As an undergraduate at MIT, Robert Horvitz did not take a biology course until his senior year. But after only six weeks into his first class with professor Cy Leventhal, he realized this was the field for him. He boldly asked for a recommendation as part of his application to grad school—in biology. “Is it too late?” he wanted to know. Professor Leventhal explained that his own undergraduate and graduate degrees had been in physics and that Horvitz would, in fact, be “starting early.”

It was his work in Cambridge, England, however, that set the stage for the discoveries for which he would receive the Nobel Prize in 2002. Here he worked with Sidney Brenner and John Sulston on a phenomenon called “programmed cell death” or apoptosis. Cell death occurs naturally as part of the genetic program of every cell—a tadpole loses its tail as it turns into a frog, a bird that doesn’t need webbed feet loses the webbing as it develops. But for many years biologists ignored this behavior thinking that they must be doing something wrong when cells they were studying died.

When Horvitz first began work on the analysis of programmed cell death, he didn’t study human or animal diseases. Instead, he relied on a tiny nematode—C. elegans—only 1mm in length and comprised of exactly 959 cells. He had been warned that C. elegans was obscure and that using it would be a “scientific dead end.” Nonetheless, this creature proved to be the perfect “research subject” for the genetic and molecular work he did in understanding apoptosis. “It’s very easy to study an organism . . . that simple.”

Today cell death—cellular suicide—is recognized as a normal part of the development and biology of animal cells. Disease, on the other hand, is seen as an abnormality in the regulation of programmed cell death. According to Horvitz, diseases come in “two flavors”—cells in which there is too little programmed cell death (cells that should die, instead live) and cells in which there is too much programmed cell death (cells that should live, instead die).

Horvitz also emphasizes the importance of basic research and the importance of federal funding for that work. “If all funding is targeted to specific areas, then out-of-the-box discoveries wouldn’t happen and progress would be much slower.”

Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan have been pioneers in the field of molecular neurobiology for more than 30 years, and their genetic studies of fruit flies and mice have provided major insights into many different aspects of brain function and development. In this joint lecture, they summarize their recent work on the genetic control of neuronal shape and of electrical properties, including many implications for human brain disorders.

The brain’s extraordinary wiring complexity is largely due to dendrites, the elaborate branched structures through which neurons receive incoming signals. In the first part of their joint lecture, Yuh-Nung Jan summarizes the genetic mechanisms that control the shapes of these elaborate structures.

Jan describes how dendrites recognize and avoid other dendrites of the same neuron, while ignoring dendrites from adjacent neurons. The key to this self/non-self discrimination ability is a remarkable gene called dsCAM, which encodes some 38,000 different splice variants. Each neuron is believed to express a different subset of these variants, giving it a unique molecular identity. Genetic studies are also starting to reveal how dendritic arbor size is regulated. Like a well- pruned tree, dendritic arbors are dynamic structures in which new growth and branch removal are kept in precise balance. Jan estimates that around 100 genes are involved in this process, and he argues that mutations in these genes could contribute significantly to many human brain disorders.

Studies of dendritic structure are providing insights into neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s disease. Jan shows that over-expression of the human mutant protein in fruit fly neurons causes systematic changes to their dendrites, making these flies an ideal system in which to study the disease mechanism and identify new therapeutic strategies.

The Jans have been pioneers in the study of potassium channels (K channels), the most abundant class of ion channels in the brain. In the second part of their joint presentation, Lily Jan examines the complex regulatory mechanisms by which K channels regulate brain’s activity.

To function properly, K channels must be targeted to the correct part of the neuron. Jan describes how this is accomplished for a prototypical mouse K channel known as Kv1, with the help of two associated proteins that are responsible for transporting the channel molecules along axons.

Kv1 is also present in dendrites but it gets there via a different mechanism. Rather than transporting the protein, as happens in axons, the RNA encoding the channel is localized to dendrites, where its translation is controlled locally by electrical activity at synaptic sites. Jan describes the pathway by which this happens, which appears to constitute a positive feedback loop – synaptic activity suppresses the synthesis of Kv1.1, thus increasing activity levels still further. She then shows how disruptions to this feedback pathway could contribute to autism and pervasive developmental disorder.

