TemeTV

Soon, after checking under the hood and kicking the tires, we will be scanning our car’s on-board diagnostic system (OBD). Sanjay Sarma has been investigating ways to take advantage of a car’s sensor bus, the module that records and conveys information about the vehicle’s components and systems. Sarma hopes to make the OBD increasingly useful and essential to consumers concerned about their fuel consumption and carbon footprint.

Car companies have been “cagey” and even “opaque” about the information bus that now comes standard in most cars, but auto enthusiasts have long known how to tap into this system for information on a car’s vitals. Sarma, a mechanical engineer comfortable tinkering with car systems, wondered if he could devise a way to gather a continuous stream of data on fuel consumption from OBD, and then come up with accessible and informative metrics for the data. As the internal combustion engine figures less in the future of cars, and batteries and electric motors more, says Sarma, “logging in and learning from this data…will be a bigger and bigger deal.”

With a small team of researchers, Sarma conducted hundreds of miles of driving tests in urban and highway settings, micrologging vehicle fuel consumption. They first analyzed the effects of traffic congestion, which demonstrated that traveling slowly did not diminish fuel consumption, because in real life, accelerating and braking frequently wastes energy. They figured out a sampling rate ideal for harvesting an adequate stream of information and avoiding a sea of data, and a way of separating idling time from moving time fuel consumption. Ultimately, Sarma’s team came up with “simple kinematic measures” for “flogging” (fuel logging) that could apply to cars of all stripes -- high-performance gas guzzlers, or the latest battery-powered inventions.

Sarma is enthusiastic about the possibility of using cell phones as an interface with a car’s OBD. With GPS and accelerometers, cellphones could read out a “weather report of emissions,” enabling drivers to determine in real time or historically what segments of a commute consume the most fuel. This information could be shared by other users across the internet. Beyond individual consumer applications, Sarma sees constructive use by public traffic authorities, which could detect fuel consumption/emissions hot spots and speed up long red lights, or even use data in “creative pricing for congestion.” Concludes Sarma, “All sorts of things like this are inevitable.”

Soon, after checking under the hood and kicking the tires, we will be scanning our car’s on-board diagnostic system (OBD). Sanjay Sarma has been investigating ways to take advantage of a car’s sensor bus, the module that records and conveys information about the vehicle’s components and systems. Sarma hopes to make the OBD increasingly useful and essential to consumers concerned about their fuel consumption and carbon footprint.

Car companies have been “cagey” and even “opaque” about the information bus that now comes standard in most cars, but auto enthusiasts have long known how to tap into this system for information on a car’s vitals. Sarma, a mechanical engineer comfortable tinkering with car systems, wondered if he could devise a way to gather a continuous stream of data on fuel consumption from OBD, and then come up with accessible and informative metrics for the data. As the internal combustion engine figures less in the future of cars, and batteries and electric motors more, says Sarma, “logging in and learning from this data…will be a bigger and bigger deal.”

With a small team of researchers, Sarma conducted hundreds of miles of driving tests in urban and highway settings, micrologging vehicle fuel consumption. They first analyzed the effects of traffic congestion, which demonstrated that traveling slowly did not diminish fuel consumption, because in real life, accelerating and braking frequently wastes energy. They figured out a sampling rate ideal for harvesting an adequate stream of information and avoiding a sea of data, and a way of separating idling time from moving time fuel consumption. Ultimately, Sarma’s team came up with “simple kinematic measures” for “flogging” (fuel logging) that could apply to cars of all stripes -- high-performance gas guzzlers, or the latest battery-powered inventions.

Sarma is enthusiastic about the possibility of using cell phones as an interface with a car’s OBD. With GPS and accelerometers, cellphones could read out a “weather report of emissions,” enabling drivers to determine in real time or historically what segments of a commute consume the most fuel. This information could be shared by other users across the internet. Beyond individual consumer applications, Sarma sees constructive use by public traffic authorities, which could detect fuel consumption/emissions hot spots and speed up long red lights, or even use data in “creative pricing for congestion.” Concludes Sarma, “All sorts of things like this are inevitable.”

Returning to his freshman physics classroom after half a century, Kent Kresa still feels passionate about MIT: “It’s a place I love; I feel good when I come back, and it’s been very much a part of my life for the past 50 years.” In his talk, Kresa describes how an MIT education helped shape his professional path, leading to a topflight career in the aviation and defense industry.

Kresa came to MIT “in love with airplanes,” but had no sense where he’d end up. Fascinated by fluid dynamics, he found student work at Boeing in the wind tunnel group. After witnessing “huge open rooms that had acres of engineers…all grinding away on numbers,” he left Boeing with “serious questions about his future career” in aeronautics engineering. He was so soured that he contemplated leaving MIT for a business degree at Harvard.

MIT professors persuaded him that the engineering world was about to change dramatically, and Kresa decided to stick it out. This decision paid off, for Kresa soon found opportunities that were both exciting and cutting edge. He got an early taste of digital computing at a firm developing a commercial parachute system for satellite capsules. He worked at MIT Lincoln Lab in ballistic missile defense. One of his most “phenomenal life experiences” unfolded on a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands, where he and a team of 100 MIT researchers toiled for two years on a missile reentry project. Cut off from the rest of the world, there wasn’t “a lot to do other than to work and drink and party.”

