhit at mit.edu

----------------------------

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Materials Science and Engineering Seminar: Material structure in the  
nano-world: The nanostructure problem and modern scattering methods  
for solving it

Speaker: Prof. Simon Billinge, Columbia

Time: 4:00p–5:15p

Location: 66-110

Materials Science and Engineering Seminar Series
Sponsored by CMSE, DMSE, and MPC. To receive announcements about this  
series and other events of interest to the MIT materials community,  
subscribe to the matseminars mailing list at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/matseminars

To solve society's most pressing problems, such as sustainable energy,  
we will need transformative, rather than evolutionary, technologies.  
Many of these depend on finding materials with properties that are  
substantially improved over existing candidates, and we are  
increasingly turning to complex materials to find them. Complex  
materials have complicated structures, large unit cells, and multiple  
chemical species. They are often nanostructured: nanoparticulate,  
nanoporous, or having nanoscale chemical or electronic inhomogeneities  
or nanoscale structural distortions. A great challenge in researching  
these materials is to characterize their structure. Apart from the  
issue that the structure is inherently complicated, structures on the  
nanoscale cannot be solved using our tried and trusted technique of  
crystallography, the so-called nanostructure problem. We don't have  
robust tools for solving the structure of precisely the complex  
nanomaterials that we want to engineer. I will describe some of the  
promising scattering techniques that are emerging.

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, Center for  
Materials Science & Engineering, Materials Processing Center,  
Materials at MIT

----------------------------

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Sloan Automotive Laboratory Spring 2011 Seminar Series

Speaker: Prof. Wai Cheng, Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Time: 4:15p–5:30p

Location: 37-212

Sloan Automotive Laboratory Spring 2011 Seminar Series
Seminar on topics related to engines, fuels, vehicle behavior, broader  
transportation energy questions presented by graduate students,  
faculty, researchers, and special guest speakers of the Sloan  
Automotive Laboratory.

Topic: Revisiting Methanol as an Alternative Transportation Fuel

Open to: the general public

Sponsor(s): Mechanical Engineering Dept.

For more information, contact:
Janet Maslow
3-4529
jsabio at mit.edu

----------------------------

Friday, March 11, 2011

Strategies for Managing and Improving Amtrak Service in the Northeast  
Corridor

Speaker: Joseph Boardman, Amtrak President & CEO

Time: 12:00p–2:00p

Location: W20-307

CTL Distinguished Speaker Series
This speaker series brings at least three speakers each semester to  
the MIT campus to talk about their expertise in fields that are  
studied by members of the Transportation Students Group, including  
transit, airlines, high speed rail, and intelligent transportation  
systems.

Part of the CTL sponsored Distinguished Speakers Series. Light lunch  
provided.

Web site: http://ctl.mit.edu/distinguished-speakers

Open to: the general public
Cost: Free

---------------------------

Friday, March 11, 2011

The Evanescent: Tasting

Speaker: Amy Trubek, "Tasting and Attentiveness: Nature or Culture?"  
and Brad Weiss, "In Tastes, Lost and Found"

Time: 2:30p–5:00p

Location: 56-114

Sensing the Unseen

A session of "Sensing the Unseen," a John E. Sawyer Seminar on the  
Comparative Study of Cultures, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon  
Foundation and sponsored by MIT Anthropology. With discussant  
commentary by Rachel Black (BU) and Steven Shapin (Harvard). Join us  
for a multi-sensory experience!

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/unseen/species/evanescent.html

Open to: the general public
Cost: none

Sponsor(s): Anthropology

For more information, contact:
Amberly Steward
617-253-3065
asteward at mit.edu

---------------------------
Friday, March 11, 2011

New Concepts in Molecular and Energy Transport Within Carbon  
Nanotubes: Thermopower Waves and Stochastically Resonant Ion Channels

Speaker: Michael S. Strano, Chemical Engineering, MIT

Time: 3:00p–4:00p

Location: 66-110

Chemical Engineering Department Seminar Series
See speakers, talk titles, and dates at http://web.mit.edu/cheme/news/seminar.html

Our laboratory has been interested in how carbon nanotubes can be  
utilized to illustrate new concepts in molecular and energy transfer.  
In the first example, we predict and demonstrate the concept of  
thermopower waves for energy generation. Coupling an exothermic  
chemical reaction with a thermally conductive CNT creates a self- 
propagating reactive wave driven along its length. We realize such  
waves in MWNT and show that they produce concomitant electrical pulses  
of high specific power >7 kW/kg. Such waves of high power density may  
find uses as unique energy sources. In the second system, we fabricate  
and study SWNT ion channels for the first time and show that the  
longest, highest aspect ratio, and smallest diameter synthetic  
nanopore examined to date, a 500 μm SWNT, demonstrates oscillations in  
electro-osmotic current at specific ranges of electric field, that are  
the signatures of coherence resonance, yielding self-generated  
rhythmic and frequency locked transport. The observed oscillations in  
the current occur due to a coupling between stochastic pore blocking  
and a diffusion limitation that develops at the pore mouth during  
proton transport.