In the final part of the talk, Jan describes the regulation of another class of K channels known as GIRKs. Unlike the voltage-gated Kv channels, which open and close rapidly in response to electrical activity, the GIRK channels open more slowly (seconds rather than milliseconds) in response to chemical signals between neurons. GIRK channels were recently found to be concentrated at excitatory synapses within the brain, and Jan presents evidence that GIRK channels may play a fundamental role in controlling synaptic plasticity and learning.

Tools developed by Martin Wattenberg and his associate Fernanda Viégas, have changed the way people look at and use visualizations, by empowering and equipping users with the methodology needed to ask different questions. Wattenberg, whose background is in math and computer science, asks how the humanities have influenced the evolution of data visualization and then answers with several examples from his own work.

Web Seer compares Google's "auto-suggest" feature in one-to-one, weighted comparisons such as "why doesn't he…" and "why doesn't she…" The resultant text image uses the size of arrows and words to reflect frequency, demonstrating how text can impart meaning.

Another Wattenberg/Viégas collaboration is Many Eyes, a social media tool and Web site that has "democratized" powerful visualization systems by putting them in the hands of general audiences. This tool lets users visualize data in numerous ways, from scatterplots and bar charts to tree maps and stack graphs.

Word Tree, a visualization technique that lets users pick a word or phrase from a data set, shows the different contexts in which it appears via a tree-like branching structure. Chimera takes care of the "boilerplate problem" by examining large collections of text, such as contracts, and pointing out identical phrases. Seeing results arranged in faux 3D "skyscrapers" clearly illustrates levels of recurrence. Although Word Tree and Chimera are fundamentally repetition searches, they are important tools for semantic analysis: simple, but revealing.

The idea behind Phrase Net is to expose a text's underlying network; this visualization tool diagrams the relationships between different words used in a text. It uses a simple form of pattern matching to provide multiple views of the concepts contained a book, speech, or poem.

Another Wattenberg/ Viégas collaboration is Fleshmap, "an inquiry into human desire." The relationship between the body and its visual and verbal representation are explored in a series of artistic studies employing song lyrics and body imagery. Flickr Flow, Wattenberg explains, is an experiment whose materials are color and time. Software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos of Boston taken during each month of the year and plotted those colors on a wheel creating a "river of meaning."

Wattenberg addresses questions regarding the impact of race in personified visualizations, and his subjective motives in selecting particular data for analysis. He admits that his "hard drive is loaded with failed visualizations," but emphasizes that the visualization process should be one of trial and error. As for encouraging the development of visual literacy, Wattenberg concludes, "as visualization becomes part of the discourse and people realize, 'this is something that's powerful, it can help me make my case in life,' they'll learn… I'm hoping for education and good, old-fashioned human brain power."

In 1906, when Alois Alzheimer first described the disease that bears his name, it was a rarity; life expectancy in the US was around 50 years, and few people lived long enough to develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD). But as life expectancies have risen around the world, AD has become vastly more prevalent, and it is now one of the major public health problems of our time. In this lecture, Steven Paul, former Executive Vice President at Lilly, reviews our current understanding of the pathological mechanisms and implications for future treatments of this disease.

People with AD experience a progressive loss of memory and other cognitive abilities, the result of slow degeneration within the brain. Postmortem examination of patients’ brains reveals myriad deposits known as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, especially within the forebrain areas that underlie memory and higher cognitive functions.

The behavioral signs of AD usually appear in the 70’s or later, and the risk of the disease rises sharply with age. But it now thought that the pathological process begins many years earlier, before the condition is diagnosed. The aim of therapy, Paul argues, should be to slow the process and thus delay onset of symptoms; even a five-year delay in onset would reduce the prevalence of the disease by 50%, a huge public benefit.

Clues to the mechanisms that may cause AD have come from genetic studies, especially of rare early-onset cases. These cases are caused by mutations in any of several genes, all of which lead to increased production of a peptide known as Abeta42 (Aβ42), the major component of amyloid plaques.

But these mutations are rare and cannot account for most cases of AD. By far the most important genetic risk factor is a gene known as ApoE, of which there are three common variants in the human population. The variant known as ApoE4 increases risk, especially in people who inherit two copies. The ApoE3 variant is intermediate, and the ApoE2 version has the lowest risk.