After completing an advanced MIT engineering degree in the mid-60s, Kresa went to work for DARPA. He saw the first stirrings of the internet, and the evolution of infrared technology, precision weapons guidance, GPS, stealth technology and unmanned vehicles. After seven years in this innovative environment, Kresa feared he “had peaked before he was 35.” But his next job “fortunately proved there was plenty left to do.” He headed to Northrop as lead researcher, which led to a series of increasingly senior positions, culminating in company chairman in 1990.

At Northrop, Kresa weathered the downsizing of the nation’s defense industry, which spurred his company’s acquisition of Grumman and other affiliated tech companies. He says he came to recognize that “engineering-related activities that emphasize broad thinking and innovation have the best chance of delivering good solutions and giving self-fulfillment and social value as well.” These insights, he says, powerfully evoke his MIT experiences, where he first learned that “the most successful problem-solving stretches and crosses boundaries,” and that the ideal environment for this involves “interaction with smart teammates, where everybody has mutual excitement about work, and the commitment to try out ideas.”

Returning to his freshman physics classroom after half a century, Kent Kresa still feels passionate about MIT: “It’s a place I love; I feel good when I come back, and it’s been very much a part of my life for the past 50 years.” In his talk, Kresa describes how an MIT education helped shape his professional path, leading to a topflight career in the aviation and defense industry.

Kresa came to MIT “in love with airplanes,” but had no sense where he’d end up. Fascinated by fluid dynamics, he found student work at Boeing in the wind tunnel group. After witnessing “huge open rooms that had acres of engineers…all grinding away on numbers,” he left Boeing with “serious questions about his future career” in aeronautics engineering. He was so soured that he contemplated leaving MIT for a business degree at Harvard.

MIT professors persuaded him that the engineering world was about to change dramatically, and Kresa decided to stick it out. This decision paid off, for Kresa soon found opportunities that were both exciting and cutting edge. He got an early taste of digital computing at a firm developing a commercial parachute system for satellite capsules. He worked at MIT Lincoln Lab in ballistic missile defense. One of his most “phenomenal life experiences” unfolded on a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands, where he and a team of 100 MIT researchers toiled for two years on a missile reentry project. Cut off from the rest of the world, there wasn’t “a lot to do other than to work and drink and party.”

After completing an advanced MIT engineering degree in the mid-60s, Kresa went to work for DARPA. He saw the first stirrings of the internet, and the evolution of infrared technology, precision weapons guidance, GPS, stealth technology and unmanned vehicles. After seven years in this innovative environment, Kresa feared he “had peaked before he was 35.” But his next job “fortunately proved there was plenty left to do.” He headed to Northrop as lead researcher, which led to a series of increasingly senior positions, culminating in company chairman in 1990.

At Northrop, Kresa weathered the downsizing of the nation’s defense industry, which spurred his company’s acquisition of Grumman and other affiliated tech companies. He says he came to recognize that “engineering-related activities that emphasize broad thinking and innovation have the best chance of delivering good solutions and giving self-fulfillment and social value as well.” These insights, he says, powerfully evoke his MIT experiences, where he first learned that “the most successful problem-solving stretches and crosses boundaries,” and that the ideal environment for this involves “interaction with smart teammates, where everybody has mutual excitement about work, and the commitment to try out ideas.”

It’s a good thing for oil spill science that Richard Camilli was not yet on a flight to Australia when the Coast Guard called last May. An hour later and Camilli might have missed the urgent request to get a team together to measure the month-old leak from the Deepwater Horizon pipe. In a richly detailed and highly accessible talk, Camilli describes novel research he performed in the depths of the Gulf to quantify the disaster, helping to settle heated conflicts swirling around the oil gushing from BP’s broken well head.

In addition to its vast scale, the spill posed other uniquely challenging conditions, says Camilli: the well’s depth of 5,000 feet required robotic tools for examination or intervention, and enormous undersea pressures encouraged the formation of hydrate crystals, as a mix of oil, gas and other chemicals shot out of the pipe at high temperature, and mixed with much cooler water.

Through technological innovations, Camilli was able to measure the flow rate of this “multiphase fluid” as it spewed from the well. With specially rigged equipment, Camilli’s team “listened” to fluid velocity, and imaged the flow with sonar, putting both kinds of measurements together to arrive at the volumetric flow rate. Camilli calculated a daily flow rate for oil from the well, and then its total output, and came up with a net leak of 4.2 million barrels. He also learned that oil from this deep reservoir contained a large fraction of gas, an important finding in terms of environmental impact.

While running this research, Camilli discovered a coherent “oil emulsion layer,” a subsurface plume, which he was able to investigate nearly immediately due to a fast turnaround government grant. This time, Camilli deployed a NASA-designed, free-swimming, autonomous undersea device (AUV), which runs a preprogrammed mission then “swims to the surface and waits to be picked up.” Using the AUV, Camilli tracked the plume “meandering along the continental shelf” at around 1,100 meters depth. While other researchers also noted the plume, Camilli’s group “were able to characterize its spatial extent,” and sampled oily water inside this two-kilometer wide, 200- meter thick and 35-kilometer long blob.

Camilli, aware of people denying the existence of the plume, says this AUV research “was pretty high stakes for us scientists. I didn’t get a lot of sleep at night. I tried to think through, what did I miss, am I going out there and coming back with nothing, or with an indeterminate answer?” Most doubts have been laid to rest, with other researchers corroborating Camilli’s findings, and his work published in Science. A larger satisfaction for Camilli involves his successful tests of novel ways to assess a spill in real-time. “We have shown that cutting-edge scientific methods can be applied for something that was a national emergency.”

