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Geography RSS FeedsRebuilding the City of New Orleans: Working Across Sectors to Achieve a Common Goal - John Fernandez It took John Fernandez more than a year just to begin to understand the political players and competing interests in New Orleans, and so it is no surprise to him that coming up with a common goal for rebuilding the city, much less a “resource efficient one,” proves elusive. Nevertheless, Fernandez and other MIT researchers aspire to make post-Katrina New Orleans a successful case study of a city “becoming green,” perhaps serving as a model for other urban centers, particularly those facing climate change challenges. Fernandez became deeply involved in New Orleans’ struggle when he was invited to examine the city’s public housing units, most of which had been condemned without inspection. He discovered that the vast majority were either habitable or recoverable. The “decided lack of a civic voice” forced the city’s poorest to abandon their homes, often for FEMA trailers. Now, New Orleans Office of Recovery Management seems to be movin...Feed Source: mitworld.mit.edu History of Boston Transportation1630-1990 - Frederick P. Salvucci Fred Salvucci ponders the role of contingency in history, and in the evolution of Boston and its transportation system. He starts from the time the glaciers pulled back from Boston, leaving a soggy near-island and a river for the first white settlers to contend with. “The reason the city is here because of an accident of history,” he says. In the 1600s, “when the English first came, they made a mistake,” Salvucci reports. Thinking that the Charles would run deep and wide for a thousand miles inland, offering vital trade routes, the English hunkered down.
Once they realized their mistake (the Charles is about a foot deep in Watertown, MA, six miles away), the settlers built on the resources at hand, which included enormous stocks of cod and good ship-building lumber. The “poverty of a place forces skills, which in turn makes the place not poor,” says Salvucci. These Protestant settlers also set about, in near record time, establishing... Agents of Change: Model Partnerships with Academia - Lennart Billfalk, Ernest J. Moniz, Theodore Smith, Elizabeth Kolbert This panel offers some evidence that sustained alliances between academia and other organizations may help us more effectively address climate change issues.
In Sweden, Lennart Billfalk says, universities have historically cooperated with industry. In the 1980s, when interest in electrical engineering was waning, Billfalk’s Vattenfall power company financed new labs and committed to extra teaching resources, spawning a whole new generation of electrical engineers attuned to key energy issues. In the 90s, the government and industry financed joint research centers, which are helping Sweden fulfill its commitment to reduce CO2 emissions 50% by 2030, and 80% by 2050. R&D from these collaborations has led to carbon capture and storage projects, and several CO2 free pilot power plants in Europe.
Ernest Moniz pegs several factors integral to the success of ... Why Bad Things Happen to Good Technologies - John Sterman John Sterman pokes holes through some popular proposals for addressing climate change, with sobering case studies that demonstrate why “technological solutions are not enough to address the problem of creating a sustainable world.”
We are staking too much hope for a climate change fix on “the better mousetrap theory of innovation,” says Sterman. It goes like this: New technology from places like MIT will drive down the cost of renewable energy, increase demand for carbon-free renewables and displace fossil fuels. New energy markets emerge, after a regulatory nudge or two from the government, or some incentives and emissions fees.
To demonstrate how completely wrong this theory is, Sterman first discusses great products never adopted by consumers, such as the Sony Betamax video recorder. More to the point, he notes current opportunities that would significantly reduce our carbon footprint yet have been ignored by society at large, s... Digital Evolution - Craig R. Barrett The world is counting on the fulfillment of (Intel co-founder) Gordon Moore’s Law for at least another half century. In Craig Barrett’s view, solutions to the crucial challenges of our time depend on improving on already nano-sized microprocessors every few years.
He points to the astonishing improvements in efficiency and miniaturization in Intel’s semiconductors, which around 1972 came loaded with 2,000 transistors that could be seen with the naked eye. Today’s integrated circuits, 11 generations down the road, bear 1-2 billion transistors that can be seen only with a scanning electron microscope. Intel has had to make other improvements too, says Barrett, as they moved into the nanoscale, attempting to improve functionality and performance without power dissipation. Dual and quad core microprocessors now permit parallel computing within a single PC. Barrett recounts how the first teraflop computer he worked on at Sandia Labs required 1... How Would Climate Change Influence Society in the 21st Century? - Rajendra K. Pachauri The rising public awareness of climate change, says MIT President Susan Hockfield, comes with a price. “The public dialogue has evolved from nothing is wrong, so we need to do nothing, to everything is so wrong, that there’s nothing we can do.” Citizens are “starving for a sense of focus, clarity and direction,” and with that in mind, MIT and other organizations “need to speak louder,” declares Hockfield, by elevating the public debate, telling the truth about the power and limitations of technology, and focusing on the harsh reality that the scale of a proposed solution can “doom a clever idea to nothing more than a dilettante’s distraction.”
