Environment

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Environment

      Looking to the past to prepare for an uncertain future

      by

      Aviva Intveld, an MIT senior majoring in Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences, is accustomed to city life. But despite hailing from metropolitan Los Angeles, she has always maintained a love for the outdoors.

      “Growing up in L.A., you just have a wealth of resources when it comes to beautiful environments,” she says, “but you’re also constantly living connected to the environment.” She developed a profound respect for the natural world and its effects on people, from the earthquakes that shook the ground to the wildfires that displaced inhabitants.

      “I liked the lifestyle that environmental science afforded,” Intveld recalls. “I liked the idea that you can make a career out of spending a huge amount of time in the field and exploring different parts of the world.”

      From the moment she arrived at MIT, Intveld threw herself into research on and off campus. During her first semester, she joined Terrascope, a program that encourages first-year students to tackle complex, real-world problems. Intveld and her cohort developed proposals to make recovery from major storms in Puerto Rico faster, more sustainable, and more equitable.

      Intveld also spent a semester studying drought stress in the lab of Assistant Professor David Des Marais, worked as a research assistant at a mineral sciences research lab back in L.A., and interned at the World Wildlife Fund. Most of her work focused on contemporary issues like food insecurity and climate change. “I was really interested in questions about today,” Intveld says.

      Her focus began to shift to the past when she interned as a research assistant at the Marine Geoarchaeology and Micropaleontology Lab at the University of Haifa. For weeks, she would spend eight hours a day hunched over a microscope, using a paintbrush to sort through grains of sand from the coastal town of Caesarea. She was looking for tiny spiral-shaped fossils of foraminifera, an organism that resides in seafloor sediments.

      These microfossils can reveal a lot about the environment in which they originated, including extreme weather events. By cataloging diverse species of foraminifera, Intveld was helping to settle a rather niche debate in the field of geoarchaeology: Did tsunamis destroy the harbor of Caesarea during the time of the ancient Romans?

      But in addition to figuring out if and when these natural disasters occurred, Intveld was interested in understanding how ancient communities prepared for and recovered from them. What methods did they use? Could those same methods be used today?

      Intveld’s research at the University of Haifa was part of the Onward Israel program, which offers young Jewish people the chance to participate in internships, academic study, and fellowships in Israel. Intveld describes the experience as a great opportunity to learn about the culture, history, and diversity of the Israeli community. The trip was also an excellent lesson in dealing with challenging situations.

      Intveld suffers from claustrophobia, but she overcame her fears to climb through the Bar Kokhba caves, and despite a cat allergy, she grew to adore the many stray cats that roam the streets of Haifa. “Sometimes you can’t let your physical limitations stop you from doing what you love,” she quips.

      Over the course of her research, Intveld has often found herself in difficult and even downright dangerous situations, all of which she looks back on with good humor. As part of an internship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, she spent three months investigating groundwater in Homer, Alaska. While she was there, she learned to avoid poisonous plants out in the field, got lost bushwhacking, and was twice charged by a moose.

      These days, Intveld spends less time in the field and more time thinking about the ancient past. She works in the lab of Associate Professor David McGee, where her undergraduate thesis research focuses on reconstructing the paleoclimate and paleoecology of northeastern Mexico during the Early Holocene. To get an idea of what the Mexican climate looked like thousands of years ago, Intveld analyzes stable isotopes and trace elements in stalagmites taken from Mexican caves. By analyzing the isotopes of carbon and oxygen present in these stalagmites, which were formed over thousands of years from countless droplets of mineral-rich rainwater, Intveld can estimate the amount of rainfall and average temperature in a given time period.

      Intveld is primarily interested in how the area’s climate may have influenced human migration. “It’s very interesting to learn about the history of human motivation, what drives us to do what we do,” she explains. “What causes humans to move, and what causes us to stay?” So far, it seems the Mexican climate during the Early Holocene was quite inconsistent, with oscillating periods of wet and dry, but Intveld needs to conduct more research before drawing any definitive conclusions.

      Recent research has linked periods of drought in the geological record to periods of violence in the archaeological one, suggesting ancient humans often fought over access to water. “I think you can easily see the connections to stuff that we deal with today,” Intveld says, pointing out the parallels between paleolithic migration and today’s climate refugees. “We have to answer a lot of difficult questions, and one way that we can do so is by looking to see what earlier human communities did and what we can learn from them.”

      Intveld recognizes the impact of the past on our present and future in many other areas. She works as a tour guide for the List Visual Arts Center, where she educates people about public art on the MIT campus. “[Art] interested me as a way to experience history and learn about the story of different communities and people over time,” she says.

      Intveld is also unafraid to acknowledge the history of discrimination and exclusion in science. “Earth science has a big problem when it comes to inclusion and diversity,” she says. As a member of the EAPS Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, she aims to make earth science more accessible.

      “Aviva has a clear drive to be at the front lines of geoscience research, connecting her work to the urgent environmental issues we’re all facing,” says McGee. “She also understands the critical need for our field to include more voices, more perspectives — ultimately making for better science.”

      After MIT, Intveld hopes to pursue an advanced degree in the field of sustainable mining. This past spring, she studied abroad at Imperial College London, where she took courses within the Royal School of Mines. As Intveld explains, mining is becoming crucial to sustainable energy. The rise of electric vehicles in places like California has increased the need for energy-critical elements like lithium and cobalt, but mining for these elements often does more harm than good. “The current mining complex is very environmentally destructive,” Intveld says.

      But Intveld hopes to take the same approach to mining she does with her other endeavors — acknowledging the destructive past to make way for a better future. More

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Environment

      Sustainable supply chains put the customer first

      by

      When we consider the supply chain, we typically think of factories, ships, trucks, and warehouses. Yet, the customer side is equally important, especially in efforts to make our distribution networks more sustainable. Customers are an untapped resource in building sustainability, says Josué C. Velázquez Martínez, a research scientist at MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. 