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/cheme/news/seminar.html

Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Chemical Engineering Department

For more information, contact:
Melanie Miller
617-253-6500
melmils at mit.edu

----------

Harvard

----------

March 7 | Monday | Seminar
US AID and the Social Entrepreneur
8:00-9:00 am| Fainsod Room (3rd floor, Littauer Building)

Hear about the conditions and challenges associated with starting and  
managing ventures in a variety of countries. M-RCBG Senior Fellow Alan  
Trager will moderate, and breakfast will be served. This seminar is co- 
sponsored by the Kokkalis Program.

Nancy Wildfeir-Field, Regional Alliance Advisor for Europe and Eurasia
US Agency for International Development (US AID)

Please RSVP to jennifer_nash at harvard.edu

------------------------------------

March 7 | Monday | ETIP/Consortium Energy Policy Seminar Series
Where do New Energy Technologies Come From? Using Patent Data to  
Identify the Importance and Sources of Knowledge Flows from Other  
Industries
12:00 – 1:30 pm| Weil Hall (ground floor, Belfer Building), Kennedy  
School

Greg Nemet
Visiting Scholar

-------------------------------------

March 7
Climate, Hazards, Economy and Society: A System of Systems
Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in  
Computational Physics, Dean, Schmid College of Science, Vice  
Chancellor for Special Projects, Chapman University, Orange, CA.

12:00 p.m. Taubman 301 Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK St.
Contact Name: Christopher Kim cskim at chapman.edu

-------------------------------------

The Atlantic Herring Fishery and the Threat of Industrial Midwater  
Trawliing
Greg Wells of the Pew Environmental Group and the Herring Alliance  
will be discussing his work to protect and restore ocean wildlife and  
ecosystems in the northeast United States, from Virginia to Maine, by  
reforming the Atlantic herring fishery.

March 7

5:30 - 7:30 p.m. Pound Hall, Room 332, Harvard Law School
Contact Name: Derek Brain derekjbrain at gmail.com

-----------------------------------------

Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping  
TechnologiesSusan Landau, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at  
Harvard University & CRCS
Tuesday, March 8, 12:00 pm
Griswold Hall Room 110, Harvard Law School
RSVP required for those attending in person to Amar Ashar (ashar at cyber.law.harvard.edu 
)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/webcast 
) and archived on our site shortly after.

This talk is part of a lens on privacy and security, which will  
highlight various talks this semester that focus on issues related to  
privacy and security in digitally networked environments

The United States has moved large portions of business and commerce,  
including the control of critical infrastructure, onto IP-based  
networks.  This reliance on information systems leaves the U.S. highly  
exposed and vulnerable to cyberattack, yet U.S. law enforcement  
remains focused on building wiretapping systems within communications  
infrastructure.  By embedding eavesdropping mechanisms into  
communications technology itself, we build tools that could easily be  
turned against us.Indeed, such attacks have already occurred. In a  
world that has Al-Qaeda, nation-state economic espionage, and  
Hurricane Katrina, how do we get communications security right?

About Susan
Susan Landau is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study  
at Harvard University for the 2010-2011 academic year. Her book,  
Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping  
Technologies will be published by MIT Press in February 2011; she is  
also the co-author, with Whitfield Diffie, of the 1998 Privacy on the  
Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption. From 1999-2010  
Landau was at Sun Microsystems, first as Senior Staff Engineer and  
then as Distinguished Engineer. There she concentrated on the  
interplay between security and public policy, and she briefed  
government officials in both Washington and Europe on such disparate  
issues as security risks in surveillance mechanisms, digital rights  
management, and cryptographic export control. In 2009 she testified  
for the House Science Committee on Cybersecurity Activities at NIST's  
Information Technology Laboratory. Landau is currently a member of the  
Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, established by  
the Center for Strategic and and International Studies, and serves on  
the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National  
Research Council and on the advisory committee for the National  
Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information Science  
and Engineering. Before joining Sun, Landau was a faculty member at  
the University of Massachusetts and Wesleyan University. Landau is the  
recipient of the 2008 Women of Vision Social Impact Award, a Fellow of  
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an ACM  
Distinguished Engineer.

About the Privacy and Security Lens
In spring 2011, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard  
University and the Center for Research on Computation and Society  
(CRCS) at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences  
(SEAS) will highlight a series of talks that will focus on issues  
related to privacy and security in digitally networked environments.  
Events associated with this “lens” will seek to foster discussion  
and explore novel solutions to digital security and privacy issues,  
and aim to surface and engage with some of the technological, legal,  
political, economic, and behavioral tensions at work within these  
topics. This cross-disciplinary initiative will build on current CRCS  
and BCIS collaborative efforts, and seek to bring multiple  
perspectives and approaches to these issues.

