[act-ma] Energy (and Other) Events
George Mokray
gmoke at world.std.com
Sun Dec 4 17:30:49 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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I was away from computers all this past week, doing some serious
relaxing with friends in a beautiful place. Regular writing should
resume next week.
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MIT Future of Electric Grid: An Interdisciplinary Study
Monday, December 5, 2011
12:30 PM Eastern
Webcast at http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=83545
--------------------------------
"Investigating the Gulf Oil Spill: Challenges and Opportunities"
Monday, December 5, 2011
12:00pm - 1:30pm
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, HKS, 79 JFK Street,
Cambridge
Energy Technology Innovation Policy/ Consortium for Energy Policy
Research
Energy Policy Seminar Series:
Speaker: Richard Lazarus, Harvard Law School
Lunch will be provided.
Contact Name: Louisa Lund, louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
------------------------
Interconnected Energy Grids - a Future for Electric Energy
Monday, December 5, 2011
12:30-1:45
Tufts, Cabot 108b, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
Aleksandar Stanković, Alvin H. Howell Professor in Electrical
Engineering
The area of energy processing, which includes power electronics,
electric drives and power systems, is at a crossroads. Its challenges
are both external (contribution to climate change, nonfunctional
markets) and internal (inability to integrate renewable sources and
efficient loads). The promise of energy processing comes from a
growing array of potentially transformative technologies that
currently exist in energy components, power electronics, distributed
sensing, and networked control. The first part of this talk will
review available energy technologies, and outline salient features of
the existing energy systems. The second part will outline desirable
future developments in electric energy systems with an emphasis on
interconnection of networks with different energy carriers.
------------------------------
How to Organize a Resilience Circle: Live Discussion Webinar
Monday December 5
3pm EST for an interactive webinar about organizing a Resilience Circle!
Register here.
We’ll talk about how to start a group for your community, including:
finding an organizing partner
finding participants through "base communities" and the "linking method"
how to share the idea of a circle with others
some notes on the curriculum
You will receive a confirmation email after registering with
information about how to join the webinar.
Before the webinar, please take 10 - 15 minutes to familiarize
yourself with the Resilience Circle seven-session curriculum. Contact
us (info at localcircles.org) for an electronic copy.
Register for the free webinar here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/638377470
Onward,
Sarah Byrnes
Find us on Facebook
Follow us @ResilienCircles
System Requirements:
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows(R) 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh(R)-based attendees
Required: Mac OS(R) X 10.4.11 (Tiger(R)) or newer
--------------------------
The Dark Side: Reporting on the War on Terror
WHEN Mon., Dec. 5, 2011, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street, room S-030
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Lecture, Social Sciences
SPEAKER(S) Roger Cohen, New York Times columnist and Shorenstein
Fellow, and Carlotta Gall, reporter for The New York Times and Nieman
Fellow
CONTACT INFO Donna Hicks: dhicks at wcfia.harvard.edu
----------------------------
Thermodynamic analysis of the deposited carbon on the anode of solid-
oxide fuel cells
Monday, December 05, 2011
4:15p–5:15p
MIT, Building 1-242, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Won Yong Lee, Department of Mechanical Engineering, M.I.T.
Center for Energy and Propulsion Research - Reacting Gas Dynamics
Seminar
SPEAKER BIO.
Won Yong Lee is a Ph.D. student in the Mechanical Engineering
Department at MIT. Won Yong's research focuses on modeling of SOFCs
using hydrocarbon fuels. He completed his M.S. degree in Mechanical
Engineering at MIT in 2006, receiving the Padmakar P. Lele student
award for outstanding research and thesis. A Samsung Scholarship
supports his graduate study at MIT. Prior to coming to MIT, Won Yong
earned his B.S. degree from Seoul National University in 2001, and
worked as an engineer at Hyundai Heavy Industries.
ABSTRACT
Fuel cells are well known for their clean power-generation capability.
A significant amount of research is focused on the development of
hydrocarbon-fueled fuel cells as an alternative to hydrogen-fuel ones.
This eliminates the challenges of hydrogen storage and delivery and
the need to first produce hydrogen from hydrocarbon sources. The most
promising fuel cell for conversion of hydrocarbon fuels is a solid-
oxide fuel cell (SOFC). However, SOFCs operating with hydrocarbon
fuels and a conventional Ni/YSZ anode suffer from performance
degradation due to carbon formation and deposition on anode surfaces
caused by internal reforming and conversion of the hydrocarbon. Since
a kinetic model for carbon deposition is not yet fully developed, the
problem has been analyzed mostly from a thermodynamic standpoint.
However, the ability to predict the likelihood and extent of carbon
deposition from a thermodynamic analysis are not always successful
because the deposited carbon is typically assumed to be bulk graphite
regardless of the actual carbon structure. In this talk, I will
discuss (1) three types of carbon-deposit structures and their
formation/growth mechanisms, and (2) how to incorporate this knowledge
into the thermodynamic analysis in order to improve predictions of
carbon deposition.
Refreshments will be provided.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): RGD Lab
For more information, contact: Jeff Hanna
--------------------------------
The Fate of Civic Education in a Connected World: A "Fred Friendly"
Seminar
Monday, December 5, 6:00 pm
Harvard, Austin East Classroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School, 1515
Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Free and Open to the Public; RSVP required for those attending in
person at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2011/12/civiceducation#RSVP
Featuring Professor Charles Nesson as Provocateur and Ellen Condliffe
Lagemann (Bard College), Peter Levine (Tufts University), Harry Lewis
(Harvard SEAS), Elizabeth Lynn (Project on Civic Reflection) and Juan
Carlos de Martin (Berkman Center) as participants.
Civic education is the cultivation of knowledge and traits that
sustain democratic self-governance. The broad agreement that civic
education is important disintegrates under close scrutiny. As the
social networks of individuals become less based on geography and more
based on friendships and common interests, consensus on shared civic
values seems harder to achieve. American education is under stress at
every level, and schools and colleges must re-imagine their commitment
to civic education. This seminar will probe tensions that make civic
education difficult, for example:
What's the problem? Doesn't everyone agree that civic education is
important? Is civic education being squeezed out in schools, either
because of the demands of subject testing or the desire to avoid
political controversy?
Does the connectedness of social media support or impair the sorts of
connections that lead to active citizenship?