      Velázquez Martínez, who is director of MIT’s Sustainable Supply Chain Lab, investigates how customer-facing supply chains can be made more environmentally and socially sustainable. One way is a Green Button project that explores how to optimize e-commerce delivery schedules to reduce carbon emissions and persuade customers to use less carbon-intensive four- or five-day shipping options instead of one or two days. Velázquez Martínez has also launched the MIT Low Income Firms Transformation (LIFT) Lab that is researching ways to improve micro-retailer supply chains in the developing world to provide owners with the necessary tools for survival.  

      “The definition of sustainable supply chain keeps evolving because things that were sustainable 20 to 30 years ago are not as sustainable now,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Today, there are more companies that are capturing information to build strategies for environmental, economic, and social sustainability. They are investing in alternative energy and other solutions to make the supply chain more environmentally friendly and are tracking their suppliers and identifying key vulnerabilities. A big part of this is an attempt to create fairer conditions for people who work in supply chains or are dependent on them.”

      Play video

      The move toward sustainable supply chain is being driven as much by people as by companies, whether they are playing the role of selective consumer or voting citizens. The consumer aspect is often overlooked, says Velázquez Martínez. “Consumers are the ones who move the supply chain. We are looking at how companies can provide transparency to involve customers in their sustainability strategy.” 

      Proposed solutions for sustainability are not always as effective as promised. Some fashion rental schemes fall into this category, says Velázquez Martínez. “There are many new rental companies that are trying to get more use out of clothes to offset the emissions associated with production. We recently researched the environmental impact of monthly subscription models where consumers pay a fee to receive clothes for a month before returning them, as well as peer-to-peer sharing models.” 

      The researchers found that while rental services generally have a lower carbon footprint than retail sales, hidden emissions from logistics played a surprisingly large role. “First, you need to deliver the clothes and pick them up, and there are high return rates,” says Velázquez Martínez. “When you factor in dry cleaning and packaging emissions, the rental models in some cases have a worse carbon footprint than buying new clothes.” Peer-to-peer sharing could be better, he adds, but that depends on how far the consumers travel to meet-up points. 

      Typically, says Velázquez Martínez, garment types that are frequently used are not well suited to rental models. “But for specialty clothes such as wedding dresses or prom dresses, it is better to rent.” 

      Waiting a few days to save the planet 

      Even before the pandemic, online retailing gained a second wind due to low-cost same- and next-day delivery options. While e-commerce may have its drawbacks as a contributor to social isolation and reduced competition, it has proven itself to be far more eco-friendly than brick-and-mortar shopping, not to mention a lot more convenient. Yet rapid deliveries are cutting into online-shopping’s carbon-cutting advantage.

      In 2019, MIT’s Sustainable Supply Chain Lab launched a Green Bottle project to study the rapid delivery phenomenon. The project has been “testing whether consumers would be willing to delay their e-commerce deliveries to reduce the environmental impact of fast shipping,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Many companies such as Walmart and Target have followed Amazon’s 2019 strategy of moving from two-day to same-day delivery. Instead of sending a fully loaded truck to a neighborhood every few days, they now send multiple trucks to that neighborhood every day, and there are more days when trucks are targeting each neighborhood. All this increases carbon emissions and makes it hard for shippers to consolidate. ”  

      Working with Coppel, one of Mexico’s largest retailers, the Green Button project inspired a related Consolidation Ecommerce Project that built a large-scale mathematical model to provide a strategy for consolidation. The model determined what delivery time window each neighborhood demands and then calculated the best day to deliver to each neighborhood to meet the desired window while minimizing carbon emissions. 

      No matter what mixture of delivery times was used, the consolidation model helped retailers schedule deliveries more efficiently. Yet, the biggest cuts in emissions emerged when customers were willing to wait several days.

      Play video

      “When we ran a month-long simulation comparing our model for four-to-five-day delivery with Coppel’s existing model for one- or two-day delivery, we saw savings in fuel consumption of over 50 percent on certain routes” says Velázquez Martínez. “This is huge compared to other strategies for squeezing more efficiency from the last-mile supply chain, such as routing optimization, where savings are close to 5 percent. The optimal solution depends on factors such as the capacity for consolidation, the frequency of delivery, the store capacity, and the impact on inbound operations.” 

      The researchers next set out to determine if customers could be persuaded to wait longer for deliveries. Considering that the price differential is low or nonexistent, this was a considerable challenge. Yet, the same day habit is only a few years old, and some consumers have come to realize they don’t always need rapid deliveries. “Some consumers who order by rapid delivery find they are too busy to open the packages right away,” says Velázquez Martínez.  

      Trees beat kilograms of CO2

      The researchers set out to find if consumers would be willing to sacrifice a bit of convenience if they knew they were helping to reduce climate change. The Green Button project tested different public outreach strategies. For one test group, they reported the carbon impact of delivery times in kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2). Another group received the information expressed in terms of the energy required to recycle a certain amount of garbage. A third group learned about emissions in terms of the number of trees required to trap the carbon. “Explaining the impact in terms of trees led to almost 90 percent willing to wait another day or two,” says Velázquez Martínez. “This is compared to less than 40 percent for the group that received the data in kilograms of CO2.” 

      Another surprise was that there was no difference in response based on income, gender, or age. “Most studies of green consumers suggest they are predominantly high income, female, highly educated, or younger,” says Velázquez Martínez. “However, our results show that the differences were the same between low and high income, women and men, and younger and older people. We have shown that disclosing emissions transparently and making the consumer a part of the strategy can be a new opportunity for more consumer-driven logistics sustainability.” 

      The researchers are now developing similar models for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. “We found that B2B supply chain emissions are often high because many shipping companies require strict delivery windows,” says Velázquez Martínez.  

      The B2B models drill down to examine the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) emissions of suppliers. “Although some shipping companies are now asking their suppliers to review emissions, it is a challenge to create a transparent supply chain,” says Velázquez Martínez.  “Technological innovations have made it easier, starting with RFID [radio frequency identification], and then real-time GPS mapping and blockchain. But these technologies need to be more accessible and affordable, and we need more companies willing to use them.” 