It’s a good thing for oil spill science that Richard Camilli was not yet on a flight to Australia when the Coast Guard called last May. An hour later and Camilli might have missed the urgent request to get a team together to measure the month-old leak from the Deepwater Horizon pipe. In a richly detailed and highly accessible talk, Camilli describes novel research he performed in the depths of the Gulf to quantify the disaster, helping to settle heated conflicts swirling around the oil gushing from BP’s broken well head.

In addition to its vast scale, the spill posed other uniquely challenging conditions, says Camilli: the well’s depth of 5,000 feet required robotic tools for examination or intervention, and enormous undersea pressures encouraged the formation of hydrate crystals, as a mix of oil, gas and other chemicals shot out of the pipe at high temperature, and mixed with much cooler water.

Through technological innovations, Camilli was able to measure the flow rate of this “multiphase fluid” as it spewed from the well. With specially rigged equipment, Camilli’s team “listened” to fluid velocity, and imaged the flow with sonar, putting both kinds of measurements together to arrive at the volumetric flow rate. Camilli calculated a daily flow rate for oil from the well, and then its total output, and came up with a net leak of 4.2 million barrels. He also learned that oil from this deep reservoir contained a large fraction of gas, an important finding in terms of environmental impact.

While running this research, Camilli discovered a coherent “oil emulsion layer,” a subsurface plume, which he was able to investigate nearly immediately due to a fast turnaround government grant. This time, Camilli deployed a NASA-designed, free-swimming, autonomous undersea device (AUV), which runs a preprogrammed mission then “swims to the surface and waits to be picked up.” Using the AUV, Camilli tracked the plume “meandering along the continental shelf” at around 1,100 meters depth. While other researchers also noted the plume, Camilli’s group “were able to characterize its spatial extent,” and sampled oily water inside this two-kilometer wide, 200- meter thick and 35-kilometer long blob.

Camilli, aware of people denying the existence of the plume, says this AUV research “was pretty high stakes for us scientists. I didn’t get a lot of sleep at night. I tried to think through, what did I miss, am I going out there and coming back with nothing, or with an indeterminate answer?” Most doubts have been laid to rest, with other researchers corroborating Camilli’s findings, and his work published in Science. A larger satisfaction for Camilli involves his successful tests of novel ways to assess a spill in real-time. “We have shown that cutting-edge scientific methods can be applied for something that was a national emergency.”

While these panelists diverge on the precise metaphor -- ‘picking through a minefield,’ ‘hacking through the underbrush,’ ‘navigating uncharted waters’ -- they all agree that the web poses novel dilemmas and hazards for truth-seeking and speaking citizens.

First the good news: “There was a conscious decision by Congress to give online space some breathing room,” says David Ardia, shielding website operators “who allow others to use their site to speak out” from liability for some published content. This has permitted the explosive rise of YouTube and blogging services that serve as platforms for the masses. On the other hand, copyright and other legal claims are being successfully prosecuted against website hosts and posters.

Ardia worries about the underreported phenomenon of citizen journalists who post on the web and find themselves “fighting an authority.” There is “an extensive chilling effect,” says Ardia “If you … discover information that shows government corruption or puts powerful institutions on the defensive, you run the real risk of having them lawyer up, come after you, or put you in a position where you can’t afford to stand up for your rights.”

Another emerging issue: When web content is construed as invading privacy, legal suits arise that lead to a delicate dance between free speech and privacy. “Horrible things are said and done through the internet,” says Ardia, “but overall the impact is far more beneficial than harmful. As we start to fix instances of bad conduct, we run a great risk…of correcting one thing, but at the cost of…speech that should be protected.”

While the Obama Administration has pledged to make government more transparent, there is wild inconsistency in how federal, state and local governments make their work available.
Daniel Schuman describes how some public authorities offer “giant data sets” lacking the kind of sophisticated formats that enable fruitful vetting. Congress members must post an earmarks request online, but Schuman says, “If you want to find it, good luck.” And in certain areas, there is no web data at all: For access to congressional ethics information, someone must visit Capitol Hill in person at the right time, and copy pertinent pages. Schuman researched a “fantastic, sortable, downloadable” database describing the disbursement of Wall Street bailout money. The drawback: license provisions that permit the database owner “to pull back” the information, posing a major “impediment to people who want to use this information to talk about what’s going on.”

Another problem involves credentialing of online journalists. “Members of the civic media simply can’t get in the door” of press galleries in some House and Committee meetings, and forget recording Supreme Court justices by cellphone or other electronic devices. “As a private citizen, it’s hard and expensive to push back,” says Schuman.

The Wikileaks disclosures are shaking up discussions of government transparency as well as those about online freedoms. Says Schuman, “It makes the political climate more difficult. Irresponsible journalism will need to be protected, and condemned when done in this kind of way.” Moderator Micah Sifry sees an overreaction: “Leaks happen every day in Washington; secret information is out there all the time…No one is prosecuted. It’s the currency of information there.” Ultimately, says Ardia, we want to “bring information together in a way that moves us from a glut of data to real knowledge, and hopefully to wisdom, to make better decisions as a society. We are moving in that direction. I’m optimistic.”

While these panelists diverge on the precise metaphor -- ‘picking through a minefield,’ ‘hacking through the underbrush,’ ‘navigating uncharted waters’ -- they all agree that the web poses novel dilemmas and hazards for truth-seeking and speaking citizens.