Every tertiary institution wants to be a "global university." What, if
any, are the civic responsibilities of a global institution? What
civic values are transnational? Should American students learn the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
What about civic education outside of school--for adults, prisoners,
and the home-schooled, for example?
Then there was model UN; now there are online simulations. Do they
achieve the same ends?
Does civic education include instruction in civic activism, using
social media for example?
With connectedness come instantaneity and constant interruptions. Is
it even possible to maintain anyone's attention on understanding
anything as subtle as the complexities of representative government?
This lively, "Fred Friendly" style seminar is timed to coincide with
publication of two edited volumes: Teaching America: The Case for
Civic Education (David Feith, ed.; Rowman & Littlefield), and What is
College For?: The Public Purpose of Higher Education (Ellen Condliffe
Lagemann and Harry Lewis, eds.)
---------------------------------
Bioclimatic Devices and Adaptations at Alijares Palace (Alhambra, 14th
century) and other Nasrid Buildings
Monday, December 05, 2011
6:00p–7:30p
MIT, Building 7-431, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
AKPIA at MIT LECTURE
Speaker: Luis Jose Garcia Pulido, Post-Doctoral Fellow, AKPIA at MIT
Web site: http://web.mit.edu/akpia/www/lecturescurrent.htm
Open to: the general public
Cost: FREE
Sponsor(s): Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
For more information, contact:
Jose Luis Arguello
253-1400
akpiarch at mit.edu
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Elijah Wald Presents the History & Early Blues' Traditions
Monday, December 05, 2011
7:30p–9:00p
MIT, Building 4-231, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Elijah Wald
Bluesologist and author Elijah Wald presents the history and early
traditions of the blues.
Open to: the general public
Cost: free
Sponsor(s): Literature Section
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CReM Seminar Series: "Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells, Where Is This
All Taking Us" with Juan Enriquez
Tuesday, Dec 6, 2011
9:00am until 10:00am
Evans Biomedical Research Center, X Building, 650 Albany Street
(X715), Boston
Speaker(s): Juan Enriquez
Juan Enriquez is a leading authority on the economic impact of life
sciences on business and society and is a respected business leader
and entrepreneur. He is a Managing Director at Excel Medical Ventures,
a life sciences venture capital firm. Prior to Excel, Juan was the
founding Director of the Harvard Business School's Life Sciences
Project, and then founder of Biotechonomy which invested in BioTrove,
Xcellerex, and Synthetic Genomics, a company he co founded with Drs.
J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith to apply life sciences to energy
markets.
The Harvard Business Review showcased his ideas as one of the
breakthrough concepts in its first HBR List. Fortune profiled him as
Mr. Gene. Time asked him to co-organize the life sciences summit
commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of DNA. Seed
picked his ideas as one of fifty that "shaped our identity, our
culture, and the world as we know it."
In addition, he is well known for giving a number of the popular TED
talks, highlighting the future of biotechnology and the profound
changes that advances in life sciences will have in business,
politics, and society. He is the author of As The Future Catches You,
which provided an accurate blueprint of how a bio-based economy
changes industries and corporations, and The Untied States of America,
which looks at the forces threatening America's future as a unified
country. His latest publication is an eBook, Homo Evolutis: A Short
Tour of our New Species, which describes a world where humans
increasingly shape their environment, themselves, and other species.
He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. and an M.B.A., both with honors.
Watch Juan's TED talks at: http://www.ted.com/speakers/juan_enriquez.html
Open to General Public
Admission is free
More Info http://www.ted.com/speakers/juan_enriquez.html
Contact: Pulmonary Center
Amulya Iyer
amiyer at bu.edu
617-638-4466
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Congress is considering several bills that would censor the Internet
and emulate China by creating a Great Firewall of the US.
*Join us on Dec. 6th to tell the Congress: Don?t Censor the Internet!*
Noon, Tuesday, December 6th.
JFK Federal Building, Cambridge St. entrance
Next to Boston City Hall Plaza
We will bring our fight against the censoring the Internet directly to
Senator Brown?s Boston office on Tuesday, December 6th. We will meet
at noon in front of the JFK Federal Building near the Cambridge St.
entrance next to Boston City Hall Plaza. Please join us in telling
Senator Brown and the Massachusetts Congressional delegation that they
must oppose efforts to censor the Internet.
*NOTE: *Check http://www.masspirates.org/blog/dontcensorthenet/ for
updated information on this rally and efforts to stop Congress from
censoring the net.
*Posters*
*Why we oppose censoring the Internet*
Our Information Packet for Senators Regarding PIPA and CFSA
<http://www.masspirates.org/blog/dontcensorthenet/information-packet-for-senators-regarding-pipa-and-cfsa/
>
is available. We hope you will find it a useful reference when
considering the implications of these harmful bills.
This rally is being organized by the Massachusetts Pirate Party.
Editorial Comment: This is an important issue and the comparison to
China's Great Firewall to this legislation is not an exaggeration but
confirmed by Rebecca McKinnon, former CNN China correspondent and co-
founder of Global Voices Online (http://globalvoicesonline.net), a
great resource to learn about the news of the world from people living
in the countries they write about. I also find it interesting that
there is a MA Pirate Party, a name and idea that is spreading
internationally.
-----------------------------
Urban Citizenship and Community-Based Conservation in Indonesia
WHEN Tue., Dec. 6, 2011, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100-North, Room 106
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ash Center for Democratic Governance and
Innovation
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Trisiawati Bantacut:
trisiawati_bantacut at hks.harvard.edu, 617.384.8156
NOTE Please join us as two Harvard student recipients of HKS
Indonesia Program travel research grants present their work. Jaclyn
Sachs, candidate for master’s degree in urban planning at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design, will discuss the interplay between
conceptions of urban citizenship and land contestation struggles in
Indonesia. Sachi Oshima, bachelor’s degree candidate at Harvard
College, will share her internship experience at Project ASRI in West
Kalimantan, Indonesia. Indonesia Research Fellow Inka Yusgiantoro will
serve as a moderator. Offered every January-term and during the
summer, HKS Indonesia student research grants encourages students from
across Harvard University to apply their analytical skills to
challenges in Indonesia through both internship as well as independent
research projects.