Paul and his colleagues were able to replicate this effect in transgenic mice genetically engineered to develop AD, and to express one or more of the human ApoE variants that either worsen or alleviate the disease. Their results support the idea that the protective E2 version of the protein is expressed at higher levels than the other versions, and that raising the expression of the gene in humans might be beneficial. Lilly has developed a compound that does this, and which is currently being tested in mice.

The ApoE protein is involved in cholesterol transport within the blood, but its role in the brain is less well understood. Paul presents evidence that ApoE works in microglial cells to clear Aβ42 from the brain before it can accumulate to form damaging plaques.

Paul ends his talk by discussing what these insights may mean for the prospects of new therapies. By the time a person is diagnosed with AD, the accumulation of Abeta may already be complete. So even if a therapy could prevent such accumulation, it may be too late to be effective. Instead, Paul argues, we need biomarkers that predict at an earlier age who is at risk for the disease, and then treat these people preventatively -- perhaps in their 50s or earlier, as is done with statins for cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. He is optimistic that current research will lead to strong predictive biomarkers; the main challenge now is to develop drugs that can be given safely over long periods to prevent the accumulation of Abeta aggregates within the brain.

A focus on designing technologies that allow the "visualization of things not visible" has been at the center of Ben Shneiderman’s work over the past two decades. He advocates the discovery of temporal patterns, relationships and clusters via an empowering user experience which enables discovery at a customizable pace and depth.

Shneiderman makes a clear distinction between high-resolution presentation (ala Edward Tufte) and discovery, which he defines as "the dynamics of interaction." Noting that different patterns will be interesting to different people, he suggests that the capacity to quickly test out a viewpoint, to ask a large number of questions in a short amount of time…is an "enriching gift."

Shneiderman cites several different projects which utilize various methodologies of user exploration and empowerment, principles applicable to the scientific and technical world, as well as the humanities and arts. The best known of these is Spotfire, a commercial application of visual data mining and information visualization. (User control – via dynamic query sliders, for example - directs the rapid updating of a display containing color- and size-coded points.)

He describes other methodologies – including treemaps (space-constrained visualizations of hierarchical structures), TimeSearcher (a visual analysis tool for time series data), FeatureLens (interactive visualization of text patterns) and Social Action (for social network data, now incorporated into NodeXL) – as capable of giving "answers to questions you didn't know you had."

Questions from the audience address the challenges of visualizing uncertainty and the notion of a "user" as a participant whose contributions and engagement actually reshape the very conditions of the system. Shneiderman emphasizes a desire to not only empower users but to alert them to potential hazards of interpretation and make them more cautious users, readers and/or participants.

Additionally, Shneiderman encourages an information visualization approach through which selection strategies allow "treasures to rise to the surface" from vast databases. Noting ongoing constraints of time and budget, he emphasizes the processes of categorization and prioritization, and supports courage of ownership for decisions made.

Jack Szostak started his first lab as a “freshly minted assistant professor” working in DNA recombination and repair reactions. While researchers had known for years that the broken ends of DNA strands behaved differently from broken DNA in the middle of the strand, they did not know the details. Because cells do not like broken ends, “they’ll do lots of things to repair that broken DNA.”

While attending a conference in New Hampshire in 1980, he met Elizabeth Blackburn who was working on an isolated piece of DNA that acted like a normal chromosomal end. They began collaborating on DNA that led to discovering the biochemistry of telomeres—those particular ends of DNA strands and predicting the existence of the enzyme, telomerase, which regulates them.

Through their work, medical applications have emerged with emphases in cancer and aging. Cancer cells are able to repair their broken DNA ends and can divide without limit; aging cells do not have enough of the enzyme telomerase to fix broken ends. They cannot replicate themselves, becoming shorter and shorter, then die.

Knowing that many other researchers would carry on his work in telomeres, Szostak shifted his lab’s work over to experiments on naturally occurring ribozymes. He had become interested in the work that Tom Cech was doing in catalyzed chemical reactions, particularly in how catalytic RNA works and its applications in terms of the origins of life.

When that work proved limited in scope, he “got interested in ribozymes that did things that we cared about.” His lab began creating RNAs that did new and different things. Work in the origins of life field, especially at the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, involves asking many broad questions about the processes of planet formation, early and atmospheric chemistry, and how Darwinian evolution gets going. “Once you’ve got all the molecules you need, how do they get together and starting acting like a cell? How does Darwinian evolution emerge spontaneously from simple chemistry?”