First the good news: “There was a conscious decision by Congress to give online space some breathing room,” says David Ardia, shielding website operators “who allow others to use their site to speak out” from liability for some published content. This has permitted the explosive rise of YouTube and blogging services that serve as platforms for the masses. On the other hand, copyright and other legal claims are being successfully prosecuted against website hosts and posters.

Ardia worries about the underreported phenomenon of citizen journalists who post on the web and find themselves “fighting an authority.” There is “an extensive chilling effect,” says Ardia “If you … discover information that shows government corruption or puts powerful institutions on the defensive, you run the real risk of having them lawyer up, come after you, or put you in a position where you can’t afford to stand up for your rights.”

Another emerging issue: When web content is construed as invading privacy, legal suits arise that lead to a delicate dance between free speech and privacy. “Horrible things are said and done through the internet,” says Ardia, “but overall the impact is far more beneficial than harmful. As we start to fix instances of bad conduct, we run a great risk…of correcting one thing, but at the cost of…speech that should be protected.”

While the Obama Administration has pledged to make government more transparent, there is wild inconsistency in how federal, state and local governments make their work available.
Daniel Schuman describes how some public authorities offer “giant data sets” lacking the kind of sophisticated formats that enable fruitful vetting. Congress members must post an earmarks request online, but Schuman says, “If you want to find it, good luck.” And in certain areas, there is no web data at all: For access to congressional ethics information, someone must visit Capitol Hill in person at the right time, and copy pertinent pages. Schuman researched a “fantastic, sortable, downloadable” database describing the disbursement of Wall Street bailout money. The drawback: license provisions that permit the database owner “to pull back” the information, posing a major “impediment to people who want to use this information to talk about what’s going on.”

Another problem involves credentialing of online journalists. “Members of the civic media simply can’t get in the door” of press galleries in some House and Committee meetings, and forget recording Supreme Court justices by cellphone or other electronic devices. “As a private citizen, it’s hard and expensive to push back,” says Schuman.

The Wikileaks disclosures are shaking up discussions of government transparency as well as those about online freedoms. Says Schuman, “It makes the political climate more difficult. Irresponsible journalism will need to be protected, and condemned when done in this kind of way.” Moderator Micah Sifry sees an overreaction: “Leaks happen every day in Washington; secret information is out there all the time…No one is prosecuted. It’s the currency of information there.” Ultimately, says Ardia, we want to “bring information together in a way that moves us from a glut of data to real knowledge, and hopefully to wisdom, to make better decisions as a society. We are moving in that direction. I’m optimistic.”

“An oil spill is a crime scene,” says Christopher Reddy, but quite unlike the kind in TV whodunits, where fictional forensic whizzes help nail down perpetrators with an arsenal of lab tools. For Reddy, a chemist involved in analyzing oil spills, investigations take years, and do not always yield certain results.

Reddy delivers a colorful account of his research, which includes an insider’s perspective on the Deepwater Horizon spill. He confesses that not long ago he “was thinking about getting out of the oil spill business;” the incidence of big accidents “had dropped like a rock” since 1991. Then came news of the BP well blowout. He was invited on the scene to take water samples in the spring of 2010. Reddy shows video from underwater robots collecting oil from the leaking well head, and of the fierce flames from gas burning off nearby. “You couldn’t hear anything, and you could feel the heat on your skin. I’ll never forget it,” Reddy recalls.

Reddy has long experience with tracking oil in the ocean and in the diverse coastal ecosystems where it comes ashore. He has learned that even 30 years after a spill, coastal marshes and shores that appear healthy often conceal toxic sludge that wreaks havoc on flora and fauna. Contrary to oil industry claims, sites don’t rebound easily.

Accounting for the Deepwater Horizon crude (nearly 200 million gallons) and its impact on the ocean and coastal environments has meant taking countless samples, and tagging them chemically. Oil is made of thousands of compounds, “each with a different personality, or behavior, like a teenager,” says Reddy, and nature treats these diverse oils in different ways: “Some evaporate, some biodegrade, or break down with sunlight.” Reddy says, “I want to know who’s (in deep water now), who used to be, and why the other guy is on the surface.” This means “punching holes in the water collecting as many data points as possible.”

The result of this work, involving hundreds of surveys by Reddy and other scientists, has costly legal ramifications for BP and the government, not to mention significant consequences for ecosystems and people living along the Gulf. And the outcome of this research will unfold not over months, but likely over decades, with lingering uncertainties about the ultimate disposition of the oil. “If we can say … about 50% evaporated, about 1/3rd biodegraded and we don’t know where the rest went,” says Reddy, “that might be the best we can get.”

If the prospect of aging and infirmity seems remote, you could use some time with AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System), a wearable apparatus that approximates “what it feels like to be a 75-year-old woman.” Joseph Coughlin’s MIT AgeLab designed the suit to promote better understanding of the challenges of aging -- part of a larger effort to address the evolving demographic reality in the U.S., where a baby boomer turns 64 every seven seconds, 85-year-olds are the fastest growing age cohort, and most of the longest-lived will be women. Coughlin believes society must anticipate the needs of this rapidly emerging population, particularly where transportation is concerned.

Coughlin draws from a flurry of statistics a vivid portrait of the near future when great numbers of people, mainly women, will not only live longer, but alone. In the U.S., many of these seniors expect to continue working and playing, sometimes battling chronic illness, but above all, maintaining independence and freedom. Given these expectations, “What is driving?” asks Coughlin. “Everything…It’s the glue that holds life together.”