-------------------------------------

To Tell The Truth: Combining Corporate Financial and Sustainability  
Reporting on a Global Scale
WHEN  Tue., Mar. 8, 2011, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE  Kennedy School of Government
Weil Town Hall, Belfer Building (Lobby Level)
79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION  Business, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR  Harvard Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations
SPEAKER(S)  Robert K. Massie, former president of Ceres, co-founder of  
the Global Reporting Initiative, Hauser senior visiting fellow
Steve Lydenberg, Hauser senior research fellow
TICKET INFO  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO  Maryann Leach: 617.495.1114
LINK  http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/events/

-------------------------------------

The Science and Technology of the Deepwater Horizon Incident
Join members of the BP's Deepwater Production and Gulf Coast  
Restoration teams for a discussion on the technical and scientific  
issues of oil production in deep water systems such as those in the  
Gulf of Mexico, including responding to and remediating oil spills.

March 9

3:30 - 5:00 p.m. Belfer Center Library (3rd Floor, Littauer Building)  
Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK St.

-------------------------------------

March 9 | Wednesday | Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
How Many Economists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? A Natural  
Field Experiment on Technology Adoption
4:10-5:30| Littauer 382, Kennedy School

David Herberich
University of Chicago

-------------------------------------
Future of Energy: "Responsible Stewardship of U.S. Offshore Oil and  
Natural Gas Development"
WHEN  Wed., Mar. 9, 2011, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Northwest Building B103, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION  Environmental Sciences, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR  Harvard University Center for the Environment
SPEAKER(S)  Michael R. Bromwich, director, Bureau of Ocean Energy  
Management, Regulation and Enforcement
CONTACT INFO  Brenda Hugot: bhugot at fas.harvard.edu
NOTE  Bromwich is overseeing the fundamental restructuring of the  
former Minerals Management Service, which was responsible for  
overseeing oil and gas development on the Outer Continental Shelf.  
Bromwich was previously a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C.,  
and New York offices of Fried Frank, where he headed the firm's  
Internal Investigations, Compliance and Monitoring practice group.  
 From 1994 to 1999, Bromwich served as inspector general for the  
Department of Justice. As inspector general, he headed the law  
enforcement agency principally responsible for conducting criminal and  
administrative investigations into allegations of corruption and  
misconduct involving the 120,000 employees of the Department of Justice.
LINK  http://environment.harvard.edu/michael-bromwich

--------------------------------

There and Back Again: Deep-Sea Exploration to the Earth's Most Extreme  
Habitats
March 9, 2011
6:00pm
http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/lectures_and_special_events/index.php
Geological Lecture Hall 24 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA

The majority of our  biosphere consists of deep ocean, but to date we  
have explored very little of it.  Indeed, just thirty years ago  
scientists discovered entirely new ecosystems thriving on chemicals  
from within the Earth (rather than from sunlight). Harvard biologist  
Peter Girguis, Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences at  
Harvard, will highlight some of these amazing deep-sea explorations  
and discuss current research, including the role of deep-sea microbes  
in mitigating oil spill disasters. Free and open to the public.

-----------------------------------

March 10, 2011
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Neural Mechanisms of Attention
Location:  Northwest B103 (at the end of Everett Street, Cambridge)
Name:  Eric Knudsen
Speaker Affiliation:  Stanford University
Attention allows us to select the most important information at any  
moment in time and to enhance and differentially process that  
information while ignoring other information. This amazing capacity is  
essential to nearly all cognitive processes.  But, how does attention  
work at the level of cells and circuits? We are addressing this  
question by studying circuits that contribute to attention in birds.  
We have identified a midbrain network, including structurally  
specialized cholinergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic circuits, that  
perform many of the fundamental computations underlying attention,  
including filtering for stimulus salience, competitive selection of  
the most salient stimulus, and top-down enhancement of the quality of  
information. We study the properties of these circuits both in vivo  
and in brain slice preparations. I will discuss our current  
understanding of how the computations performed by these circuits  
contribute to attention.

---------------------------------

'Failed States' and Development Aid: The Impact of Labels in Global  
Interventionism
WHEN  Thu., Mar. 10, 2011, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE  Perkins Room, Rubenstein-415, Harvard Kennedy School
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION  Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR  International Security Program
SPEAKER(S)  Teresa Cravo, associate, International Security Program
CONTACT INFO  susan_lynch at harvard.edu
LINK  http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/events/5431/failed_states_and_development_aid.html

--------------------------------

Citizens United v. Democracy?
WHEN  Thu., Mar. 10, 2011, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Austin Hall 111, Harvard Law School
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION  Ethics, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR  Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
SPEAKER(S)  Joshua Cohen, Martha Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in  
Society; professor of political science, philosophy, and law, Stanford  
University
CONTACT INFO  ethics at harvard.edu
NOTE  Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be available.
LINK  http://ethics.harvard.edu/component/content/article/40-general-content/164-currentlecture