Note: This video has some audio problems, which get resolved early on with some help from an audience member, presumed to be a Course VI alum.

MIT President Susan Hockfield delivers a general update on the Institute to MIT Alumni gathered in Kresge for the annual Technology Day event.

Focusing first on everyone’s most pressing concern, Hockfield provides an overview of the Institute’s finances, and reports on a campus-wide response to the economic downturn that has resulted in a leaner and stronger MIT. Going forward with a balanced budget, MIT is benefitting from The Idea Bank, a community-wide on-line discussion that produced hundreds of ideas on how to reduce expenses. Many of these changes required an examination of business practices aimed at more efficient, streamlined operations. One highly visible change involved the reorganization of the MIT News Office, and the MIT Home Page with Technology Review which created a more unified approach to external communication, and an overall leaner operation. One result? MIT’s website is now the most visited university website in the world.

Hockfield also updates on major building projects, including the celebrated opening of the new Media Lab (Bldg. E14), and the much-anticipated new Sloan building (Bldg. E62) in 2011. Additionally, as the Koch Institute for Integrated Cancer Research (Bldg. 76) nears completion, she provides details on the plan to bring 12 biologists and 12 engineers together as they take on the cancer research in new ways that speak to the MIT interdisciplinary approach to solving very big problems.

Initiatives begun the past year include new programs in leadership, energy, sustainability, entrepreneurship and finance.

Questions from the audience include MIT’s role in trying to solve the oil leak in the gulf (MIT faculty are on the case), MIT’s help in providing insight and analysis on the causes of the global economic crisis challenges in the banking industry, more on solar energy and the challenges of energy storage, the upcoming MIT 150 celebration, the job climate for MIT grads (considerably better than most), and work at the Sloan School in sustainability and fostering entrepreneurship.

In a lecture that could have been titled, Better Education through Chemistry, Don Sadoway begins with solar energy, grid-level storage, and liquid metal batteries and moves into education innovation, sharing creative ways to teach chemistry.

Calling 3.091 a chemistry-centered class or Chemistry and the World Around Us, Sadoway uses examples from art, literature, music, and film to bring the topic alive. He weaves a complex chemistry tale with special features that include materials science jokes, insights into Salvador Dali, the story of human greed that took down the Titanic, and the use of primary sources in science.

He also shares some amazing student innovations around learning chemistry, including the periodic table of the chemical elements set to “Do-Re-Mi”, and periodic table inspired sonnets.

The expression of certain genes depends on whether they were inherited from the mother or the father, a phenomenon known as imprinting. Catherine Dulac has discovered that a surprisingly large number of brain genes are imprinted, often in complex ways. Her findings have broad implications for understanding the inheritance of behavioral traits and disease susceptibility.

Diploid species such as mammals inherit two copies (alleles) of each gene, one from the mother and one from the father. For most genes, the maternal and paternal alleles are expressed at equal levels. But for imprinted genes, only one allele is expressed while the other is silenced.

Twenty years ago, David Haig proposed an evolutionary explanation for imprinting based on genetic conflict between the parents. For species such as mammals, in which the mother contributes more resources (through pregnancy and lactation) than the father, he proposed that genes from the father maximize their fitness by inducing the offspring to consume more maternal resources, whereas genes from mother benefit by sharing resources with their siblings.

This idea was supported by findings that paternally expressed genes tend to promote embryonic growth and maternally expressed genes tend to restrict growth. But sibling competition does not end at birth. It continues after birth, through competition for food, parental attention and so on -- and these behaviors are controlled by the brain.

For this reason, Dulac and colleagues sought to identify imprinted genes within the mouse brain. Using high throughput sequencing technology, they were able to study gene expression patterns in the cortex and hypothalamus of adult mice, and also in the embryonic brain. These mice were derived by crossing two strains of mice that diverge enough to have at least one difference at every gene, allowing the researchers to identify the parental origin of every transcript.

Remarkably, Dulac and colleagues have identified some 1300 imprinted genes – more than ten times the number that were previously known. The expression patterns of these new genes are surprisingly complex. A given gene can be imprinted in the cortex but not in the hypothalamus or vice versa. Or it can be imprinted in the embryo but not in the adult. In some cases, the same gene can give rise to different transcripts with different patterns of imprinting.