      Some companies have been hesitant to dig too deeply into their supply chain, fearing they might uncover a scandal that might risk their reputation, says Velázquez Martínez. Other organizations are forced to look at the issue when nongovernmental organizations research sustainability issues such as social injustice in sweat shops and conflict mineral mines. 

      One challenge to building a transparent supply chain is that “in many companies, the sustainability teams are separate from the rest of the company,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Even if the CEOs receive information on sustainability issues, it often doesn’t filter down because the information does not belong to the planners or managers. We are pushing companies to not only account for sustainability factors in supply chain network design but also examine daily operations that affect sustainability. This is a big topic now: How can we translate sustainability information into something that everybody can understand and use?” 

      LIFT Lab lifts micro-retailers  

      In 2016, Velázquez Martínez launched the MIT GeneSys project to gain insights into micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries. The project released a GeneSys mobile app, which was used by more than 500 students throughout Latin America to collect data on more than 800 microfirms. In 2022, he launched the LIFT Lab, which focuses more specifically on studying and improving the supply chain for MSEs.  

      Worldwide, some 90 percent of companies have fewer than 10 employees. In Latin America and the Caribbean, companies with fewer than 50 employees represent 99 percent of all companies and 47 percent of employment. 

      Although MSEs represent much of the world’s economy, they are poorly understood, notes Velázquez Martínez. “Those tiny businesses are driving a lot of the economy and serve as important customers for the large companies working in developing countries. They range from small businesses down to people trying to get some money to eat by selling cakes or tacos through their windows.”  

      The MIT LIFT Lab researchers investigated whether MSE supply chain issues could help shed light on why many Latin American countries have been limited to marginal increases in gross domestic product. “Large companies from the developed world that are operating in Latin America, such as Unilever, Walmart, and Coca-Cola, have huge growth there, in some cases higher than they have in the developed world,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Yet, the countries are not developing as fast as we would expect.” 

      The LIFT Lab data showed that while the multinationals are thriving in Latin America, the local MSEs are decreasing in productivity. The study also found the trend has worsened with Covid-19.  

      The LIFT Lab’s first big project, which is sponsored by Mexican beverage and retail company FEMSA, is studying supply chains in Mexico. The study spans 200,000 micro-retailers and 300,000 consumers. In a collaboration with Tecnológico de Monterrey, hundreds of students are helping with a field study.  

      “We are looking at supply chain management and business capabilities and identifying the challenges to adoption of technology and digitalization,” says Velázquez Martínez. “We want to find the best ways for micro-firms to work with suppliers and consumers by identifying the consumers who access this market, as well as the products and services that can best help the micro-firms drive growth.” 

      Based on the earlier research by GeneSys, Velázquez Martínez has developed some hypotheses for potential improvements for micro-retailer supply chain, starting with payment terms. “We found that the micro-firms often get the worst purchasing deals. Owners without credit cards and with limited cash often buy in smaller amounts at much higher prices than retailers like Walmart. The big suppliers are squeezing them.” 

      While large retailers usually get 60 to 120 days to pay, micro-retailers “either pay at the moment of the transaction or in advance,” says Velázquez Martínez. “In a study of 500 micro-retailers in five countries in Latin America, we found the average payment time was minus seven days payment in advance. These terms reduce cash availability and often lead to bankruptcy.” 

      LIFT Lab is working with suppliers to persuade them to offer a minimum payment time of two weeks. “We can show the suppliers that the change in terms will let them move more product and increase sales,” says Velázquez Martínez. “Meanwhile, the micro-retailers gain higher profits and become more stable, even if they may pay a bit more.” 

      LIFT Lab is also looking at ways that micro-retailers can leverage smartphones for digitalization and planning. “Some of these companies are keeping records on napkins,” says Velázquez Martínez. “By using a cellphone, they can charge orders to suppliers and communicate with consumers. We are testing different dashboards for mobile apps to help with planning and financial performance. We are also recommending services the stores can provide, such as paying electricity or water bills. The idea is to build more capabilities and knowledge and increase business competencies for the supply chain that are tailored for micro-retailers.” 

      From a financial perspective, micro-retailers are not always the most efficient way to move products. Yet they also play an important role in building social cohesion within neighborhoods. By offering more services, the corner bodega can bring people together in ways that are impossible with e-commerce and big-box stores.  

      Whether the consumers are micro-firms buying from suppliers or e-commerce customers waiting for packages, “transparency is key to building a sustainable supply chain,” says Velázquez Martínez. “To change consumer habits, consumers need to be better educated on the impacts of their behaviors. With consumer-facing logistics, ‘The last shall be first, and the first last.’” More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Environment

      MIT community in 2022: A year in review

      by

      In 2022, MIT returned to a bit of normalcy after the challenge of Covid-19 began to subside. The Institute prepared to bid farewell to its president and later announced his successor; announced five flagship projects in a new competition aimed at tackling climate’s greatest challenges; made new commitments toward ensuring support for diverse voices; and celebrated the reopening of a reimagined MIT Museum — as well as a Hollywood blockbuster featuring scenes from campus. Here are some of the top stories in the MIT community this year.

      Presidential transition

      In February, MIT President L. Rafael Reif announced that he planned to step down at the end of 2022. In more than 10 years as president, Reif guided MIT through a period of dynamic growth, greatly enhancing its global stature and magnetism. At the conclusion of his term at the end of this month, Reif will take a sabbatical, then return to the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In September, Reif expressed his gratitude to the MIT community at an Institute-wide dance celebration, and he was honored with a special MIT Dome lighting earlier this month.

      After an extensive presidential search, Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist and the current provost of Duke University, was announced in October as MIT’s 18th president. Following an introduction to MIT that included a press conference, welcoming event, and community celebration, Kornbluth will assume the MIT presidency on Jan. 1, 2023.

