[act-ma] Energy (and Other) Events - March 10, 2019
gmoke
gmoke at world.std.com
Sun Mar 10 09:05:59 PDT 2019
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
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html
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Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index
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Index
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Monday, March 11
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12pm Reconstructing Last Interglacial Sea Level from the Geology of the Bahamas
12pm Legal Controversies about State Clean Energy Policies in Courts and at FERC
12pm Book Launch: Global Health Justice and Governance
12:10pm Understanding principle mechanisms of tropical forest degradation with application to their restoration
12:15pm Humanitarian Planners in the "Century of the Unsettled Man”
12:30pm Highlights from Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism
12:30pm Andras Petho: The Risks to Freedom in Hungary: Corruption, Propaganda, and Russian Influence
2:30pm AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II
4pm Using Computer Vision to Study Society: Methods and Challenges
4pm Trumpism in American Foreign Policy
4:15pm Digital Hormones: Emotional Humanoids and Spiritual Humans
4:30pm Ghost Species: the Uncertain Future of Woodland Caribou in the Anthropocene
4:30pm Higher Education Disrupted: Trajectories of Regulatory Transformation in Europe and the US
5pm Is MIT addicted to air travel?
5pm On Climate Change, We’re Toast. And if we don’t get serious now, probably burnt toast
5pm Art for Social Change: Talk by Nandita Das and Screening of Manto
5:30pm Southern Solidarity? Special Economic Zones and the Circulation of Planning Models in Zambia
5:30pm Panel Discussion: Central American Migration and Cultural Exchanges
6pm Doris Kearns Goodwin and David Gergen Lessons in Leadership: Presidential Character and the Making of a Leader
6pm How You Can Help Climate & Wildlife Scientists
6pm Unearthing the Truth of Slavery By Another Name
6pm Harvard i3 Innovation Challenge PITCH NIGHT
6:30pm Why We Cycle: Film Screening and Panel Discussion: An Evening on the Health, Sustainability, and Equity Benefits from Cycling
7pm This Is What Democracy Looks Like: The South
7:15pm Where Have All the Workers Gone? And Where Are All the Jobs?
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Tuesday, March 12
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12pm Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Is Transforming Kenya
12pm Tuesday Seminar Series: Voting for Victors: Why Violent Actors Win Postwar Elections
12:30pm Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan
2pm Ethics and Design Thinking: A 21st Century Craftsman
3:30pm Goldsmith Awards Panel Discussion
4pm Democratizing Web Automation: Programming for Social Scientists and Other Domain Experts
4pm The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet
4:15pm Genetics and Ethics in the Obama Administration
4:30pm The Rise of the New American Majority: The #WOKE Vote
5:15pm Biological Exchange in the Pacific World in the Age of Industrial Sugarcane Plantations
5:30pm Tide Tuesday: Sustainable Seafood
6pm Jeff Flake
6pm Goldsmith Awards Ceremony 2019 with Marty Baron
6:30pm Cuba: Why The Revolution Still Matters with Professor Aviva Chomsky
7pm Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia
7pm The Fourth String: A Memoir of Sensei and Me
7pm Science for the People
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Wednesday, March 13
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8am Buildings and Energy Roundtable
12pm Accelerating Cancer Research by Partnering with Patients
12pm Sack Lunch Seminar (SLS) Series: Human Evolution and Climate Change
12pm Cybersecurity: What You Need to Know and Why
12pm Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority
12pm Mining, Toxics and Environmental justice
12pm Planning to Fail: The US Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan
12:30pm Michael McFaul: From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia
3:45pm Machines in Motion: The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Oil, 1967-1973
4pm Where is Energy Storage Going?
4:30pm Climate Overtime: Is a Price on Carbon the Solution We Need?
4:30pm Back from the Brink: Restoration History and Coaster Brook Trout
5pm Stuart Cunningham and David Craig: Social Media Entertainment
5pm A conversation about Art, Music, and Social Justice with Deborah Borda, New York Philharmonic Orchestra and renowned Cellist, Yo-Yo Ma
5:15pm The Power and Limits of Deep Learning
6pm A Conversation with Governor Gina Raimondo and Dean Douglas Elmendorf
6pm CRISPR: What is it and where is it going?
6pm Nationalism: Here, There, and Everywhere?
6:30pm Waste Not, Want Not: Shifting Toward a Zero-Waste Lifestyle
6:30pm Worlds within Worlds
6:30pm A Conversation on Allyship with Michael Kaufman
6:30pm The Middle East between Trump’s Deal and the Israeli Elections: A Regional Outlook from Israel
7pm This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
7pm Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel
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Thursday, March 14 & Friday, March 15
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BuildingEnergy Boston 2019
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Thursday, March 14
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8:30am Carbon Drawdown Now: Turning Buildings into Carbon Sinks
11:45am The Role of Business & Public-Private Partnerships in Addressing Urgent Social Needs
12pm Heather Clish, Director of Conservation & Recreation Policy, Appalachian Mountain Club
12pm Adding Up to Peace Book Talk
12pm PON Book Talk: Leading with Dignity: How to Create a Culture That Brings Out the Best in People
12:30pm Waste to Energy Facilities
3pm Aeronautics Research at NASA: New Frontiers in Aviation
4pm The Origin of Cellular Life
4:30pm Climate Grief: Toxics, Global Warming and Loons in the Boreal North
4:30pm Starr Forum: From Cold War to Hot Peace
4:30pm The Transformation of Saudi Arabia and the Geopolitics of the Middle East
5pm Defense Innovation Night: The Role of Venture Capital
5pm Industrial Augmented Reality: What's Next?
5:15pm How Could Machines Learn Like Animals and Humans?
6pm George Estreich and Sara Hendren: Fables and Futures
6pm Art and Science Converge in the Deep Sea
6pm Screening of “Paris to Pittsburgh” followed by expert panel discussion
6pm Promoting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Women's Leadership, Religion, and Leveraging Scholarship
6:30pm Intro to the Boston Startup Community
7pm The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
7pm Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure
7pm Women in Art and Science, Seekers All
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Friday, March 15
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8am New Space Age
8:30am EBC Climate Change Program: A Massachusetts Response to Municipal Adaptation & Resiliency
11am International School Strike for Climate
12pm Challenges and opportunities in modeling cross-scale, cross-sector feedbacks to inform critical decision-making in food-energy-water systems
12pm Solar radiation management: global or regional?
12pm The Future of Health Care?: Medicaid Buy-In and State Trailblazing in Health Care
4pm Space Traveling: A Lecture by Agnes Meyer-Brandis
5:30pm God, Beauty and Mathematics
7pm Making China Modern
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Saturday, March 16
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10am The Community Maple Sap Boil Down
10am Food as Medicine, the New Farmacy
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Monday, March 18
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12pm Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, anc Climate [PAOC]
2:15pm Sharing an Online Roadmap for Social Responsibility Guidance in the Seafood Industry
4pm Civic Experience: Covering the Nation's Capital
5pm #MeToo in France
6pm Boston New Technology FinTech & Blockchain Startup Showcase
7pm Brookline Talks Presents: Debby Irving, Waking Up White
7pm Climate Change in Focus: Finding Hope Through Democratic Action
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Tuesday, March 19
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11:30am 7th Annual Massachusetts WATER FORUM
11:45am World Water Week Panel
11:45am The Global Menace of Plastic Waste
12pm Film Screening: Left on Pearl
12pm CREOS Brown Bag - Cognitive Efficiency and Roles for Visual Thinking Tools
4pm A Taste of Techstars - Presented by Techstars Sustainability and STANLEY + Techstars Accelerator
4:30pm The State of Autonomous Driving
4:30pm New Tools for Sensing Microplastic Pollution, an Emerging Food Security Issue
4:30pm Myron Weiner Seminar Series on International Migration
5:30pm In Real Life: Designing for Impact Workshop
6pm Exploring Race through Drama
6pm Leveraging Machine Learning Approach to Optimize the Participation of a Wind and Storage Power Plant
6:30pm Planting Native Species: How You can Contribute to Enhancing the Edibility of Northeast Landscapes!
7pm Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture: The Second Founding
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com
Friday, March 15 #ClimateStrike
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/7/1840403/-Friday-March-15-Climatestrike
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Monday, March 11
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Reconstructing Last Interglacial Sea Level from the Geology of the Bahamas
Monday, March 11
12:00PM
Harvard, Geological Museum 102, Haller Hall, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Blake Dyer, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Columbia University
EPS Colloquium
Contact Name: Summer Smith
Summer_Smith at fas.harvar.edu
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Legal Controversies about State Clean Energy Policies in Courts and at FERC
Monday, March 11
12:00PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
Ari Peskoe, Director of the Electricity Law Initiative, Harvard Law School
HKS Energy Policy Seminar
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/energyconsortium/seminars
Lunch will be served. This event is free and open to the public.
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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Book Launch: Global Health Justice and Governance
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C (2036), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Law
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Part of the Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP), a collaboration between the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI) at Harvard University.
SPEAKER(S) Jennifer Prah Ruger, Amartya Sen Professor of Health Equity, Economics, and Policy, School of Social Policy & Practice; Associate Dean for Global Studies; Faculty Chair, Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP); and founder and director, Health Equity and Policy Lab (HEPL), University of Pennsylvania
Michael Stein, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Co-founder and Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability
Alicia Ely Yamin, Senior Fellow, Global Health and Rights Project, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, Harvard Law School; Senior Scholar in Residence, Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI), Harvard University; Adjunct Lecturer on Global Health and Population, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health; and Affiliate, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Moderator: Carmel Shachar, Executive Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eg0phc9eeaa5b936&oseq=&c=&ch=
DETAILS In a world beset by serious and unconscionable health disparities, by dangerous contagions that can circle our globalized planet in hours, and by a bewildering confusion of health actors and systems, humankind needs a new vision, a new architecture, new coordination among renewed systems to ensure central health capabilities for all. Dr. Jennifer Prah Ruger's recent book, "Global Health Justice and Governance" (Oxford University Press, 2018), lays out the critical problems facing the world today and offers a new theory of justice and governance as a way to resolve these seemingly intractable issues.
A fundamental responsibility of society is to ensure human flourishing. The central role that health plays in flourishing places a unique claim on our public institutions and resources, to ensure central health capabilities to reduce premature death and avoid preventable morbidities. Faced with staggering inequalities, imperiling epidemics, and inadequate systems, the world desperately needs a new global health architecture.
Join us for a discussion of these issues with the author!
LINK https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/book-launch-global-health-justice-and-governance
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Understanding principle mechanisms of tropical forest degradation with application to their restoration
Monday, March 11
12:10p
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Research Building, 1300 Centre Street, Roslindale
Mark Ashton, Professor and Director of School Forests, Yale University
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Humanitarian Planners in the "Century of the Unsettled Man"
Monday, March 11
12:15PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Marianne F. Potvin, Harvard, GSD
STS Circle at Harvard
http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/events/sts_circle/
Please RSVP via the online form by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
sts at hks.harvard.edu
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Highlights from Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism
Monday, March 11
12:30 – 1:45 pm
Tufts, Mugar 200, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PhmvUWaiZgdwIaKDV5sQUbrRBmJNvzQb7uXGwGoLYFE/
Robin Chase is a transportation entrepreneur. She is co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the world’s leading carsharing network; as well as co-founder of Veniam, a network company that moves terabytes of data between vehicles and the cloud. She has recently co-founded her first nonprofit, NUMO, a global alliance to channel the opportunities presented by new urban mobility technologies to build cities that are sustainable and just.
She sits on the Boards of the World Resources Institute and Tucows, and serves on the Dutch multinational DSM’s Sustainability Advisory Board. Robin lectures widely, has been frequently featured in the major media, and has received many awards in the areas of innovation, design, and environment, including the prestigious Urban Land Institute’s Nicols Prize as Urban Visionary, Time 100 Most Influential People, Fast Company Fast 50 Innovators, and BusinessWeek Top 10 Designers.
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Andras Petho: The Risks to Freedom in Hungary: Corruption, Propaganda, and Russian Influence
Monday, March 11
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EDT
Tufts, Murrow Room, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/andras-petho-the-risks-to-freedom-in-hungary-corruption-propaganda-and-russian-influence-registration-57058834510
Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program and the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at The Fletcher School for a lunch conversation with Hungarian journalist Andras Petho on the risks to freedom in Hungary. Although Hungary appeared to transform into a stable democracy after the fall of communism, it seems to have backtracked on democracy and the rule of law under the leadership of Viktor Orban since 2010. Freedom of the press and other democratic institutions now appear to be under attack. What role have geopolitics, Russian-style propaganda, and corruption played in all of this? Lunch will be provided. Attendance is by registration only on Eventbrite.
Andras Petho is a co-founder and editor of Direkt36, an investigative reporting center based in Hungary. Previously, he was a senior editor at news site Origo, which he left in protest against political pressure in 2014. During his 17 years as a journalist, he also worked for the BBC World Service and spent 8 months at the investigative unit of The Washington Post, where he contributed to several major reporting projects. In 2008, he spent three months in the United States as a World Press Institute fellow, visiting newsrooms and covering the historic presidential election campaign. In 2012 and 2013 he was a Humphrey Fellow at the University of Maryland where he took courses in data journalism and investigative reporting.
He has received the Soma Prize, the annual award dedicated to investigative journalism in Hungary, twice. He has been reporting extensively about political corruption and in recent years he has focused on how people with close ties to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban are benefiting from public funds. He has been a member of a number of international investigative collaborations, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers project that exposed the hidden world of offshore businesses. He has taught journalism courses at Hungarian colleges and given talks at various conferences.
Direkt36 is an independent non-profit investigative reporting center based in Budapest, Hungary. It was founded in 2014 with the mission to hold the powerful accountable. Direkt36 covers some of the most pressing issues Hungarian society faces, including widespread political corruption, the misuse of power and the growing influence of Russia over Hungary’s politics and economy. The center has also been an active contributor to international reporting projects, such as the Panama Papers. Direkt36’s exposés have triggered numerous official inquiries by Hungarian and EU authorities.
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AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II
Monday, March 11
2:30pm to 3:45pm
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Oriol Vinyals, PhD; Google DeepMind
Abstract: Games have been used for decades as an important way to test and evaluate the performance of artificial intelligence systems. As capabilities have increased, the research community has sought games with increasing complexity that capture different elements of intelligence required to solve scientific and real-world problems. In recent years, StarCraft, considered to be one of the most challenging Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games and one of the longest-played esports of all time, has emerged by consensus as a “grand challenge” for AI research.
In this talk, Oriol will introduce our StarCraft II program AlphaStar, the first Artificial Intelligence to defeat a top professional player. In a series of test matches held on 19 December, AlphaStar decisively beat Team Liquid’s Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz, one of the world’s strongest professional StarCraft players, 5-1, following a successful benchmark match against his team-mate Dario “TLO” Wünsch. The matches took place under professional match conditions on a competitive ladder map and without any game restrictions.
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Using Computer Vision to Study Society: Methods and Challenges
Monday, March 11
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-G449, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Timnit Gebru , Google
Abstract: Targeted socio-economic policies require an accurate understanding of a country's demographic makeup. To that end, the United States spends more than 1 billion dollars a year gathering census data such as race, gender, education, occupation and unemployment rates. Compared to the traditional method of collecting surveys across many years which is costly and labor intensive, data-driven, machine learning driven approaches are cheaper and faster--with the potential ability to detect trends in close to real time. In this work, we leverage the ubiquity of Google Street View images and develop a computer vision pipeline to predict income, per capita carbon emission, crime rates and other city attributes from a single source of publicly available visual data. We first detect cars in 50 million images across 200 of the largest US cities and train a model to determine demographic attributes using the detect cars. To facilitate our work, we used a graph based algorithm to collect a challenging fine-grained dataset consisting of over 2600 classes of cars comprised of images from Google Street View and other web sources. Our prediction results correlate well with ground truth income (r=0.82), race, education, voting, sources investigating crime rates, income segregation, per capita carbon emission, and other market research. Data mining based works such as this one can be used for many types of applications--some ethical and others not. I will finally discuss work (inspired by my experiences while working on this project), on auditing and exposing biases found in computer vision systems. Using recent work on exposing the gender and skin type bias found in commercial gender classification systems as a case study, I will discuss how the lack of standardization and documentation in AI is leading to biased systems used in high stakes scenarios. I will end with the concept of AI datasheets for datasets, and model cards for model reporting to standardize information for datasets and pre-trained models, to push the field as a whole towards transparency and accountability. Host: Antonio Torralba.
Bio: Timnit Gebru is a research scientist in the Ethical AI team at Google and just finished her postdoc in the Fairness Accountability Transparency and Ethics (FATE) group at Microsoft Research, New York. Prior to that, she was a PhD student in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, studying computer vision under Fei-Fei Li. Her main research interest is in data mining large-scale, publicly available images to gain sociological insight, and working on computer vision problems that arise as a result, including fine-grained image recognition, scalable annotation of images, and domain adaptation. She is currently studying the ethical considerations underlying any data mining project, and methods of auditing and mitigating bias in sociotechnical systems. The New York Times, MIT Tech Review and others have recently covered her work. As a cofounder of the group Black in AI, she works to both increase diversity in the field and reduce the negative impacts of racial bias in training data used for human-centric machine learning models.
Contact: Mary McDavitt, 617-253-9620, mmcdavit at csail.mit.edu
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Trumpism in American Foreign Policy
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Loeb House, 17 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
SPEAKER(S) Peter J. Katzenstein, Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Cornell University.
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Sarah Banse
sarahbanse at wcfia.harvard.edu
DETAILS The Warren and Anita Manshel Lecture in American Foreign Policy with Peter Katzenstein
The public tends to associate certain traditions in US foreign policy with Donald Trump himself: ethnonationalism, populism, and an ‘America First’ rhetoric. But how do we differentiate the man from the political repertoire that Trump articulates — and to some extent stands for? Put simply, Trumpism is not the same as Trump.
This event will also be streamed live on the WCFIA Facebook page: www.facebook.com…
LINK https://wcfia.harvard.edu/events/manshel19-katzenstein
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Digital Hormones: Emotional Humanoids and Spiritual Humans
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 4:15 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S250, Porté Room, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Asia Center Science and Technology Seminar Series; co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies
SPEAKER(S) Jennifer Robertson, Professor of Anthropology and the History of Art, University of Michigan
Chair: Victor Seow, Assistant professor of the History of Science, Harvard University
DETAILS Many Japanese roboticists building humanoids today have sought to imbue their robots with “heart” (kokoro), which they translate into English as both “consciousness” and “emotion.” Recently, the popular media have been full of references to “emotional” (kokoro-bearing) and even “spiritual” robots, with specific reference to Pepper, SoftBank’s humanoid that debuted in 2015. This talk will discuss (and demystify) efforts to develop Pepper’s “emotional recognition engine” based on biology-inspired “digital hormones.” In this connection, we revisit the declaration by pioneering roboticist Mori Masahiro that robots have the “Buddha-nature” within them and consider how robotic technologies are deployed by humans to give shape and expression to their spiritual ideas and needs.