There is also an intriguing bias to the pattern of imprinting. In the cortex, the majority of imprinted genes are maternally expressed, whereas in the hypothalamus the majority are paternally expressed. This is consistent with Haig’s model, in which paternally derived genes are expected to promote competitive behaviors whereas maternally derived genes will tend to promote cooperation and sharing with siblings.

Dulac’s team also examined the imprinting of the X-chromosome, which carries a disproportionate number of genes expressed in the brain. Females inherit two copies of the X chromosome, and it is well established that one copy is silenced in every cell, a phenomenon known as X-inactivation. In general, the maternal and paternal X are thought to be silenced with equal probability, but Dulac found that in the cortex, there is a 20% bias toward expression of the maternal X and silencing of the paternal copy.

Finally, Dulac describes how some imprinted genes show different patterns of expression in male and female offspring. For example, an allele inherited from the father can be silenced in male but not female offspring, or vice versa. The significance of this finding is not yet fully clear, but one implication is that it provides a potential explanation for sex-specific disease susceptibility.

In 1978, in his last years of residency in psychiatry at Mass General Hospital, Eric Chivian decided to do something bold. Encouraged by Australian physician, Helen Caldicott, who spoke of the medical dangers of the nuclear fuel cycle and of nuclear power, in particular, he decided to restart an old medical organization—Physicians for Social Responsibility. Their opening public meeting was scheduled, coincidentally, on the same day of the partial-core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Within weeks, Physicians for Social Responsibility became a national organization with thousands of new members as a result.

While many older physicians within the organization were more concerned with nuclear war, others were focused on the use of nuclear power. Both were interested in disseminating information about what they believed would be the devastating medical and environments effects of nuclear power use gone wrong. Chivian believes in the importance of physicians and other public health professionals getting involved in global environmental issues—that their role is to provide help in translating complex and abstract concepts that are often difficult for the public to understand into human health terms. To this end, he also created the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical—to this day the only organization of its kind at a medical school.

Using three important species examples from his most recent book, Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, Chivian describes the overwhelming and sometimes irreversible losses that can occur when we "take for granted what nature supplies us." What can we learn from polar bear physiology that allows them to hibernate for months at a time without developing kidney disease, osteoporosis, or diabetes? Why does the extinction of two gastric-brooding frogs species forever prevent us from developing a potential treatment for peptic ulcers? How can tiny cone snails that produce toxic peptides to defend themselves help provide pain management medications for humans with few side effects and limited tolerance?

The issues, though, are not just medical or scientific—they are also political. Chivian asserts that political will to make changes and reduce human damage to the environment grows out of understanding "what's at stake." He believes that scientists could do a better job of explaining these complex issues to the public and public policy makers. By focusing on the health and medical components, he hopes his groups will make the issues more concrete and understandable for everyone.

The session begins with brief introductory remarks by moderator Kurt Fendt. He points out the need for new tools that will examine data in meaningful ways through aspects of interpretation and visualization. Dean Deborah Fitzgerald emphasizes the importance of support for digital humanities and visualization interpretation as supplemental to textual analysis, and the creation of new forms of scholarly and cultural communication; Peter Donaldson offers a concise welcome to participants.

It is in sharp contrast to a period of enlightenment and empirical science that a re-humanization of digital activities may now take place, says Johanna Drucker. Humanistic approaches are the motif against which she frames her assertion that "interpretation" introduces an epistemological shift—which she identifies by the rubric "from data to capta"—or data that is taken rather than data which is given.

Noting that visualization techniques originally developed for empirical sciences and quantitative analytics lack the sophistication needed by humanists, Drucker emphasizes that humanists must remember their core orientation and approach interpretation not strictly as visualization. Simply introducing more complicated statistical models doesn't solve the problem, although adding some degree of humanistic inquiry does demonstrate that data is "a composite rather than a singularity." But Drucker identifies the deeper and more serious problem as "not simply a matter of modeling humanistic statistics … but shifting the epistemological ground." She sees a serious and substantial role for the humanities "that is cultural as well as intellectual in pushing back against the dominant models of a kind of quantitative and empirical approach."