-----------------------
Electricity Market Design and the Green Agenda
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
12:15p–1:30p
MIT, Building 4-145, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. William W. Hogan
Energy & Environment Community Lecture/Discussion Series
Prof. William W. Hogan from Harvard Kennedy School will join us to
discuss electricity sector's role in addressing climate change through
improved efficiency, development of renewable energy, and use of low-
carbon fuels--which creates expanded demands for and of electricity
restructuring.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT Energy Club, Energy & Environment Community
For more information, contact:
MIT Energy Club
energy-environment at mit.edu
------------------------------
Optimal Information Revelation
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
2:30p–4:00p
MIT, Building E62-550, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Speaker: Anton Kolotilin (MIT)
Web site: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/project/oe-seminar/
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MIT/Sloan Seminar in Organizational Economics
For more information, contact: Theresa Benevento
theresa at mit.edu
-------------------------------
Engineering the Microstructural Architecture of New Materials Using
Freedom and Constraint Topologies
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
3:00p–4:00p
MIT, Building 3-270, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Jonathan Hopkins, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The ability to design and fabricate microstructural architecture
enables the creation of new materials that possess radically superior
properties from those currently achieved by composites, alloys, and
other naturally occurring materials. The Freedom and Constraint
Topologies (FACT) synthesis approach has been successfully applied to
the design and optimization of such new materials (e.g., materials
with large negative Poisson's ratios and zero/negative thermal
expansion coefficients). The basis for FACT is a comprehensive library
of geometric shapes that represent the mathematics of screw theory and
enable designers to visualize all the regions wherein various
microstructural elements may be placed for achieving desired bulk
material properties. In this way, designers may rapidly consider and
compare every microstructural concept that best satisfies the design
requirements before selecting the final concept.
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): MechE Seminar Series
For more information, contact:
Ian Hunter
617-253-3921
ihunter at mit.edu
----------------------------------
"IN THE DOCK: Lawrence Lessig Interrogates Jack Abramoff about
Corruption"
WHEN Tue., Dec. 6, 2011, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Ames Courtroom (Austin Hall 200), Harvard Law School, 1515
Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Law, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
SPEAKER(S) Jack Abramoff and Professor Lawrence Lessig
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO ethics at harvard.edu
NOTE Seating is limited. Overflow seating will be available.
The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics has had a long list of great
souls offering their insight about ethics, philosophy, and the
question of institutional corruption. With this event, we launch an
occasional series drawing on people from the other side of that
ethical line. The "In the Dock" series will, when appropriate and
edifying, interview the guilty, not the innocent or inspirational. In
this first of the series, Professor Lessig will interview Jack
Abramoff about corruption and the nature of lobbying. We hope you will
join us.
LINK http://ethics.harvard.edu/news-and-events/in-the-dock
----------------------------------
Join Boston Climate Action Network this Wednesday Evening to Plan the
Future of the Climate Movement
Dimensions of Resilience: A Potluck and Discussion
Tuesday, December 6
6-9 pm
at the Nate Smith House, 155 Lamartine Street, Jamaica Plain
All are welcome to join this potluck and talk, featuring local
activists working on the artistic, food, spiritual, and equity
dimensions of Community Resilience. We'll hear from:
Andi Sutton, a JP performance artist - on the artistic dimensions
Jim Bukle, farmer at Allandale Farm - on the food sustainability
dimensions
Lilli Nye, minister at West Roxbury UU church - on the spiritual
dimensions
Juan Gonzalez, community organizer at JP NDC - on the social justice
and equity dimensionsYouth Ambassadors from Bikes Not Bombs, to talk
with us about their work creating an after school bike shop at Boys
and Girls Clubs.
Q&A will be followed by break out groups on a variety of issues.
Please bring a dish to share for the meal.
---------------------------------
CSE Fraunhofer AR Project Introduction
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
6:00p–7:00p
MIT, Building 56-114, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Daniel Kokonowski
Dan recently joined Fraunhofer USA Center for Sustainable Energy to
head the development and implementation of Augmented Reality (AR) in
coordination with the Building Technology Showcase (BTS).
The BTS is Fraunhofer CSE's plan to retrofit a historic building in
South Boston's Innovation District, transforming it into a living
laboratory and test bed for the latest technologies in sustainable
energy systems. The BTS will also include an Interactive Lobby Showcase.
With the design and layout headed by Daniel, the showcase will deploy
the use of the latest Audio/Visual technologies developed by
Fraunhofer and industry partners. This is including, but not limited
to; interactive hand gesturing displays, facial recognition software,
3-D televisions, and potentially bidirectional OLED microdisplays.
Web site: http://mit.edu/e-club/
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Entrepreneurs Club
For more information, contact:
MIT Solar Decathlon
SolarDecathlon at mit.edu
-------------------------------------
“Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST):
What role does scientific information on ecosystem services play in
decision-making?”
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
12:00pm - 1:30pm
124 Mt Auburn Street, Suite 160, Room 105, Cambridge
Emily McKenzie, Natural Capital Project
Lunch will be served, please RSVP here: http://bit.ly/sxkAaR to ensure
enough food is ordered.
Presentation summary: InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem
Services and Trade-offs) is a suite of models developed by the Natural
Capital Project that provides information on where ecosystem services
are provided and how they will be affected by alternative plans and
policies. InVEST is designed to help local, regional and national
decision-makers incorporate ecosystem services into processes such as
spatial planning, strategic environmental assessments and payments for
ecosystem services. Based on experiences applying InVEST around the
world, the Natural Capital Project is beginning to assess if, how and
when decisions are transformed by access to scientific information on
ecosystem services.
Emily McKenzie leads the science-policy interface work of the Natural
Capital Project (NatCap), and manages NatCap’s work at WWF. Her focus
is on enabling scientific information on ecosystem services to be
effectively incorporated into institutions, policies and decisions.
Emily’s research interests include environmental valuation, and
policies and payments for ecosystem services. She has applied
environmental economics to policy questions in sixteen countries in
Asia, Europe, Africa, the Pacific, Caribbean and Europe. Her research
has helped to ensure nature’s benefits to people are considered in
decisions around land use planning in Indonesia, black pearl farming
in the Cook Islands, aggregates extraction in the Marshall Islands and
forest biodiversity in Montserrat. She has built several environmental
economics programs - leading research, developing tools, building
capacity and providing technical and policy advice. She previously
worked as Environmental Economics Advisor to the UK government, based
at the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. In 2003-2005, she was
awarded an Overseas Development Institute Fellowship as the Resource
Economist at the Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji. Emily
received a Masters Degree in International Policy Studies from
Stanford University, and a Bachelors Degree in Economics from
Cambridge University.