-------------------------------

Nanoporous Black Silicon by Liquid Etch: Optics, Photovoltaics and  
Photoelectrochemistry
March 11, 2011
4:00pm
Contact Name:  Brenda Hugot
bhugot at fas.harvard.edu
Maxwell Dworkin G115 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Featuring Howard Branz,Principal Scientist in the National Center for  
Photovoltaics, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
----------------

Northeastern

----------------

Monday, March 7, 2011
Barnett Lectureship

The Challenge of Sustainability

Guest Speaker: Professor Richard N. Zare, Department of Chemistry,  
Stanford University

Reception: 3:30 - 4:00 PM, Raytheon Amphitheater, 240 Egan
Lecture: 4:00 - 5:00 PM, Raytheon Amphitheater, 240 Egan, Boston, MA

------

Tufts

------


The Global Development And Environment Institute Presents

The 2011 Leontief Prize for
  Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought

“Towards a New Economics of Climate Change”

Award recipients and lecturers:

  Lord Nicholas Stern
IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham  
Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School  
of Economics
Author of the “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change”
Cambridge University Press, 2007

Dr. Martin Weitzman
Professor of Economics at Harvard University
Author of “On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic  
Climate Change”and other landmark papers in environmental economics.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 5:00-7:30 pm
Coolidge Room, Ballou Hall, Medford Campus, Tufts University

Ceremony and addresses will be followed by a reception.

This event is free and open to the public.
Directions to Tufts Medford Campus can be found on the web at: http://www.tufts.edu/home/maps/

For more information about the event, contact Lauren Denizard at  
617-627-3530 Or visit our Web site: www.gdae.org
Lord Nicholas Stern Dr. Martin Weitzman
Co-sponsored with:
The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI); The Tufts Institute of the  
Environment (TIE);
Energy, Climate, and Innovation Program (ECI), Center for  
International Environment and Resource Policy (CIERP), Fletcher

-------

Other

-------

*Monday, March 7 from 6PM-8:30PM* ***SoJust Skillshares are the 1st  
Monday of every month - mark your calendar!***
*Skillshare: Fundraising - Getting Past the Fear of Asking* *
*by Robbie Samuels, SoJust Co-Founder and Trainer/Consultant at
www.RobbieSamuels.com
at The NonProfit Center by South Station
*Do you want to raise money to support the causes and organizations  
you care about?* **This engaging coaching session focuses on getting  
past the fear of asking and how to avoid some common mistakes. Learn  
an easy way to sort through contact lists and build a strong prospect  
list based on the 3 Cs of fundraising: capacity, connection and  
commitment. Learn specific language for how to make a strong ask,  
based on the relationship-building tips shared in *Art of the  
Schmooze*, and ten tips that will make your next fundraising plan a  
success. "If you are afraid to ask for money, kick yourself out of the  
way and let the cause talk."
RSVP: http://www.sojust.org/events/16373242/

----------------------------------

The topic of the March Growing Green Innovators in Business Network  
(GIBN) Conversation will be Evidence for Sustainability: Trends in  
Benchmarking and Reporting and the call will be held on Tuesday March  
8 at 2pm ET. To join the call, please RSVP to info at digin.org. The call- 
in number is: (760) 569-9000 and the code is: 160031#.

And please remember that Growing GIBN Conversations will be held on  
the 2nd Tuesday of every month in 2011. These calls will focus on the  
topics that are most compelling to you -- a network of green  
innovators in business -- and draw on your experience and ideas. Some  
of these topics may be a continuation of the themes that emerged  
during Solutions Labs events. Others may be suggested during the  
conversations or during other GIBN calls and events. Please feel free  
to propose topics.

-------------------------------------

NESEA's Building Energy Conference
March 8-10, 2011, in Boston, MA.
BuildingEnergy is the only conference where architects, designers,  
planners, builders, policymakers, manufacturers, and installers work  
together to determine what's possible. Conference sessions range from  
emerging trends in renewable energy to deep energy retrofits of  
commercial and residential buildings.  The Trade Show features 160  
exhibitors with the latest sustainable technologies and products.

http://www.nesea.org/be11/

----------------------------

Mass Innovation Night

	• Date: 3/9/2011
	• Location: Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive,  
Cambridge, MA 02142
	• Time: 6:00pm - 8:30pm
	• Audience: Innovators, entrepreneurs, social media mavens, job  
seekers, students, seekers of inspiration and knowledge
	• Twitter: @massinno or #bostonazurehack
	• Description: Mass Innovation Night is a free monthly product  
launch party and networking event. Every month ten companies introduce  
new products and the social media community blogs, tweets, posts video  
and pictures, and in general helps increase the buzz around innovative  
new products.
RSVP http://massinnovationnights.com/event-rsvp

-------------------------------------
Hattie Nestel, Anti Nuclear Activist, Presents a 40 min Power Point  
presentation, followed by a question/answer session.