Coughlin sees “transportation as a function of all the other activities you do.” How then will an aging, frequently ailing, isolated population meet its needs for healthcare, shopping, work, leisure, especially when driving becomes a challenge, if not an impossibility?

Older drivers contending with stress or fatigue may turn to such automotive technology as the AwareCar, from Coughlin’s lab, which can alert drivers if their performance flags at the wheel. Some communities have developed alternative transportation options for seniors who can’t count on relatives or friends to shuttle them to appointments or shopping. Big box stores have begun to recognize that acres of parking lot and warehouse pose insuperable challenges to older folks, and are working on making their locations more convenient and navigable.

Coughlin cites additional ways society is beginning to accommodate the specific needs of the elderly, so as to sidestep the problems of transportation altogether. These include smart toilets that monitor human waste and upload information to disease management companies, signaling if a change in diet is indicated, and delivering appropriate foods; and home delivery of health care services and products by such retailers as Walgreens.

In spite of these promising moves, the sheer number of aging baby boomers who will need to get around in coming years spells trouble. “We are still going to have a major mobility gap in the U.S.,” Coughlin believes, “even if we started yesterday and invested billions to work really fast.”

If the prospect of aging and infirmity seems remote, you could use some time with AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System), a wearable apparatus that approximates “what it feels like to be a 75-year-old woman.” Joseph Coughlin’s MIT AgeLab designed the suit to promote better understanding of the challenges of aging -- part of a larger effort to address the evolving demographic reality in the U.S., where a baby boomer turns 64 every seven seconds, 85-year-olds are the fastest growing age cohort, and most of the longest-lived will be women. Coughlin believes society must anticipate the needs of this rapidly emerging population, particularly where transportation is concerned.

Coughlin draws from a flurry of statistics a vivid portrait of the near future when great numbers of people, mainly women, will not only live longer, but alone. In the U.S., many of these seniors expect to continue working and playing, sometimes battling chronic illness, but above all, maintaining independence and freedom. Given these expectations, “What is driving?” asks Coughlin. “Everything…It’s the glue that holds life together.”

Coughlin sees “transportation as a function of all the other activities you do.” How then will an aging, frequently ailing, isolated population meet its needs for healthcare, shopping, work, leisure, especially when driving becomes a challenge, if not an impossibility?

Older drivers contending with stress or fatigue may turn to such automotive technology as the AwareCar, from Coughlin’s lab, which can alert drivers if their performance flags at the wheel. Some communities have developed alternative transportation options for seniors who can’t count on relatives or friends to shuttle them to appointments or shopping. Big box stores have begun to recognize that acres of parking lot and warehouse pose insuperable challenges to older folks, and are working on making their locations more convenient and navigable.

Coughlin cites additional ways society is beginning to accommodate the specific needs of the elderly, so as to sidestep the problems of transportation altogether. These include smart toilets that monitor human waste and upload information to disease management companies, signaling if a change in diet is indicated, and delivering appropriate foods; and home delivery of health care services and products by such retailers as Walgreens.

In spite of these promising moves, the sheer number of aging baby boomers who will need to get around in coming years spells trouble. “We are still going to have a major mobility gap in the U.S.,” Coughlin believes, “even if we started yesterday and invested billions to work really fast.”

“An oil spill is a crime scene,” says Christopher Reddy, but quite unlike the kind in TV whodunits, where fictional forensic whizzes help nail down perpetrators with an arsenal of lab tools. For Reddy, a chemist involved in analyzing oil spills, investigations take years, and do not always yield certain results.

Reddy delivers a colorful account of his research, which includes an insider’s perspective on the Deepwater Horizon spill. He confesses that not long ago he “was thinking about getting out of the oil spill business;” the incidence of big accidents “had dropped like a rock” since 1991. Then came news of the BP well blowout. He was invited on the scene to take water samples in the spring of 2010. Reddy shows video from underwater robots collecting oil from the leaking well head, and of the fierce flames from gas burning off nearby. “You couldn’t hear anything, and you could feel the heat on your skin. I’ll never forget it,” Reddy recalls.

Reddy has long experience with tracking oil in the ocean and in the diverse coastal ecosystems where it comes ashore. He has learned that even 30 years after a spill, coastal marshes and shores that appear healthy often conceal toxic sludge that wreaks havoc on flora and fauna. Contrary to oil industry claims, sites don’t rebound easily.

Accounting for the Deepwater Horizon crude (nearly 200 million gallons) and its impact on the ocean and coastal environments has meant taking countless samples, and tagging them chemically. Oil is made of thousands of compounds, “each with a different personality, or behavior, like a teenager,” says Reddy, and nature treats these diverse oils in different ways: “Some evaporate, some biodegrade, or break down with sunlight.” Reddy says, “I want to know who’s (in deep water now), who used to be, and why the other guy is on the surface.” This means “punching holes in the water collecting as many data points as possible.”

The result of this work, involving hundreds of surveys by Reddy and other scientists, has costly legal ramifications for BP and the government, not to mention significant consequences for ecosystems and people living along the Gulf. And the outcome of this research will unfold not over months, but likely over decades, with lingering uncertainties about the ultimate disposition of the oil. “If we can say … about 50% evaporated, about 1/3rd biodegraded and we don’t know where the rest went,” says Reddy, “that might be the best we can get.”