LINK https://asiacenter.harvard.edu/events/digital-hormones-emotional-humanoids-and-spiritual-humans-400
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Ghost Species: the Uncertain Future of Woodland Caribou in the Anthropocene
Monday, March 11
4:30-6:00PM
Brandeis, MCH G3, Barbara Mandel Auditorium, 415 South St, Waltham
Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)
Mandel Lectures in the Humanities
Reception to Follow
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Higher Education Disrupted: Trajectories of Regulatory Transformation in Europe and the US
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Adolphus Busch Hall, Goldman Room, 27 Kirkland Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Co-sponsored by: Universities: Past, Present, and Future Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center and Seminar on Social Exclusion and Inclusion, Center for European Studies
SPEAKER(S) Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Visiting Scholar 2011-2012, CES
Manja Klemencic, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Harvard University
COST free
DETAILS Higher education has taken center stage in countries’ attempts to sustain economic growth and social welfare in the 21st century. Across the world, policymakers have expanded the sector and launched far-reaching structural changes to meet the challenges of the “knowledge economy.” What are the patterns of convergence and diversity in reforms across countries? This presentation explores the comparative politics of institutional change in Germany and the US through the lens of the “regulatory welfare state.” It shows how a focus on the growing scope of competition-sustaining regulation, including on how shifting rules interact with fiscal transfers, can illuminate policymakers’ attempts to steer the higher education sector in line with reconceived goals. In the process, the analysis seeks to make three broader contributions. It strives to clarify the reconfiguration of public authority in higher education, delineate the effects of differential state capacities, and theorize links between regulatory governance and welfare states’ turns to sustaining national competitiveness and providing social investment.
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/universities-past-present-and-future
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Is MIT addicted to air travel?
Monday, March 11
5:00pm
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
DUSP Climate's second lecture on Monday, March 11th, at 5 PM in 9-255 (City Arena) with Parke Wilde, a professor at the Friedman School, who will talk about Flying and Climate Change. He will provide an overview of the aviation industry’s contribution to climate change and will specifically discuss the role of academic flying, with conversation to follow.
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On Climate Change, We’re Toast. And if we don’t get serious now, probably burnt toast
Monday, March 11
Reception at 5:00 followed by talk at 5:30pm
Tufts, Cabot 702, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
M. Granger Morgan is the Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds appointments in three academic units: the Department of Engineering and Public Policy; the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and the H. John Heinz III College. His research addresses problems in science, technology and public policy with a particular focus on energy, electric power, environmental systems, climate change, the adoption of new technologies, and risk analysis. Much of his work has involved the development and demonstration of methods to characterize and treat uncertainty in quantitative policy analysis. At Carnegie Mellon, Morgan co-directs (with Inês Azevedo) the NSF Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making and (with Jay Apt) the university’s Electricity Industry Center.
Morgan is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At the National Academies, he serves as the NAS co-chair of the Report Review Committee and has chaired a variety of consensus studies. Morgan is a member of the board for the International Risk Governance Council Foundation and of the Advisory Board for the E.ON Energy Research Center, RWTH Aachen. He is a member of the DOE’s Electricity Advisory Committee and of the Energy Advisory Committee of PNNL. In the past, he served as Chair of the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and as Chair of the Advisory Council of the Electric Power Research Institute. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the IEEE, and the Society for Risk Analysis. He holds a BA from Harvard College (1963) where he concentrated in Physics, an MS in Astronomy and Space Science from Cornell (1965) and a Ph.D. from the Department of Applied Physics and Information Sciences at the University of California at San Diego (1969).
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Art for Social Change: Talk by Nandita Das and Screening of Manto
Monday, March 11
5:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building 32-123, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/art-for-social-change-talk-by-nandita-das-and-screening-of-manto-registration-55987053785
Join MIT-India, the MIT School of Engineering and the Office of the Associate Provost for this exciting event:
5:00 Talk by Nandita Das: Art for Social Change
5:30: Screening of Manto, followed by a Q&A
Manto follows the life of maverick writer Saadat Hasan Manto and the two countries he inhabited - India and Pakistan. Set during the Independence of India that led to the Partition, Manto is compelled to make a difficult choice of leaving his beloved Bombay for the newly born Pakistan.
Nandita Das is an actor, filmmaker and social advocate. Manto premiered at Cannes and is her second directorial feature, after Firaqq. She will share why she chose to tell the story of Manto and the difficulties of making an independent film in the mainstream film landscape.
Open to the public.
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Southern Solidarity? Special Economic Zones and the Circulation of Planning Models in Zambia
Monday, March 11
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
MIT, Building E19-319, 400 Main Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Dr. Dorothy Tang (MIT DUSP)
Special economic zones (SEZs) have played an important role in China’s global investment strategies since the “Going Global” policy in 2000 and the recent “Belt and Road Initiative” of 2013. Currently, there are 113 Chinese-financed economic zones in 46 countries underway—of which twenty are officially and funded recognized by the Chinese government. This paper examines the design and planning of SEZs in Zambia to understand the relationship between Chinese state-led overseas development projects and their relationships to the host countries. As one of the first sites of Chinese development aid in the 1970s and subsequent investment in the 2000s, Zambia has a long-standing history of “Southern Solidarity” with China. Zambia is also one of the first sites of Japanese experiments in “South-South Cooperation” in which a tripartite collaboration, including Malaysian consultants, were crucial in shaping Zambian foreign investment policies. A spatial comparison of SEZs separately funded by Chinese investors and the Zambian state suggests that urban design decisions, such as location, infrastructural connections, land-use planning, and environmental concerns are subject to competing domestic politics and geo-political interests. In addition, while the SEZ model has largely been credited for the China’s miraculous urban and economic transformation since the 1980s, its origins and proliferation are far more global. By tracing the genealogy of Zambian SEZs, we uncover a diverse network of international actors, deep histories of engagement, and a wide circulation of planning ideas that collectively shape Zambia’s urban landscape.
Bio: Dorothy Tang is currently a doctoral student at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. She is a landscape architect interested in the intersections of infrastructure and everyday life. Her work engages with urban and rural communities situated in landscapes confronting large-scale environmental change. She was the co-curator for Counterpart Cities, a design and research workshop addressing the challenges of climate change in the China’s Pearl River Delta, and has collaborated with rural communities to develop sustainable landscape prototypes. Current research projects include urban storm water management in Chinese cities, urban development in the post-industrial gold mining lands in Johannesburg and the proliferation of Chinese urban investments in Africa.
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Panel Discussion: Central American Migration and Cultural Exchanges
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S216, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Exhibitions, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Beatriz Cortez, Visual artist and professor, Department of Central American Studies, California State University, Northridge
Alexandra Ortiz Wallner, Professor, Institute of Latin American Studies, Freie Unviersität Berlin
Kirsten Weld, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University
Moderator: Sergio Delgado Moya, Acting associate professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Emory College
COST Free and Open to the Public
CONTACT INFO drclas at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS The proposed panel discussion is part of the supporting programing for the exhibition "Arquitectura del vaivén: Diasporic Building(s) in Central America’s Northern Triangle," organized by DRCLAS Arts and the Central America and the Caribbean’s programs during the academic year 2018-19, and curated by Gabriela Poma, Harvard University Doctoral student in Romance Languages and Literatures. The panel responds to interest in the study of displacement, movement and migration as exchange. The programing also features the screening of Los ofendidos followed by a discussion with the film director, Marcela Zamora (El Salvador/Nicaragua), which will take place earlier that day and that we hope to further comment during the panel discussion.
LINK https://drclas.harvard.edu/event/panel-discussion-central-american-migration?delta=0
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Doris Kearns Goodwin and David Gergen Lessons in Leadership: Presidential Character and the Making of a Leader
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Doris Kearns Goodwin, Author, "Leadership: In Turbulent Times"; presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author
David Gergen, Professor of Public Service and founding director, Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office
617-495-1380
DETAILS Join us for a conversation with presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin and Harvard Kennedy School's David Gergen.
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/doris-kearns-goodwin-and-david-gergen-lessons-leadership-presidential-character-and-making
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How You Can Help Climate & Wildlife Scientists
Monday, March 11
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
250 Fresh Pond Parkway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-you-can-help-climate-wildlife-scientists-tickets-52434338518
Climate Change Science & Biodiversity Science need you and the information you can collect. And the good news is that you can easily and really make a difference! This is a crash course about participative science (a.k.a. citizen science), that is the active public involvement in scientific research. In this class, we introduce you to what citizen science is, why it is needed, where it is needed, how you can help (individually or joining some of our local projects including at the Fresh Pond Reservoir), and some of the tools to help.
Join us. It's fun & exciting. Let's make a difference together!
For any question, contact Claire at claire.oneill at earthwiseaware.org
Learn about Earthwise Aware at https://www.earthwiseaware.org/
$ Free with a value: Our events are not meant to be free. The reason why we offer this one for free is to benefit Nature directly by having us all together connecting with 'It' —here through exploring together how we can better that connection. Donations to EwA are welcome though!
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Unearthing the Truth of Slavery By Another Name
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
SPEAKER(S) Reginald Moore and Samuel Collins III, Convict Leasing and Labor Project
COST Free and Open to the Public
DETAILS A blue storage pod in the broiling sun of south Texas is now the resting place of the remains of 95 convict laborers who died in the sugar plantations of the ironically named Sugar Land, Texas. Unearthed were they lay for more than a century in a quiet field to make way for a school, the violation of their remains is evidence of America’s continuing and collective whitewashing and ignorance of its history — a history that through the violation of the burial sites of the African American dead continues to today and tomorrow.
The discovery of the remains of 95 black inmates at the Imperial Prison Farm in Sugar Land has drawn national attention to the history of convict leasing in Texas and the Greater Houston Area. Our speakers will examine this history and the current struggle to honor and memorialize the lives and deaths of these 94 men and one woman.
The talk will expose the now known narrative of leased convicts as laborers, often in horrific conditions and with little or no regard to their human value or their lives. Truth and reconciliation are sequential — only by unearthing the invisible and desecrated stories can we begin to loosen the chokehold of racism in America and embolden a new national identity of racial justice and reconciliation.
LINK https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/event/reginald-moore-samuel-collins-iii-unearthing-truth-slavery-another-name?delta=0
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Harvard i3 Innovation Challenge PITCH NIGHT
Monday, March 11
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Harvard, Cabot Science Library, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harvard-i3-innovation-challenge-pitch-night-tickets-55682828840
Harvard student-innovators will pitch their startups to a panel of notable judges, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. Food and drinks provided!
You are invited to the Challenge's Capstone "Pitch Night" Event where the semi-finalist student-innovators pitch to a notable panel of judges in Cabot Library! 18 startup teams will be gunning for their spot in the Finals. They will be judged by a stellar cast of innovative executives and successful entrepreneurs.
Abundant dinner, drinks, snacks and baked goods will be provided!
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Why We Cycle: Film Screening and Panel Discussion: An Evening on the Health, Sustainability, and Equity Benefits from Cycling
Monday, March 11
6:30–9 pm
Harvard, Piper Auditorium, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
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This Is What Democracy Looks Like: The South
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 7 – 8:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Littauer, 230, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Andrew Gillum, Mayor of Tallahassee, Florida (2014-2018), 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and IOP Spring 2019 Resident Fellow
LaTosha Brown, Co-founder of Black Voters Matter
DETAILS Today’s American South is younger, more diverse, and more innovative — so why is it still largely a one-party region? Meanwhile, the South remains a hotly contested political battleground and key to both parties’ hopes of winning the White House. What are the legacies of the South’s history — cultural, racial, political — that persist to this day? While many southern cities have become centers of diversity and economic growth, southerners living outside of metropolitan areas are feeling left behind. As a son of Miami who grew up in Gainesville and Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum will bring his lived experience to this session. What are the historical and cultural legacies where you grew up?
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/calendar/events/mayor-andrew-gillum-south
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Where Have All the Workers Gone? And Where Are All the Jobs?
WHEN Monday, Mar. 11, 2019, 7:15 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Starr Auditorium, 4th floor, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Heidi Heitkamp, U.S. Senator for North Dakota (2013-2019) and IOP Spring 2019 Visiting Fellow
Gary Cohn, Director of the National Economic Council (2017-2018), former president & COO of Goldman Sachs, and IOP Spring 2019 Visiting Fellow
DETAILS The nature of work in America is changing. New technologies, globalization, and changes in productivity are disrupting the U.S. labor market, causing economic and electoral consequences. What is the future of work, both domestically and abroad? What is the best way for government to support workers and progress? Join Sen. Heitkamp and Gary Cohn for a conversation on the real state of work in America.
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/calendar/events/sen-heidi-heitkamp-and-gary-cohn-where-have-all-workers-gone-and-where-are-all-jobs
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Tuesday, March 12
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Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Is Transforming Kenya
Tuesday, March 12
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM ET
Harvard, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East C (Room 2036, Second Floor), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeN0AXpp3JvLIRMtS9Haw9OVqpVeqWoBNylw8f73teCr_xwJw/viewform
Join us for a conversation with author Nanjala Nyabola and 2017 Berkman Klein Fellow Grace Mutung'u about Nanjala's book, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya.
Kenya is the most digitally advanced country in sub-Saharan Africa, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and other online platforms are part of everyday life. And, as in Western nations, the digital age has had dramatic effects on society and politics. Yet, while we hear about the #MeToo movement and the Russian bot scandal, there is little appreciation for the feminist movement #MyDressMyChoice and the subversion of state-run political propaganda by social media.
Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics aims to change this by presenting a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalized groups, particularly women and the disabled, digital spaces have provided vital platforms that allow Kenyans to build new communities that transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. Covering attempts by political elites to prevent social movements from translating online visibility into meaningful offline gains, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts to contain online activism and new methods of feminist mobilization, as well as how “fake news,” Cambridge Analytica, and allegations of hacking contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy for the first time from the African perspective, Nanjala Nyabola’s groundbreaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.
This event will be live webcast at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2019-03-12/digital-democracy-analogue-politics at noon on event date.
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Tuesday Seminar Series: Voting for Victors: Why Violent Actors Win Postwar Elections
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
SPEAKER(S) Sarah Daly, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Columbia University
Moderated by Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO drclas at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS This project seeks to understand political life after episodes of mass violence. After suffering wartime atrocities and winning peace, millions of people around the world elect to live under the rule of political actors with deep roots in the violent organizations of the past. This book analyzes why citizens vote for actors with violent pasts and what the implications of these elections are for efforts at successful peacebuilding and democratization.
LINK https://drclas.harvard.edu/event/voting-victors-why-violent-actors-win-postwar-elections?delta=0
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Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel Building, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Professor of History, Williams College
Moderated by Andrew Gordon, Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Professor of History, Harvard University; Acting Director (2018-19), Harvard-Yenching Institute
COST Free and open to the public
LINK https://programs.wcfia.harvard.edu/us-japan/calendar/upcoming
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Ethics and Design Thinking: A 21st Century Craftsman
Tuesday, March 12
2:00pm to 3:00pm
MIT, Building E14, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Conversations with Miklu Silvanto
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Goldsmith Awards Panel Discussion
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 3:30 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Wexner 434, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center, Harvard Kennedy School
DETAILS A panel discussion with the 2019 finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.
Finalists include: Alabama Media Group; The Dallas Morning News; The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism with FRONTLINE; The Philadelphia Inquirer; ProPublica; The South Bend Tribune with ProPublica; and The Wall Street Journal.
LINK https://shorensteincenter.org/event/goldsmith-awards-2019-panel-discussion/
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Democratizing Web Automation: Programming for Social Scientists and Other Domain Experts
Tuesday, March 12
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-D463, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Sarah Chasins , University of California, Berkeley
ABSTRACT: We have promised social scientists a data revolution, but it hasn’t arrived. What stands between practitioners and the data-driven insights they want? Acquiring the data. In particular, acquiring the social media, online forum, and other web data that was supposed to help them produce big, rich, ecologically valid datasets. Web automation programming is resistant to high-level abstractions, so end-user programmers end up stymied by the need to reverse engineer website internals—DOM, JavaScript, AJAX. Programming by Demonstration (PBD) offered one promising avenue towards democratizing web automation. Unfortunately, as the web matured, the programs became too complex for PBD tools to synthesize, and web PBD progress stalled.
In this talk, I’ll describe how I reformulated traditional web PBD around the insight that demonstrations are not always the easiest way for non-programmers to communicate their intent. By shifting from a purely Programming-By-Demonstration view to a Programming-By-X view that accepts a variety of user-friendly inputs, we can dramatically broaden the class of programs that come in reach for end-user programmers. My Helena ecosystem combines (i) usable PBD-based program drafting tools, (ii) learnable programing languages, and (iii) novel programming environment interactions. The end result: non-coders write Helena programs in 10 minutes that can handle the complexity of modern webpages, while coders attempt the same task and time out in an hour. I’ll conclude with predictions about the abstraction-resistant domains that will fall next—robotics, analysis of unstructured texts, image processing—and how hybrid PL-HCI breakthroughs will vastly expand access to programming.
BIOGRAPHY: Sarah Chasins is a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley, advised by Ras Bodik. Her research interests lie at the intersection of programming languages and human-computer interaction. Much of her work is shaped by ongoing collaborations with social scientists, data scientists, and other non-traditional programmers. She has been awarded an NSF graduate research fellowship and a first place award in the ACM Student Research Competition.
Contact: Chadwick Collins, 617-452-2309, chadcoll at mit.edu
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The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and a Healthier Planet
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center, Lecture Hall D, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Hosted by the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Co-sponsored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health, and Planetary Health Alliance.
SPEAKER(S) Paul Greenberg, New York Times bestselling author of "Four Fish," "American Catch," and "The Omega Principle"
Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition
Christopher Golden, Assistant professor of Nutrition and Planetary Health
Susan Korrick, Assistant professor of Medicine
Moderator: Elsie Sunderland, Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Chemistry
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Erin Harleman, HUCE Events Coordinator
eharleman at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS HUCE presents a special lecture with Paul Greenberg, James Beard award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller "Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food." Greenberg will discuss his new book, "The Omega Principle: Seafood and the Quest for a Long Life and Healthier Planet," an eye-opening look at how the multi-billion dollar omega-3 industry is affecting our ocean sustainability and, ultimately, our health. A panel discussion will follow featuring Harvard faculty speaking on the relationship between the food we eat and the oceans that sustain us.
LINK http://environment.harvard.edu/events/2019-03-12-200000/omega-principle-seafood-and-quest-long-life-and-healthier-planet
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Genetics and Ethics in the Obama Administration
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Health Sciences, Humanities, Information Technology, Lecture, Research study, Science, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Alondra Nelson, President, Social Science Research Council; Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events at radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS In this lecture, Nelson will discuss the Obama administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and, in particular, the evolution of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in the United States. Register online.