      In other administrative transitions: Cynthia Barnhart was appointed provost after Martin Schmidt stepped down to become president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Sanjay Sarma stepped down as vice president for open learning after nine years in the role; professors Brent Ryan and Anne White were named associate provosts, while White was also named associate vice president for research administration; and Agustín Rayo was named dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

      Climate Grand Challenges

      MIT announced five flagship projects in its first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition. These multiyear projects focus on unraveling some of the toughest unsolved climate problems and bringing high-impact, science-based solutions to the world on an accelerated basis. Representing the most promising concepts to emerge from the two-year competition that yielded 27 finalist projects, the five flagship projects will receive additional funding and resources from MIT and others to develop their ideas and swiftly transform them into practical solutions at scale.

      CHIPS and Science Act

      President Reif and Vice President for Research Maria Zuber were among several MIT representatives to witness President Biden’s signing of the $52 billion “CHIPS and Science” bill into law in August. Reif helped shape aspects of the bill and was a vocal advocate for it among university and government officials, while Zuber served on two government science advisory boards during the bill’s gestation and consideration. Earlier in the year, MIT.nano hosted U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, while MIT researchers released a key report on U.S. microelectronics research and manufacturing.

      MIT Morningside Academy for Design

      Supported by a $100 million founding gift, the MIT Morningside Academy for Design launched as a major interdisciplinary center that aims to build on the Institute’s leadership in design-focused education. Housed in the School of Architecture and Planning, the academy provides a hub that will encourage design work at MIT to grow and cross disciplines among engineering, science, management, computing, architecture, urban planning, and the arts.

      Reports of the Institute

      A number of key Institute reports and announcements were released in 2022. They include: an announcement of the future of gift acceptance for MIT: an announcement of priority MIT investments; a new MIT Values Statement; a renewed commitment to Indigenous scholarship and community; the Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement, and Composition; a report on MIT’s engagement with China; a report of the Working Group on Reimagining Public Safety at MIT; a report of the Indigenous Working Group; and a report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Arts, Culture, and DEI.

      Nobel Prizes

      MIT affiliates were well-represented among new and recent Nobel laureates who took part in the first in-person Nobel Prize ceremony since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. MIT-affiliated winners for 2022 included Ben Bernanke PhD ’79, K. Barry Sharpless, and Carolyn Bertozzi. Winners in attendance from 2020 and 2021 included Professor Joshua Angrist, David Julius ’77, and Andrea Ghez ’87.

      New MIT Museum

      A reimagined MIT Museum opened this fall in a new 56,000-square-foot space in the heart of Cambridge’s Kendall Square. The museum invites visitors to explore the Institute’s innovations in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — and to take part in that work with hands-on learning labs and maker spaces, interactive exhibits, and venues to discuss the impact of science and technology on society.

      “Wakanda Forever”

      In November, the Institute Office of Communications and the Division of Student Life hosted a special screening of Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The MIT campus had been used as a filming location in summer 2021, as one of the film’s characters, Riri Williams (also known as Ironheart), is portrayed as a student at the Institute.

      In-person Commencement returns

      After two years of online celebrations due to Covid-19, MIT Commencement returned to Killian Court at the end of May. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81 delivered the Commencement address, while poet Kealoha Wong ’99 spoke at a special ceremony for the classes of 2020 and 2021.

      Students win distinguished fellowships

      As in previous years, MIT students continued to shine. This year, exceptional undergraduates were awarded Fulbright, Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, and Schwarzman scholarships.

      Remembering those we’ve lost

      Among MIT community members who died this year were Robert Balluffi, Louis Braida, Ashton Carter, Tom Eagar, Dick Eckaus, Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Peter Griffith, Patrick Hale, Frank Sidney Jones, Nonabah Lane, Leo Marx, Bruce Montgomery, Joel Moses, Brian Sousa Jr., Mohamed Magdi Taha, John Tirman, Richard Wurtman, and Markus Zahn.

      In case you missed it:

      Additional top community stories of 2022 included MIT students dominating the 82nd Putnam Mathematical Competition, an update on MIT’s reinstating the SAT/ACT requirement for admissions, a new mathematics program for Ukrainian students and refugees, a roundup of new books from MIT authors, the renaming of the MIT.nano building, an announcement of winners of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, the new MIT Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, and MIT students winning the 45th International Collegiate Programming Contest for the first time in 44 years. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Environment

      New nanosatellite tests autonomy in space

      by

      In May 2022, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Transporter-5 mission into orbit. The mission contained a collection of micro and nanosatellites from both industry and government, including one from MIT Lincoln Laboratory called the Agile MicroSat (AMS).

      AMS’s primary mission is to test automated maneuvering capabilities in the tumultuous very low-Earth orbit (VLEO) environment, starting at 525 kilometers above the surface and lowering down. VLEO is a challenging location for satellites because the higher air density, coupled with variable space weather, causes increased and unpredictable drag that requires frequent maneuvers to maintain position. Using a commercial off-the-shelf electric-ion propulsion system and custom algorithms, AMS is testing how well it can execute automated navigation and control over an initial mission period of six months.

      “AMS integrates electric propulsion and autonomous navigation and guidance control algorithms that push a lot of the operation of the thruster onto the spacecraft — somewhat like a self-driving car,” says Andrew Stimac, who is the principal investigator for the AMS program and the leader of the laboratory’s Integrated Systems and Concepts Group.

      Stimac sees AMS as a kind of pathfinder mission for the field of small satellite autonomy. Autonomy is essential to support the growing number of small satellite launches for industry and science because it can reduce the cost and labor needed to maintain them, enable missions that call for quick and impromptu responses, and help to avoid collisions in an already-crowded sky.

      AMS is the first-ever test of a nanosatellite with this type of automated maneuvering capability.

      AMS uses an electric propulsion thruster that was selected to meet the size and power constraints of a nanosatellite while providing enough thrust and endurance to enable multiyear missions that operate in VLEO. The flight software, called the Bus Hosted Onboard Software Suite, was designed to autonomously operate the thruster to change the spacecraft’s orbit. Operators on the ground can give AMS a high-level command, such as to descend to and maintain a 300-kilometer orbit, and the software will schedule thruster burns to achieve that command autonomously, using measurements from the onboard GPS receiver as feedback. This experimental software is separate from the bus flight software, which allows AMS to safely test its novel algorithms without endangering the spacecraft.