Drucker advocates a shift from "knowledge" to "knowing" by questioning certain fundamental assumptions about how we know what we know. She and her colleagues have explored this problem by studying temporality and spatiality via the history of time and its representations -- timelines. After searching in vain for means to represent time as non-homogenous -- probabilistic, potential-laden and discontinuous – she introduced point of view into her models as a way of expressing the subjectivity of temporality – distinctions in traditional assumptions about time.

Creating graphical representations of humanistic data – that is, data inflected with affect – is not data, it's 'capta.' "Capta," she explains, "suggests that all quantification, parameterization, representation is always about an experiential, co-dependent relationship of emergent phenomena. The phenomena don't exist outside of the cognitive perception and the perception is intervening in and influenced by the phenomena."

Ultimately, Drucker suggests, the idea of humanistic experience should be re-centered at the core of the interpretive model. "One of the things we must do," she explains, "is to replace perspective, the human scale, the point of view, the situatedness of human experience within this social and cultural order and it's representation in visual and graphical form."

Kurt Fendt and respondents Amber Frid-Jimenez and Nick Monfort pose questions of their own about the potential for the systemization of visual systems, the difficulty of approaching large, communal data sets, and distinctions between exploration and presentation in the humanities.

Questions from the audience focus on the desirability of certainty within a humanistic construct, and emerging ways in which to represent emergent phenomena through visualization. Drucker favors the dynamic modeling techniques used in meteorology, because of its potential for layered complexity.

Ed Roberts chronicles the history of entrepreneurship at MIT. More details about the lecture coming soon.

Antoinette Schoar analyses how general economic conditions affect the CEO career path. More details about the lecture coming soon.

In this talk Andrew Lo addresses the problem of finding the right level of abstraction with which to think about economic phenomena. He compares economics to physics, with some surprising results.

For at least several decades economics theorists have assumed that the highest level of abstraction is the best. Lo argues that this assumption has stemmed from what he calls "physics envy": the enviable ability to explain a huge range of phenomena with a small number of rules or laws.

Admittedly physics envy has led to the development of many useful ideas, including utility theory, game theory, and general equilibrium theory, among others. These have been real successes; however Lo takes up the argument recently made by some observers that the recent fiscal crisis is evidence that economics is by the nature of its subject matter not reducible to a small number of general laws.

The possibility that a certain level of abstraction can be inappropriate for a given material raises the question of how to know what level is right where. Lo addresses this issue with a distinction originally made in the 1920's between risk and uncertainty which has been further developed into the Ellsberg Paradox. Both terms refer to unknowns, but in this formulation, "risk" refers to the category of unknown that is governed by defined probabilities. You do not know whether a flipped coin will land heads or tails, but you do know, with certainty, that the odds of either outcome is 50- 50. “Uncertainty" refers to unknowns in which the odds of a given outcome are not known and even cannot be known, such as the odds of running into an old friend you have not seen for years on the street tomorrow.

Recently Lo and physicist Mark T. Mueller developed this polarity into a spectrum of types or kinds of unknowns. These run from well- defined cases like the coin toss, through types in which, while the odds of a given outcome are unknown now, it is pretty clear how to go about making them known, to unknowns that are so complex that there is no way to even begin to get a handle on them, to cases that are a confusing mixture of all three. Lo demonstrates an instrument developed by researchers that allows managers and analysts to assess what kind of unknowns they are dealing with at any given time, and therefore to get a sense of what level of abstraction might reasonably be expected to be useful for that particular material.

In response to a question, Lo observed that the highest rewards seem to flow to people who deal successfully with the most profound levels of unknowns. He concluded by speculating that people with a very high level of self-confidence might be able to use his instrument to pick the most intractable unknowns facing society. If they pick right, and then manage those unknowns successfully, they should do well.

Otto Scharmer describes his theory of capitalism 3.0. More details about the lecture coming soon.

In the first of four panels celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program at MIT, panelists reflect on the wide range of projects and media studies offspring that have emerged from this innovative program.

Major CMS themes include the development of community, creation of a deeper understanding of collaboration, working across disciplines, participatory culture, and collective intelligence. Panelists discuss the MIT approach to applied humanities, and share insights on education, game design, public media and visual information. William Uricchio moderates.

Scot Osterweil brings his background as a theatre major to the effort of game design, citing the need to engage the user, not just create games that are based on reciting facts—just as an actor has to engage in audience in something deeper than lines of a script.