LINK https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2019-alondra-nelson-lecture
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The Rise of the New American Majority: The #WOKE Vote
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 4:30 – 5:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Littauer 163, Faculty Dining Room, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Aisha Moodie-Mills, Democratic strategist, past president & CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, and IOP Spring 2019 Resident Fellow
Danielle Moodie-Mills, Host of "WokeAF" on SiriusXM Progress
DETAILS The Resistance to President Trump has fueled a wave of progressive political activism that reaches far beyond the political arena, and average Americans — young people in particular — who otherwise considered themselves apolitical are now hyper-engaged in political discourse for the first time. What does it mean to be “woke”? And are people actually becoming more “woke” or just doubling down on their long-held beliefs? What impact have Trump’s tweets, “fake news”, and the 24-hour news cycle had on the national consciousness? Election outcomes? We’ll talk to SiriusXM Progress host and “Warrior Princess of the Resistance”, about the importance of getting and staying woke, and what young people in particular can do to transform politics.
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/calendar/events/aisha-moodie-mills-woke-vote
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Biological Exchange in the Pacific World in the Age of Industrial Sugarcane Plantations
Tuesday, March 12
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts "Biological Exchange in the Pacific World in the Age of Industrial Sugarcane Plantations" with Lawrence Kessler, Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Comment by Nancy Shoemaker, University of Connecticut.
Attendance is free, but you can subscribe online ($25) for the convenience of advance online access to the papers in FOUR series: this, our new Boston African American History Seminar, the Boston Area Early American History Seminar, and the Boston Seminar on Modern American Society and Culture.
Boston Seminar on Environmental History
https://www.masshist.org/2012/calendar/seminars/environmental-history
Contact Name: Alex Buckley
abuckley at masshist.org
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Tide Tuesday: Sustainable Seafood
Tuesday, March 12
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
EVOO, 350 Third Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tide-tuesday-sustainable-seafood-tickets-56059458349
Cost: $10
Join us for the New England Aquarium’s inaugural Tide Tuesday! This exciting event, which will take place at EVOO Restaurant in Cambridge, MA, is a distinctive opportunity to learn more about the significance of sustainable seafood. EVOO chef and owner Peter McCarthy will provide delectable seafood bites while sustainable seafood experts from the New England Aquarium discuss the best choices surrounding seafood and answer any questions from those in attendance. A cash bar will be available; members of the Tide will receive one drink ticket. Tickets for the event are $10.
All proceeds support the Aquarium's Sustainable Seafood program - learn more about our program and current projects here.
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Jeff Flake
Tuesday, March 12
6 PM
Tufts, ASEAN Auditorium, Cabot Intercultural Center, 170 Packard Avenue Medford
RSVP at https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/content/jeff-flake
Join Tisch College for a conversation about the Senate, presidential politics, and the Republican Party with former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ). A former member of the House of Representatives, Flake was elected in 2012 to the Senate, where he served on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees. One of the Republican Party’s staunchest critics of President Trump, Flake announced he would not seek reelection during a 2017 Senate speech that famously denounced the President, party leaders, and the current “disrepair and destructiveness of our politics.” Prior to this political career, Flake served as a missionary in South Africa before graduating from Brigham Young University and as Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Namibia. Follow the conversation live at #JeffFlakeAtTufts
This event is sponsored by the Political Science Department and the Tufts Republicans.
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Goldsmith Awards Ceremony 2019 with Marty Baron
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 12, 2019, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Marty Baron, Executive editor, The Washington Post
Nancy Gibbs, Visiting Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice, HKS; former editor in chief of TIME
Nicco Mele, Lecturer in Public Policy and director, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office
617-495-1380
DETAILS The winner of the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting will be announced, followed by a conversation with Goldsmith Career Award winner Marty Baron. This event is open to the public, and will also be streamed online. The ceremony will be preceded by a panel discussion, from 3:30-5 p.m., in which finalists and special citation awardees will discuss the reporting behind the stories.
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/goldsmith-awards-ceremony-2019-marty-baron
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Cuba: Why The Revolution Still Matters with Professor Aviva Chomsky
Tuesday, March 12
6:30 PM
Main Library, 449 Broadway, Lecture Hall , Cambridge
While the U.S. media may portray Cuba as a crumbling relic of twentieth-century socialism, it is in fact a dynamic and vibrant country that has both changed drastically in the past three decades, and continues to engage with local, regional, and global events in significant ways. We will look at the changes that have been happening in Cuba and explore how studying the Cuban Revolution can help us
understand Latin American politics, migration, violence, global trade and economic issues, race, U.S. foreign policy, economic
development, and more
Aviva Chomsky is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Salem State University in
Massachusetts. Her books include /Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal/ (Beacon Press, 2014; Mexican edition, 2014), /A History of the Cuban Revolution/ (2011, 2^nd ed. 2015), /Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class/ (2008), /They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration/ (2007; U.S. Spanish edition 2011, Cuban edition 2013), and /West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940/ (1996). She has also co-edited several anthologies including /The People behind Colombian Coal: Mining, Multinationals and Human Rights/Bajo el manto del carb?n: Pueblos y multinacionales en las minas del Cerrej?n, Colombia/(2007), /The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics/ (2003, 2^nd edition 2019) and /Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic
Caribbean/ (1998). She has been active in Latin America solidarity and immigrants? rights movements for several decades.
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Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia
Tuesday, March 12
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes CHRISTINA THOMPSON—editor of Harvard Review and award-winning author of Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All—for a discussion her latest book, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia.
About Sea People
For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers, they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.
How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.
For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists, and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People combines the thrill of exploration with the drama of discovery in a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world.
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The Fourth String: A Memoir of Sensei and Me
Tuesday, March 12
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
The word sensei in Japanese literally means "one who came before," but that's not what Janet Pocorobba's teacher wanted to be called. She used her first name, Western-style. She wore a velour Beatles cap and leather jacket, and she taught foreigners, in English, the three-stringed shamisen, an instrument that fell out of tune as soon as you started to play it. Vexed by the music and Sensei's mission to upend an elite musical system, Pocorobba, on the cusp of thirty, gives up her return ticket home to become a lifelong student of her teacher. She is eventually featured in Japan Cosmo as one of the most accomplished gaijin, "outside people," to play the instrument.
Part memoir, part biography of her Sensei, The Fourth String looks back on the initial few years of that apprenticeship, one that Janet's own female English students advised her was "wife training," steeped in obedience, loyalty, and duty. Even with her maverick teacher, Janet is challenged by group hierarchies, obscure traditions, and the tricky spaces of silence in Japanese life.
Anmoku ryokai, Sensei says to explain: "We have to understand without saying."
By the time Janet finds out this life might not be for her, she is more at home in the music than the Japanese will allow.
For anyone who has had a special teacher, or has lost themselves in another world, Janet Pocorobba asks questions about culture, learning, tradition, and self. As Gish Jen has said of The Fourth String, "What does it mean to be taught? To be transformed?"
Janet’s involvement with Japan goes back more than twenty years and includes two decades of performing Japanese arts on two continents. She has studied shamisen, the three drums of the kabuki orchestra (ko-tsuzumi, o-tsuzumi, and shimedaiko), and Japanese dance. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Kyoto Journal, Harvard Review, [Nixes Mate], and others. She teaches in the Lesley low-residency MFA program in creative writing and is associate director of the program.
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Science for the People
Tuesday, March 12
7-9 PM
Northeastern School of Law, Dockser Hall 030, 65 Forsyth Street, Boston
Preliminary agenda at https://docs.google.com/document/d/19vmoHbP0vyyG_qSgZiR91G9vjqvzMG4uiNzFjeaml1w/
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Wednesday, March 13
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Buildings and Energy Roundtable
Monday, March 11
8:00 AM – 9:30 AM EDT
Edison, Floor 16, 50 Milk Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/buildings-and-energy-roundtable-tickets-57022969236
Cost: $50
USGBC MA’s mission is to drive sustainable and regenerative design, construction, and operation of the built environment. The only way to accomplish our mission is to collaborate with community members. To that end, join us for our Buildings and Energy Roundtable.
The Buildings and Energy Roundtable will enable like-minded professionals to gather and explore specific issues, define actions, develop strategies and explore solutions related to energy in the green building industry. Join us in moving the needle towards a net positive environment, society, and economy.
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Accelerating Cancer Research by Partnering with Patients
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 12 – 12:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Medical School Webinar, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Medical School Executive Education
SPEAKER(S) Corrie Painter, Ph.D. Associate Director of Operations and Scientific Outreach for the Broad Cancer Program
Associate Director of Count Me In
TICKET WEB LINK https://executiveeducation.hms.harvard.edu/thought-leadership/webinar-series/accelerating-cancer-research-partnering-patients?utm_source=Harvard_Gazette&utm_medium=event_calendar&utm_campaign=March_Webinar
DETAILS While survival rates from many cancers have been increasing over the past decade, we still lack effective therapies and cures for most cancers. Dr. Corrie Painter is leading the way in leveraging the power of the internet and our electronic interconnectedness to accelerate the pace of cancer treatment discoveries. The non-profit organization for which the is the Associate Director, Count Me In, partners directly with cancer patients to de-identify and publicly share data from their clinical and biological samples online. As a result, researchers from across the biomedical community can access this large, clinically-annotated genomics database with information from across a variety of different cancers to help accelerate treatment discoveries.
This webinar will explore how this is being done through the use of technology as well as the engagement of patients and other important players in the biomedical community, including physicians, scientists, researchers and anyone who is able to contribute to using this data to make discoveries in cancer treatment and cures.
LINK https://executiveeducation.hms.harvard.edu/thought-leadership/webinar-series/accelerating-cancer-research-partnering-patients?utm_source=Harvard_Gazette&utm_medium=event_calendar&utm_campaign=March_Webinar
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Sack Lunch Seminar (SLS) Series: Human Evolution and Climate Change
Wednesday, March 13
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Rachel Lupien, Brown University
About the Lecturer
I am a paleoclimatologist who uses organic biomarker isotopes to look at African Plio-Pleistocene climate and how climate change affects human evolution.
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Cybersecurity: What You Need to Know and Why
Wednesday, March 13
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
RSVP at https://alumniandfriends.tufts.edu/attend-events-reunions/cybersecurity-what-you-need-know-and-why
Cybersecurity is now an international crisis impacting every individual, business, and institution. It behooves us all to be more educated and proactive when it comes to our security in the digital realm. Learn more about this pressing issue including misconceptions and fallacies, perceived cybersecurity skills shortage, the sobering reality of most attacks and how to defend yourself and your business, and how Tufts is working to improve cybersecurity.
Presented by: Ming Chow, Senior Lecturer, Director of Alumni and Industrial Relations, Computer Science Department
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Sovereignty and the New Executive Authority
Wednesday, March 13
12pm
Harvard, WCC Milstein West A/B, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Claire Finkelstein and Adrian Vermuele
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Mining, Toxics and Environmental justice
Wednesday, March 13
12:00-1:00PM
Brandeis, MCH 303, Mandel Reading Room, 415 South Street, Waltham
Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)
Here is the link to the article to read for the talk: https://placesjournal.org/article/the-wisconsin-experiment/?cn-reloaded=1
Mandel Lectures in the Humanities,Lunch Symposium
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Planning to Fail: The US Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan
Wednesday, March 13
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
SSP Wednesday Seminar
James Lebovic (The George Washington Universtiy)
SUMMARY
Despite its planning, the United States has failed to meet its early objectives in almost every one of its major, post-World War II conflicts. Of these troubled efforts, the US wars in Vietnam (1965-73), Iraq (2003-11), and Afghanistan (2001-present) stand out for their endurance, resource investment, human cost, and common decisional failings. US Policymakers focus on short-term policy goals, instruments, constraints, and guidelines -- proximate objectives, presumed tasks and tactics, "available" resources, and time schedules -- at the expense of overarching goals. A profound myopia, at four stages of intervention, helps explain why the United States fought; chose to increase, decrease, or end its involvement in a conflict; encountered a progressively reduced set of options; and ultimately settled for suboptimal results.
BIO
James H. Lebovic is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. He has published widely on defense policy, deterrence strategy, arms control, military budgets and procurement, foreign aid, democracy and human rights, international conflict, cooperation in international organizations, and military intervention. He is the author of six books including Planning to Fail: The US Wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming), Flawed Logics: Strategic Nuclear Arms Control from Truman to Obama (Johns Hopkins University, 2013), The Limits of US Military Capability: Lessons from Vietnam and Iraq (Johns Hopkins University, 2010), and Deterring International Terrorism and Rogue States: US National Security Policy after 9/11 (Routledge, 2007). Until February 2017, he served as chair of the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association.
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Michael McFaul: From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia
Wednesday, March 13
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Tufts, Cabot 703, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/michael-mcfaul-from-cold-war-to-hot-peace-an-american-ambassador-in-putins-russia-tickets-55706791513
Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School for a lunch conversation with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about his new book From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia (2018). Lunch will be provided. Attendance is by registration only on Eventbrite. Please only register if you know you can attend, as spaces are limited.
Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University from June to August of 2015. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post.
McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations between China, Russia, and the United States, and the relationship between democracy and development. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.
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Machines in Motion: The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Oil, 1967-1973
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 3:45 – 5:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Robinson Hall, Lower Library, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR U.S. Power in the Global Arena
SPEAKER(S) Victor McFarland, University of Missouri
CONTACT INFO Charles Warren Center
Emerson Hall, 4th floor
Cambridge
DETAILS Workshop on U.S. Power in the Global Arena
LINK https://warrencenter.fas.harvard.edu/event/victor-mcfarland-university-missouri
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Where is Energy Storage Going?
Wednesday, March 13
4:00pm
BC, Higgins Hall, Room 310, Chestnut Hill
George Crabtree, Argonne National Laboratory
Energy storage is central to many emerging technologies, including electric vehicles for transportation, renewable electricity integration, decarbonization and smart distributed energy resources on the electric grid, and electric flight. Achieving the full value of these game-changing opportunities requires a diversity of designer batteries for a diversity of applications, where each battery meets multiple targeted performance metrics required by its host application. JCESR will develop a new approach to these transformative materials, designing and building them “from the bottom up,” atom-by-atom and molecule-by-molecule, where each atom or molecule plays a prescribed role in producing the targeted overall materials behavior. A summary of JCESR’s first five years and an outlook for its renewal will be presented.
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Climate Overtime: Is a Price on Carbon the Solution We Need?
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 4:30 – 5:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Littauer 166, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Institute of Politics
SPEAKER(S) Carlos Curbelo, U.S. Representative for Florida’s 26th District (2016-2018) and IOP Spring 2019 Resident Fellow
Ryan Costello, U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania's 6th District (2015-2019)
DETAILS This issue is so important, that we will be dedicating an additional session to it. Specifically, we will discuss carbon pricing — what many believe is the most efficient and effective solution to the challenge of a changing climate. What are some of the recent designs of carbon tax legislation? What are some of the key elements? Is it politically viable? Our special guest former U.S. Congressman Ryan Costello who now leads Americans for Carbon Dividends will be joining us to discuss.
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/calendar/events/rep-carlos-curbelo-climate-overtime-price-carbon-solution-we-need
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Back from the Brink: Restoration History and Coaster Brook Trout
Wednesday, March 13
4:30-6:00PM
Brandeis, MCH G3, Barbara Mandel Auditorium, 415 South Street, Waltham
Nancy Langston, (Michigan Technological University)
Mandel Lectures in the Humanities
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Stuart Cunningham and David Craig: Social Media Entertainment
Wednesday, March 13
5:00pm
MIT, Building 4-270, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
In a little over a decade, competing social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, and their Chinese counterparts, have formed the base for the emergence of a new creative industry: social media entertainment. Social media entertainment creators have harnessed these platforms to generate significantly different content, separate from the century-long model of intellectual property control in the entertainment industries. This new screen ecology is driven by intrinsically interactive viewer- and audience-centricity. Combined, these factors inform a qualitatively different globalization dynamic that has scaled with great velocity, posing new challenges for established screen industries, screen regulatory regimes, as well as media scholars. Social Media Entertainment: The New Industry at the Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley maps the platforms and affordances, content innovation and creative labor, monetization and management, new forms of media globalization, and critical cultural concerns raised by this nascent media industry. Media scholars Stuart Cunningham and David Craig propose challenging, revisionist accounts of the political economy of digital media, the precarious status of creative labor and of media management, and the possibilities of progressive cultural politics in commercializing environments, while offering a new take on media globalization debates.
About Stuart Cunningham and David Craig
Stuart Cunningham is Distinguished Professor of Media and Communications, Queensland University of Technology. He has authored over a dozen academic titles including Media Economics (Terry Flew, Adam Swift), Screen Distribution and the New King Kongs of the Online World (Jon Silver), Hidden innovation: Policy, industry and the creative sector.
David Craig is a Clinical Associate Professor at USC Annenberg’s School for Communication and Journalism and a Fellow at the Peabody Media Center. Craig is also a veteran media producer and executive nominated for multiple Emmy Awards and responsible for over 30 critically-acclaimed films, TV programs, and stage productions.
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A conversation about Art, Music, and Social Justice with Deborah Borda, New York Philharmonic Orchestra and renowned Cellist, Yo-Yo Ma
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Business School, Klarman Hall, Kresge Way, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Business School
SPEAKER(S) Deborah Borda, President of the NY Philharmonic Orchestra
Yo-Yo Ma, Renowned cellist
Moderators: Rohit Deshpandé and Henry McGee, Harvard Business School professors
COST Free and Open to the Public
TICKET WEB LINK http://artmusicsocialjustice.eventbrite.com
CONTACT INFO connects at hbs.edu
DETAILS Deborah Borda, president of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and renowned cellist, Yo-Yo Ma, will engage in a wide-ranging conversation about art, music, and social justice.
This event is free and open to the Harvard community. Partners and friends of Harvard/Allston are welcome. Registration is required.
LINK http://artmusicsocialjustice.eventbrite.com
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The Power and Limits of Deep Learning
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 5:15 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Langdell Hall 272, 1555 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Humanities, Information Technology, Lecture, Science, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative
SPEAKER(S) Yann LeCun
COST Free
DETAILS Deep Learning (DL) has enabled significant progress in computer perception, natural language understanding, and control. Supervised learning paradigms in particular have provided many extremely successful applications, including medical image analysis, autonomous driving, virtual assistants, and language translation. DL systems underlie search engines and social networks, and increasingly much physical and social science research. But while supervised DL excels at perceptual tasks, further significant progress requires (1) getting DL systems to learn tasks without large amounts of human-labeled data; and (2) getting them to learn to reason and to act. These challenges motivate some of the most interesting AI research today.
LINK https://mbb.harvard.edu/event/mbb-distinguished-lecture
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A Conversation with Governor Gina Raimondo and Dean Douglas Elmendorf
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 6 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Gina Raimondo, Governor of Rhode Island
Douglas Elmendorf, Dean and Don K. Price Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office
617-495-1380
DETAILS
Join us for the Godkin Lecture with Gov. of Rhode Island Gina Raimondo, and Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf.
LINK https://iop.harvard.edu/forum/making-tough-decisions
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CRISPR: What is it and where is it going?
Wednesday, March 13
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
BosLab, 339R Summer Street, Somerville
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/BosLab/events/258299339/
Genome editing techniques such as CRISPR make it possible to change the DNA of organisms, including humans. With the recent claims of the birth of the first genome-edited babies, scientific and ethical questions abound. How might new advances in our ability to change genomes impact individuals and society? Join us for an interactive discussion on this important topic.