Contact:
Lauren Bloomberg
lauren_bloomberg at hks.harvard.edu
-----------------------------------
The Occupy Movement and Student Debt Refusal
WHEN Wed., Dec. 7, 2011, 4:15 p.m.
WHERE CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Room S050, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Project on Justice, Welfare, and Economics
SPEAKER(S) Andrew Ross, professor of social and cultural analysis, NYU
CONTACT INFO jbarnard at wcfia.harvard.edu, 617.495.8923
LINK http://programs.wcfia.harvard.edu/jwe/
---------------------------------
COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL PHENOMENA IN ON-LINE NETWORKS
12/7/2011
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA
02142
Description: With an increasing amount of social interaction taking
place in the digital domain, and often in public on-line settings, we
are accumulating enormous amounts of data about phenomena that were
once essentially invisible to us: the collective behavior and social
interactions of hundreds of millions of people, recorded at
unprecedented levels of scale and resolution. Analyzing this data
computationally offers new insights into the design of on-line
applications, as well as a new perspective on fundamental questions in
the social sciences. We discuss how this perspective can be applied to
questions involving network structure and the dynamics of interaction
among individuals, with a particular focus on the ways in which
evaluation, opinion, and in some cases polarization manifest
themselves at large scales in the on-line domain Biography Jon
Kleinberg is the Tisch University Professor in the Computer Science
Department at Cornell University. His research focuses on issues at
the interface of networks and information, with an emphasis on the
social and information networks that underpin the Web and other on-
line media. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the
National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and serves on the Computer and Information Science and
Engineering (CISE) Advisory Committee of the National Science
Foundation, and the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board
(CSTB) of the National Research Council. He is the recipient of
MacArthur, Packard, and Sloan Foundation Fellowships, as well as
awards including the Nevanlinna Prize from the International
Mathematical Union and the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the
Computing Sciences
--------------------------------------
Reinventing the City @ MIT: A Planet of Civic Laboratories: The Future
of Cities, Information and Inclusion
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
5:30p–7:00p
MIT, Building E14-633, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Dr. Anthony Townsend, Research Director, Institute for the
Future
Reinventing the City @ MIT
During 2011-2012, the Department of Urban Studies & Planning will host
a series of high-profile speakers and panels on a wide-range of topics
related to the future of cities, planning, participation, economies,
technology, design, and development. This series is part of a multi-
year initiative in the department to raise cutting-edge questions
about the field in an era of rapid change.
See http://dusp.mit.edu/p.lasso?t=7:6:0 for more in this series.
How are tools like smart phone apps and mobile communications changing
the way people experience and interact with the built environment? How
will new forms of visualization and simulation inform the planning
process? What new skills will urban designers need to integrate
ubiquitous technologies into mediated public spaces, and how can we re-
interpret key planning tenets - such as the ideas of Lynch, Jacobs and
Alexander - in a world of ubiquitous information technology?
Lecture at 5:30, with reception following.
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
-----------------------------------
HTC Forum: The Body as Archive/ The Archive as Body: Live Art in Los
Angeles 1970-75, A Case Study
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
6:30p–8:00p
MIT, Building 7-431, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Amelia Jones
HTC Forum: After the fact
The re-presentation of ephemeral or fragile works of art and
architecture raises vital questions regarding ideas of originality,
authenticity, authority, and temporality. Whether reconstructed,
repurposed, or reenacted, these works establish new meanings in
relation to their new spatial, social, and temporal contexts while
maintaining vestigial but unimpeachable reference to their previous
histories. This semester's HTC Forum invites artists, historians, and
curators who critically engage re-presentation, to surface the issues
that it poses for the production and presentation of history.
Amelia Jones is Professor and Grierson Chair in Visual Culture in the
Department of Art History & Communication Studies at McGill
University. She practices a queer, anti-racist, feminist history and
theory of twentieth- and twenty-first century Euro-American visual
arts, including performance, film, video, and installation. Dr. Jones
is the author of numerous books, including: Seeing Differently: A
History and Theory of Identification in the Visual Arts (2012) and
Perform Repeat Record: Live Art in History (co-edited with Adrian
Heathfield, 2012). Self/Image: Technology, Representation, and the
Contemporary Subject (2006), Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic
History of New York Dada (2004), and Body Art/Performing the Subject
(1998). She has published several articles on the subject of presence
and live art, most recently including "'The Artist is Present':
Artistic Re-enactments and the Impossibility of Presence," in the
Spring 2011 volume of The Drama Review. Dr. Jones has also curated
such landmark exhibitions as "Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner
Party in Feminist Art History," held at UCLA's Armand Hammer Museum of
Art in 1996.
Web site: http://htc.scripts.mit.edu/wordpress/?page_id=1305
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): School of Architecture and Planning, Department of
Architecture, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art
For more information, contact:
258-8439/8
htc at mit.edu
-----------------------------------
ENCUENTRO5 TURNS 5! COMMEMORATIVE DINNER: Celebrating 5 solid years
and 5 inspiring honorees!
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
7:00 pm
Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, Chinatown T, Boston
As a dynamic movement-building space, encuentro 5 has balanced the day-
to-dayneeds of grassroots organizations and community groups with the
wide-ranging
social change goals that their organizers embrace for 5 solid years
ofsolidarity and inspiration.
For e5, challenging the militarism and corporate globalization that
institutionalize the current moment of capitalism and white supremacy
has meant offering a space for the spontaneous needs of local groups,
housing over a dozen resident organizations, offering offices for new
projects and small NGOs, archiving the efforts of social movements,
providing cross-movement institutional memory, resourcing emerging
projects with much needed research, materials and equipment, and
ongoing daily efforts of networking and support.
Although it has meant a lot of intense work, it has also been greatly
inspiring to connect with creative activists, engaging writers,
soulful musicians and dedicated community members. Together, we have
made e5 a platform for major demonstrations, thoughtful debates,
heartwarming performances, and strategic conversations as a review of
the e5 website reveals.
Always thriving on the insights and energy of countless groups and
individuals, we chose five exemplary honorees who have contributed
directly to e5's programming and/or inspired the work we do. To honor
them and to launch the e5 movement-builders sustainer program, e5 is
hosting its first annual,
Commemorative Dinner, at 7pm Wednesday, December 7, 2012.