Charles Ferguson shows how useful a varied background in math, political science and business can be, as he dissects the complexities and recent crisis of the U.S. financial system. In a lecture that distills many of the arguments of his recent film, Inside Job, Ferguson conveys dispassionately yet persuasively the reasons we all should feel profound anxiety not only about the nation’s financial institutions, but about our economic and political future as well.

Ferguson details the “securitization food chain,” a system of investing (and gambling) with debt that U.S. financial institutions enthusiastically adopted around 15 years ago. Encouraged by friendly government policies, a handful of investment behemoths such as JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers began transforming the banking landscape, buying up mortgages and other forms of debt worth countless billions of dollars, and packaging these securities for buyers worldwide. Allied financial institutions became adept at selling cheap mortgages to ordinary people, creating an inflated housing market. Insurance and ratings companies bought in. The speed of growth and scale of this securities chain was unprecedented, recounts Ferguson -- as was its impact on the nation’s economy, both at the market’s peak, and after its collapse.

Ferguson provides a very detailed and pointed sidebar on industry incentives that underlay the wild growth years. These included allowing investment banks to bet on the failure of their own securities; and linking rating agencies’ income to their approval of risky securities. Individuals inside big institutions made out like bandits, because they could. Senior executives in places like Bear Stearns took out over $1 billion in cash each in the years prior to the 2008 collapse. The head of Countrywide Mortgage saw the end coming, and cashed out over $100 million in stock. Asks Ferguson, “Why was such extreme behavior permitted? I have to conclude there was a complete abdication on the part of the regulatory system.”

Ferguson finds galling both government apathy in regulating and in prosecuting high-end white collar crime, but perceives the reason: a financial services industry that “as it rapidly consolidated and concentrated became the dominant source not only of corporate profits but campaign contributions and political funding in the U.S.” Evidence for unrestrained financial power lies in the fact that the government response to the crisis has been engineered by Wall Street insiders intent on shoring up firms too big to fail. Ferguson cites as well “corruption of the economics discipline,” the rising role of money in politics, and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

The dominance of a single industry constitutes a deep change and danger for America, believes Ferguson. The nation “has evolved a political duopoly where two political parties agree on things related to finance and money.” Without a political structure immune to such influence, Ferguson sees little likelihood of challenging the interests of the financial giants.

Charles Ferguson shows how useful a varied background in math, political science and business can be, as he dissects the complexities and recent crisis of the U.S. financial system. In a lecture that distills many of the arguments of his recent film, Inside Job, Ferguson conveys dispassionately yet persuasively the reasons we all should feel profound anxiety not only about the nation’s financial institutions, but about our economic and political future as well.

Ferguson details the “securitization food chain,” a system of investing (and gambling) with debt that U.S. financial institutions enthusiastically adopted around 15 years ago. Encouraged by friendly government policies, a handful of investment behemoths such as JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers began transforming the banking landscape, buying up mortgages and other forms of debt worth countless billions of dollars, and packaging these securities for buyers worldwide. Allied financial institutions became adept at selling cheap mortgages to ordinary people, creating an inflated housing market. Insurance and ratings companies bought in. The speed of growth and scale of this securities chain was unprecedented, recounts Ferguson -- as was its impact on the nation’s economy, both at the market’s peak, and after its collapse.

Ferguson provides a very detailed and pointed sidebar on industry incentives that underlay the wild growth years. These included allowing investment banks to bet on the failure of their own securities; and linking rating agencies’ income to their approval of risky securities. Individuals inside big institutions made out like bandits, because they could. Senior executives in places like Bear Stearns took out over $1 billion in cash each in the years prior to the 2008 collapse. The head of Countrywide Mortgage saw the end coming, and cashed out over $100 million in stock. Asks Ferguson, “Why was such extreme behavior permitted? I have to conclude there was a complete abdication on the part of the regulatory system.”

Ferguson finds galling both government apathy in regulating and in prosecuting high-end white collar crime, but perceives the reason: a financial services industry that “as it rapidly consolidated and concentrated became the dominant source not only of corporate profits but campaign contributions and political funding in the U.S.” Evidence for unrestrained financial power lies in the fact that the government response to the crisis has been engineered by Wall Street insiders intent on shoring up firms too big to fail. Ferguson cites as well “corruption of the economics discipline,” the rising role of money in politics, and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

The dominance of a single industry constitutes a deep change and danger for America, believes Ferguson. The nation “has evolved a political duopoly where two political parties agree on things related to finance and money.” Without a political structure immune to such influence, Ferguson sees little likelihood of challenging the interests of the financial giants.

President Obama scored abysmally on his mid-terms. A trio of MIT professors renders harsh judgment on the president half-way through his administration, and their assessments may leave listeners “weeping or depressed,” in the words of moderator
Richard Samuels.

National security expert Barry Posen reviews the administration’s strategy and implementation of the war in Afghanistan. This conflict was adopted by the president and many Democrats as “the right war” following the wrong-headed invasion of Iraq, says Posen. But after investing tens of thousands more troops, and nearly $100 billion a year in Afghanistan, there remains uncertainty about how to complete the mission: to clear out the Taliban, secure critical regions, and build up a successful Afghan police force and government. While the Pentagon seems to support an “open-ended project aimed at defeating the Taliban,” the president appears intent on limiting the venture, with the aim of drawing down troops beginning in July 2011.

But Posen is skeptical of the overall project: Afghan politics are corrupt, rife with ethnic rivalries, and the administration is incompetent, so the idea of setting up a government “to compete with the Taliban probably won’t work well.” Though there are frequent reports of killing Taliban leaders, “many doubt the Taliban can be killed off as fast they regenerate,” and there is little chance of serious negotiation with them. The creation of a functioning Afghanistan “looks like a costly, lengthy gamble,” but the strategy is driven by politics, says Posen: “Democrats are quite concerned not to appear authors of defeat.”