      “One of the enablers for AMS is the way in which we’ve created this software sandbox onboard the spacecraft,” says Robert Legge, who is another member of the AMS team. “We have our own hosted software that’s running on the primary flight computer, but it’s separate from the critical health and safety avionics software. Basically, you can view this as being a little development environment on the spacecraft where we can test out different algorithms.”

      AMS has two secondary missions called Camera and Beacon. Camera’s mission is to take photos and short video clips of the Earth’s surface while AMS is in different low-Earth orbit positions.

      “One of the things we’re hoping to demonstrate is the ability to respond to current events,” says Rebecca Keenan, who helped to prepare the Camera payload. “We could hear about something that happened, like a fire or flood, and then respond pretty quickly to maneuver the satellite to image it.”

      Keenan and the rest of the AMS team are collaborating with the laboratory’s DisasterSat program, which aims to improve satellite image processing pipelines to help relief agencies respond to disasters more quickly. Small satellites that could schedule operations on-demand, rather than planning them months in advance before launch, could be a great asset to disaster response efforts.

      The other payload, Beacon, is testing new adaptive optics capabilities for tracking fast-moving targets by sending laser light from the moving satellite to a ground station at the laboratory’s Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts. Enabling precise laser pointing from an agile satellite could aid many different types of space missions, such as communications and tracking space debris. It could also be used for emerging programs such as Breakthrough Starshot, which is developing a satellite that can accelerate to high speeds using a laser-propelled lightsail.

      “As far as we know, this is the first on-orbit artificial guide star that has launched for a dedicated adaptive optics purpose,” says Lulu Liu, who worked on the Beacon payload. “Theoretically, the laser it carries can be maneuvered into position on other spacecraft to support a large number of science missions in different regions of the sky.”

      The team developed Beacon with a strict budget and timeline and hope that its success will shorten the design and test loop of next-generation laser transmitter systems. “The idea is that we could have a number of these flying in the sky at once, and a ground system can point to one of them and get near-real-time feedback on its performance,” says Liu.

      AMS weighs under 12 kilograms with 6U dimensions (23 x 11 x 36 centimeters). The bus was designed by Blue Canyon Technologies and the thruster was designed by Enpulsion GmbH.

      Legge says that the AMS program was approached as an opportunity for Lincoln Laboratory to showcase its ability to conduct work in the space domain quickly and flexibly. Some major roadblocks to rapid development of new space technology have been long timelines, high costs, and the extremely low risk tolerance associated with traditional space programs. “We wanted to show that we can really do rapid prototyping and testing of space hardware and software on orbit at an affordable cost,” Legge says.

      “AMS shows the value and fast time-to-orbit afforded by teaming with rapid space commercial partners for spacecraft core bus technologies and launch and ground segment operations, while allowing the laboratory to focus on innovative mission concepts, advanced components and payloads, and algorithms and processing software,” says Dan Cousins, who is the program manager for AMS. “The AMS team appreciates the support from the laboratory’s Technology Office for allowing us to showcase an effective operating model for rapid space programs.”

      AMS took its first image on June 1, completed its thruster commissioning in July, and has begun to descend toward its target VLEO position. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Environment

      Using game engines and “twins” to co-create stories of climate futures

      by

      Imagine entering a 3D virtual story world that’s a digital twin of an existing physical space but also doubles as a vessel to dream up speculative climate stories and collective designs. Then, those imagined worlds are translated back into concrete plans for our physical spaces.

      Five multidisciplinary teams recently convened at MIT — virtually — for the inaugural WORLDING workshop. In a weeklong series of research and development gatherings, the teams met with MIT scientists, staff, fellows, students and graduates as well as other leading figures in the field. The theme of the gathering was “story, space, climate, and game engines.”

      “WORLDING illustrates the emergence of an entirely new field that fuses urban planning, climate science, real-time 3D engines, nonfiction storytelling, and speculative fiction,” says Katerina Cizek, lead designer of the workshop at Co-Creation Studio, MIT Open Documentary Lab. “And co-creation is at the core of this field that allows for collective, democratic, scientific and artistic processes.” The research workshop was organized by the studio in partnership with Unity Software.

      The WORLDING teams met with MIT scholars to discuss diverse domains, from the decolonization of board games, to urban planning as acts of democracy, to behind the scenes of a flagship MIT Climate Challenge project.

      “Climate is really a whole-world initiative,” said Noelle Selin, an MIT atmospheric chemistry professor, in a talk at WORLDING. Selin co-leads an MIT initiative that is digitally twinning the Earth to harness enormous volumes of data for improved climate projections and put these models into the hands of diverse communities and stakeholders.

      “Digital twinning” is a growth market for the game engine industry, in verticals such as manufacturing, architecture, finance, and medicine. “Digital twinning gives teams the power to ideate,” said Elizabeth Baron, a senior manager of enterprise solutions at Unity in her talk at WORLDING. “You can look at many things that maybe aren’t even possible to produce. But you’re the resource. Impact is very low, but the creativity aspect is very high.”

      That’s where the story and media experts come in. “Now, more than ever, we need to forge shared narratives about the world that we live in today and the world that we want to build for the future. Technology can help us visualize and communicate those worlds,” says Marina Psaros MCP ’06, head of sustainability at Unity, lead on WORLDING at Unity, and a graduate of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

      In his talk on the short history of WORLDING, media scholar William Uricchio, MIT professor of comparative media studies and founder of the Open Documentary Lab, suggested that story and space come together in these projects that create new ways of knowing. “Story is always a representation,” he says. “It’s got a fixity and coherence to it, and play is — and, I would argue, worlds are —  all about simulation. Simulation in the case of digital twinning is capable of generating countless stories. It’s play as a story-generator, but in the service of envisioning a pluralistic and malleable future.”