Here’s Rajendra K. Pachauri’s panic-inducing assertion: We have a window of seven years to stabilize CO2 at today’s levels if we are to limit our global mean temperature increase to around 2.40C. A world this hot would be a very unpleasant place to be. Pachauri lays ... How Would Climate Change Influence Society in the 21st Century? (Panel) - Akimasa Sumi, John Reilly, Adil Najam, Howard Herzog, Michael W. Golay, William Moomaw, Andreas Fischlin Rajendra K. Pachauri leads fellow members of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC in a remarkable public session of soul-searching. Now that the IPCC has helped make climate change a signal issue of our times, what next?
John Reilly wonders whether the IPCC should be celebrating any success, given that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in spite of all the comprehensive study. Given the “dismal outcome so far,” it’s important that the IPCC “avoid the complacency that comes with big awards,” and that “much, all of the work is still there to be done.”
“It’s probably time for sunset, Michael Golay suggests.” Now that the IPCC has succeeded in establishing climate change as “a reality among at least the chattering classes,” the next step is actually a social question, one that is much more difficult than coming up with new technolog... Leading Global Growth by Protecting What Really Matters Most - Ellen J. Kullman After 205 years, DuPont has transformed itself substantially while remaining true to its character, suggests Ellen Kullman. “We’re a company with a passion for science,” says Kullman. DuPont, which got its start making black powder for explosives, pursued chemicals for its first 100 years, but is now taking its science into energy, biotechnology and nanotechnology, with products and services in agriculture, nutrition, coating and color technologies, performance materials and safety and protection.
Kullman says that in its first 180 years of existence, DuPont did everything itself. “We believed firmly that nobody could do it better than us.” Now, the company is “thinking without borders,” seeking customers and collaborators globally. With a central lab in the U.S., the company targets R&D and application development close to customers in such key markets as Japan, India and China. The company also partners with research institutions worldwid... Life is Not Virtual - Tom Brokaw In this heartfelt address, Tom Brokaw characterizes the transformation of the world by digital technology as a second “Big Bang,” a time of great possibility, but also of danger.
This revolution is being advanced not by “a small collection of monkish wonks working in a secret lab” but by a vast and ever larger population ranging from inventive teenagers to military analysts in the Pentagon, says Brokaw, who feel “power at their fingertips and in the bowels of their servers.” They believe that the world is limited only by their imagination. Yet, cautions Brokaw, “life is not a virtual experience. If we develop capacity and leave out compassion, what is the reward? What are the consequences if speed overruns reason?”
The most memorable people Brokaw has met during 45 years in journalism are not world leaders and movie stars, but “brave young, black and white civil rights workers” determined to end the "moral hypocrisy” of the segregated sout... Are You Ready for IPO? Strategies and Steps For How and When to Take Your Company Public - Jonathan Bush, Gail Goodman, Jonathan (Jono) Goldstein, Bruce Evans These panelists serve up straight talk and occasionally dish on various aspects of going public, giving aspiring entrepreneurs an unvarnished view of the process.
In the mid-90s, Jonathan Bush started a health care IT business in the cellar of his Boston-area home, with the server sitting on a basement dryer. After a failed initial attempt to “create an incredible service experience around birth,” his team decided to focus on solving healthcare’s “insidious integrity problem.” Athenahealth set about providing billing and medical records services via internet to health care groups large and small.
The 10-year journey to public offering was bumpy, according to Bush. There was a great deal of pressure, with VCs pushing the timing, and “lots of swanky, large black cars would show up to talk about selling out opportunities.” His advice today, around setting an IPO price: “Push and sque... Copyright © 2008, Magic Maldives. All Rights Reserved. |