Kurt Fendt’s background teaching German language and literature, combined with work with many German artists has informed his current approach to working in digital media. He is concerned with how to engage students in the process of actively creating media, not just using it.

Peter Donaldson cites Shakespeare’s works as multi format productions whose performances can travel across cultures and time as well as across media.

Rekha Murthy finds that her real life experience coupled with her CMS education has enabled her to have a broader understanding of the world, and channel it into her work in public radio in new ways. As public broadcasting morphs into public media, significant identity questions emerge that require deeper thinking to sort out the huge challenges in her field. Today she values the contextualization and opportunities for reflection that CMS has afforded.

Matthew Weise who attended film school before CMS admits to always struggling with the notion of the humanities. He comes to terms with a definition that “humanities are things that make me feel more human” and provide inspiration to want to apply his full self to the task at hand. He finds himself happily enriched in ways he doesn’t fully understand.

In conversation with William Uricchio, Henry Jenkins returns to reflect on his time at MIT and offers insights into MIT’s culture, his new life at USC, and the state of digital cultures, new media and collective intelligence.

Jenkins shares that complex feeling of loving and hating MIT, at the same time and often within the course of one day. Providing his own insights into MIT’s culture and the legacy of IHTFP, he looks back on a long career and the evolution of film and media studies into the Comparative Media Studies program we know today. He attributes his longevity at MIT to the inspiration provided by the students, and makes a strong case for the value of humanities education, while questions remain for some on how the humanities fit into an MIT education.

The reflection ends with Jenkins reading The Cat in the Hat—his annual salute to Dr. Seuss. This tradition, began 18 years ago, became a staple of IAP. Jenkins says he is reminded “how much it characterizes to me that creativity and imagination, which is so vital at MIT, and that we turn our back on at our own peril.”

A few hundred years after the Enlightenment, western civilization is rushing back to the Dark Ages. The causes are debatable, but, argue these science journalists, the public increasingly rejects the findings of science, from climate change to evolution, and is turning away from rationality and reason in general.

“People are afraid of anything that will hammer away at their preconceived notions,” says Michael Specter. He points to the fanatic opposition in some quarters to genetically engineered foods, and the worship of organic products. Almost everything we eat is the result of genetic modification, he notes, and “organics kill people, too.” It doesn’t make sense to think that returning to “the old ways” will keep us healthy and supply the world with food. “We’re hurting ourselves in lots of ways,” says Specter, when people insist on believing what they want.

Human nature plays a big part in feeding denialism, believes Chris Mooney. “We all ... argue against information that contradicts our existing worldview.” The unfortunate evolution of media in the digital age is feeding our inherent “confirmation bias,” and today “Americans with different political leanings construct different realities.” We must “give up” on the idea that truth triumphs and society advances as more people become critical thinkers. Concludes Mooney, “We have to work with the media and brains we have, and seek realistic change.”

Shannon Brownlee had an “epiphany” a decade ago when she realized that prostate cancer tests did not lead to a lower risk of dying, as researchers suggested, but instead to potentially harmful treatment. Her “awakening” led her to perceive “how much of medicine we take on faith.” Brownlee’s journalistic beat now involves the frequent occurrence of “bad science” in medicine. She believes we are not all that far removed from the days when medicine was based on “four humors of disease” and bleeding was the key remedy. Health care, on which Americans spend more than anything else, depends on “the perception of science as its underpinning”– a terrible delusion, she implies.

To contend with denialism, says Shankar Vedentam, we need a more nuanced view, one that recognizes its different shapes: One type rejects events from the past for which we have evidence, and another kind “says I’m not willing to trust projections of what will happen in the future.” Climate change falls in the latter category, as people “are being asked to trust data rather than their intuitions.” Some summers feel cold, and some winters feel hot, for instance. Also, he says, partisanship now holds sway in all aspects of life, with people swearing loyalty to particular positions in unrelated areas, and to fellow members of their “team.” Given indifference to facts, good information “paradoxically, horrifyingly can amplify the effects of bad information,” believes Vedentam. Just look at the explosive growth of the Obama birther movement, in spite of ample evidence that the president was indeed born in Hawaii.

Panelists see no easy antidote to this large-scale retreat from reason. Specter recommends that schools teach statistics, and Brownlee concurs that kids “should know what a big denominator and small numerator means.” Vendantam argues for a nonpartisan approach to such issues as climate change, and Mooney thinks hard scientists and social scientists should be “in better dialog” to craft an effective approach to the big scientific and policy questions of our time.