      Fixed dominant narratives and game mechanics that underpin board games have been historically violent and unjust, says MIT Game Lab scholar Mikael Jakkobson, who shared findings for his upcoming book on the subject with the cohort. He argues that board games are built on underlying ideas of  “exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination. And, as it happens, those are also good ways of thinking about the mechanics of Western colonialism.”

      To counter these hegemonic mechanics and come up with new systems, community is vital, and urban planning is a discipline that plays a huge role in the translation of space, story, and democracy. Ceasar MacDowell, an MIT professor of the practice of civic design, told the WORLDING cohort that urban planning needs to expand its notion of authorship. He is working on systems (from his current position at the Media Lab) that not only engage the community in conversations but also prompt “the people who have been in conversations to actually make sense of them, do the meaning-making themselves, not to have external people interpret them.” These become dynamic layers of both representation and simulation that are not, as Uricchio suggests, fixed. 

      USAID Chief Climate Officer Gillian Calwell visited the group with both sharp warnings and warm enthusiasm: “When it comes to climate, this world isn’t working so well for us; we better start envisioning the new ones, and fast … We don’t have time to convince people that this is happening anymore. Nor do we need to. I think most of the world is having the hands-on, up-close-and-personal experience with the fact that these impacts are coming faster and more furiously than even the scientists had predicted. But one thing we do need help with on a more hopeful note is visualizing how the world could be different.”

      The WORLDING workshop is designed and inspired by the ideas and practices charted in the Co-Creation Studio’s new MIT Press book, “Collective Wisdom: Co-Creation Media for Equity and Justice,” which insists that “No one person, organization, or discipline can determine all the answers alone.”

      The five multidisciplinary teams in this first WORLDING cohort were diverse in approach, technology, and geography. For example, one is an Indigenous-led, land-based, site-specific digital installation that seeks to envision a future in which, once again, the great herds of buffalo walk freely. Another team is creating 3D-modeled biome kits of the water systems in the drought-stricken American West, animated by interviews and data from the communities living there. Yet another team is digitally twinning and then re-imagining a sustainable future in the year 2180 for a multi-player virtual reality game in a Yawanawà Shukuvena Village in the rainforests of Brazil.

      “While our workshop design was focused on developing and researching these incredible, interdisciplinary projects, we also hope that WORLDING can set an example for similar initiatives across global sectors where distances and varied expertise are not limitations but opportunities to learn from one another,” says Srushti Kamat, WORLDING producer and MIT creative media studies/writing grad.

      Most of the talks and presentations from the WORLDING workshop are available as archived videos at cocreationstudio.mit.edu/worlding-videos. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Environment

      MIT Policy Hackathon produces new solutions for technology policy challenges

      by

      Almost three years ago, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the world. Many are still looking to uncover a “new normal.”

      “Instead of going back to normal, [there’s a new generation that] wants to build back something different, something better,” says Jorge Sandoval, a second-year graduate student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP) at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS). “How do we communicate this mindset to others, that the world cannot be the same as before?”

      This was the inspiration behind “A New (Re)generation,” this year’s theme for the IDSS-student-run MIT Policy Hackathon, which Sandoval helped to organize as the event chair. The Policy Hackathon is a weekend-long, interdisciplinary competition that brings together participants from around the globe to explore potential solutions to some of society’s greatest challenges. 

      Unlike other competitions of its kind, Sandoval says MIT’s event emphasizes a humanistic approach. “The idea of our hackathon is to promote applications of technology that are humanistic or human-centered,” he says. “We take the opportunity to examine aspects of technology in the spaces where they tend to interact with society and people, an opportunity most technical competitions don’t offer because their primary focus is on the technology.”

      The competition started with 50 teams spread across four challenge categories. This year’s categories included Internet and Cybersecurity, Environmental Justice, Logistics, and Housing and City Planning. While some people come into the challenge with friends, Sandoval said most teams form organically during an online networking meeting hosted by MIT.

      “We encourage people to pair up with others outside of their country and to form teams of different diverse backgrounds and ages,” Sandoval says. “We try to give people who are often not invited to the decision-making table the opportunity to be a policymaker, bringing in those with backgrounds in not only law, policy, or politics, but also medicine, and people who have careers in engineering or experience working in nonprofits.”

      Once an in-person event, the Policy Hackathon has gone through its own regeneration process these past three years, according to Sandoval. After going entirely online during the pandemic’s height, last year they successfully hosted the first hybrid version of the event, which served as their model again this year.

      “The hybrid version of the event gives us the opportunity to allow people to connect in a way that is lost if it is only online, while also keeping the wide range of accessibility, allowing people to join from anywhere in the world, regardless of nationality or income, to provide their input,” Sandoval says.

      For Swetha Tadisina, an undergraduate computer science major at Lafayette College and participant in the internet and cybersecurity category, the hackathon was a unique opportunity to meet and work with people much more advanced in their careers. “I was surprised how such a diverse team that had never met before was able to work so efficiently and creatively,” Tadisina says.

      Erika Spangler, a public high school teacher from Massachusetts and member of the environmental justice category’s winning team, says that while each member of “Team Slime Mold” came to the table with a different set of skills, they managed to be in sync from the start — even working across the nine-and-a-half-hour time difference the four-person team faced when working with policy advocate Shruti Nandy from Calcutta, India.

      “We divided the project into data, policy, and research and trusted each other’s expertise,” Spangler says, “Despite having separate areas of focus, we made sure to have regular check-ins to problem-solve and cross-pollinate ideas.”

      During the 48-hour period, her team proposed the creation of an algorithm to identify high-quality brownfields that could be cleaned up and used as sites for building renewable energy. Their corresponding policy sought to mandate additional requirements for renewable energy businesses seeking tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act.

      “Their policy memo had the most in-depth technical assessment, including deep dives in a few key cities to show the impact of their proposed approach for site selection at a very granular level,” says Amanda Levin, director of policy analysis for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Levin acted as both a judge and challenge provider for the environmental justice category.

      “They also presented their policy recommendations in the memo in a well-thought-out way, clearly noting the relevant actor,” she adds. This clarity around what can be done, and who would be responsible for those actions, is highly valuable for those in policy.”