Presented by Robin Bowman, M.Ed., Professional Development Associate, and Johnny Kung, Ph.D., Director of New Initiatives for the Personal Genetics Education Project at Harvard Medical School.
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Nationalism: Here, There, and Everywhere?
Wednesday, March 13
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EDT)
Boston Athenaeum, 10 ½ Beacon Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nationalism-here-there-and-everywhere-tickets-55735200485
Cost: $5 Donation
Civic Series events are free, though they do cost money to run. Donate to support us in maintaining the Civic Series' website, thanking our speakers, and helping us grow to other cities.
The President of the United States declared himself a nationalist and joined an increasing number of far-right leaders in Russia, Germany, Brazil, and Turkey. For the last two decades, the focus of cooperation and globalization has helped grow economies and bring prosperity to most, but clearly not all. As countries start to build diplomatic barriers against each other, decades-old global relationships are dissolving and across the world power is shifting toward isolationism and new allegiances are being formed.
Join us to get your questions answered about the rise of nationalism, including:
What happens when America withdraws from treaties and United Nations activities?
How are neighboring countries affected by the election of far-right candidates?
Is protectionism the best way forward for emerging economies?
At Civic Series, we help you think for yourself about the most critical issues of our time. We will start promptly at 6pm and our speaker will give a 30 minute overview, followed by extensive Q&A and discussion. Hang out after the event for drinks, snacks, and good conversation.
Speaker:
Jed Willard is Director of Global Engagement at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation at Harvard. In this role, he leads the Foundation’s mission to pursue solutions to current challenges with an eye both to their historical origins and to FDR’s personal legacy. Over the past decade, Willard has worked with governments to help them to understand the drivers of public opinion and create strategies and structures to effectively engage citizens. He is currently focused on adaptation to climate change, coping with disinformation and propaganda, and revitalizing faith in liberal democracy. Willard co-founded the Public Diplomacy Collaborative at Harvard Kennedy School.
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Waste Not, Want Not: Shifting Toward a Zero-Waste Lifestyle
Wednesday, March 13
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Cambridge Naturals Brighton Location, 92 Guest Street, Brighton
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/waste-not-want-not-shifting-toward-a-zero-waste-lifestyle-tickets-57713390304
Cost: $10
What is “zero-waste”? Is reaching zero-waste really possible? What are some practical steps one can take to reduce their waste at home and on-the-go?
In this workshop, Sarah Atkinson, a Cambridge-based environmental professional committed to reducing her waste and carbon footprint, will facilitate a discussion answering these questions and more. Sarah will explore what “going zero-waste” really means, give tips that she’s learned from her own path towards zero-waste over the last 9 months, as well as help troubleshoot all your zero-waste questions around grocery shopping, eating out, recycling/composting, toiletries, and more.
All attendees will receive a $10 gift card to Cambridge Naturals with the price of admission!
Sarah Atkinson received her B.S. in Environmental Science from UC Berkeley and has since consulted for multiple food-service companies in California to improve their sustainability efforts. Sarah has always been mindful of her waste but decided to take the plunge into a full zero-waste lifestyle upon moving to Cambridge last August. Sarah recently helped start a waste-education organization called Zerology, aiming to provide resources and consulting services for individuals and businesses looking to reduce their waste. Visit zerologywaste.com to learn more.
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Worlds within Worlds
Wednesday, March 13
6:30pm
ArtScience Culture Lab & Café, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/worlds-within-worlds-tickets-57051894753
Mariana Bañez and Simon Kim. Le Laboratoire Cambridge: ArtScience Culture Lab & Cafe
IBAÑEZ KIM is a genre-defiant design practice that works with sensate materials, atmospheres, sound, and new media to generate architecture, objects, and cities. The founding principals Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim produce designs of high and low systems, culture, and duration. Their teaching positions at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania allow them to test and experiment with concepts and materials that produce innovation and value in their professional office. Ibañez Kim have produced designs for institutions such as the MoMA, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian, Opera Philadelphia, and have been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, and Canada Council for the Arts.
IBAÑEZ KIM will present their projects that tether architecture, urbanism, and objects with touch, interaction, and sound. To learn more about IBAÑEZ KIM, please click on link below: www.IbanezKim.com
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A Conversation on Allyship with Michael Kaufman
Wednesday, March 13
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Bonobos Prudential Center, 800 Boylston Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-conversation-on-allyship-with-michael-kaufman-tickets-58186962772
Join us for a special Women’s History Month event with Michael Kaufman, author of The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution.
Michael will read excerpts from his thoughtful new book, and lead a conversation on allyship and how men can join the gender equality revolution. Joining him will be Our Bodies Ourselves, the breakthrough feminist publication, Voice Male Magazine, Jane Doe Inc., a coalition against domestic violence and sexual assault, and the North America MenEngage Network, a regional organization for gender equality and healthy manhood.
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The Middle East between Trump’s Deal and the Israeli Elections: A Regional Outlook from Israel
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2019, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, WCC 1015, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Program on Negotiation
SPEAKER(S) Gilead Sher, Head of the Center for Applied Negotiations at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv
COST Free and open to the public; refreshments will be provided.
CONTACT INFO dlong at law.harvard.edu
DETAILS While President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” remains pending, the footprint of the United States in the Middle East is fading, as Russian influence increases. In Israel, general elections in April and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s likely indictment for alleged criminal corruption make the future of the country and the region even less predictable. Gilead Sher will share his analysis from an Israeli perspective and welcome questions and discussion from the audience.
LINK https://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/middle-east-talk-gilead-sher/
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This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution
Wednesday, March 13
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes eminent evolutionary biologist DAVID SLOAN WILSON—author of Evolution for Everyone—for a discussion of his latest book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution.
About This View of Life
Charles Darwin's vision of evolution was so broad that he wrote, "There is grandeur in this view of life" in the concluding paragraph of On the Origin of Species. By the 1970s, the Darwinian revolution was sufficiently complete that the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won't be truly complete until it makes sense of everything associated with the words "human," "culture," and "policy."
In a series of engaging stories—from the breeding of hens, to the timing of cataract surgeries, to the organization of an automobile plant—Wilson shows how an evolutionary worldview provides a practical toolkit for understanding not only genetic evolution, but also the fast-paced changes impacting our world and ourselves. What emerges is an incredibly empowering argument: if we can become wise managers of evolutionary processes, we can solve the problems of our age at all scales—from the efficacy of our groups, to our wellbeing as individuals, to our stewardship of the planet earth.
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Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel
Wednesday, March 13
7pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Award-winning writer Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff - but it’s all true.
Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of four young spies, but it’s also about Israel’s own complicated and fascinating identity. Israel sees itself and presents itself as a Western nation, when in fact more than half the country has Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this story. And, according to Friedman, that goes a long way toward explaining the life and politics of the country, and why it often baffles the West.
Matti Friedman’s 2016 book Pumpkinflowers was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. It was selected as one of the year’s best by Booklist, Mother Jones, Foreign Affairs, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail. His first book, The Aleppo Codex, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history.
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Thursday, March 14 & Friday, March 15
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BuildingEnergy Boston 2019
Thursday, March 14 & Friday, March 15
Westin Boston Waterfront, Boston
http://nesea.org/conference/buildingenergy-boston
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Thursday, March 14
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Carbon Drawdown Now: Turning Buildings into Carbon Sinks
Thursday, March 14
8:30am to 10am.
Westin Boston Waterfront, Boston
RSVP at https://nesea.org/civicrm/event/register?id=241
Chris Magwood, Executive Director, The Endeavour Centre
Jacob Racusin, Managing Partner, New Frameworks
Ace McArleton, Founder, New Frameworks
With our BuildingEnergy Boston 2019 theme of “Know-How” in mind, we are pleased to announce this year's keynote session, Carbon Drawdown Now: Turning Buildings into Carbon Sinks.
Presented by Chris Magwood of the Endeavour Centre, and Jacob Racusin and Ace McArleton of New Frameworks, the keynote will take place on Thursday, March 14 from 8:30am to 10am.
“Carbon Drawdown Now” will help you know how buildings have the potential to become the world’s fifth largest carbon sink, rather than a leading emitter, and more clearly know why your work is essential for climate justice and social equity. Read more here.
You will leave this keynote feeling reinvigorated in your work, eager to connect our community of practitioners with the wider network of change-makers, and fired up to transform our built environment and our world.
Jacob, Ace, and Chris's work on this topic was the cover article of the Fall 2018 issue of BuildingEnergy magazine.
Read their article, Beyond Energy Efficiency: Why Embodied Carbon In Materials Matters, to learn more at http://www.buildingenergymagazine-digital.com/eneb/0218_fall_2018/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1422002#articleId1422002
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The Role of Business & Public-Private Partnerships in Addressing Urgent Social Needs
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 14, 2019, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Kennedy School, Littauer Building, Fainsod Room, 3rd Floor, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.
SPEAKER(S) Michael Nutter, Mayor of Philadelphia (2008-2016)
CONTACT INFO mrcbg at hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS This seminar will be given by Michael Nutter, mayor of Philadelphia (2008-2016) as part of M-RCBG's Business & Government Seminar Series.
Lunch will be served.
RSVPs are helpful: mrcbg at hks.harvard.edu
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Heather Clish, Director of Conservation & Recreation Policy, Appalachian Mountain Club
Thursday, March 14
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Multi-purpose Room, Curtis Hall, 474 Boston Avenue, Medford
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Adding Up to Peace Book Talk
Thursday, March 14
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT
Roger Fisher House, 9 Waterhouse Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/adding-up-to-peace-book-talk-tickets-57719272899
CDA is pleased to host Diana Chigas and Peter Woodrow for a discussion of their book Adding Up to Peace. This event will be moderated by Neil Levine, CDA Board Chair.
“How do numerous peace efforts add up to produce progress towards peace over time?”This book examines, how multiple peace efforts in the same conflict zone have cumulative impacts, and how they “add up”—or don’t add up—to producing significant progress towards larger societal-level peace. The findings are a product of sixteen case studies conducted between 2007 and 2012, gathering the perceptions of both local and international stakeholders. It identifies how cumulative impacts in peace practice operate at all levels, to provide practical lessons that assist policymakers, donors and practitioners in developing more effective strategies for greater progress towards peace. The recommendations provided for stronger peacebuilding practices are derived not only from the cumulative cases but also from fifteen years of CDA’s Reflecting on Peace Practice project.
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PON Book Talk: Leading with Dignity: How to Create a Culture That Brings Out the Best in People
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 14, 2019, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Hauser, Room 102, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Donna Hicks, Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
COST Free and Open to the Public
DETAILS Dr. Donna Hicks’s book explores the under-recognized role of dignity as part of good leadership. Extending the reach of her book "Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict," Donna Hicks now contributes a specific, practical guide to achieving a culture of dignity.
Most people know very little about dignity, the author has found, and when leaders fail to respect the dignity of others, conflict and distrust ensue. Dr. Hicks highlights three components of leading with dignity: what one must know in order to honor dignity and avoid violating it; what one must do to lead with dignity; and how one can create a culture of dignity in any organization, whether corporate, religious, governmental, healthcare, or beyond. This book contains key research findings, real-life case studies, and workable recommendations, filling a gap in our understanding of how best to be together in a conflict-ridden world.
Refreshments will be provided.
LINK https://www.pon.harvard.edu/events/leading-with-dignity/
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Waste to Energy Facilities
Thursday, March 14
12:30PM
Harvard, Room 429, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Masahiko Haraguchi
HEJC is open to all members of the Harvard and MIT communities. A technical background is not needed. Lunch will be provided.
Harvard Energy Journal Club
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hejc/
Contact Name: Dan Pollack
daniel_pollack at g.harvard.edu
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Aeronautics Research at NASA: New Frontiers in Aviation
Thursday, March 14
3:00 pm
Tufts, Nelson Auditorium, Anderson 112, 200 College Avenue, Medford
Speaker: Mike Rogers, NASA
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The Origin of Cellular Life
Thursday, March 14
4:00pm
MIT, Building 32-155, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Jack Szostak, Harvard
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Climate Grief: Toxics, Global Warming and Loons in the Boreal North
Thursday, March 14
4:30-6:00PM
Brandeis, MCH G3, Barbara Mandel Auditorium, 415 South Street, Waltham
Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)
Mandel Lectures in the Humanities
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Starr Forum: From Cold War to Hot Peace
Thursday, March 14
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building 26-100, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/starr-forum-from-cold-war-to-hot-peace-tickets-53351937080
An American ambassador in Putin’s Russia
With speaker Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to the Russian Federation
A session of the Focus on Russia Lecture Series co-chaired by Carol Saivetz and Elizabeth Wood
Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller, “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.”
His latest book will be signed and sold at the event.
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The Transformation of Saudi Arabia and the Geopolitics of the Middle East
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 14, 2019, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR CMES/WCFIA Middle East Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Bernard Haykel, Professor of Near Eastern Studes and Director of the Institute for Transregional Studies and the Program in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
CONTACT INFO elizabethflanagan at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Professor Bernard Haykel's research is concerned with the political and social tensions that arise from questions about religious identity and authority. Educated at the University of Oxford, he received my doctorate in 1998 in Oriental Studies with an emphasis on Islam and history. Much of his teaching and research lies at the juncture of the intellectual, political, and social history of the Middle East with particular emphasis on the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. He also has a side interest in the effects of energy resources and rents on politics and society. An essential part of his work concerns the reception of reformist ideas at present and analysis of the Salafi heritage in contemporary debates among Sunnis as well as the Zaydi heritage among Shi`is. Another concern pertains to the history and politics of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia in particular. Professor Haykel considers himself to be an historian who is not restricted by disciplinary boundaries or historical time frame. Although his focus is on the modern period, he is at home with pre-modern Islamic literary sources and concepts and sees these as a crucial foundation for the study of the modern Arab and Muslim worlds. The region he has studied, Arabia, is important for understanding the history and politics of the modern Middle East and yet it remains the least studied and understood.
LINK https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/event/transformation-saudi-arabia-and-geopolitics-middle-east
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Defense Innovation Night: The Role of Venture Capital
Thursday, March 14
5:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Venture Cafe Cambridge, One Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/defense-innovation-night-the-role-of-venture-capital-tickets-58011484913
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Industrial Augmented Reality: What's Next?
Thursday, March 14
5:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
PTC, 121 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/industrial-augmented-reality-whats-next-tickets-56899723605
Join us on March 14th as industry and technology experts examine the importance of industrial AR today and showcase the next phase of AR at the forefront of digital transformation.
This will be the first in a series of industry-focused events held at PTC’s new state-of-the-art headquarters, where technology is interlaced with the physical space and the digital infrastructure of 121 Seaport.
Agenda is as follows:
5:00-6:00pm | Check In
5:00-5:30pm | Networking
5:30-5:50pm | Opening Remarks from Jim Heppelmann
5:55-7:50pm | Lightening Talks on Industrial AR
8:00-9:00pm | Networking Reception
Real-time product demos, food, and drinks will be available throughout the evening.
For additional questions, please reach out to cfendrock at ptc.com
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How Could Machines Learn Like Animals and Humans?
Thursday, March 14
5:15pm
Harvard, Langdell Hall 272, 1555 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Yann LeCun, Facebook AI Research & New York University
Supervised deep learning is the workhorse of the recent explosion of interest in AI. But supervised learning requires large amounts of human-annotated training data, which limits its range of applications. Similarly, much attention has been devoted to model-free reinforcement learning, which has been very successful for games, but requires impractically large amounts of trials for real-world applications. In contrast, animals and humans seem to learn vast amounts of task-independent knowledge about how the world works through mere observation and occasional interactions. Learning new tasks or skills requires very few samples or interactions with the world: we learn to drive and fly planes in about 30 hours of practice with few fatal accidents. What learning paradigm do humans and animal use to learn so efficiently?
Based on the hypothesis that prediction is the essence of intelligence, self-supervised learning purports to train a machine to predict missing information, for example predicting occulted parts of an image, predicting future frames in a video, and generally "filling in the blanks". Such models may constitute the basis of machines with enough background knowledge about the world to possess some level of common sense. Additionally learning predictive world models would allow AI systems to predict the consequences of their actions and plan course of actions. I will present a general formulation of self-supervised learning and applications of model-predictive control using learned models.
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George Estreich and Sara Hendren: Fables and Futures
Thursday, March 14
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
MIT Press Bookstore, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/george-estreich-and-sara-hendren-fables-and-futures-tickets-54720277824
Cost: $0 – $22.36
Please join MIT Press Bookstore in welcoming George Estreich and Sara Hendren to discuss George Estreich's book, Fables and Futures: Biotechnology, Disability, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves.
From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilities—especially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.
George Estreich is the author of The Shape of the Eye: A Memoir. His writing has appeared in Tin House, The New York Times, Salon, and other publications. He teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Sara Hendren is Artist, Designer and Researcher in Residence at Olin College of Engineering. Her recent work includes collaborative public art and social design that engages the human body, technology, and the politics of disability. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad and is held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC).
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Art and Science Converge in the Deep Sea
Thursday, March 14
6:00pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Lily Simonson, Painter
Peter R. Girguis, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Lily Simonson and Peter Girguis exemplify the long tradition of artists and scientists working in tandem to explore new worlds—in their case, the magnificent deep sea. Simonson will discuss how the immersive, glowing canvases in her current exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Lily Simonson: Painting the Deep, have been shaped by collaborations with scientists—whether exploring the depths of the ocean in a submersible or scuba diving beneath Antarctic sea ice. Girguis will reveal how working at sea with an artist has shaped his research and enabled him to see familiar organisms and environments in new ways.
About the speakers:
Lily Simonson works in tandem with researchers at remote field sites to create paintings of extraordinary organisms and extreme environments—from the deep sea to Antarctica. Enveloping viewers in dramatic, atmospheric scenes, her work evokes the immersive experience of exploration. Simonson has embedded as an artist-at-sea on six oceanographic expeditions aboard the E/V Nautilus and R/Vs Melville and Atlantis. Simonson's paintings have been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Europe and her work has appeared in a range of media outlets, includingInterview Magazine, MTV, Atlas Obscura, Pacific Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and LA Weekly. Simonson holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.F.A. in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has taught painting and drawing at Cal Poly Pomona and the University of California, Berkeley.
Her current solo exhibition Lily Simonson: Painting the Deep is on view at the Harvard Museum of Natural History through June 30, 2019.
Peter Girguis works at the crossroads of microbial ecology, physiology, and biogeochemistry. He uses molecular biology, as well as physiological and geochemical techniques to examine the relationship between microbial diversity/physiology and biogeochemical cycles. Due to the limitations of existing in situ measurement and incubation technologies, he and his lab have developed novel instruments and samplers that enable them to better study microbial-geochemical relationships. This includes high-pressure systems to mimic natural environments, geochemical sensors, microbial fuel cells as experimental apparatus and power sources, and preservation technologies. He holds a B.Sc from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Livestreaming Information:
This event will be livestreamed on the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/harvardmuseumsofscienceandculture
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Screening of “Paris to Pittsburgh” followed by expert panel discussion
Thursday, March 14
6–8 pm
Harvard, Science Center, Hall C, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/screening-of-paris-to-pittsburgh-followed-by-expert-panel-discussion-tickets-56133426590
Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. But faced with a federal government that is hostile to climate science, leaders across the U.S. are taking action themselves to safeguard our health and our environment.