When: Thur March 10, 7 pm
Where: Peter Ames' Home,

90 Ivy St. Brookline, 02448
Peter's telephone number is 617 731-0512
Sponsored by Brookline PeaceWorks
Amy's telephone number 617 738-8029

T Directions:
Cleveland Circle Green Line, get off at St Mary's stop, the first stop  
when you come up from underground,
Walk 2 short blocks up St Mary's Street, towards Cambridge, and turn  
left onto Ivy Street. Peter's home is 1/2 block down.
(for driving check http://www.mapquest.com)

Did you know:
if there was a Chernobyl type melt down at Vermont Yankee, the Quabbin  
Resevoir would be irradiated and would not be able to supply water to  
the city of Boston?


Hattie with Francis Crowe and the Women of the Shut It Down affinity  
group of Citizen's Awareness Network, offering their reasons for  
shutting down Vermont Yankee at Windham County Court.

Hattie is an activist extraordinaire, participating many times in  
civil disobedience at Vermont Yankee, as well as peace walks through  
Vermont cities, and an Interfaith Peace Walk Towards a Nuclear Free  
Future, from London to Geneva, April to June 2008.

See her website for more info:
http://peacehq.tripod.com/OSHN/hn-home.html

----------------------------------

Neighborhood Weatherization Skill-Share
Sunday, March 13th, 10am-3pm, 41 Brent St., Codman Sq, Dorchester

Making windows less drafty

The federal government hasn't cut carbon yet, and the state's energy  
efficiency  programs don't go far enough, so let's do it ourselves!

· Learn skills you can take back to your own home
· Share lunch and celebrate with friends and neighbors
· Help toweatherize the home of two long-time community activists
The work list includes sealing air leaks in basement and attic, making  
windows and doors less drafty, and using a blower door to measure  
energy savings.

Sign up on-line  or by calling 857-544-6846.  Co-organized with Home  
Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), a Cambridge-based co-op bringing  
neighbors together to weatherize our homes and take the energy future  
into our own hands.

------------------------------------

March 13th
11 am
GRACE ROSS
"Main Street Smarts: Who Got Us Into this Economic Mess and How We Get  
Through It"

Grace will explore the story of Main Street, what we've experienced  
and the challenges for reversing the economy for the regular people of  
Massachusetts. She will explore the need to reengage in a political  
process that is supposed to be for the people. In the long term ramp  
up to the market crash and the immediate foreclosure crisis the people  
were force fed the mythology of free markets and supply side  
economics, we need to equip ourselves with the tools to fight back  
against these lies.

Grace Ross brings 25 years of experience working with the grassroots  
and creating policy change from the municipal all the way up to the  
national and international political arenas. Among her many campaigns  
Grace is currently actively involved with the Mass Alliance Against  
Predatory Lending, fighting to keep people in their homes.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT US

Rev. Jason Lydon, Minister
Community Church of Boston
565 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 266-6710
(617) 266-0449 (fax)
info (at) commchurch.org
http://www.communitychurchofboston.org

------------
Upcoming

------------


Wednesday, March 16
11am - 1pm
Location:  online

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Featured Speakers

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11:00AM EST
Driving to 1 Million Electric Vehicles by 2015
Patrick Davis, Program Manager,Vehicle Technologies
U.S. Department of Energy

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12:00PM EST
Challenges of Electric Vehicle  Integration
Clay Luthy, Global Distributed Energy, Resource Manager
IBM Global Energy & Utilities

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Attend this complimentary event for U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle  
Technology Program updates and to learn about the challenges involved  
in ensuring an effective grid integration and seamless user experience.

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Contact:  http://www.virtualenergyforum.com
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newsletters at virtualenergyforum.com
--------------------------------

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Fire in the Heart:  White Activists for Racial Justice

Harvard sociologist Mark Warren uncovers the dynamic processes through  
which some
white Americans become activists for racial justice [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7wih55cab&et=1104449747173&s=217&e=001DKbjUrRpB-6qAw6qZKRL7KAVDV0WrVEmgcUbqXnEa001hLPAUovvX9XZ-TW6bHJfKF71lXjDKHKqIKMQBxcWEZ2E2Bhv_iKdmpDupikTbBIuNfwKlyAO0Gt0DaoKUZb10k7u-f7UmvDhqCKY7i0Cbw== 
]

Cambridge Forum
The First Parish in Cambridge
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
www.cambridgeforum.org [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7wih55cab&et=1104449747173&s=217&e=001DKbjUrRpB-5of3dakCr4HiT9q0asS8mXVVrIZ2V0AiOVVCWtQPhlVVoqnsAB2Wyg9g2ss9e8SnYH6MZ-HEIh_DNzdYvWpakjY4yowi5qI56hR7jLEXodZQ== 
]
Cambridge Forum is recorded and edited for public radio broadcast.   
Edited CDs are
available by contacting Cambridge Forum [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?llr=7wih55cab&et=1104449747173&s=217&e=001DKbjUrRpB-5of3dakCr4HiT9q0asS8mXVVrIZ2V0AiOVVCWtQPhlVVoqnsAB2Wyg9g2ss9e8SnYH6MZ-HEIh_DNzdYvWpakjY4yowi5qI56hR7jLEXodZQ== 
]
or calling 617-495-2727.  Select forums can be viewed in their  
entirety on the Forum Network.