      Levin says the NRDC, one of the largest environmental nonprofits in the United States, provided five “challenge questions,” making it clear that teams did not need to address all of them. She notes that this gave teams significant leeway, bringing a wide variety of recommendations to the table. 

      “As a challenge partner, the work put together by all the teams is already being used to help inform discussions about the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Levin says. “Being able to tap into the collective intelligence of the hackathon helped uncover new perspectives and policy solutions that can help make an impact in addressing the important policy challenges we face today.”

      While having partners with experience in data science and policy definitely helped, fellow Team Slime Mold member Sara Sheffels, a PhD candidate in MIT’s biomaterials program, says she was surprised how much her experiences outside of science and policy were relevant to the challenge: “My experience organizing MIT’s Graduate Student Union shaped my ideas about more meaningful community involvement in renewables projects on brownfields. It is not meaningful to merely educate people about the importance of renewables or ask them to sign off on a pre-planned project without addressing their other needs.”

      “I wanted to test my limits, gain exposure, and expand my world,” Tadisina adds. “The exposure, friendships, and experiences you gain in such a short period of time are incredible.”

      For Willy R. Vasquez, an electrical and computer engineering PhD student at the University of Texas, the hackathon is not to be missed. “If you’re interested in the intersection of tech, society, and policy, then this is a must-do experience.” More

    • 50 Shares149 Views

      in Environment

      Machinery of the state

      by

      In Mai Hassan’s studies of Kenya, she documented the emergence of a sprawling administrative network officially billed as encouraging economic development, overseeing the population, and bolstering democracy. But Hassan’s field interviews and archival research revealed a more sinister purpose for the hundreds of administrative and security offices dotting the nation: “They were there to do the presidents’ bidding, which often involved coercing their own countrymen.”

      This research served as a catalyst for Hassan, who joined MIT as an associate professor of political science in July, to investigate what she calls the “politicized management of bureaucracy and the state.” She set out to “understand the motivations, capacities, and roles of people administering state programs and social functions,” she says. “I realized the state is not a faceless being, but instead comprised of bureaucrats carrying out functions on behalf of the state and the regime that runs it.”

      Today, Hassan’s portfolio encompasses not just the bureaucratic state but democratization efforts in Kenya and elsewhere in the East Africa region, including her native Sudan. Her research highlights the difficulties of democratization. “I’m finding that the conditions under which people come together for overthrowing an autocratic regime really matter, because those conditions may actually impede a nation from achieving democracy,” she says.

      A coordinated bureaucracy

      Hassan’s academic engagement with the state’s administrative machinery began during graduate school at Harvard University, where she earned her master’s and doctorate in government. While working with a community trash and sanitation program in some Kenyan Maasai communities, Hassan recalls “shepherding myself from office to office, meeting different bureaucrats to obtain the same approvals but for different jurisdictions.” The Kenyan state had recently set up hundreds of new local administrative units, motivated by what it claimed was the need for greater efficiency. But to Hassan’s eyes, “the administrative network was not well organized, seemed costly to maintain, and seemed to hinder — not bolster — development,” she says. What then, she wondered, was “the political logic behind such state restructuring?”

      Hassan began researching this bureaucratic transformation of Kenya, speaking with administrators in communities large and small who were charged with handling the business of the state. These studies yielded a wealth of findings for her dissertation, and for multiple journals.

      But upon finishing this tranche of research, Hassan realized that it was insufficient simply to study the structure of the state. “Understanding the role of new administrative structures for politics, development, and governance fundamentally requires that we understand who the government has put in charge of them,” she says. Among her insights:

      “The president’s office knows a lot of these administrators, and thinks about their strengths, limitations, and fit within a community,” says Hassan. Some administrators served the purposes of the central government by setting up water irrigation projects or building a new school. But in other villages, the state chose administrators who could act “much more coercively, ignoring development needs, throwing youth who supported the opposition into jail, and spending resources exclusively on policing.”

      Hassan’s work showed that in communities characterized by strong political opposition, “the local administration was always more coercive, regardless of an elected or autocratic president,” she says. Notably, the tenures of such officials proved shorter than those of their peers. “Once administrators get to know a community — going to church and the market with residents — it’s hard to coerce them,” explains Hassan.

      These short tenures come with costs, she notes: “Spending significant time in a station is useful for development, because you know exactly whom to hire if you want to build a school or get something done efficiently.” Politicizing these assignments undermines efforts at delivery of services and, more broadly, economic improvement nationwide. “Regimes that are more invested in retaining power must devote resources to establishing and maintaining control, resources that could otherwise be used for development and the welfare of citizens,” she says.

      Hassan wove together her research covering three presidents over a 50-year period, in the book, “Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya” (2020, Cambridge University Press), named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020.

      Sudanese roots

      The role of the state in fulfilling the needs of its citizens has long fascinated Hassan. Her grandfather, who had served as Sudan’s ambassador to the USSR, talked to her about the advantages of a centralized government “that allocated resources to reduce inequality,” she says.

      Politics often dominated the conversation in gatherings of Hassan’s family and friends. Her parents immigrated to northern Virginia when she was very young, and many relatives joined them, part of a steady flow of Sudanese fleeing political turmoil and oppression.

      “A lot of people had expected more from the Sudanese state after independence and didn’t get it,” she says. “People had hopes for what the government could and should do.”

      Hassan’s Sudanese roots and ongoing connection to the Sudanese community have shaped her academic interests and goals. At the University of Virginia, she gravitated toward history and economics classes. But it was her time at the Ralph Bunche Summer institute that perhaps proved most pivotal in her journey. This five-week intensive program is offered by the American Political Science Association to introduce underrepresented undergraduate students to doctoral studies. “It was really compelling in this program to think rigorously about all the political ideas I’d heard as I was growing up, and find ways to challenge some assertions empirically,” she says.

      Regime change and civil society

      At Harvard, Hassan first set out to focus on Sudan for her doctoral program. “There wasn’t much scholarship on the country, and what there was lacked rigor,” she says. “That was something that needed to change.” But she decided to postpone this goal after realizing that she might be vulnerable as a student conducting field research there. She landed instead in Kenya, where she honed her interviewing and data collection skills.