The U.S. missed a vital opportunity to take the lead in addressing climate change, says Henry “Jake” Jacoby. Early on, the Obama administration “hurt prospects for progress,” putting healthcare reform first when it had a choice between “the health of the people and the planet.” And the administration didn’t forcefully back either the House or Senate versions of climate legislation, which attempted to produce an “economically rational” approach to pricing greenhouse gas emissions. Then came the recession, which doomed any chance for moving climate legislation forward, since it “made imposing costs very difficult,” says Jacoby.

What troubles him more is that the Obama administration has essentially “given the pulpit over to people against any action, and deniers.” Republicans seem to be winning the war of public opinion, claiming that measures against climate change will strangle the economy, and are now pressing to relieve the EPA of its power to regulate CO2. The “outlook is dark,” says Jacoby. “The word carbon is not said in polite company, and won’t be said in Washington.”

While it is a “terrific achievement” that we avoided another Great Depression, Simon Johnson is still “giving out failing grades” to this administration. Although Obama and his economic advisers basically got it right with the stimulus, they shockingly departed from best practices around banking policy, he believes. When major banks flounder, you close some of them down, fire managers, eliminate boards of directors, but “whatever you do, you cannot provide these banks with an unconditional bailout,” he says. Rewarding banks for bad behavior is plain shocking and leaves us in “a very awkward and unpleasant position.” By making banks too big to fail and sidestepping tough financial reform, he says, recovered banks will fight all the harder against any effort to be reined in. “By building implicit subsidy schemes into the structures in which banks survive,” we are stuck with “a few banks with excessive power,” and the “administration is responsible for setting us up for serious trouble down the road.”

President Obama scored abysmally on his mid-terms. A trio of MIT professors renders harsh judgment on the president half-way through his administration, and their assessments may leave listeners “weeping or depressed,” in the words of moderator
Richard Samuels.

National security expert Barry Posen reviews the administration’s strategy and implementation of the war in Afghanistan. This conflict was adopted by the president and many Democrats as “the right war” following the wrong-headed invasion of Iraq, says Posen. But after investing tens of thousands more troops, and nearly $100 billion a year in Afghanistan, there remains uncertainty about how to complete the mission: to clear out the Taliban, secure critical regions, and build up a successful Afghan police force and government. While the Pentagon seems to support an “open-ended project aimed at defeating the Taliban,” the president appears intent on limiting the venture, with the aim of drawing down troops beginning in July 2011.

But Posen is skeptical of the overall project: Afghan politics are corrupt, rife with ethnic rivalries, and the administration is incompetent, so the idea of setting up a government “to compete with the Taliban probably won’t work well.” Though there are frequent reports of killing Taliban leaders, “many doubt the Taliban can be killed off as fast they regenerate,” and there is little chance of serious negotiation with them. The creation of a functioning Afghanistan “looks like a costly, lengthy gamble,” but the strategy is driven by politics, says Posen: “Democrats are quite concerned not to appear authors of defeat.”

The U.S. missed a vital opportunity to take the lead in addressing climate change, says Henry “Jake” Jacoby. Early on, the Obama administration “hurt prospects for progress,” putting healthcare reform first when it had a choice between “the health of the people and the planet.” And the administration didn’t forcefully back either the House or Senate versions of climate legislation, which attempted to produce an “economically rational” approach to pricing greenhouse gas emissions. Then came the recession, which doomed any chance for moving climate legislation forward, since it “made imposing costs very difficult,” says Jacoby.

What troubles him more is that the Obama administration has essentially “given the pulpit over to people against any action, and deniers.” Republicans seem to be winning the war of public opinion, claiming that measures against climate change will strangle the economy, and are now pressing to relieve the EPA of its power to regulate CO2. The “outlook is dark,” says Jacoby. “The word carbon is not said in polite company, and won’t be said in Washington.”

While it is a “terrific achievement” that we avoided another Great Depression, Simon Johnson is still “giving out failing grades” to this administration. Although Obama and his economic advisers basically got it right with the stimulus, they shockingly departed from best practices around banking policy, he believes. When major banks flounder, you close some of them down, fire managers, eliminate boards of directors, but “whatever you do, you cannot provide these banks with an unconditional bailout,” he says. Rewarding banks for bad behavior is plain shocking and leaves us in “a very awkward and unpleasant position.” By making banks too big to fail and sidestepping tough financial reform, he says, recovered banks will fight all the harder against any effort to be reined in. “By building implicit subsidy schemes into the structures in which banks survive,” we are stuck with “a few banks with excessive power,” and the “administration is responsible for setting us up for serious trouble down the road.”

While breaking bread around the world with friends and families suffering through war and deprivation, Anna Badkhen managed to compile not just a vivid chronicle of lives under duress, but a cookbook. In this dialogue with MIT political scientist Fotini Christia, Badkhen describes her new work, Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories , in which by some Proustian process frontline reporting melds with tasty recipes.

Conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East or Africa seem remote to most Americans, seen mainly through the lens of a news camera. In contrast, Badkhen takes “a quiet, intimate long look” into the living rooms of people under constant threat of violence and destitution. Badkhen’s persistence and patience over 10 years of reporting has won her friends in dangerous and ravaged lands. Peace Meals arose from a series of extended conversations about survival with her most memorable acquaintances -- over a good meal: “All that is holding us together are stories. And (my subjects) tell stories from their dinner tables.”