Join Gina McCarthy, former U.S. EPA Administrator and Director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in a screening and panel discussion of "Paris to Pittsburgh," a new documentary from Bloomberg Philanthropies and Radical Media. Panelists were featured in the documentary and conversations will explore the role of media in increasing public awareness and how local, private sector and community leaders can continue to work towards the Paris Agreement despite federal inaction on climate change.
Panel Discussion: Taking Action on Climate without the Federal Government
Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres
Ken Kimmell, President of Union of Concerned Scientists
Chris Wheat, Strategic Director at NRDC American Cities Climate Challenge
Bruce Gellerman, Senior Environmental Correspondent at WBUR
Gina McCarthy, Director of Harvard C-CHANGE & Former EPA Administrator (Moderator)
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Promoting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Women's Leadership, Religion, and Leveraging Scholarship
Thursday, March 14
6:00 to 8:30 pm
Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cAVJbAjQ1KqpQnb
Featured speaker: Dr. Alaa Murabit, UN High-Level Commissioner and SDG Global Advocate
Moderator and Discussant: Professor Jocelyne Cesari, Harvard Divinity School
Cosponsored by the Women's Studies in Religion Program
Space is limited. RSVP is required.
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Intro to the Boston Startup Community
Thursday, 14 March
6:30 – 8:30 pm EDT
GA Boston, 125 Summer Street 13th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://generalassemb.ly/education/intro-to-the-boston-startup-community/boston/70787
Will Koffel, Head of Startup Ecosystems, Google Cloud, Americas
Simone LaPray, Program Manager, TiE Boston
Colin Barry, Staff Writer & Editor, VentureFizz
Join us for a panel discussion with Boston's top community organizers and get an exclusive inside look into the startup culture that’s rapidly growing in the city.
Why it Matters?
In Boston, new tech solutions are emerging every day to improve our lives, spanning industries from biotech and real estate to wellness-tech and social impact. This has opened up countless opportunities for jobs and career development in the city, but breaking in is not always easy.
What You'll Take Away?
This free event is an orientation to help newcomers to the startup scene get acquainted with the Boston ecosystem. We will give you the inside scoop on key events/ meetups to attend, people, companies, VCs, blogs, incubators, programs, hot issues, and more.
By signing up for this event, you’re giving our partners and sponsors for this event permission to contact you about upcoming events and promotions. Please note that seats are available on a first come, first served basis. We encourage you to arrive on time. We will not be able to let attendees in once we have reached maximum capacity. Thank you for understanding.
About the Presenters
Will Koffel, Head of Startup Ecosystems, Google Cloud, Americas
Born and raised in Boston, Will has been leading technology-focused startup teams here for over 20 years. From the founding engineering team launched out of MIT to start Akamai, Will has held CTO roles at 5 venture-backed startups. Most recently, Will was CTO at Qwiklabs, acquired by Google in 2016, changing how teams think about training with developer-native publishing tools and hands-on labs. Prior experience includes roles as CTO at Thumb, a highly-engaging mobile consumer opinion gathering platform, and CTO/VP of Operations at Sermo, the professional social network for physicians. He launched the Boston chapter of Venwise and has served as an advisor and mentor-in-residence for many Boston area startups. Will received B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Music Composition from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives with his family in Sudbury, and online @wkoffel.
Simone LaPray, Program Manager, TiE Boston
Simone is the program manager at TiE Boston, a chapter of the world's largest non-profit supporting entrepreneurship through mentoring, education, networking and funding. She runs their growth stage accelerator, TiE ScaleUp, to help companies overcome common obstacles and barriers to scale while preparing for their next capital raise. Before coming to the Boston area, Simone served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine from 2006-2011 working in the areas of business development and education. When she isn't working to help entrepreneurs grow with TiE Boston, she is a proud mentor with BUILD Boston.
Colin Barry, Staff Writer & Editor, VentureFizz
An avid writer and technology journalist, at VentureFizz Colin edits contributor articles and writes about the ever-growing technology scene in Boston; from local startups, profiling companies and CEOs, to covering local technology-related events.
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The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
Thursday, March 14
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome award-winning journalist and writer ELAINE WEISS for a discussion of her latest book, The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.
About The Woman's Hour
Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state is needed. It all comes down to Tennessee, the moment of truth for the suffragists, after a seven-decade crusade. The opposing forces include politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, and a lot of racists who don't want black women voting. And then there are the "Antis"—women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the moral collapse of the nation. They all converge in a boiling hot summer for a vicious face-off replete with dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel's, and the Bible.
Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, along with appearances by Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Woman's Hour is an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.
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Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure
Thursday, March 14
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Are today's young adults gender rebels or returning to tradition? In Where the Millennials Will Take Us, Barbara J. Risman reveals the diverse strategies youth use to negotiate the ongoing gender revolution. Using her theory of gender as a social structure, Risman analyzes life history interviews with a diverse set of Millennials to probe how they understand gender and how they might change it. Some are true believers that men and women are essentially different and should be so. Others are innovators, defying stereotypes and rejecting sexist ideologies and organizational practices. Perhaps new to this generation are gender rebels who reject sex categories, often refusing to present their bodies within them and sometimes claiming gender queer identities. And finally, many youths today are simply confused by all the changes swirling around them.
As a new generation contends with unsettled gender norms and expectations, Risman reminds us that gender is much more than an identity; it also shapes expectations in everyday life, and structures the organization of workplaces, politics, and, ideology. To pursue change only in individual lives, Risman argues, risks the opportunity to eradicate both gender inequality and gender as a primary category that organizes social life.
Barbara J. Risman is Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition, editor of Families as They Really Are, and a forthcoming Handbook on Gender (co-edited with Carissa Froyum and William Scarborough).
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Women in Art and Science, Seekers All
Thursday, March 14
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 415 Main Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-in-art-and-science-seekers-all-tickets-55543946439
Gathered together for a conversation during Women’s History Month, these women represent a broad range of both art and science practices. The program will begin with five-minute pecha kucha style introductions. The speakers will then share with each other and the audience their respective thoughts on the relationship between art and science, and how and if that affects their own thinking and projects. In spite of the ambition of the evening, this promises to be an intimate event. Co-sponsored by Women @ Broad.
The Speakers:
Dr. Jody Weber received a BFA from SUNY Purchase, an M.A. from American University and a Ph.D. in dance history from Boston University. Currently, she is a tenured full professor and Chair of the Dance Department at Bridgewater State University and author of The Evolution of Aesthetic and Expressive Dance in Boston. She is also Artistic Director and Choreographer for Weber Dance, a nonprofit concert dance company based in Boston. She has received grants from the Boston Center for The Arts, Somerville Arts Council, the Cambridge Arts Council, The Boston Dance Alliance and numerous research grants through the Center for Advancement of Research and Scholarship. Her choreography has been presented in venues in New York City, San Francisco, Florida, Montana, British Columbia, Alaska, Colorado, Maine and Washington D.C. Her newest work, Her Sylvan Ascent, was co-presented by the Somerville Arts Council and presented at the deCordova Museum in 2018.
Lucy Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised between South Korea, Myanmar, and the United States. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She attended the Yale Summer School of Art and Music, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the MacDowell Colony, and is the recipient of the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize and the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship from Yale. She is a founding member of the collaborative kijidome and is currently Assistant Professor of Art at BU. She has received an Artadia Award. She is the Broad Institute artist in residence. Her work is included in the collection of the Kadist Foundation in Paris, and is represented by Lisa Cooley, New York.
Stacey Gabriel is senior director of the Genomics Platform at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and an institute scientist at the Broad. Under Gabriel’s guidance, the Genomics Platform operates as one of the largest sequencing centers in the world and continually explores, validates, optimizes, and implements new technologies, methods, and analysis tools to meet the needs of the Broad community. Gabriel and the members of her team are committed to pushing the boundaries of the genomic frontier through the application of operational excellence, advanced process design, data analysis and visualization, and technology development capabilities. Gabriel received her B.S. in molecular biology from Carnegie Mellon University and Ph.D. in human genetics from Case Western Reserve University.
Ashlee M. Earl is a research scientist and senior group leader for the Bacterial Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she is an institute scientist. Within the Broad Institute’s Genomic Center for Infectious Diseases and Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program, Earl is working to understand the relationship between microbes and human health including how multi-drug resistant pathogens emerge and spread. Prior to joining the Broad Institute, Earl received her B.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from Louisiana State University and postdoctoral training from Harvard Medical School with Dr. Roberto Kolter. In addition to expertise in microbiology, microbial genomics, genetics, metagenomics, and human microbiome research.
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Friday, March 15
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New Space Age
Friday, March 15
8:00 AM – 6:00 PM EDT
MIT Building E14, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mit-new-space-age-conference-2019-tickets-51975633519
Cost: $20 – $150
VISIT OUR CONFERENCE WEBSITE FOR THE LATEST ON SPEAKERS, LOGISTICS, AND OUR COMPLETE CONFERENCE AGENDA!
We are proud to host the fourth annual, student-led MIT New Space Age Conference. As space is rapidly being commercialized, this conference serves as a platform to advance growth of the private space industry by providing a connection between astropreneurs, businesses, academia, funding, and the talent pools of major universities around the world. 2019 speakers will discuss new technologies and services being implemented to close the business case for the emerging space economy.
Join students, academics, and industry professionals to learn more about space start up accelerators, the roles of public organizations and policy makers, the next generation of satellite constellations, and MIT’s role in supporting the new space age.
Would you like the chance to give a short presentation on the space-related technology you are working on? E-mail asic.officers at sloangroups.mit.eduwith a paragraph description of your project for the chance to receive complimentary admission and a 2-3 minute lightning talk at the conference.
Visit http://newspaceage.org/ for more information on speakers, agenda, logistics.
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EBC Climate Change Program: A Massachusetts Response to Municipal Adaptation & Resiliency
The Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program
Friday, March 15
Registration: 8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
Program: 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Nixon Peabody LLP, Exchange Place, 53 State Street, Boston
RSVP at http://ebcne.org/event/ebc-climate-change-program-a-massachusetts-response-to-municipal-adaptation-resiliency-the-municipal-vulnerability-preparedness-program/
Cost: $50 - $185
The Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant program (MVP) provides support for cities and towns in Massachusetts to plan and prioritize local climate change resiliency projects. For this EBC Climate Change program, the Commonwealth’s Director of Climate Adaptation & Resiliency will provide an overview of the structure and goals of the Commonwealth’s Climate Change Program and summarize the MVP program as well as other statewide efforts and future opportunities; regional planning professionals will provide an overview of how the MVP program is moving forward; and representatives from selected participating municipalities will report on successes, findings, and lessons from the MVP process.
This program will provide businesses and communities with an opportunity to network and learn about local efforts to remain resilient during climate change realities and reflect on how to practically apply these lessons on their own turf. A panel discussion including audience participation will follow the individual presentations.
General Continuing Education Certificates are awarded by the EBC for this program (3.5 training contact hours). Please select this option during registration if you wish to receive a certificate.
Program Co-Chairs:
David Billo, Office Manager, Sovereign Consulting
Joseph Famely, Project Manager / Environmental Scientist, Woods Hole Group
Tiffany Skogstrom, MPH, Outreach & Policy Analyst, Massachusetts Office of Technical Assistance (OTA)
Speakers:
Anne Herbst, Senior Regional Environmental Planner, Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC)
Mia Mansfield, Director of Climate Adaptation & Resiliency, Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Michelle Paul, LSP, Director of Resilience and Environmental Stewardship, City of New Bedford
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International School Strike for Climate
Friday, March 15
11 am-3 pm
State House, Boston
"As part of the global movement, youth from across Massachusetts will be striking on March 15 to fight for our futures & demand that our lawmakers put an end to climate change. If you care about our future, please join us! #YouthStrikesUSA #ClimateStrike #YouthClimateStrike #GreenNewDeal
We are striking to demand the following:
1. A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in line with the October 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming
2. World leaders come together and take action that ensures global warming remains under 1.5 degrees Celsius
3. U.S. leaders implement the Green New Deal and other legislative actions that help to solve the climate crisis
We are youth organized and youth centered, but all are welcome who are passionate about this issue and want to save our planet.
#Fridaysforfuture #Climatestrike"
Find a local Friday climate strike in your area at https://fridaysforfuture.org/events/map
More information at https://fridaysforfuture.org
https://www.youthclimatestrikeus.org/massachusetts
https://www.facebook.com/events/392487231327397/
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Challenges and opportunities in modeling cross-scale, cross-sector feedbacks to inform critical decision-making in food-energy-water systems
Friday, March 15
12:00 PM
Tufts, Anderson Hall, Nelson Auditorium, Anderson 112, 200 College Avenue, Medford
Speaker: Jordan Kern, North Carolina State University
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Solar radiation management: global or regional?
Friday, March 15
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Olivier Boucher, Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Contact: Kelvin Bates
Email: kelvin_bates at fas.harvard.edu
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The Future of Health Care?: Medicaid Buy-In and State Trailblazing in Health Care
WHEN Friday, Mar. 15, 2019, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West (2019), 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Law
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and United States of Care.
COST Free and open to the public
TICKET WEB LINK https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eg2er6cr052e2b25&oseq=&c=&ch=
DETAILS States can be laboratories of health reform. States like Massachusetts and Oregon expanded coverage during previous periods of federal inaction. With solutions unlikely to come from a politically divided Washington D.C., how will states tackle the problem of health insurance becoming increasingly unaffordable and unattainable for many families? Is there a role for the government to play a greater role in making health insurance affordable and accessible? As public support for action on health care grows, what options are available to states now?
States have begun to explore Medicaid Buy-In policies, which allow people to purchase government backed health insurance or Medicaid-like plans. What form this policy takes will vary by the state and each state will need to navigate the complexities of the private insurance market federal rules and legal limitations of the reach of states. This event will examine current Medicaid Buy-In proposals, the opportunities they present to improve affordability, and the potential challenges that states may face in implementing them.
This event is free and open to the public. Lunch will be available. RSVP now!
LINK https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/events/details/the-future-of-health-care
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Space Traveling: A Lecture by Agnes Meyer-Brandis
Friday, March 15
4:00pm
MIT, Building E15-207, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Agnes Meyer-Brandis’s poetic-scientific investigations weave fact, imagination, storytelling, and myth; past, present, and future. Ten years ago she founded the Research Raft FFUR, a permanently altering meta-installation and Institute for Art and Subjective Science. The institute deals with artistic reality research that manifests itself as performances, lectures, and installations. One can have encounters with the institute in tents, on boats, on islands, on a zero gravity plane of the German Aerospace Agency, at conferences, in museums, or even on a glacier.
In this lecture, Meyer-Brandis will present on some of her projects, including “The Moon Goose Colony: Lunar Migration Bird Facility.”
Meyer-Brandis will be part of the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative's third annual private event, Beyond the Cradle: Envisioning a New Space Age on Thursday, March 14, 2019, which will be live streamed. The March 15 presentation is open to the public and will expand upon the ideas covered during the Media Lab event.
This presentation is part of Diversifying Space, a Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Mellon Faculty Grant project led by Professor Joe Paradiso with Marie-Pier Boucher and Xin Liu.
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God, Beauty and Mathematics
Friday, March 15
5:30am
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Join us for a TI talk titled "God, Beauty and Mathematics." The talk will be given by Alexander Pruss who has doctorates both in philosophy and mathematics, and is currently Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. His books include The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment (Cambridge University Press), One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics (Notre Dame University Press), and Actuality, Possibility and Worlds (Continuum). His research areas include metaphysics, philosophy of religion, Christian ethics, philosophy of mathematics and formal epistemology. The talk will take place in 3-270 and refreshments will be served after!
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Making China Modern
Friday, March 15
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-klaus-muhlhahn-co-sponsored-by-harvard-fairbank-center-for-chinese-studies-tickets-55243677326
A panoramic survey of China’s rise and resilience through war and rebellion, disease and famine, that rewrites China’s history for a new generation. It is tempting to attribute China’s recent ascendance to changes in political leadership and economic policy. Making China Modern teaches otherwise. Moving beyond the standard framework of Cold War competition and national resurgence, Klaus Mühlhahn situates twenty-first-century China in the nation’s long history of creative adaptation.
Klaus Mühlhahn is Professor of Chinese History and Culture and Vice President at the Free University of Berlin. His Criminal Justice in China: A History won the John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History from the American Historical Association. Mühlhahn has published widely on modern Chinese history in English, German, and Chinese and is a frequent commentator on China for the German media.
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Saturday, March 16
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The Community Maple Sap Boil Down
Saturday, March 16
10 AM - 1PM
South Street Farm, 138 South Street, Somerville
Bring your family and friends to the main event! Watch the sap boil down into local maple syrup. We will have pancakes, cider, "sap tea" tasting, live music and all things sweet! Get involved with your community by celebrating a local, and sweet tradition!
Find out about all of our maple-themed events here: http://bit.ly/maple2019
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Food as Medicine, the New Farmacy
Saturday, March 16
10am - 3pm
Youth Center at Bethel AME Church, 84 Wachusetts Street, Jamaica Plain
RSVP at ldpalm at gmail.com or 617-989-9920
Explore common foods and herbs that support our organs and maximize our health.
Interactive Activities
Food Demonstration
Panel Discussion
Resources
and Much More!
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Monday, March 18
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Program on Atmospheres, Oceans, anc Climate [PAOC] Colloquium: Kathleen Schiro (JPL)
Monday, March 18
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
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Sharing an Online Roadmap for Social Responsibility Guidance in the Seafood Industry
Monday, March 18
2:15 PM – 3:30 PM EDT
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center - Room 152, 415 Summer Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sharing-an-online-roadmap-for-social-responsibility-guidance-in-the-seafood-industry-tickets-55989055773
Businesses are increasingly focused on labor conditions in their supply chains. But knowing a problem may exist isn’t the same as addressing it. We invite you to RSVP for a FishWise-led session “Sharing an Online Roadmap for Social Responsibility Guidance in the Seafood Industry” on March 18th, featuring the public launch of a new online platform to clarify recommendations for companies working towards socially responsible seafood.
Developed with support from the Walmart Foundation and designed for the industry, the Roadmap for Improving Seafood Ethics (RISE) makes better social responsibility performance easier. It offers tailored advice for producers, processors, brands, and retailers on building, assessing, and improving socially responsible practices in seafood supply chains.
RISE is a free, open access website featuring a series of steps that companies may take. Each step offers practical tools to help companies implement the recommendations and track progress. RISE also offers connections to real people at organizations with deep expertise in understanding and improving labor practices.
In this hands-on, interactive session, participants will:
See how RISE provides actionable step-by-step guidance;
Learn from Verité and Issara Institute about key topics, like responsible recruitment, worker voice, and risk mitigation;
Hear from industry representatives about how their companies benefit from using the Roadmap; and
Have the opportunity to ask questions directly to experts with experience implementing social responsibility with companies.