      Today, empowered by her prior work, she has returned to Sudan. “I felt that the popular uprising in Sudan and ousting of the Islamist regime in 2019 should be documented and analyzed,” she says. “It was incredible that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, acted collectively to uproot a dictator, in the face of brutal violence from the state.”But “democracy is still uncertain there,” says Hassan. The broad coalition behind regime change “doesn’t know how to govern because different people and different sectors of society have different ideas about what democratic Sudan should look like,” she says. “Overthrowing an autocratic regime and having civil society come together to figure out what’s going to replace it require different things, and it’s unclear if a movement that accomplishes the first is well-suited to do the second.”

      Hassan believes that in order to create lasting democratization, “you need the hard work of building organizations, developing ways in which members learn to compromise among themselves, and make decisions and rules for how to move forward.”

      Hassan is enjoying the fall semester and teaching courses on autocracy and authoritarian regimes. She is excited as well about developing her work on African efforts at democratic mobilization in a political science department she describes as “policy-forward.”

      Over time, she hopes to connect with Institute scholars in the hard sciences to think about other challenges these nations are facing, such as climate change. “It’s really hot in Sudan, and it may be one of the first countries to become completely uninhabitable,” she says. “I’d like to explore strategies for growing crops differently or managing the exceedingly scarce resource of water, and figure out what kind of political discussions will be necessary to implement any changes. It is really critical to think about these problems in an interdisciplinary way.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Environment

      Earth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds

      by

      The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on beating.

      Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.

      Just how does it accomplish this? A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.

      Scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering plays a major role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle. The mechanism of silicate weathering could provide a geologically constant force in keeping carbon dioxide — and global temperatures — in check. But there’s never been direct evidence for the continual operation of such a feedback, until now.

      The new findings are based on a study of paleoclimate data that record changes in average global temperatures over the last 66 million years. The MIT team applied a mathematical analysis to see whether the data revealed any patterns characteristic of stabilizing phenomena that reined in global temperatures on a  geologic timescale.

      They found that indeed there appears to be a consistent pattern in which the Earth’s temperature swings are dampened over timescales of hundreds of thousands of years. The duration of this effect is similar to the timescales over which silicate weathering is predicted to act.

      The results are the first to use actual data to confirm the existence of a stabilizing feedback, the mechanism of which is likely silicate weathering. This stabilizing feedback would explain how the Earth has remained habitable through dramatic climate events in the geologic past.

      “On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback,” says Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

      The study is co-authored by Arnscheidt and Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics at MIT.

      Stability in data

      Scientists have previously seen hints of a climate-stabilizing effect in the Earth’s carbon cycle: Chemical analyses of ancient rocks have shown that the flux of carbon in and out of Earth’s surface environment has remained relatively balanced, even through dramatic swings in global temperature. Furthermore, models of silicate weathering predict that the process should have some stabilizing effect on the global climate. And finally, the fact of the Earth’s enduring habitability points to some inherent, geologic check on extreme temperature swings.

      “You have a planet whose climate was subjected to so many dramatic external changes. Why did life survive all this time? One argument is that we need some sort of stabilizing mechanism to keep temperatures suitable for life,” Arnscheidt says. “But it’s never been demonstrated from data that such a mechanism has consistently controlled Earth’s climate.”

      Arnscheidt and Rothman sought to confirm whether a stabilizing feedback has indeed been at work, by looking at data of global temperature fluctuations through geologic history. They worked with a range of global temperature records compiled by other scientists, from the chemical composition of ancient marine fossils and shells, as well as preserved Antarctic ice cores.

      “This whole study is only possible because there have been great advances in improving the resolution of these deep-sea temperature records,” Arnscheidt notes. “Now we have data going back 66 million years, with data points at most thousands of years apart.”

      Speeding to a stop

      To the data, the team applied the mathematical theory of stochastic differential equations, which is commonly used to reveal patterns in widely fluctuating datasets.

      “We realized this theory makes predictions for what you would expect Earth’s temperature history to look like if there had been feedbacks acting on certain timescales,” Arnscheidt explains.

      Using this approach, the team analyzed the history of average global temperatures over the last 66 million years, considering the entire period over different timescales, such as tens of thousands of years versus hundreds of thousands, to see whether any patterns of stabilizing feedback emerged within each timescale.

      “To some extent, it’s like your car is speeding down the street, and when you put on the brakes, you slide for a long time before you stop,” Rothman says. “There’s a timescale over which frictional resistance, or a stabilizing feedback, kicks in, when the system returns to a steady state.”

      Without stabilizing feedbacks, fluctuations of global temperature should grow with timescale. But the team’s analysis revealed a regime in which fluctuations did not grow, implying that a stabilizing mechanism reigned in the climate before fluctuations grew too extreme. The timescale for this stabilizing effect — hundreds of thousands of years — coincides with what scientists predict for silicate weathering.

      Interestingly, Arnscheidt and Rothman found that on longer timescales, the data did not reveal any stabilizing feedbacks. That is, there doesn’t appear to be any recurring pull-back of global temperatures on timescales longer than a million years. Over these longer timescales, then, what has kept global temperatures in check?

      “There’s an idea that chance may have played a major role in determining why, after more than 3 billion years, life still exists,” Rothman offers.

      In other words, as the Earth’s temperatures fluctuate over longer stretches, these fluctuations may just happen to be small enough in the geologic sense, to be within a range that a stabilizing feedback, such as silicate weathering, could periodically keep the climate in check, and more to the point, within a habitable zone.

      “There are two camps: Some say random chance is a good enough explanation, and others say there must be a stabilizing feedback,” Arnscheidt says. “We’re able to show, directly from data, that the answer is probably somewhere in between. In other words, there was some stabilization, but pure luck likely also played a role in keeping Earth continuously habitable.”

      This research was supported, in part, by a MathWorks fellowship and the National Science Foundation. More