In the book, Badkhen describes the mingled experience of intimate talk and food preparation, as well as the complex stew of culture, history and politics that is a necessary part of each survivor’s story. No matter how extreme her subjects’ circumstances, “the more stripped down the house or kitchen, the more the emptiness was filled with extraordinary humanity and generosity.”

For her, each recipe or meal evokes a unique encounter and acquaintance. Dolma (stuffed grape leaves) calls up her Iraqi reporter friend and his family, who cooked with her in 2003 “while U.S. planes were bombing their hometown.” A hearty borscht summons the evening in 2002 when Russian authorities invaded a Moscow theater held by Chechen terrorists, leading to the death of 129 people. For Russians, this beet soup is “the ultimate comfort food, like donuts,” says Badkhen. Her friends “went for the borscht” because it was “hot, and protects you from the physical cold of living in a country that doesn’t care.” An American Army commander in Iraq shared his chow hall meal: a burger, corn dog, French fries and Jell-O. “He ate the same meal every day,” Badkhen says, regardless of whatever else was in the menu. “He felt each meal might be his last … If the day ends, and he is still alive, there will be the corn dog which will remind him of home.”

While breaking bread around the world with friends and families suffering through war and deprivation, Anna Badkhen managed to compile not just a vivid chronicle of lives under duress, but a cookbook. In this dialogue with MIT political scientist Fotini Christia, Badkhen describes her new work, Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories , in which by some Proustian process frontline reporting melds with tasty recipes.

Conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East or Africa seem remote to most Americans, seen mainly through the lens of a news camera. In contrast, Badkhen takes “a quiet, intimate long look” into the living rooms of people under constant threat of violence and destitution. Badkhen’s persistence and patience over 10 years of reporting has won her friends in dangerous and ravaged lands. Peace Meals arose from a series of extended conversations about survival with her most memorable acquaintances -- over a good meal: “All that is holding us together are stories. And (my subjects) tell stories from their dinner tables.”

In the book, Badkhen describes the mingled experience of intimate talk and food preparation, as well as the complex stew of culture, history and politics that is a necessary part of each survivor’s story. No matter how extreme her subjects’ circumstances, “the more stripped down the house or kitchen, the more the emptiness was filled with extraordinary humanity and generosity.”

For her, each recipe or meal evokes a unique encounter and acquaintance. Dolma (stuffed grape leaves) calls up her Iraqi reporter friend and his family, who cooked with her in 2003 “while U.S. planes were bombing their hometown.” A hearty borscht summons the evening in 2002 when Russian authorities invaded a Moscow theater held by Chechen terrorists, leading to the death of 129 people. For Russians, this beet soup is “the ultimate comfort food, like donuts,” says Badkhen. Her friends “went for the borscht” because it was “hot, and protects you from the physical cold of living in a country that doesn’t care.” An American Army commander in Iraq shared his chow hall meal: a burger, corn dog, French fries and Jell-O. “He ate the same meal every day,” Badkhen says, regardless of whatever else was in the menu. “He felt each meal might be his last … If the day ends, and he is still alive, there will be the corn dog which will remind him of home.”

The Gulf Oil spill hurt many individuals and businesses, and there is broad agreement that they deserve compensation. But working out the nuances of damage payment is no simple matter, as Lawrence Susskind describes in conversation with an MIT Museum audience.

The $20 billion Oil Spill Compensation Fund, created by BP at the behest of the president, seemed a beneficial alternative to the endless litigation following the Exxon Valdez disaster. But even with the fund’s experienced “paymaster,” Ken Feinberg (who managed 9/11 claims), this approach to compensation is a “big experiment,” says Susskind. “We’re not used to doing it this way, at this scale.”

Susskind outlines and then raises several questions about the claims process. Feinberg has solicited documentation from victims that will demonstrate loss of income during the period of the spill. He has promised to write checks as fast as possible. But Susskind wonders if Feinberg, with his staff of 25, can sort through and reasonably assess the mountains of material claimants send in. Does the money go to those most in need, who have lost mortgages on their fishing boats or homes, or to condo developers in Florida who cannot sell their properties? Susskind wants to understand Feinberg’s “philosophical stand in regard to fairness.”

“Timing matters” as well. Susskind wonders about the tradeoffs between getting money to people quickly, and the need to examine claims with the kind of care required to avoid exploitation of the system. Should Feinberg “lower the standard of proof” to help people in urgent need? Finally, Susskind worries about the wisdom of separating compensation payments “from the issue of fact-finding with regard to fault, long-term environmental restoration, and punitive payments aimed at changing behaviors to avoid future accidents.” BP’s $20 billion payout does not really punish the corporation, which earns this much money in three months, says Susskind. So if the compensation plan does not help correct BP’s “risky behavior,” and send a message to the entire industry, what is the best means to avoid another Deepwater Horizon?

Susskind proposes one remedy to prevent continued slipshod practices in the offshore oil and gas industry. He cites the creation of the non-profit Institute for Nuclear Power Operations after the Three Mile Island accident, which the nuclear power industry developed “to police itself, so bad actors became the industry’s responsibility, not just the government’s.” Sloppy or unsafe nuclear plants can lose their insurance, and are “out of business,” says Susskind. Why not “take this analogy and apply it to offshore oil and gas,” he suggests.