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Civic Experience: Covering the Nation's Capital
Monday, March 18
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM EDT
Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex, 805 Columbus Avenue, Auditorium, first floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/civic-experience-covering-the-nations-capital-tickets-57614561705
Hear insightful commentary from leading Beltway journalists about the state of political play in Washington, and the changing nature of journalism's most high-profile beat. Special guests are Hallie Jackson, chief White House correspondent for NBC News; Ed O'Keefe, political correspondent, CBS News; Gabby Orr, White House reporter, Politico; and Shannon Pettypiece, White House reporter, Bloomberg.
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#MeToo in France
Monday, March 18
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 14e-304, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Professor Laure Murat (UCLA) will present her new book, Une révolution sexuelle?: Réflexions sur l'après-Weinstein [A Sexual Revolution? A critical assessment in a post-Weinstein era]. Her talk will cover the impact of the MeToo movement in France.
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Boston New Technology FinTech & Blockchain Startup Showcase #BNT99 (21+)
Monday, March 18
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Foley Hoag LLP, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Boston_New_Technology/events/258983609/
Price: $15.00 /per person
See 7 innovative and exciting local FinTech & Blockchain technology demos, presented by startup founders
Network with attendees from the Boston-area startup/tech community
Enjoy dinner with beer, wine and more
Each company presents an overview and demonstration of their product within 5 minutes and discusses questions with the audience.
21+. Save 50% up to 48 hrs prior, when price increases to $30.
Please follow @BostonNewTech and support our startups by posting on social media using our #BNT99 hashtag. We'll retweet you!
To save on tickets and enjoy exclusive benefits, purchase a BNT VIP Membership. Learn more: http://bit.ly/BnTvip
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Brookline Talks Presents: Debby Irving, Waking Up White
Monday, March 18
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Runkle School, Multi Purpose Room, 50 Druce Street, Brookline
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/brookline-talks-presents-debby-irving-waking-up-white-tickets-54796096600
I’m a Good Person! Isn’t That Enough?
Using historical and media images, Debby examines how she used her white-skewed belief system to interpret the world around her. Socialized on a narrow worldview, Debby explores how she spent decades silently reaffirming harmful, archaic racial patterns instead of questioning the socialization that promoted racial disparities and tensions she could see and feel.
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Climate Change in Focus: Finding Hope Through Democratic Action
Monday, March 18
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM (Local Time)
First Parish UU Arlington, at 630 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington
RSVP at https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7010Z0000027QAhQAM
Acclaimed author (Diet for A Small Planet), activist, and speaker, Frances Moore Lappe will explain how her concept of "living democracy" is applied to climate change examples from the local to national levels. The free event is sponsored by the Massachusetts Sierra Club, Arlington Town Democratic Committee and the Social Justice Committee of First Parish UU Arlington.
Contact Paulette Schwartz (plschwartz at verizon.net)
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Tuesday, March 19
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7th Annual Massachusetts WATER FORUM
Tuesday, March 19
11:30 am -1:45 pm
Massachusetts State House, Boston
Sponsored by Senator Anne Gobi
Organized by Foundation for a Green Future
SPEAKERS & PROGRAM DETAILS to be announced Partners: MWRA, MIT Water Club, Boston Society of Landscape Architects, Boston Water
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World Water Week Panel
Tuesday, March 19
11:45am to 1:00am
Northeastern, Curry Student Center, 333, 346 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Come join for a lively discussion on water issues moderated by the Office of Sustainability. Our diverse group of panelists will shed light on how these issues can affect them and how we can, in turn, affect them. Panelists include: Dr. Laura Kuhn PhD, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and in the International Affairs Program; Joe Ranahan, the Associate Directory of Energy and Sustainability; Jannette Briceno, the Lab Manager for the Lazer Lab at the Network Science Institute; Josh Aliber, an entrepreneur, farmer and innovator; Aditya Kamat, a Graduate Student; and Hugh Shirley, an Undergraduate student.
More information at https://www.facebook.com/events/402578470569542/
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The Global Menace of Plastic Waste
Tuesday, March 19
11:45am to 1:15pm
Northeastern, Curry Student Center, 440, 346 Huntington Avenue, Boston
NU Trash2Treasure's Sustainablility Week and the Office of Sustainability Presents a panel on plastics in our ecosystems led by Professor Kwamina Panford. Food will be provided by Taco Party!
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Film Screening: Left on Pearl
Tuesday, March 19
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Northeastern, Snell Library 90, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Left on Pearl documents a highly significant but little-known event in the history of the women's liberation movement, the 1971 takeover and occupation of a Harvard University–owned building by hundreds of Boston-area women. The ten-day occupation of 888 Memorial Drive in Cambridge by women demanding a Women’s Center, and low income housing for the community in which the building stood, embodied within it many of the hopes, triumphs, conflicts, and tensions of second wave feminism. One of the few such takeovers by women for women, this action was transformative for the participants and led directly to the establishment of the longest continuously operating women's center in the U.S.
Part of the Neighborhood Matters event series. Lunch will be served. Event is free and open to the public.
(Film runtime: 55 minutes)
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CREOS Brown Bag - Cognitive Efficiency and Roles for Visual Thinking Tools
Tuesday, March 19
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building NE36, 6th floor shared conference room 105 Broadway, Suite 6101, Cambridge
Visualizations are cognitive tools. They take advantage of human pattern perception, support working memory and help with cognitive model building. Lessons for visualization based tool building will be developed with three examples. The first is a software for analyzing the behavior of tagged marine mammals. Its design was informed by studies of visual working memory. The second is an interactive visual interface to a fisheries model designed to help users understand the inner workings of a mathematical model, and the third is a model of seaweed architecture, with lessons for mental model building and the role of visualization in explanation and model construction.
About Dr. Colin Ware:
Colin Ware has a special interest in applying theories of perception to the design of data visualizations. He has advanced degrees in both computer science (MMath, Waterloo) and in the psychology of perception (PhD,Toronto). He has published over 170 articles ranging from rigorously scientific contributions to the Journal of Physiology, Behavior and Vision Research to applications oriented articles in the fields of data visualization and human-computer interaction. His book Information Visualization: Perception for Design is now in its third edition. His book, Visual Thinking for Design, appeared in 2008. Ware also likes to build practical visualization systems. Fledermaus, a commercial 3D geospatial visualization system widely used in oceanography, was developed from his initial prototypes. His trackPlot software is being used by marine mammal scientists and his flowVis2D software is serving images on NOAA websites. Colin Ware is Director of the Data Visualization Research Lab which is part of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire.
Location: NE36 Please note the new location. This location requires an ID to sign into the building upon arrival. Please allow time to sign in with security and to proceed to the 6th floor conference room before the start of the discussion.
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A Taste of Techstars - Presented by Techstars Sustainability and STANLEY + Techstars Accelerator
Tuesday, March 19
4:00 PM – 5:15 PM EDT
Impact Hub Boston, 50 Milk Street, 20th floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-taste-of-techstars-presented-by-techstars-sustainability-and-stanley-techstars-tickets-57847181477
Join us for "A Taste of Techstars" on Tuesday March 18th. There will be a short workshop on how to turn motion into progress, followed by informal q&a about the Techstars initiatives in sustainability with the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, and the STANLEY + Techstars Accelerator, a partnership between Techstars and Stanley Black & Decker, designed to move the manufacturing sector forward.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT:
4:00-4:45pm - Turn Motion into Progress Workshop- Just because you’re busy, doesn’t mean you’re moving your business forward. In this talk learn the key steps to turn your hard work into a business that works. Presented by Zach Nies, Managing Director of Techstars Sustainability Accelerator in partnership with The Nature Conservancy.
4:45-5:15pm - Informal Q&A with Zach Nies, the Managing Director of the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator, and Claudia Reuter, the Managing Director of the STANLEY+Techstars Accelerator, about the Techstars' initiatives in sustainability
5:15-6:30 - Join us after for an informal happy hour at a nearby bar. (location TBD, walking distance)
Note: We will start the workshop right at 4pm so please arrive a few minutes early to get settled in.
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The State of Autonomous Driving
Tuesday, March 19
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Speaker: Dr. Amnon Shashua, President and CEO Mobileye, an Intel company; Senior Vice President, Intel Corporation; Sachs Professor of Computer Science | Hebrew University
Speaker Biography: Professor Amnon Shashua is senior vice president at Intel Corporation and president and chief executive officer of Mobileye, an Intel company. He leads Intel’s global organization focused on advanced driving assist systems (ADAS), highly autonomous and fully autonomous driving solutions and programs.
Professor Shashua holds the Sachs Chair in computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Shashua’s field of expertise is computer vision and machine learning. Prof. Shashua received the MARR Prize Honorable Mention in 2001, the Kaye Innovation Award in 2004, and the Landau Award in Exact Sciences in 2005. Since 2010 Prof. Shashua is the co-founder, Chief Technology Officer and Chairman of OrCam, an Israeli company that recently launched an assistive product for the visually impaired based on advanced computerized visual interpretation capabilities.
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New Tools for Sensing Microplastic Pollution, an Emerging Food Security Issue
Tuesday, March 19
4:30pm to 6:00pm
Northeastern, Renaissance_Park, 909, 1135 Tremont Street, Boston
Microplastics are small plastic fragments less than 5mm in width and they are polluting the world’s water systems at alarming levels. This talk will explore the impacts of microplastics on critical water resources, our marine and freshwater food supplies, and also highlight efforts here at Northeastern to develop sensors to more efficiently quantify microplastics in real time.
This lecture is part of the Spring 2019 Contemporary Issues in Security and Resilience Series.
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Myron Weiner Seminar Series on International Migration
Tuesday, March 19
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge,
Jeffrey Kahn is an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. Professor Kahn is a sociocultural anthropologist and legal scholar with an interest in issues of migration, mobility, border policing, sovereignty, law, and ritual economies. His research on these topics has focused geographically on Haiti, the Guantánamo Naval Base, the United States, and the Republic of Bénin.
Free and open to the public | Refreshments will be served
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In Real Life: Designing for Impact Workshop
Tuesday, March 19
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center, 730 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-real-life-designing-for-impact-workshop-tickets-53917074421
In your community or across the globe, learn how to develop ideas that solve problems and make things better. This workshop will teach attendees the design thinking process, also known as human-centered design.
March 19th will be facilitated by BU Hillel staff
Attendees will:
Be introduced to design thinking process and how we articulate it at BU, with a particular focus on reframing.
Apply the design thinking process to a real challenge
Identify challenges that you could/want to apply design thinking towards
Learn about BU and community resources for innovation and design thinking
Each workshop follows a similar format:
Overview of workshop goals
Overview and lesson on the topic
Hands-on activity and exercise
Share learnings and activity results
Wrap up and questions
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Exploring Race through Drama
Tuesday, March 19
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exploring-race-through-drama-tickets-57717332094
Keith Hamilton Cobb, actor and author of American Moor, and David Howse, executive director of ArtsEmerson, examine the powerful role performance can play in catalyzing conversations on race, equality, and social challenges with Lizzy Cooper Davis, a professor at Emerson working at the intersection of arts and social justice.
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Leveraging Machine Learning Approach to Optimize the Participation of a Wind and Storage Power Plant
Tuesday, March 19
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Refreshments start at 6:00PM, talk commences at 6:30PM.
National Grid, 40 Sylvan Road, Waltham, MA 02451 (Rooms: Valley A&B)
RSVP at http://ieeeboston.org/event/leveraging-machine-learning-approach-to-optimize-the-participation-of-a-wind-and-storage-power-plant/
Speaker: Md. Noor-E-Alam, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University
Variable energy resources such as wind farms and solar photovoltaic plants have started to play a significant role in power markets worldwide. However, challenges are faced with decision making due to the uncertainty associated with energy prices and available energy. In many markets, decisions on the amount of energy a plant commits to buy/sell must be made ahead of time before accurate information on such parameters are made available.
This talk discusses the issue of the above uncertainty from the perspective of a wind farm participating in various energy markets, including the day-ahead market. A framework for robust decision making is proposed with the objective of maximizing net profit. This framework aims at leveraging machine learning techniques to extract as much information as possible out of the available dataset. At first, it finds patterns in the daily prices, then extract information out of the sequence in which those patterns appear. The first task is done by performing a multivariate clustering, and the second task is performed by a recurrent neural network-based multiclass classifier. Our simulation experiments showed that the resulting framework has the potential to aid decision makers in managing operations and gaining competitive advantage.
Biography: Md. Noor-E-Alam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the Northeastern University. At Northeastern, Dr. Alam also holds a faculty associate position at Centre for Health Policy and Healthcare Research and an affiliated faculty position at Global Resilience Institute. Prior to his current role, he was working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, affiliated with Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Operations Research Center (ORC), and Sloan School of Management. He has completed his PhD in Engineering Management in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta (UofA) in 2013. His current research interests lie in the intersection of operations research, artificial intelligence and big-data analytics, particularly as applied to healthcare, manufacturing systems and supply chain. He is currently serving as a board of director for IISE Logistics and Supply Chain division.
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Planting Native Species: How You can Contribute to Enhancing the Edibility of Northeast Landscapes!
Tuesday, March 19
6:30 to 9pm
Boston Nature Center Food Forest, 500 Walk Hill Street, Mattapan
RSVP at https://bostonfoodforest.org/events/planting-native-species-how-you-can-contribute-to-enhancing-the-edibility-of-northeast-landscapes/
Forager Russ Cohen, the “Johnny Appleseed” of native edibles, will review two dozen species, tell us how to propagate them in our own yards or nearby landscapes, and share some home-cooked delicacies that feature foraged plants. Space is limited, so pre-register!
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Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture: The Second Founding
Tuesday, March 19
7:00 pm to 8:15 pm
BU, CAS, 6Tsai Performance Center, 85 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at http://bostonu.imodules.com/s/1759/2-bu/2col.aspx?sid=1759&gid=2&pgid=6333&content_id=6874
Historian Eric Foner will present "The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Forged a Constitutional Revolution."
Contact Name Sarah Speltz
Phone 617-353-9511
Contact Email alumnied at bu.edu
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, March 20
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Cyberspace Strategy and Great Power Competition
Wednesday, March 20
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
BIO: Dr. Emily Goldman is currently a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where she leads the cyber and emerging technology portfolios. She is on detail from her position as Director of the US Cyber Command / National Security Agency Combined Action Group, where she led a team to write the 2018 US Cyber Command Vision, “Achieve and Maintain Cyberspace Superiority.” Dr. Goldman previously served as Deputy Director for Interagency Coordination, Office of Communication, USCENTCOM; Strategic Communication Advisor to the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State; and Associate Director, Support to Public Diplomacy, U.S. Department of Defense. She received her PhD from Stanford University and was Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis from 1989 to 2008. She has published on cyber strategy; strategic, military, and arms control policy; military innovation and organizational change; and revolutions in military affairs. She has received awards and fellowships from the MacArthur, Olin, Pew and Smith Richardson Foundations, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the U.S. Naval War College. Her book, Power in Uncertain Times: Strategy in the Fog of Peace, was published by Stanford University Press in 2011. In 2012 she launched the Cyber Analogies Project to improve understanding of the cyber environment. Cyber Analogies was co-edited with John Arquilla and published by the Naval Postgraduate School in 2014.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
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The politics of attention: Understanding the currency of the hybrid media system"
Wednesday, March 20
3:30 pm to 4:30 pm
BU, COM 209, 640 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Dr. Christopher Wells
The attention economy, or the logics by which attention is generated and transformed into various forms of power, is coming into focus as a central feature of our political-media system. This talk is grounded in contemporary theoretical work directed at understanding attention, publicity and visibility in the hybrid media system. It then draws on evidence from several aspects of the American election in 2016, including news media treatment of Donald Trump, the “media-hacking” of far-right social media networks, and the information operations of Russia’s Internet Research Agency, to rethink what we know about political communication under conditions of the attention economy.
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The Pathologies of Digital Consent
Wednesday, March 20
3:30 pm to 5:00 pm
BU, School of Law, 15th Floor Faculty Lounge, 765 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Prof. Neil Richards of Washington University in St. Louis will be giving a talk as part of our collaborative Cyber Alliance Speaker Series.
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CBMM Special Seminar: Self-Learning Systems
Wednesday, March 20
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker/s: Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder & CEO, DeepMind
Speaker Biography: Demis is a former child chess prodigy, who finished his A-levels two years early before coding the multi-million selling simulation game Theme Park aged 17. Following graduation from Cambridge University with a Double First in Computer Science he founded the pioneering videogames company Elixir Studios producing award winning games for global publishers such as Vivendi Universal. After a decade of experience leading successful technology startups, Demis returned to academia to complete a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCL, followed by postdocs at MIT and Harvard, before founding DeepMind. His research into the neural mechanisms underlying imagination and planning was listed in the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2007 by the journal Science. Demis is a 5-times World Games Champion, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the recipient of the Royal Society’s Mullard Award and the Royal Academy of Engineering's Silver Medal.
This talk is co-hosted by the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CBMM) and MIT Quest for Intelligence.
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The Ultrasocial World: International Cooperation Against All Odds
Wednesday, March 20
5:00pm to 6:30pm
Northeastern, Renaissance_Park, 909, 1135 Tremont Street, Boston
Mai’a K. Davis Cross is the Edward W. Brooke Professor of Political Science and Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Northeastern University, will be speaking in the “Us vs. Them: Taming the Biology of Otherness” speaker series.
More information at https://cssh.northeastern.edu/internationalcenter/event/the-ultrasocial-world-international-cooperation-against-all-odds/#_ga=2.197510959.1026000035.1551928550-593491830.1457895416
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Civic Arts Series, "Gaming the Iron Curtain: Computer Games in Communist Czechoslovakia as Entertainment and Activism"
Wednesday, March 20
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 4-270, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge,
Based on the recent book Gaming the Iron Curtain, this lecture will outline the idiosyncratic and surprising ways in which computer hobbyists in Cold War era Czechoslovakia challenged the power of the oppressive political regime and harnessed early microcomputer technology for both entertainment and activism. In the 1970s and 1980s, Czechoslovak authorities treated computer and information technologies as an industrial resource rather than a social or cultural phenomenon. While dismissing the importance of home computing and digital entertainment, they sponsored paramilitary computer clubs whose ostensible goal was to train expert cadres for the army and the centrally planned economy. But these clubs soon became a largely apolitical, interconnected enthusiast network, where two forms of tactical resistance could be identified. First, the clubs offered an alternative spaces of communal hobby activity, partially independent of the oppression experienced at work or at school. The club members’ ambitious DIY projects often substituted for the deficiencies of the state-controlled computer industry. Hobbyists not only built joysticks and programmed games, but also introduced new standards for data storage and ran large-scale bottom-up education programs. Second, especially in the late 1980s, local authors started making games that were openly subversive. Several anti-regime text adventure games were made in 1988 and 1989, including The Adventures of Indiana Jones on Wenceslas Square, January 16, 1989, which pitted the iconic Western hero against riot police during an anti-regime demonstration. These games rank among the world’s earliest examples of activist computer games.