The five honorees are:
Sergio Reyes, a Chilean-born revolutionary. musician, and founder of
the Boston May Day Committee and a founder of Latin at s for Social Change
Avi Chomsky, a scholar and activist whose work connects people across
borders
Paul Shannon, a peace movement veteran active in United for Justice
with Peace and a founder of the Majority Agenda Project who has been
on staff at the
American Friends Service Committee for over 30 years.
Robin Jacks, a long-time activist challenging low-wage work in the
South and a founder of the #OccupyBoston effort
Dorotea Manuela, a founder of the Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day
Committee, a member of the Downtown Workers Center collective, and an
active defender of
Puerto Rican sovereignty.
On December 7th, join us to honor these 5 outstanding movement
builders, to celebrate the extraordinary efforts of the e5 Residents
and the expansive social justice community, and to make e5 a
sustainable effort for 2012! RSVP at http://encuentro5.org/home/node/234
-----------------------------------
Promoting Safety, Protecting the Environment and Conserving Offshore
Resources Through Vigorous Regulatory Oversight and Enforcement
WHEN Thu., Dec. 8, 2011, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, Harvard Kennedy School,
79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Environmental Sciences, Lecture,
Science, Social Sciences, Special Events, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government
SPEAKER(S) Michael R. Bromwich, director, Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement, US Department of Interior
CONTACT INFO Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to mrcbg at ksg.harvard.edu
---------------------------------
How Social Networks Shape Human Behavior...and Vice Versa
December 8, 2011
2:50 pm - 4:00 pm
Tufts, Halligan 111A, 161 College Avenue, Medford
Speaker: Alex (Sandy) Pentland, MIT Media Lab
Host: Soha Hassoun
Abstract: Increased productivity and creative output lie in
understanding how social networks - face-to-face and digital - shape
the behavior both of employees and customers. By use of the `big data'
collected by my research group's unique `reality mining' sensor
platforms, we can measure the behavior of hundreds of people in great
detail and over long periods of time, and build mathematical models
that provide accurate predictions of human decision making performance
across a wide range of scales...team, organization, and even city. We
can also use these models to more effectively shape social behaviors,
as illustrated by our win of DARPA's 40th Anniversary of the Internet
Grand Challenge. As a consequence of these new capabilities personal
data is becoming ever more valuable, and also more dangerous. To
address this concern I will describe my work with the World Economic
Forum that has lead to the emergence of a new personal data framework.
Bio: Alex `Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory
and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, and advises the World
Economic Forum, Nissan Motor Corporation, and a variety of start-up
firms. He has previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media
Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes
of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future Health.
Sandy is one of the world's most-cited computer scientists, and a
pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering,
mobile computing, image understanding, and modern biometrics. His
research has recently been featured in Nature, Science, the World
Economic Forum, Harvard Business Review, and the popular press.
-------------------------------
Harvard Thinks Green
WHEN Thu., Dec. 8, 2011, 5 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences,
Humanities, Law, Special Events, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Office for Sustainability, Harvard Thinks Big,
Harvard University Center for the Environment
SPEAKER(S)
Eric Chivian, HMS
Rebecca Henderson, HBS
Rob Kaplan, HBS
Richard Lazarus, HLS
James McCarthy, FAS
Christoph Reinhart, GSD
CONTACT INFO jennifer_stacy at harvard.edu
NOTE 6 all-star environmental faculty, 6 big green ideas, 10 minutes
each
LINK http://green.harvard.edu/thinksgreen
---------------------------
Root Cause's Social Innovation Forum presents: Celebrating
Innovation: A Winter Reception
Thursday, December 8, 2011
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Microsoft New England R&D Center, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA
02142
Please join Root Cause’s Social Innovation Forum for cocktails and
hors d'oeuvre as we welcome our 2012 Social Innovators and celebrate
the 2011 Innovators' achievements
The evening will feature the formal announcement of the 2012 Social
Innovators and the presentation of the 6th Annual Margaret Stewart
Lindsay Inspiration Award to Lindsay Hyde, President and Founder of
Strong Women, Strong Girls, a 2007 Social Innovator. The award is
sponsored by the Margaret Stewart Lindsay Foundation.
Help us congratulate our 2011 Social Innovators...
Future Chefs
Fiscal Health Vital Signs, a program of DotWell
Massachusetts Senior Action Council
MathPOWER
Smart from the Start
...and be the first to meet our 2012 Social Innovators, one for each
of the following social issue tracks:
At-Risk Children and Youth in MetroWest: Providing Adult Guidance and
Support
Sponsoring Partner: The Sudbury Foundation
Food, Nutrition, and Fitness: Promoting Healthy Living for Children,
Youth, and Families
Sponsoring Partner: The Trefler Foundation
Healthy Aging: Engaging and Supporting Older Adults in their
Communities
Sponsoring Partner: Tufts Health Plan Foundation
Impact Investing: Scaling Social Enterprise
Sponsoring Partner: The Devonshire Foundation
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education and
Enrichment for Children and Youth
Sponsoring Partners: Amelia Peabody Foundation and Microsoft New
England Research & Development Center
Workforce Development: Skills and Support for Workers in Today’s
Economy
Sponsoring Partner: Highland Street Foundation
---------------------------------
Reinventing the City @ MIT: Building resilience in in low- and middle-
income nations: Challenges for city governments
Thursday, December 08, 2011
5:30p–7:00p
MIT, Building 3-370, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: David Satterthwaite, Senior Fellow, Human Settlements Group,
Home International Institute for Environment and Development
Reinventing the City @ MIT
During 2011-2012, the Department of Urban Studies & Planning will host
a series of high-profile speakers and panels on a wide-range of topics
related to the future of cities, planning, participation, economies,
technology, design, and development. This series is part of a multi-
year initiative in the department to raise cutting-edge questions
about the field in an era of rapid change.
See http://dusp.mit.edu/p.lasso?t=7:6:0 for more in this series.
Most of the measures needed to build resilience to climate change for
urban populations fall to city and municipal governments -- a
difficult challenge when many are struggling to provide basic
infrastructure and services, and most have shown themselves to be
unable or unwilling to act to reduce disaster risks that are already
known. In the face of these difficulties, how can planners concerned
with climate change be most effective?