Knowing more about the environmental impacts of aviation is increasingly essential, but according to
Ian Waitz, it is also an area where uncertainties abound. One thing we know for sure is that the airplanes developed today will be flying for next 30 years, as the fleet dynamics are very stable, due to the extraordinary costs and lead-time to design and build. Meanwhile, an increasingly affluent population will travel more, and more of that travel will take place on today’s airplanes.

Waitz and his students have been developing state-of-the art modeling impacts, and advising the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA). He characterizes the environmental impacts of aviation into three broad categories. The most omnipotent impact, noise pollution, is associated with quality-of -life issues, health, and property loss. Waitz observes that noise pollution is observed by the public, typically at levels of 55 to 70 decibels. It is estimated to cost about half a billion dollars in property losses within the United States. The aviation industry is able to mitigate some of this burden on homeowners from a dedicated tax on ticket revenue.

A second environmental impact results from gaseous pollutants that interact in the atmosphere, or more generically, “atmospheric chemistry and physics”. Unfortunately, the state-of-the -art has two known limitations: first, measurements are taken in conditions under 3000 feet, which is beneath airplane cruising levels. Second, long downwind effects of the pollutants are relatively unanalyzed, for example, down-winds that travel from Europe towards the East.

The third environmental impact, perhaps the best debated one, centers on global climate change. Waitz points out that there are many counterbalancing effects; for example, ozone creation may be a warming effect in the Northern Hemisphere but methane is a cooling effect globally. Scientists know that the largest non CO2 effects are created by contrails from aircraft that recombine as cirrus clouds. Yet, these clouds might either trap heat, or reflect it.

To date, government regulation of the airplane fleet has focused on reducing NOx, Even that is complicated, since more efficient fuels and engines can create more NOx. The FAA has strict guidelines to ratchet-down, over time, NOx produced by aircraft take-offs and landings. Waitz walks through the many projections, scenarios, and Monte Carlo simulations that underlie the government policy. He notes that whether or not there is complete information, decisions continue to be made, engine and fuel standards are set, and the environmental burden of aviation will continue to increase.

In both lecture format and conversation with Sloan Senior Lecturer Noubar Afeyan, RUSNANO CEO Anatoly Chubais presents an ambitious plan to create Russia’s Nanotechnology Center—a $10 billion, entrepreneurial ecosystem that incorporates education, research and business incubation. Noting that a plan of this depth also requires the deep engagement with an academic institution Chubais discusses the launch of SKOLKOVO, the Moscow School of Management, where MIT Sloan has been involved in a major collaboration.

From MIT Sloan School of Management Newsroom

RUSNANO, part economic development entity, part venture capital firm, recently turned to MIT Sloan to devise a custom Executive Education program to help it cultivate an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Russia. The effort is part of the government’s plan to diversify their natural-resource-based economy. “We’re creating an innovation economy,” said Anatoly Chubais, CEO of RUSNANO, and a leading architect of Russia’s post-Soviet privatization. “We are to be entrepreneurial not just at a company level, but at a country level.” With a budget of up to $10 billion (USD) in government funds, RUSNANO co-invests in nanotechnology projects in areas such as solar energy, composite materials, nano-biotechnology, and mechanical engineering that have high potential for commercial or social benefit. RUSNANO stipulates that all companies that win funding must operate in Russia. Its goal is to ensure the production of the value of Russia’s nanotechnology industry reaches $30 billion by 2015. MIT Sloan’s custom program featured sessions on leadership, organizational change, innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship. But what most interested the nine RUSNANO executives who attended the course was how MIT has so successfully commercialized its innovation.

“MIT research and its entrepreneurial spinoffs have had a huge impact on the local economy, the U.S. economy, and global economies,” says Steven Eppinger, Professor of Management Science and Engineering Systems at Sloan, who lead the program. “We’re a living example of what they’re trying to do.”

Replicating MIT’s start-up culture is a key challenge for RUSNANO because Russia does not have a tradition of commercializing ideas that come out of the academic structure, says Noubar Afeyan, a Senior Lecturer at MIT in both the Sloan School of Management and the Biological Engineering Department, and one of the instructors in the program.