About Jaroslav Švelch
Jaroslav Švelch is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergen and assistant professor at Charles University, Prague. He is the author of the monograph Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (MIT Press, 2018). He has published research on history and theory of computer games, on humor in games and social media, and on the Grammar Nazi phenomenon. His work has been published in journals including New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, or Game Studies, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury and others. He is currently researching history, theory, and reception of monsters in games.
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SCIENCE with/in/sight: 2019 Koch Institute Image Awards
Wednesday, March 20
5:30pm to 7:00pm
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, Galleries 500 Main Street
Celebrate the diversity of biomedical research at the opening of the 2019 Koch Institute Image Awards exhibition. Featuring a range of microscopy and data visualization techniques, this year's display explores topics ranging from developmental biology to machine learning. Dive into cell migration, gene expression, cancer therapy, optogenetics, and more with lightning talks by MIT biologists, engineers, computer scientists, and imaging specialists, and enjoy a casual networking session with your fellow art-science enthusiasts against the backdrop of this year’s newly unveiled winning images.
5:30 - 6:00 p.m. - Networking reception and image viewing in the Koch Institute Public Galleries
6:00 - 7:00 p.m. - Lightning talks by the researchers behind the 2019 Image Awards exhibition
Editorial Comment: Yes, those Kochs.
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Safi Bahcall’s Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.
Wednesday, March 20
6-7:30 p.m.
Suffolk, Sargent Hall, Fifth Floor Commons, 120 Tremont Street, Boston
Author Safi Bahcall will discuss his new book, Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.
What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? Why do traffic jams appear out of nowhere on highways? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water? Physicist and biotech entrepreneur Bahcall, reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about radical breakthroughs. Bahcall shows why groups will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Learn the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice. The program will be moderated by Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and the associate director of the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, which studies the ways information technology affects businesses and society.
Praise for Loonshots
“This book has everything: new ideas, bold insights, entertaining history and convincing analysis. Not to be missed by anyone who wants to understand how ideas change the world.”
~ Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow and winner of the Nobel Prize
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The State of AI / Artificial Intelligence - Panel Discussion with Experts + Networking
Wednesday, March 20
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
General Assembly Boston, 125 Summer Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-state-of-ai-artificial-intelligence-panel-discussion-with-experts-networking-tickets-57728706114
Today, tech startups and corporate giants alike are experimenting with artificial intelligence. We know it’s coming, but where are we in the advent of AI and how soon will it weave into our daily lives—or has it already?
Overview: From applications in AI across industries to major ethical debates, the panel will discuss the state of artificial intelligence and how it’s evolved.
What You’ll Take Away: Attendees will learn about major trends in artificial intelligence and take away key use cases to look out for in the coming years.
Why It Matters: Your job--and all aspects of your life-- will be impacted greatly by artificial intelligence in the very near future. Learn how to harness the power of AI to make it work to your benefit.
Please click here to share/tweet this event.
About the Presenters:
Ben Clark - Chief Architect, Wayfair
Ben Clark joined Wayfair technology in 2011, in recommendations and search. He has been Chief Architect since 2014. He writes about Wayfair tech on their blog. Follow: @clarkjacker
About Wayfair: Wayfair believes everyone should live in a home they love. Through technology and innovation, Wayfair makes it possible for shoppers to quickly and easily find exactly what they want from a selection of more than 14 million items across home furnishings, décor, home improvement, housewares and more. Committed to delighting its customers every step of the way, Wayfair is reinventing the way people shop for their homes – from product discovery to final delivery. The Wayfair family of sites includes: Wayfair - Everything home for every budget. Joss & Main - Stylish designs to discover daily. AllModern - The best of modern, priced for real life. Birch Lane - Classic home. Comfortable cost. Perigold - The widest-ever selection of luxury home furnishings. Wayfair generated $6.8 billion in net revenue for full year 2018. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts with operations throughout North America and Europe, the company employs more than 12,100 people. Learn about Wayfair Careers and join our Talent Community. Follow: @Wayfair @WayfairAtWork
Rob May - CEO and Co-Founder, Talla
Rob May is an active angel investor with 45+ companies in the AI and blockchain spaces, and the author of Inside AI, the most popular AI newsletter online. Previously, Rob was the CEO and Co-Founder of Backupify (acquired by Datto in 2014). Rob has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Kentucky. Follow: @RobMay
Talla integrates with your existing systems and workflows to build machine learning models of common tasks, and answer common questions. Deploy Talla to support reps, or directly to end customers, and see how AI
can increase your productivity by 50% or more. Get Happier Customers and Faster Resolutions with AI Powered Support Tools. Follow: @TallaInc
Judah Phillips - CTO and Co-Founder, Squark
Judah Phillips is an award-winning entrepreneur, consultant, and author. He is the CTO and Co-founder of Squark. A Harvard Innovation Lab VIP, Judah has written three books on analytics. Phillips is an adjunct professor at Babson College and at Boston University. He is a founding member of the University of Massachusetts Advisory Council for the Humanities & Fine Arts.
Phillips helps people create value with analytics, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence by improving business performance, increasing revenue, reducing cost, boosting profitability, and increasing customer satisfaction. He takes a “top down” approach to value creation by working with executive leaders who want to improve their business strategy and financial performance with thought-leadership and solid execution.
Judah has worked with Internet companies, Media and Marketing companies, CPG companies, Automotive Companies, Financial Services and Insurance firms, Pharma companies, and many agencies, including high-growth, early stage startups and the Fortune 10. Follow: @Judah @SquarkAI
Plus 1 more speaker to be announced shortly!
Chris Requena (moderator) - Lead Organizer, Boston New Technology andChief Partnerships Officer, Cape Ann Development
Chris is an app/software innovator, business grower, community builder and people connector. Since 2011, Chris has led the tech and startup group, Boston New Technology, growing it into one of the largest in the world. BNT startups get extensive publicity and support from the community at monthly events and via BNT's network. Chris also co-founded hubEngage, a platform for employee communication and engagement. Chris is also Chief Partnerships Officer at Cape Ann Development Partners, which offers enterprise-class software, app and web development services. Chris greatly enjoys collaborating with clients and users to design and build innovative solutions that solve problems. Follow @CERequena @BostonNewTech
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Jabari Asim: We Can’t Breathe, On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival
Wednesday, March 20
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
First Church JP, 6 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain
Jabari Asim is an author, poet, playwright, associate professor of writing, literature and publishing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.The author of six books for adults and nine books for children. His most recent works are Only The Strong (Agate, 2015), A Child’s Introduction To African-American History(Hachette, 2018) and We Can’t Breathe (Picador, 2018).
His poetry, drama, and prose have been widely published in various periodicals and anthologies. He was an editor for 11 years at the Washington Post, where he also wrote a syndicated column on politics, popular culture, and social issues. Formerly the editor-in-chief of Crisis magazine, the NAACP’s flagship journal of politics, culture, and ideas, he received a 2009 Guggenheim fellowship in Creative Arts. Most recently, he has taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a scholar-in- residence.
Asim’s new book, We Can’t Breathe, On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival are Insightful and searing essays that celebrate the vibrancy and strength of the black experience in America. It is a sharp vision that challenges readers to shift perspective and examine conventional narratives.
In We Can’t Breathe, Jabari Asim disrupts what Toni Morrison has exposed as the “Master Narrative” and replaces it with a story of black survival and persistence through art and community in the face of centuries of racism. In eight wide-ranging and penetrating essays, he explores such topics as the twisted legacy of jokes and falsehoods in black life; the importance of black fathers and community; the significance of black writers and stories; and the beauty and pain of the black body. What emerges is a rich portrait of a community and culture that has resisted, survived, and flourished despite centuries of racism, violence, and trauma. These thought-provoking essays present a different side of American history, one that doesn’t depend on a narrative steeped in oppression but rather reveals black voices telling their own stories.
“We Can’t Breathe is, itself, a useful antidote—for the complacency and ignorance of white Americans. It stands next to Howard Zinn’s work as a supplement to an educational system that teaches the textbooks of the victors. I can imagine thrusting it at any number of well-meaning but inadequately informed acquaintances when they use the phrases “not that bad,” or “post-racial era,” or “who’s Ida B. Wells?” It’s all right here, Asim assures us. Everything we turn away from, he turns back to us, patiently, intelligently. Relentlessly.” -Katharine Coldiron
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Thursday, March 21 - Friday, March 22
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Sharing Economy: Research on Access, Technology, Equity, and Applications
Thursday, March 21
9:00am to 5:00pm
Northeastern, East Village 17th Floor, 281 St. Botolph Street, Boston
Friday, March 22
8am to 4pm
Northeastern Raytheon Amphitheater, 120 Forsyth Street, Boston
RSVP at https://commerce.cashnet.com/cashnetg/selfserve/EditItem.aspx?PC=SFSC-SHFEE&ItemCount=1
$50 on or before March 8th, and $75 after. The final deadline for conference registration is Friday, March 15th.
More dates through March 22, 2019
Multiple aspects of our 21st century lives are touched by sharing economy platforms, which enable customer-to customer matching and transactions, more efficient infrastructure utilization, and actively lower market friction. These electronic platforms span a broad spectrum of sectors, practices and organizational structures. There are inherent tensions and contradictions related to the objectives, boundaries and environmental and societal impacts of the sharing economy.
This conference brings together leaders from the private sector and researchers from disciplines including engineering, law, computing, business, and public policy to:
Identify and compare regulatory and data sharing practices that influence the real-world implementation of sharing economy platforms.
Consider emerging technologies and algorithms for optimizing design, operation, incentives, and security.
Address the role of sharing economy platforms in working toward socially desirable outcomes, including sustainable growth, social equity and improved resilience.
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Thursday, March 21
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Cyber Securitization: Can States Deter Cyber Escalation?
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 21, 2019, 12:15 – 2 p.m.
WHERE One Brattle Square, Room 350, 89 Brattle Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Nadiya Kostyuk, Predoctoral fellow, Cyber Security Project
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch at harvard.edu
DETAILS Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first-come. first-served basis.
LINK https://www.belfercenter.org/index.php/event/cyber-securitization-can-states-deter-cyber-escalation
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Energy Uses in Industry
Thursday, March 21
12:30PM
Harvard, Room 429, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge
John Harrold
HEJC is open to all members of the Harvard and MIT communities. A technical background is not needed. Lunch will be provided.
Harvard Energy Journal Club
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hejc/
Contact Name: Dan Pollack
daniel_pollack at g.harvard.edu
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NULab: Digital Public Humanities Panel
Thursday, March 2
2:00pm
Northeastern, Renaissance Park, 1135 Tremont Street, Boston
RSVP to Sarah Connell (sa.connell at northeastern.edu)
Speakers: Caroline Klibanoff, MIT Museum; Jim McGrath, Brown University; Roopika Risam, Salem State University; Alex Gil, Columbia UniversityLocation: Renaissance Park 909Join us for a two-hour panel, featuring four scholars who work in the digital public humanities: Caroline Klibanoff, MIT Museum; Jim McGrath, Brown University; and Roopika Risam, Salem State University, and Alex Gil, Columbia University, of the Torn Apart / Separados project. This project “aggregates and cross-references publicly available data to visualize the geography of Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy in 2018 and immigration incarceration in the USA in general.”Each scholar will present on their current projects and talk about how these connect with the growing field of digital public humanities. Following the presentations, there will be time for questions and discussion.Co-sponsored with the Northeastern University Humanities Center.More information coming soon!
This event is free and open to the public, but if you are not a member of the Northeastern community, please email Sarah Connell (sa.connell at northeastern.edu)
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Cleantech Open's 2019 Boston Kickoff Party!
Thursday, March 21
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cleantech-opens-2019-boston-kickoff-party-tickets-55537288525
Cost: $0 – $15
This is one of our most popular events!
Please join us in celebrating the launch of the 2019 Cleantech Open accelerator! We are excited to welcome back our community as we look forward to this year's program. We welcome all entrepreneurs, students, investors, savvy technologists, and anyone interested in joining our growing community. This is a great way to connect with Cleantech Open alumni, mentors, and thought leaders in the cleantech space.
If you're a cleantech entrepreneur, this is the perfect event to learn how your venture can benefit from Cleantech Open. You will have the opportunity to give a 1-minute pitch in front of the audience. The crowd favorite will win a free application to Cleantech Open!
Here's our agenda:
Welcome from Greentown Labs
Welcome from Michelle Dawson, Senior External Ventures Manager at Saint Gobain
Overview of Cleantech Open - Beth Zonis, Northeast Regional Director
Alumni Lightning Talks
One-Minute Startup Pitches
Networking over appetizers & drinks
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Transporting Malden into the Future
Thursday, March 21
6:00 PM - 8:30 PM (Local Time)
First Parish Malden, 2 Elm Street, Malden
Malden's 1st Sustainability Forum will focus on Sustainable Transportation. The electric vehicle fair including electric buses, electric car shares, electric scooters and bikes begins at 4PM at Beebe School Parking Lot.
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Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law
Thursday, March 21
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:30)
Memorial Church, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge
Cost: $29.75 (book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York PREET BHARARA for a discussion of his debut book, Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law. He will be joined in conversation by Harvard professor MICHAEL SANDEL—author of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets.
Please Note
This event does not include a book signing. Books included with tickets will not be signed, and we are not taking requests or pre-orders for signed books.
About Doing Justice
Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature.
The book is divided into four sections: Inquiry, Accusation, Judgment and Punishment. He shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system, but he also shows how we all need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in our daily lives.
Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career—the successes as well as the failures—to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action (and in some cases, not taking action, which can be just as essential when trying to achieve a just result).
Much of what Bharara discusses is inspiring—it gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can truly lead us on a path toward truth and justice. Some of what he writes about will be controversial and cause much discussion. Ultimately, it is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system—and in our society.
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Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America
Thursday, March 21
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge,
Randy Shaw, author of Genreration Priced Out, appears in conversation with A Better Cambridge founder Jesse Kanson-Benanav.
Generation Priced Out is a call to action on one of the most talked-about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing the working and middle classes out of urban America. Randy Shaw tells the powerful stories of tenants, politicians, homeowner groups, developers, and activists in over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis. From San Francisco to New York, Seattle to Denver, and Los Angeles to Austin, GenerationPriced Out challenges progressive cities to reverse rising economic and racial inequality.
Shaw exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials’ access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Shaw also demonstrates that neighborhood gentrification is not inevitable and presents proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive outcomes. Generation Priced Out is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of urban America.
Randy Shaw is Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, San Francisco’s leading provider of housing for homeless single adults. His previous books include The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century; Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century; and The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.
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Friday, March 22
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Greater Boston MA Nonprofit Network Meeting
Friday, March 22
9:00 am -11:00 am
The Boston Foundation, 75 Arlington Street, #1000, Boston
RSVP at https://www.tfaforms.com/4717245
Registration will be open at 9:00 am and the program will begin at 9:30 am. Light refreshments will be provided.
Every year, MNN hosts Regional Meetings in every region of the state. The meetings bring together nonprofits from all subsectors to network, share best practices, and collaborate on issues important to the sector.
This year’s meetings will feature a presentation and discussion on the reasons why a complete Census count is important for Massachusetts, the challenges facing the 2020 Census in particular, and the role that nonprofits can play to help ensure an accurate count.
In addition, MNN will be providing a membership update and will review new and expanded services and programs to ensure that nonprofit members are taking advantage of all of their memberships benefits. The update will give non-member nonprofits the best possible reasons to join our network.
We will also discuss other policy updates and provide some time for informal networking.
These meetings are free and open to all nonprofits.
Our Greater Boston Regional Meeting is presented in partnership with The Boston Foundation.
This Regional Meeting is sponsored by the Massachusetts CORE Plan.
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Keynotes on Resilience of New England's Electricity System & Wholesale Market Design 3.0
Friday, March 22
9:00 am - 12:30 pm
Foley Hoag, 13th Floor Conference Room, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
RSVP for livestream at https://signup.clickstreamtv.net/event/raab/events/neer/
Resilience of New England's Electricity System
Ensuring the resilience of our electricity system in the face of ongoing federal/state policy interventions, cybersecurity, and extreme weather events.
We are honored to have keynote addresses on this timely and important topic from Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); and James Robb, CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
Wholesale Market Design 3.0 for New England
How do our wholesale markets need to evolve over next decade in order to:
Provide fuel security and resilience;
Help NE states achieve their carbon reduction goals;
Accommodate state-sponsored resources with long-term contracts (projected to increase from 15% to 50%); and
Operate effectively with increased intermittent resources (solar/wind) and increased zero marginal cost resources (nuclear/solar/wind)
To discuss these complex and important issues we have assembled a great panel of leading thinkers in the region:
Commissioner-Designée Katie Dykes, CT DEEP
Mark Karl, Vice President Market Development, ISO New England
Dan Dolan, President, New England Power Generators Association
Paul Hibbard, Principal, Analysis Group
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Variability in background U.S. ozone pollution: An underappreciated role for the terrestrial biosphere
Friday, March 22
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 48-316, Ralph M Parsons Laboratory, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Prof. Arlene Fiore, Columbia University
Ozone in surface air poses risks to the health of humans as well as vegetation, which has led to the development of air quality standards in many nations such as the U.S.A. Effective implementation of air pollution controls requires knowledge of the various processes shaping ozone distributions and their temporal variability. These processes include natural and anthropogenic precursor emissions, the ensuing ozone formation chemistry, meteorological conditions affected by climate change and variability, and dry deposition. Drawing from recent work in which we apply a range of modeling approaches to interpret observations, I will highlight the role of the terrestrial biosphere – and its response to meteorology – in shaping daily to decadal changes in surface ozone
Environmental Science Seminar Series
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The Cities on the Hill: How Urban Institutions Transformed National Politics
Friday, March 22
12pm -1:30pm
BU, Initiative on Cities, 75 Bay State Road, Boston
RSVP at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eg1x0898da014617&oseq=&c=&ch=
Lunch provided
Tom Ogorzalek, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Northwestern University, shares his new book, The Cities on the Hill: How Urban Institutions Transformed National Politics.
Over the second half of the 20th century, American politics was reorganized around race as the tenuous New Deal coalition frayed and eventually collapsed. What drove this change? In The Cities on the Hill, Ogorzalek argues that the answer lies not in the sectional divide between North and South, but in the differences between how cities and rural areas govern themselves and pursue their interests on the national stage.
Using a wide range of evidence from Congress and an original dataset measuring the urbanicity of districts over time, he shows how the trajectory of partisan politics in America today was set in the very beginning of the New Deal. As Ogorzalek demonstrates, the red and blue shades of contemporary political geography derive more from rural and urban perspectives than clean state or regional lines.
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Brains, Minds + Machines Seminar Series: Probing memory circuits in the primate brain: from single neurons to neural networks
Friday, March 22
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 46-3002, Singleton Auditorium, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Prof. Julio Martinez-Trujillo, Robarts Research Institute
Abstract: The brain’s memory systems are like time machines for thought: they transport sensory experiences from the past to the present, to guide our current decisions and actions. Memories have been classified into long-term, stored for time intervals of days, months, or years, and short-term, stored for shorter intervals of seconds or minutes. There is a consensus that these two types of memories involve different brain systems and have different underlying mechanisms. In this talk, I will present data from different experiments in non-human primates examining brain circuits and mechanisms of both short-termmemory and long-term memory.