David Satterthwaite is a Senior Fellow at the International Institute
for Environment and Development (IIED) and Editor of the international
journal Environment and Urbanization. A development planner by
training with a Doctorate in social policy, he has long had an
interest in the power and capacity of grassroots organizations formed
by residents of informal settlements; this was the focus of a book
written with Jorge Hardoy in 1989 entitled Squatter Citizen. More
recent books published by Earthscan include: The Earthscan Reader on
Sustainable Cities (editor), 1999; Environmental Problems in an
Urbanizing World (with Jorge Hardoy and Diana Mitlin), 2001;
Empowering Squatter Citizen (co-editor with Diana Mitlin), 2004 and
Adapting Cities to Climate Change (co-editor with Jane Bicknell and
David Dodman), 2009.
Lecture at 5:30, followed by reception in 9-450.
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
-------------------------------------
An Evening Celebrating the Legacy of the Center for Advanced Visual
Studies (CAVS)
Thursday, December 08, 2011
6:00p–8:00p
MIT, Building E15-001, MIT Cube, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street,
Cambridge
PROGRAM
Lecture: Marton Orosz, Curator and Gyorgy Kepes Fellow for Advanced
Studies and Transdisciplinary Research in Art, Culture and Technology
Screening: Centerbeam, Directed by Richard Leacock and Jon Rubin. CAVS
1978, 16 mm, color, 13 min.
Round table discussion:
Otto Piene, Professor and CAVS Director Emeritus
Elizabeth Goldring, former CAVS Co-Director and ACT Fellow
Joan Brigham, former CAVS Fellow
Lowry Burgess, former CAVS Fellow
Alejandro Sina, former CAVS Fellow
Aldo Tambellini, former CAVS Fellow
Moderated by Joao Ribas, Curator, List Visual Arts Center
The Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship for Advanced Studies and Transdisciplinary
Research in Art, Culture and Technology is a joint initiative of the
MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), tranzit.org and
ERSTE Foundation. The preservation of Centerbeam is supported in part
by the National Film Preservation Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters
Grant program funded by The Film Foundation.
Web site: http://visualarts.mit.edu/about/events.html
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free and open to the public.
Tickets: http://visionsandprojections.eventbrite.com/
Sponsor(s): MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
For more information, contact:
Laura Anca Chichisan Pallone
617-253-5229
act at mit.edu
---------------------------------------
MIT Clean Energy Prize Info Session & Networking Opportunity
Thursday, December 8, 2011
6:30pm
Harvard, Maxwell Dworkin 119, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Want to shape our energy future through entrepreneurship? Interested
in winning $200,000?
Come learn about the MIT CLEAN ENERGY PRIZE
The MIT Clean Energy Prize is a multi-stage, student-organized
business plan competition. The top twenty-one teams receive
professional, legal and industry mentors, and three finalists are
awarded $20,000. The competition culminates with a $200,000 Grand
Prize winner in April 2012.
Info Session and Networking Opportunity
(Meet potential teammates!)
Pizza will be provided!
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/embeddedform?formkey=dExHcTZSQl9BbUxUOVRPM2pxOTNRQ1E6MQ
http://cep.mit.edu/
--------------------------------
An Update on Deep Energy Retrofits for Buildings - the Intersection of
Human-Based and Energy Efficient Design
Thursday, December 08 2011
7:00pm reception, program begins at 7:30 pm
1st Parish Unitarian Church, 3 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge
BOSTON AREA SOLAR ENERGY ASSOCIATION Forum
Speakers: Henry MacLean (Timeless Architecture) & Friends
Contact : http://www.basea.org/
The BASEA forums are held September through May, the second Thursday
of each month, except as noted. The forums are free and open to the
public.
-----------------------------
Renewable Energy-Related Transmission for New Englanders: By Land and
By Sea
Friday, December 9, 2011
9:00 am to 12:30 pm
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, 13th Floor, Boston
New England Electricity Restructuring Roundtable
We welcome two new speakers to our December 9 Roundtable: Associate
Deputy Minister for Energy, Mario Gosselin, Québec Ministry of Natural
Resources and Wildlife, and Deepwater Wind CEO, William Moore.
Our 126th New England Electric Restructuring Roundtable focuses on
renewable energy-related transmission for New Englanders - both by
land and by sea. Utility-scale wind, hydro, and even solar must be
sited in proximity to the resource, which is often far from population
centers, thus necessitating the building of new transmission lines.
The siting, cost, and cost allocation related to these lines is often
no less (and sometimes more) controversial than the renewable energy
resources they are built to transmit. And the promise of off-shore
wind development on the East Coast presents a bevy of additional new
technical and other challenges. At this Roundtable, we will explore
numerous, very current, renewable energy-related transmission studies
and proposed projects.
Our first panel focuses primarily on land-based renewable energy-
related transmission. Starting off the panel is Associate Deputy
Minister for Energy, Mario Gosselin, from Québec's Ministry of Natural
Resources and Wildlife, who will discuss Québec's current and planned
renewable energy resources that could be exported to the Northeast.
David Whiteley , Executive Director for the Eastern Interconnection
Planning Collaborative (EIPC) then discusses the collaborative
scenario planning analysis currently underway on transmission and
renewables for the entire Eastern Interconnect (comprising 24 RTOs and
over 40 states). Next, First Wind Executive VP/CDO, Kurt Adams,
provides a wind developer's perspective on transmission, including
potential transmission projects in Maine. David H. Boguslawski, VP for
Transmission Strategy/Operations atNortheast Utilities rounds out the
panel with a presentation on a transmission owner's perspective on
connecting New England wind to the grid and NU/NSTAR's proposed
Northern Pass Transmission Project to bring approximately 1,200 MW of
mainly hydro power from Québec to New England through New Hampshire.
Our second panel brings together three CEO's to discuss sea-based
renewable energy-related transmission. Robert Mitchell, CEO ofAtlantic
Wind Connection kicks off the panel with a discussion of Atlantic
Wind's proposal to construct a transmission line 20 miles off-shore,
between New Jersey and Virginia, to facilitate off-shore wind
development (aka Google Line) Edward Krapels, CEO pf Anbaric
Transmission, then discusses Anbaric's just- announced (11/14) Bay
State Offshore Wind Transmission System, to be located 25 miles off-
shore in Massachusetts, to carry up to 2,000 MW of off-shore wind to
the NE Grid. Deepwater Wind CEO William Moore rounds out the panel by
discussing the Deepwater Wind Energy Center proposal to build 1,000 MW
of off-shore wind off the Rhode Island coast, with transmission to
both New England and Long Island.