---------------------------------

Gragger/Noisemaker! The Workmen's Circle's 4th Annual Radical Purim  
Party Celebrating Economic Justice!

Saturday, March 19th, 8pm - midnight
At Spontaneous Celebrations, 45 Danforth St, Jamaica Plain
Sliding scale $10-20

*Bloco AfroBrazil*
*DJ Annie R U Ok*
*And a unique, never-before-seen Purim shpiel (play)*

We will honor work that is being done locally to protect workers'  
rights and fight back against bad employers. The Gragger, the Jewish  
noisemaker, is traditionally used to drown out the name of our foes -  
join us to make some serious noise in a rowdy call for justice and joy!

Live music! Costume contest! Cash bar! Performance!

Contact Leah for more info: leah at circleboston.org
www.circleboston.org

Leah Madsen
Program and Membership Organizer
Boston Workmen's Circle
leah at circleboston.org
617-566-6281

----------------------------------

Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy for Multifamily Residential  
Buildings Workshop – Saturday, March 19, Cambridge City Hall Annex
A morning workshop for owners of multifamily residential buildings on  
energy efficiency and renewable energy options and opportunities
Sponsored by the Cambridge Energy Alliance, Massachusetts Rental  
Housing Association, and City of Cambridge
For more info, contact John Bolduc, jbolduc at cambridgema.gov,  
617-349-4628

---------------------------
Urban Gardening Book Club

We'll be discussing the book Farm City, by Novella Carpenter, and how  
it relates to community and urban food production at Roxbury Community  
College on 3/22 at 6:00 pm (Academic Bldg 3).  All are welcome!  We'll  
be selecting the next book at the meeting, but if you're interested  
and unable to make it, feel free to send me your suggestions in  
advance.  Free to contact me with any additional questions.

The event is supported by the Boston Gardener's Council and The  
Roxbury Community College Service Learning Garden Project.  In  
addition, event information is available on the page below:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143456282386051

Thank you very much!
Stephanie

--
Stephanie Bostic
MS in Agriculture, Food & the Environment 2010
Tufts University

Blogging about food and fiber: http://groundcherry.wordpress.com

-------------------------------------

Eco-Municipalities Talk - Wednesday, March 23, 7:00 pm, Cambridge Main  
Library Auditorium

Speakers:  Peter Britt, Sustainability Coordinator, Portsmouth, NH  
John Bohenko, City Manager, Portsmouth, NH; Sarah James from the  
Institute for Eco-Municipality Education & Assistance will give a  
brief introduction about eco-municipalities.

In November, 2007, Portsmouth, New Hampshire formally decided to  
become an Eco-Municipality, when its City Council passed a resolution  
declaring that the following four sustainability objectives would  
guide its municipal operations:

1. Reduce dependence on fossil fuels, underground metals, and minerals
2. Reduce dependence upon synthetic chemicals and other unnatural  
substances.
3. Reduce encroachment upon nature.
4. Meet human needs fairly and efficiently

An Eco-Municipality uses a comprehensive, integrated approach to  
creating a sustainable city.

Find out how Portsmouth became an Eco-Municipality and how the city  
takes the systems approach to sustainability now.

Sponsored by the office of Vice Mayor Henrietta Davis, the Cambridge  
Renewable Energy Team (CREATe), and the Cambridge Energy Alliance.

--------------------------------------

Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk Univesity
“WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, and Our Right to Know”
with Daniel Domscheit-Berg (former WikiLeaks staffer) and Herbert  
Snorasson (former WikiLeaks staffer); moderator Wendy Ballinger (Ford  
Hall Forum Board member)
Thursday, March 24, 8-9:00 am [special breakfast forum]
Moot Court Room, Suffolk University Law School

Although Herbert Snorasson and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, both former  
staffers at WikiLeaks, cannot enter the United States for fear of  
arraignment, they join us live by video fromIceland and Germany to  
answer questions about the necessity of and danger in leaking state  
secrets.  With Wendy Ballinger, Treasurer and former Executive  
Director of Ford Hall Forum, Snorasson and Domscheit-Berg discuss why  
their newest venture, OpenLeaks, is superior to Assange’s WikiLeaks  
model and other various “Leaks” sites launching around the world.  The  
two will tell us how and why they became involved with WikiLeaks,  
particularly their idea on the public’s right to know versus global  
security.  Signed copies of the book will be sold following the  
presentation.
-------------------------------------------------------------