Speaker Biography: Julio Martinez-Trujillo is Professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and Scientist at the Robarts Research Institute. He holds an Academic Chair in Autism. Prior to joining Western University in 2014, he was Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience at McGill University.
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What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
Friday, March 22
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Carolyn Forché in conversation with Askold Melnyczuk
What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.
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Saturday, March 23 - Sunday, March 24
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LibrePlanet Conference
Saturday, March 23 - Sunday, March 24
Greater Boston Area
RSVP at https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/event/info?id=79
Cost: $0 - $120
LibrePlanet is an annual conference hosted by the Free Software Foundation for free software enthusiasts and anyone who cares about the intersection of technology and social justice. LibrePlanet brings together software developers, law and policy experts, activists, students and computer users to learn skills, celebrate free software accomplishments, and face challenges to software freedom. Newcomers are always welcome, and LibrePlanet 2019 will feature programming for all ages and experience levels.
LibrePlanet 2019's theme is “Trailblazing Free Software.”
More information at https://libreplanet.org/2019/
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Saturday, March 23
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Gardeners' Gathering
Saturday, March 23
10AM-5PM
Northeastern, Shillman Hall, 115 Forsyth Street, Boston
RSVP at https://events.thetrustees.org/tickets/ItemShow.aspx?Dep=x58rDrwgvC26UOja8STjdA==&Cat=fHoRCuPGeV0xtNHR62NCSw==&It=Wb32kwa/zOY=&d=03-23-2019
Gardens & Gardening, Farms & Food, Lectures & Workshops
Celebrate the start of the gardening season! The 44th Annual Gardeners' Gathering brings Boston-area gardeners together for a free day full of informative workshops, engaging exhibitors, networking, and inspiration. Held at Northeastern University, the Gathering features more than two dozen workshops on everything from Healthy Soil to Urban Foraging. Urban homesteaders can learn about keeping bees or chickens, making fermented pickles, and growing gourmet mushrooms. Gardeners can hone their skills with workshops on garden planning, managing pests and diseases, and more.
Follow the links to sign up if you want to teach a workshop, have a table in the exhibitors' gallery, or advertise in the brochure at http://www.thetrustees.org/things-to-do/metro-boston/event-43119.html
Contact 617.542.7696 x2115
mdelima at thetrustees.org
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Sunday, March 24
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Climate Science and Policy: A Call to Action
Sunday March 24
12:30-2:30
UU First Church in Belmont, 404 Concord Avenue, Belmont
State Senator Will Brownsberger
Peter Frumhoff, Chief Climate Scientist, UCS
More information at http://www.sustainablebelmont.net
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The Second Jewish Climate Conference: The Time is Short, the Task is Great
Sunday, March 24
12:30-7:30 PM
Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street, Newton
RSVP at https://www.jewishboston.com/events/the-second-jewish-climate-conference/
Cost: $10 - $54
in cooperation with the Synagogue Council of MA, Temple Reyim of Newton, MA, and other partners
Jewish Climate Action Network
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Electric Bus Demonstration
Sunday, March 24
2:30 PM (Local Time)
UU First Church in Belmont, 404 Concord Avenue, Belmont
RSVP at https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7010Z0000027SXXQA2
Join MassPIRG and Proterra for an electric bus demonstration at the Sustainable Belmont Forum!
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Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism
Sunday, March 24
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
One Fayette Park, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Biodiversity-for-a-Livable-Climate/events/259618818/
Victor Wallis will lead a discussion based on his book Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (2018), in which he argues that addressing the environmental crisis will require a radical reorganization of society -- over and above whatever changes are made in the direction of cleaner forms of energy production. He recognizes that restoring biodiversity must be central to this process, but argues that we need to understand the social conditions that will be required in order to achieve that goal on a large scale. What those conditions are and how it is possible to approach them are the core issues posed in Red-Green Revolution (copies of which will be available at this event).
Victor Wallis teaches history and politics at the Berklee College of Music. He was for twenty years the editor of Socialism and Democracy. He is also the author of Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S.Politics (2019) and of many articles on ecological and political issues. He is a frequent guest on broadcast and podcast talk shows, and has been an invited lecturer in Brazil, China, and France.
Visit his website at https://www.victorwallis.com
What to bring
An item of food or drink to share, tending to the healthy and organic.
Important to know
Biodiversity for a LIvable Climate is a small non-profit so a $10 donation is requested.
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Monday, March 25
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Connected Things 2019: Disruptive IoT
Monday, March 25
10:00am to 7:10pm
MIT Media Lab, E14, 6th Floor 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://connectedthings.mitforumcambridge.org
Cost: $30 - $325
We hope to see you at the MIT Enterprise Forum (MITEF) Cambridge 2019 Connected Things IoT conference on March 25 at the MIT Media Lab, in Cambridge Massachusetts. This year, our theme is disruptive IoT. Forces contributing to disruptive IoT include new networks, new devices and especially new business models.
Today, everything is a “connected thing.” At our 2018 conference entitled “The Future Arrives,” Dirk Didascalou, Vice President, Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT remarked that we should have named the conference, “The Future Arrived,” a fait accompli!
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Repossessing the Wilderness: New Deal Sciences in the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation
Monday, March 25
12:15PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Please RSVP via the online form at Please RSVP via the online form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd7VGUkAvTU655Dub2FTGSNMjpVs6f8Qbu0kpmXh6oz11MgFw/viewform by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.
Eli Nelson, Williams College, Anthropology
STS Circle at Harvard
http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/events/sts_circle/
Contact: sts at hks.harvard.edu
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Chris Hoofnagle: Cyber Security and the FTC
Monday, March 25
12:15pm - 1:30pm
Harvard, 1 Brattle Square - Suite 470, Cambridge
The Cyber Security Project will host a lunch with Chris Jay Hoofnagle, UC Berkeley School of Information and School of Law, on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's cybersecurity.
Lunch provided on a first come, first served basis. All lunches are off the record.
More information at https://www.belfercenter.org/event/chris-hoofnagle-cyber-security-and-ftc
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Books at Baker with Amy Edmondson
WHEN Monday, Mar. 25, 2019, 3:30 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Business School, Spangler Center Auditorium, Soldiers Field Road, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Baker Library
SPEAKER(S) Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School
Author of "The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth”
COST Free
CONTACT INFO schurch at hbs.edu
DETAILS In The Fearless Organization, Professor Amy Edmondson offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent — but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind?
The traditional culture of “fitting in” and “going along” spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing.
LINK https://www.library.hbs.edu/Articles/Books-Baker
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ISE 2019 Spring Symposium Series: Water, Energy, and the Utility of the Future
Monday, March 25
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
BU, Kilachand Center, Conference Room 106B, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Energy utilities (electricity as well as natural gas distribution) and water utilities have functioned quite separately until recently. Today’s utility world finds several convergence points between electricity, in particular, and water services. For example, similar information infrastructure is required by both electric and water utilities for metering as well as for monitoring and controlling flows of electrons or water. Service interruptions can be as severe for water as for electricity or natural gas distribution. Conservation (demand management) may be as significant, if not more so, for water as for electricity.
Dr. Ashmore, Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Boston University, will talk about the distinctive characteristics of water utilities and engage attendees in discussion of the future of water utilities as they co-evolve with the emergence of the energy utility of the future.
Contact Peishan Wang pswang at bu.edu
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How You Can Help Climate & Wildlife Scientists
Monday, March 25
250 Fresh Pond Parkway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-you-can-help-climate-wildlife-scientists-tickets-52434339521
Climate Change Science & Biodiversity Science need you and the information you can collect. And the good news is that you can easily and really make a difference! This is a crash course about participative science (a.k.a. citizen science), that is the active public involvement in scientific research. In this class, we introduce you to what citizen science is, why it is needed, where it is needed, how you can help (individually or joining some of our local projects including at the Fresh Pond Reservoir), and some of the tools to help.
Join us. It's fun & exciting. Let's make a difference together!
✉ For any question, contact Claire at claire.oneill at earthwiseaware.org
ⓘ Learn about Earthwise Aware » https://www.earthwiseaware.org/
$ Free with a value: Our events are not meant to be free. The reason why we offer this one for free is to benefit Nature directly by having us all together connecting with 'It' —here through exploring together how we can better that connection. Donations to EwA are welcome though!
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Heavy: An American Memoir
Monday, March 25
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed writer and University of Mississippi professor KIESE LAYMON—author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America—for a discussion of his celebrated memoir, Heavy, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.
About Heavy
In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting . . . generous” (New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.
“A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. “You won’t be able to put [this memoir] down . . . It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities” (The Atlantic).
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Tuesday, March 26
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Civic Life Lunch - Monuments & Movements: The Art of Protest
Tuesday, March 26
12 – 1PM
Tufts, Lincoln Filene Center, Rabb Room, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
The struggle over how to document U.S. history honestly and equitably is far from new, but it has taken center stage in recent years with debates about Confederate monuments and buildings named after slave-owners. Enter Steve Locke, Boston Artist-in-Residence, who proposed public art that tackles Faneuil Hall and its namesake’s profit from the slave trade. Locke has sparked debate over how to come to terms with complicated history, and how art can be a medium of advocacy, education, and protest.
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Research Spotlight: Easing Traffic Congestion with Socially Optimal Routing
Tuesday, March 26
12 pm-1:30 pm
BU, Initiative on Cities, 75 Bay State Road, Boston
RSVP at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07eg3bz6jae6bfdb30&llr=sgxoeyrab
Ioannis Paschalidis, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Information & Systems Engineering, shares his new research on ways to mitigate congestion through socially optimal – rather than selfish – traffic routing. Using real-time traffic data from the Boston region
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Research Spotlight: Ioannis Paschalidis
Tuesday, March 26
1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
BU, Initiative on Cities, 75 Bay State Road
Ioannis Paschalidis, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Information & Systems Engineering, shares his new research on ways to mitigate congestion through socially optimal – rather than selfish – traffic routing. Using real-time traffic data from the Boston region, Paschalidis and his colleagues examined the present price of anarchy. Co-hosted with the Center for Information & Systems Engineering. Lunch provided.
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Tales of Sweetgrass and Trees: Robin Wall Kimmerer and Richard Powers in Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2019, 5 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall, 1279 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Humanities, Religion, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Humanities Center and the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Harvard Divinity School
SPEAKER(S) Robin Wall Kimmerer
Richard Powers
Terry Tempest Williams
COST free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO humctr at fas.harvard.edu, (617) 495-0738
DETAILS Scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of the prize-winning "Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants" and "Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses," and Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Richard Powers, author of "The Overstory," join Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams, author of "Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place" and "The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks," in conversation.
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/tales-sweetgrass-and-trees-robin-wall-kimmerer-and-richard-powers-conversation-terry-tempest
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Frye Gaillard’s, A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence
Tuesday, March 26
6-7:30 p.m.
Suffolk, Sargent Hall, Fifth Floor Commons, 120 Tremont Street, Boston
Author Frye Gaillard will discuss his recent book, A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence. Frye Gaillard has given us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller’s eye to this pivotal time in American life. He explores the competing story arcs of tragedy and hope through the political and social movements of the times ― civil rights, black power, women’s liberation, the War in Vietnam, and the protests against it. But he also examines the cultural manifestations of change ― music, literature, art, religion, and science ― and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Harper Lee, Mister Rogers, James Baldwin, Andy Warhol, Billy Graham, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Barry Goldwater,and the Beatles. The evening’s moderator is Robert Poulton, Vice President, Marketing & Branding, NBC10 Boston, NECN & Telemundo Boston.
Praise for A Hard Rain
“A Hard Rain is essential reading for a time when an American president has willfully ignored the hard-earned lessons from our passage through the most tumultuous decade of social change since the Civil War.”
~Howell Raines, former executive editor, The New York Times, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize
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19th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture: Kimberly Dowdell, “Diverse City: How Equitable Design and Development Will Shape Urban Futures”
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2019, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Graduate School of Design, Piper Auditorium, Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
SPEAKER(S) Kimberly Dowdell
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/kimberly-dowdell-diverse-city-how-equitable-design-and-development-will-shape-urban-futures/
CONTACT INFO Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events at gsd.harvard.edu.
DETAILS How can real estate development and sustainable design be used to foster equitable and inclusive redevelopment in cities? That’s the challenge that has animated the career of Kimberly Dowdell, an architect, developer, and educator who is focused on leading projects that help contribute to the revitalization of cities like Detroit, and also preparing the next generation of urban change agents.
Dowdell, who will give the 19th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture, presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, is a partner at Century Partners, an innovative real estate development firm in Detroit focused on equitable neighborhood revitalization, and a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. She is also the new president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). In that position, she has outlined an ambitious agenda focused on helping to ensure that African-American architects — who make up less than two percent of the profession in a country that is 13 percent African-American — play a larger role in efforts to revitalize America’s cities.
In her lecture, Dowdell, who has designed or managed over $100 million in assets in her work as an architect, real estate project manager, government staffer and developer, will draw on her varied experiences to discuss steps needed to create neighborhoods in which all people feel safe and empowered to build a brighter urban future for generations to come.
LINK https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/kimberly-dowdell-diverse-city-how-equitable-design-and-development-will-shape-urban-futures/
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Mass Climate Action Network Legislative Conversation
Tuesday, March 26
7pm - 8pm
Webinar
RSVP at https://www.massclimateaction.org/3_26_leg_convo_2
Join us for a webinar on Tuesday, March 26th at 7:00 PM to learn about MCAN's legislative priorities - in conversation with climate champions in the statehouse! This webinar will is the second in a series covering our climate priority bills for this session.
Rep Joan Meschino of Hull will discuss her road map 2050 bill to avoid climate catastrophe by providing a new target of zero emissions. The bill resets the state's 2050 target to net zero and commits the state agencies to making a comprehensive and detailed plan for how to build a clean economy.
Rep Marjorie Decker of Cambridge has sponsored the 100% clean energy for all bill. There are no insurmountable technical or economic barriers to achieving clean energy for all and Massachusetts to lead the way.
Rep Jennifer Benson of Lunenburg is the lead house sponsor of the bill to put a price on carbon from the heating and transportation sectors. As a Commonwealth, we have placed a significant focus on cutting our climate change-causing pollution from electricity, but we now need to have a comprehensive approach to other areas of our lives.
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Shifting into High Gear with Kyle Bryant
Tuesday, March 26
7:00pm
Trident Books Cafe, 338 Newbury Street, Boston
Author, Podcast-Host, Ted Talk speaker, and subject of a documentary film, Kyle Bryant was diagnosed with Friedreich's ataxia (FA). a degenerative neurological disease that affects one in 50,000 people- making it officially a 'rare disease.' Kyle uses his life story to teach us how to replace the handicapping language of 'disability' with the agency to build a thriving and hopeful life. Hear how Kyle traveled on his trike twice across the United States.
About the book:
Author Kyle Bryant was diagnosed with Friedreich's ataxia (FA). a degenerative neurological disease that affects one in 50,000 people- making it officially a 'rare disease.' Kyle uses his life story to teach us how to replace the handicapping language of 'disability' with the agency to build a thriving and hopeful life.
About the Author:
Diagnosed with a debilitating disease called Friedreich's ataxia (FA) at age seventeen, Kyle Bryant set off across the country to raise awareness. Today, he is the founder and director of rideATAXIA—a fundraising program of the Friedreich's Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) which welcomes thousands of participants who raise 1 million dollars for research every year.
As the public face of FA and spokesperson for FARA, Kyle is in the vanguard of individuals who lend their passionate voices to the rare disease community. As he struggles to manage his own declining health and keep the FA research torch burning for a cure, his one-to-one grassroots efforts provide hope for recently diagnosed patients and those well into their journey, inspiring and coaching them toward the finish line. Kyle lives outside of Philadelphia, which is the base of operations for FARA, where he rides his beloved recumbent trike throughout the year.
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Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature—A New Evolutionary History
Tuesday, March 26
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
The author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived investigates what it means to be human--and the ways we are (and aren’t) unique among animals.
We like to think of ourselves as exceptional beings, but are we really more special than other animals? In this original and entertaining tour of life on Earth, Adam Rutherford explores how many of the things once considered to be exclusively human are not: We are not the only species that communicates, makes tools, uses fire, or has sex for reasons other than procreation. Evolution has, however, allowed us to develop a culture far more complex than any other observed in nature. Humanimal explains how we became the creatures we are today, uniquely able to investigate ourselves. Illuminating the latest genetic research, it is a thrilling account of what unequivocally fixes us as animals--and what makes us truly extraordinary.
Adam Rutherford wrote A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived--finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction--and Creation, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. He writes and presents BBC’s flagship weekly Radio 4 program Inside Science; The Cell for BBC Four; and Playing God (on the rise of synthetic biology) for leading science series Horizon; in addition to writing for the Guardian.
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Opportunity
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MIT Energy Conference: Tough Tech & The 2040 Grid, scheduled for April 4th & 5th, are once again offering a generous discount for subscribers to our NE Roundtable listserv. Just enter the discount code NEERR when you purchase your ticket for 15% off the price of admission.
If you purchase your ticket before February 1st, this discount will stack on top of the Early Bird discount, for a total of 35% off!
RSVP at https://mit.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=950&p=1&utm_source=MIT+Energy+Conference+Discount&utm_campaign=MIT+Energy+Conference+Discount&utm_medium=email
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Announcing Destination 2040: The next long-range transportation plan for the Boston region
How would you improve the Boston region’s transportation system? That’s the question at the heart of the MPO’s preparations for Destination 2040, which the MPO expects to adopt in the spring of 2019.
Every four years, the MPO identifies the system’s strengths and weaknesses; forecasts changes in population, employment, and land use; and creates a plan to address existing and future mobility needs. The resulting long-range transportation plan (LRTP) allocates funding for major projects in the Boston region and guides the MPO’s funding of capital investment programs and studies.
Use the new Destination 2040 website at http://ctps.org/lrtp-dev to explore the state of the system; learn how the MPO will identify needs, revisit its vision and goals, and prioritize its investments; and share your own interests, concerns, and ideas.
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch. No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.
For more information checkout.
https://somervilleyogurtmakingcoop.wordpress.com
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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhwM202dDYxdUZJVGFscnY1VGZ3aXc6MQ
Solar map of Cambridge, MA
http://www.mapdwell.com/en/cambridge
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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha at sbnboston.org
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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas. Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities. Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers. Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs
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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development - http://www.bnid.org/events
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
Please feel free to email our organization at info at bnid.org if you have any questions!
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Boston Maker Spaces - 41 (up from 27 in 2016) and counting: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
Solidarity Network Economy: https://ussolidarityeconomy.wordpress.com
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston: http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/
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Links to events at over 50 colleges and universities at Hubevents: http://hubevents.blogspot.com
Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area: http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Events: http://calendar.mit.edu
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events: http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal: http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings: http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar: https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar
If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
More information about the Act-MA
mailing list