--------------------------------------
Architecture Lecture Series - Design and Computation
Friday, December 09, 2011
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 7-431, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Ayodh Kamath
Title: Craft and the Computer: Theory and Practice
Open to: the general public
Sponsor(s): Computation Group Events
For more information, contact:
Daniela Stoudenkova
danielas at mit.edu
--------------------------------------
BUILDING TECHNOLOGY LECTURE SERIES: Vernacular Construction
Technology: Knowledge and Preservation
Monday, December 12, 2011
12:30p–2:00p
MIT, Building 7-431, The Long Lounge (AVT), 77 Massachusetts Avenue,
Cambridge
Speaker: Camilla Mileto and Fernando Vegas; Polytechnic University of
Valencia
Building Technology Fall 2011 Lecture Series
Vernacular construction technology represents the most immediate,
sustainable and functional answer to the needs of a dwelling using the
available resources and materials. Its knowledge allows us to design
the architecture of the future, being more rational and sensible to
the environment. The preservation of traditional buildings requires
innovative technology as well as respect for history. This lecture
will present a series of recent design projects which investigate
historical construction methods and their long-term preservation.
Camilla Mileto and Fernando Vegas are architects and professors at the
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain). They have extensively
published on traditional architectural technology and its
preservation, and have won a number of international awards for their
work.
Open to: the general public
Cost: Free
Sponsor(s): Building Technology Program, School of Architecture and
Planning
For more information, contact:
Kathleen Ross
253-1876
kross at mit.edu
---------------------------------
Crowdsourcing: Quality Assurance and Connections with Machine Learning
Friday, December 9 2011
1:00PM to 2:00PM
Refreshments: 12:45PM
MIT, CSAIL Reading Room (G882), 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Panos Ipeirotis, NYU
Host: Rob Miller, MIT CSAIL
I will discuss the acquisition of "labels" for data items when the
labeling is imperfect. Labels are values provided by humans for
specified variables on data items, such as "PG-13" for "Adult Content
Rating on this Web Page." With the increasing popularity of micro-
outsourcing systems, such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk, it often
is possible to obtain less-than-expert labeling at low cost. I will
present strategies of managing quality in a crowdsourcing environment,
showing in parallel how to integrate data acquisition with the process
of learning machine learning models. I illustrate the results using
real-life applications from on-line advertising: leveraging
Mechanical Turk to help classify web pages as being objectionable to
advertisers. Time permitting, I will also discuss our latest results
showing that mice and Mechanical Turk workers are not that different
after all.
Bio: Panos Ipeirotis is an Associate Professor at the Department of
Information, Operations, and Management Sciences at the Stern School
of Business of New York University. His recent research interests
focus on crowdsourcing and on mining user-generated content on the
Internet. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia
University in 2004, with distinction. He has received three "Best
Paper" awards (IEEE ICDE 2005, ACM SIGMOD 2006, WWW 2011), two "Best
Paper Runner Up" awards (JCDL 2002, ACM KDD 2008), and is also a
recipient of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. He
also maintains the blog "A Computer Scientist in a Business School"
where he blogs about crowdsourcing, user-generated content, and other
random facts, and his blogging activity seems to generate more
interest and recognition than any of the other activities mentioned in
this bio.
Relevant URL: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/seminar.shtml
Contact: Katrina Panovich, kp at mit.edu
-----------------------------------
Weatherization Barnraising
Saturday, December 10, 2011
9:30 AM to 12:30 PM
364 Marrett Road, Lexington, MA 02421
HEET Cambridge and myself are looking for 20 volunteers who are
interested in energy efficiency!
We are hosting a weatherization barnraising at our 100 year old home
in Lexington, MA.
HEET will be educating people and training them to do specific (small)
projects of their choice, which they can in turn bring the skills home
to their own home.
We will meet at 9:30, work til12:30 and then share lunch with our new
friends!
Register at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2598040810/esearch?srnk=19
-----------------------------------
Powerful Potential: The Gift of Energy
A Holiday Lecture for Children and their Parents
Saturday, December 10th
10:00 - 11:00 am or 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Harvard University, Science Center, Lecture Hall B, 1 Oxford Street,
Cambridge
Energy makes things work! In this lecture featuring Professor Howard
Stone, we’ll explore where energy comes from, as well as electricity,
energy conversion, and entropy. From explosions to electrons, we’ll
take a look at many different forms of energy. We’ll have many
kinetic activities for children to show their potential!
Free and Open to the Public
Preregistration required for guaranteed seating
Recommended for ages 7 and up
For more information, visit http://www.eduprograms.seas.harvard.edu/HolidayLecture
or send email to: sciencetix @ seas.harvard.edu
For guaranteed seating please register online at: http://eduprograms.seas.harvard.edu/HolidayLecture
.
Sponsored by the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences ,
the Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), the National
Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), the Materials Research
Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Harvard, and the Nanoscale
Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) at Harvard.
----------------------------
MTA Composer Forum features Terry Riley
Monday, December 12, 2011
5:00p–6:00p
MIT, Building 14e-109, MIT Lewis Music Library
Dec. 12 MTA Composer Forum features Terry Riley in a talk about his
new work for gamelan (his first for that medium), commissioned by
Galak Tika & MIT, to be premiered at Kresge on Dec 15. 5pm, MIT Lewis
Music Library, 14E-109. A Reception will follow. Free. Funded in part
by the Council for the Arts at MIT.
Open to: the general public
Cost: FREE
Tickets: NOT TIX REQ.
Sponsor(s): Music and Theater Arts
For more information, contact:
Clarise Snyder
mta-request at mit.edu
-----------------------------------
Reinventing the City @ MIT: U.S. Housing & Urban Development in the
Aftermath of the 'Great Crash'
Monday, December 12, 2011
5:30p–7:00p
MIT, Building 7-431, AVT, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Reinventing the City @ MIT
During 2011-2012, the Department of Urban Studies & Planning will host
a series of high-profile speakers and panels on a wide-range of topics
related to the future of cities, planning, participation, economies,
technology, design, and development. This series is part of a multi-
year initiative in the department to raise cutting-edge questions
about the field in an era of rapid change.
See http://dusp.mit.edu/p.lasso?t=7:6:0 for more in this series.
The Future of U.S. Housing & Urban Development in the Aftermath of the
'Great Crash': How Can Adversity Be Turned to Advantage?