*Compelling Conversation with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
Civil Rights Activist and Former Champion Boxer
Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.*

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was a formidable boxer who had won the  
European Light Welterweight Championship for two years in a row and  
knocked out Emile Griffith in the first round when his promising  
career was cut short. In 1966, he was falsely arrested for the murder  
of three white people in a bar. Sentenced to a triple life-sentence,  
Carter always maintained his innocence. Subjected to a nineteen-year  
travesty of justice, he was finally set free in 1985 by a federal  
court. His story was immortalized in a Bob Dylan song and made into a  
Hollywood movie starring Denzel Washington.

Carter has chronicled his own life in two books, _The Sixteenth  
Round_, and 2011?s _Eye of_ _the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to  
Freedom_.  He now devotes much of his time to speaking out on behalf  
of the wrongly convicted.

*Bunker Hill Community College**in A300 Auditorium*

250 New Rutherford Ave.
Boston, Massachusetts 02129-2995
Free but you need to register for tickets at the website below*
*
Compelling Conversations Speaker Series
<http://www.bhcc.mass.edu/cc/index.php>

Directions

http://www.bhcc.mass.edu/inside/64

-----------------------------

Think Global, Act Local:
A Community Climate Action Roundtable

Thursday, March 24, 6pm-7:30pm, Suffolk University, 73 Tremont St.

All politics are local but many problems are global. How do  
neighborhood-based groups form effective partnerships with larger  
organizations to bring global issues home and amplify grassroots  
voices? Join BostonCAN and representatives from other neighborhood- 
based and national sustainability organizations as we discuss stories  
of successful collaboration between community-based organizations and  
national groups that highlight best practices.  Speakers will include  
Cindy Luppi from Clean Water Action discussing stopping coal power in  
eastern Mass and Mela Bush from Greater Four Corners Action Coalition  
onimproving mass transit in Dorchester.
Free and open to the public.  Snacks provided.  RSVP at on-line https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115453565198269 
  or by calling 857-544-6846.

------------------------------------------------

Babson Energy and Environmental Conference

Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Future

Register Now at http://beec2011conference.eventbrite.com/

Register now to attend the 5th Annual Babson Energy and Environmental  
Conference on March 31st, 2011 at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of  
Business.

This year’s theme is “Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Future”, and  
we will explore how innovation and entrepreneurship will play a  
pivotal role in shaping the new green economy in the years to come. We  
will hear severalexciting keynotes from high profile entrepreneurs:

	• Dr. Bart Riley, Co-Founder, A123 Systems (NASDAQ: AONE)
	• Sheeraz Haji, CEO, Cleantech Group
	• Nancy Floyd, Founder & Managing Director, Nth Power
	• Kathy Brown, Senior Vice President – Public Policy Development and  
Corporate Responsibility, Verizon
Other featured speakers

	• Leonard Schlesinger, President, Babson College
	• Mark Donohue, Clean Technology Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Babson  
College
	• Peter Rothstein, President, New England Clean Energy Council
	• Cynthia Curtis, Chief Sustainability Officer, CA Technologies
	• Rob Pratt, Chairman & CEO, GreenerU
	• Clint Wilder, Senior Editor, Clean Edge & Author, The Clean Tech  
Revolution
	• Chuck McDermott, General Partner, Rockport Capital
	• Jeramy Lemieux, Head of Climate Savers, Diversey,  Inc.
	• Greg  Dixon, SVP of Marketing, EnerNOC
	• Kathy Loftus, Global Leader for Sustainability Engineering,  
Maintenance & Energy Management, Whole Foods
	• Michael Bakas, Senior Vice President – Renewable Energy, Ameresco
	• Robert Gough, Founder, Port Meadow Tech
	• Bob Reese, President/ Co-Founder, Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery
	• Jonathan Nash, Director of Business  Development, NewStream
	• Patrick Cloney, Executive Director, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
	• David O’Connor, Senior Vice President for Energy and Clean  
Technology, ML Strategies, LLC
	• Kim Stevenson, Manager of New Technologies, CT Clean Energy Fund
And Many More!

Our engaging panel sessions will focus on several main topics:

	• Innovations in Cleantech and Renewable Energy
	• Sustainable Business Practices
	• Financing Strategies
	• New Energy Policy & Implications
	• Responsible Consumption and Disposal of Food, Water & Waste
Our Entrepreneurs Showcase will give a glimpse of some of the newest  
innovators in the industry. Further, you will have the opportunity to  
listen to panelists from Enernoc, WholeFoods, Massachusetts Clean  
Energy Center, CA Technologies, Diversy and many more. Our goal is to  
show that sustainable business practices are not at odds with creating  
profit and growing a company.

The world needs more entrepreneurs and leaders focused on preserving  
the earth’s resources while building a more sustainable future. We  
hope that you will join us for this exciting event, and be inspired to  
become part of the next wave of change!

For additional information, please contact Jatin Ahuja (jahuja1 at babson.edu 
), Adam Ostaszewski (aostaszewski1 at babson.edu) and Joel Robbins (jrobbins1 at babson.edu 
)

----------------------------

Digital Media and Popular Uprisings

March 31, 2011
6-8 p.m.
Lesley University
University Hall Amphitheater
1815 Mass. Ave.
2nd Flr.
Cambridge, MA 02140

Google Map: http://bit.ly/edM4fz


The importance of digital media in building the recent wave of popular
uprisings in the Middle East has been widely heralded in the global
press. But how are social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and
digital communication devices like texters, cell phones and PDAs really
being used on the ground to help organize millions of people towards a
common goal - democracy. And is it true that these movements for
democracy in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and beyond are completely
spontaneous and being organized on the fly with the help of modern
technology? Or is there more to the story?

Lesley University and Open Media Boston have invited three experts on
digital media and grassroots organizing to speak to these and related
issues. Each brings a unique perspective to the discussion.

Ethan Zuckerman is co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices
and senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Jillian York is a writer and freedom of expression activist who studies
Internet controls and online activism, with a focus on the Arab world.
She is a project coordinator at the Berkman Center for Internet and
Society.

Suren Moodliar is a coordinator of Massachusetts Global Action and an
organizer of the Majority Agenda Project. He is deeply interested in
networks and social change.

The panel will be chaired by Jason Pramas, Editor/Publisher of Open
Media Boston, www.openmediaboston.org, and introduced by a
representative of Lesley University.

Doors will open at 5:45 p.m. There will be light refreshments served in
the Atrium just outside the Amphitheater. The event is free and open to
the public.

For more information, or press inquiries, please email
info at openmediaboston.org.

--------------------------------

The Sociology Department at Northeastern University is hosting our 2nd  
annual globalization symposium on March 31, with a focus on global  
commodity chains, neoliberalism, and human rights. The evening  
session, in particular, will explore issues related to politics and  
activism surrounding global commodities such as coffee, coca cola,  
drugs, arms, as well as clothing and apparel.


What: Global Commodities, Chained and Unchained- 2nd Annual Conference  
on Globalization at Northeastern University

When: March 31, 2011

Panel 1- 2:45 to 4:30pm (Global Commodity Chains- a Critical Approach)

Panel 2- 6:00 to 8:00pm (Global Commodity Chains and Human Rights)

Where: Northeastern University, 20 West Village F

For more Information, see: http://globalcommodities2011.blogspot.com/


Conference Description:

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern  
University is pleased to host its 2nd annual conference on  
globalization. We are excited to bring together a group of prominent  
scholars to discuss their recent research on global commodity chains  
and to critically assess the political and cultural implications of  
neoliberal globalization.

Presenters at the evening session, including Carolyn Nordstrom (Notre  
Dame University), Robert Ross (Clark University), Edward Fischer  
(Vanderbilt University) and Robert Foster, will discuss the  
interconnections between commodity chains and human rights and the  
potential paths of resistance available to populations marginalized  
within the current neoliberal order.

Presenters at the afternoon session, including Catherine Dolan (Oxford  
University), Andrew Schrank (University of New Mexico), Robert Foster  
(University of Rochester) and Damla Isik (Western Connecticut State  
College), will draw on their ethnographic field work to discuss  
critical approaches to global commodity chain research and theory.

This event is free and open to the public. The Department of Sociology- 
Anthropology at Northeastern hopes you can join us for what promises  
to be an exciting, politically inspirational, and intellectually rich  
encounter. For more information on the conference, including times and  
location, please visit our blog at http://globalcommodities2011.blogspot.com 
.

Hope to see you there!

Jeffrey S. Juris
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Northeastern University
www.networkingfutures.com

------------------------------------

-----------

Resource

-----------

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

----------------------

Artisan Asylum  http://artisansasylum.com/

Sprout & Co:  Community Driven Investigations  http://thesprouts.org/studios

Greater Boston Solidarity Economy Mapping Project  http://www.transformationcentral.org/solidarity/mapping/mapping.html
a project by Wellesley College students that invites participation

-----------------------------------------------------

Links to events at 60 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://fhapgood.fastmail.fm/site02.html

Boston Area Computer User Groups  http://www.bugc.org/

http://www.mitenergyclub.org/calendar/mit_events_template

http://sustainability.mit.edu/

http://www.environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/

http://green.harvard.edu/events

http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/tabid/57/Default.aspx

http://pechakuchaboston.org/blog/

http://boston.nerdnite.com/

http://www.meetup.com/

http://www.eventbrite.com/

--------------------------------------------------



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