Paul Willen, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; Raphael Bostic, US
Department of Housing and Urban Development; Todd Sinai, Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania; Tom Davidoff, University of
British Columbia (not confirmed)
In the 20th-century, housing dominated "The American Dream" and was a
driver of urban development and the consumer-led economy. In the past
decade, housing led the great financial collapse. Now "Generation Y"
may be looking for a new housing paradigm. The ramifications are
fundamental and far-reaching???for the economy, the financial system,
and the shape of our cities. How can we extricate ourselves from the
current predicament? What reforms are needed? What is the future role
of owning versus renting, of suburbs versus central cities, of single-
family versus multi-family, and what is housing's role in the income
disparities that are tearing at society? This panel invites discussion
of several cutting-edge scholars and policy leaders dealing with
housing markets in the U.S. today.
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
--------------------------------
-------------
***********
Upcoming
-------------
***********
Please join American Farmland Trust for the second webinar in the
series on Planning for Food and Agriculture: Taking a Systems Approach.
On Tuesday, December 13, AFT is offering an opportunity for people
interested in local and regional food systems to learn about
successful examples of county- and community-based food system
planning. Presenters include Kathy Creahan of King County, Washington,
Department of Natural Resources & Parks; Jason Grimm from Iowa
Corridor Food and Agriculture Coalition; Katie Lynd of Multnomah
County, Oregon, Office of Sustainability; and David Shabazian of
Sacramento Area Council of Governments.
Register for the webinar, Planning for Food and Agriculture: Taking a
Systems Approach on the County or Community Level, at 2 pm on December
13 at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/679320458
In case you missed our first webinar on state and regional food
systems planning, visit farmland.org/systems-planning to access a
video recording, copies of presentations, and links to download model
plans from our presenters: Delaware Valley Regional Planning
Commission, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and Vermont
Sustainable Jobs Fund.
We hope you will join us to learn more about how to form strategic
partnerships, conduct food system assessments, gather stakeholder
input, and establish forward-thinking goals and steps for implementing
them.
--------------------------------
10 in 1 StreetTalk: Ten Transportation Talks
Tuesday, December 13
6:00pm-9:00pm (note earlier start time)
70 Pacific St, Cambridge, MA (around the corner from our 100 Sidney St
office)
$5-$15 suggested donation. Beverages provided.
Come hear 10 innovative transportation research and advocacy stories
from students, advocates, consultants, planners and engineers from
around the Boston area. Learn about transit equity and the Silver
Line, youth empowerment through cycling, and a Broadway Bikeway and
Urban Renewal proposal all in the same night.
Stories are from around the world, from Brookline to China,
Massachusetts Avenue to Scotland, Virginia to Toronto. LivableStreets
sent out a request for your transportation stories last month, and on
December 13 you will hear 10 of them, each seven minutes long.
Seventy minutes of presentations with a social break in the middle,
and time afterwards to chat, ask questions, network, and discuss.
Don't miss out, it's the last event of the year!
Contact kara at livablestreets.info
617.621.1746
http://www.LivableStreets.info
*************
----------------
Opportunity
---------------
*************
Free Solar Panels for Houses of Worship
From a recent Mass Interfaith Power & Light (http://mipandl.org/) email
"We've recently been talking with DCS Energy (http://
www.dcsenergy.com/) who has an unbeatable offer: if your site
qualifies, they design and install the panels at no cost, don't charge
you for any electricity, and donate the system to your house of
worship after five years. Your only costs will be for a building
permit, possibly a structural engineer to verify that your roof can
support their weight, and any preparatory work such as roof work or
tree removal. If solar panels are so expensive how can anyone give
them away for free? First, there is a federal grant program that is
only available until November that pays for 30% of the cost of the
system. Then there is an accelerated depreciation option that gives
certain kinds of investors another tax advantage. Finally, the state
awards a special allowance called a "Solar Renewal Energy
Credit" (SRECs) to owners of solar electricity systems which are sold
at auctions to utilities who buy them to meet their requirements under
the Massachusetts' renewable portfolio standard. DCS is betting that
the price of these SRECs will remain high. Jim Nail, president of MA
IP&L, has talked to DCS Energy and is currently having them prepare a
proposal for his church, St. Dunstan's Episcopal in Dover. Jim says,
"The references I've talked to have been quite positive about the
program and the company has been very responsive. "If you think your
site might qualify, contact Peter Carli, pete at dcsenergy.com, with the
address of your house of worship and your contact information. He'll
take a preliminary look at your site and advise you if it meets their
criteria."
----------------------------------------------------------
Young World Inventors Success!
Young World Inventors (http://yinventors.wordpress.com/) finished
their Kickstarter campaign (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1036325713/youngworldinventorscom
) to fund insider web stories of African and American innovators in
collaboration successfully.
New contributions, however, will be accepted.
*********
-----------
Resource
-----------
Massachusetts Attitudes About Climate Change – An opinion survey of
Massachusetts residents conducted by MassINC and sponsored by the Barr
Foundation found that 77% of respondents believe that global warming
has “probably been happening” and 59% of all respondents see see it
as being at least partially caused by human pollution. Only 42% of
the state’s residents say global warming will have very serious
consequences for Massachusetts if left unaddressed. The 18 to 29 age
group is more likely to believe global warming is appearing and caused
by humans compared to the 60+ age group. African-American (56%) and
Latino residents (69%) are more likely than white residents (40%) to
believe global warming will be a very serious problem if left
unaddressed. The MassINC report, titled The 80 Percent Challenge:
What Massachusetts must do to meet targets and make headway on climate
change (http://www.massinc.org/Research/The-80-percent-
challenge.aspx), contains many other findings.
----------------------------------------------------
The presentations from the recent Affordable Comfort National Home
Performance Conference are available online at
http://2011.acinational.org/downloadable_resources
Lots of good information from what some call the best energy
conference in the USA on Deep Energy Retrofits to Community Energy
Challenges with details on insulation, heat flow, energy metering,
ducting, hot water, and many, many other topics. If you are a
practical energy wonk, this should make your eyes light up.
--------------------------------------------------
Free Monthly Energy Analysis
CarbonSalon is a free service that every month can automatically track
your energy use and compare it to your past energy use (while
controlling for how cold the weather is). You get a short friendly
email that lets you know how you’re doing in your work to save energy.
https://www.carbonsalon.com/
---------------------------------------
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,
contact jmatthaei at wellesley.edu
------------------------
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
********************************************
-----------------------------------------------------
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://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
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/
More information about the Act-MA
mailing list