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You wouldn’t know that Alan Alda felt nervous in advance of addressing this audience of neuroscientists. In his trademark style, Alda chats up the crowd like an old friend, sharing anecdotes involving one of his great pursuits: “I love to talk to scientists,” he says.

When he is not on stage or in a film, Alda works to advance the public understanding of science. For more than a decade, he has served as a kind of super talent for Scientific American Frontiers on PBS, helping develop a unique kind of program. Meeting scientists around the world, Alda would pose a series of unscripted questions, the more naïve the better. “An amazing thing happened on their end: the real ‘them’ came out. They weren’t lecturing me, but connecting with me and trying to get me to understand. These conversation modes brought out not only their own personalities, but the science through their personalities.”

Whether climbing a forbidden stairway in the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or squatting at the rim of a crater on the suspiciously steaming Vesuvius volcano, Alda always managed to engage his scientist confederate in lively and instructive interactions. In this “wonderful system,” says Alda, the “scientist would warm up to me and the science would come out in a way that was understandable.” He relates a revelatory incident, where a scientist inadvertently turned away from him during taping and addressed the camera instead. Her tone became instantly dry and the information “unintelligible.” This episode “changed the course of my life,” says Alda, leading him to pursue his own research on how spontaneous social communication can simply vanish in certain circumstances. If scientists could readily summon the capacity for everyday, natural communication, Alda suggests, imagine how much more effective they might be.

He shows “before and after” videos of young engineers with whom he has worked on improvisation exercises. Post-Alda, they appear to express themselves with greater warmth. “Understanding and reading faces and speaking in a tone of voice that carries emotion and meaning above and beyond words” is critical, says Alda. He hopes that researchers at places like the McGovern Institute can help unravel the neurological basis for the kind of communication “that makes us human,” work that someday may help “scientists all over…to speak in their own voices.”

You wouldn’t know that Alan Alda felt nervous in advance of addressing this audience of neuroscientists. In his trademark style, Alda chats up the crowd like an old friend, sharing anecdotes involving one of his great pursuits: “I love to talk to scientists,” he says.

When he is not on stage or in a film, Alda works to advance the public understanding of science. For more than a decade, he has served as a kind of super talent for Scientific American Frontiers on PBS, helping develop a unique kind of program. Meeting scientists around the world, Alda would pose a series of unscripted questions, the more naïve the better. “An amazing thing happened on their end: the real ‘them’ came out. They weren’t lecturing me, but connecting with me and trying to get me to understand. These conversation modes brought out not only their own personalities, but the science through their personalities.”

Whether climbing a forbidden stairway in the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or squatting at the rim of a crater on the suspiciously steaming Vesuvius volcano, Alda always managed to engage his scientist confederate in lively and instructive interactions. In this “wonderful system,” says Alda, the “scientist would warm up to me and the science would come out in a way that was understandable.” He relates a revelatory incident, where a scientist inadvertently turned away from him during taping and addressed the camera instead. Her tone became instantly dry and the information “unintelligible.” This episode “changed the course of my life,” says Alda, leading him to pursue his own research on how spontaneous social communication can simply vanish in certain circumstances. If scientists could readily summon the capacity for everyday, natural communication, Alda suggests, imagine how much more effective they might be.

He shows “before and after” videos of young engineers with whom he has worked on improvisation exercises. Post-Alda, they appear to express themselves with greater warmth. “Understanding and reading faces and speaking in a tone of voice that carries emotion and meaning above and beyond words” is critical, says Alda. He hopes that researchers at places like the McGovern Institute can help unravel the neurological basis for the kind of communication “that makes us human,” work that someday may help “scientists all over…to speak in their own voices.”

In a meaty lecture that serves as a concise and comprehensive primer on the twin challenge of energy and environment, John Holdren lays out the difficult options for contending with a world rapidly overheating.

“There is no question the world is growing hotter,” says Holdren, “and we do have a pretty good handle on … influences on climate that are changing the average temperature of the Earth,” he says. Since the mid-19th century, there has been a 20-fold increase in the world’s use of energy, the preponderance of which comes from burning fossil fuels. The U.S. is 82% dependent on these fuels, and the rest of the world is racing to catch up. If all nations continue business as usual, says Holdren, by 2030 energy use will increase by about 60% over 2005 levels, with fossil fuels comprising about 70% of world energy use. While there is legitimate concern about the economic, political and security risks of fossil fuel dependence, he says, CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions that result from fossil fuel combustion pose an immense, immediate threat to the planet. From urban and regional air pollution to massive wildfires and fierce storms that bring coastal inundation, dramatic climate disruption is upon us and demands action now.

In order to avoid the biggest risks, such as a temperature increase of several degrees centigrade, we must “sharply change the ratio of energy used essentially immediately,” Holdren says. But it would cost around $15 trillion to convert the world’s fossil fuel dependent energy system into something less destructive, and this conversion would take too long, even if nations could agree on an alternative system. So we are confronted with striking a balance between mitigation and adaptation. Scientists think stabilizing CO2 emissions at 450 parts per million by 2030 might give humanity a shot at avoiding a planet with temperatures as high as those 30 million years ago (when crocodiles swam off Greenland and palm trees swayed in Wyoming).

Looking to cut CO2 emissions drastically, the Obama Administration is intent on achieving changes in vehicle fuel efficiency, promoting public transportation and other measures. But realistically, adaptation must also come into play, including changes in agricultural practices, engineering defenses against rising coastal waters, and warding off tropical diseases. The longer we wait, says Holdren, the more expensive mitigation and adaptation become.

The wrenching changes needed across the board to reach the ambitious goal of 450 ppm require “barrier-busting incentives,” and cannot be accomplished without eliminating “perverse incentives” that encourage business as usual. Holdren believes carbon pricing is essential and inevitable, despite the current climate in Washington. Nuclear power has a critical role to play in this transformation -- including the elusive goal of fusion reactors -- but it must be part of a larger surge in R&D spending on new energy technology ($15 billion versus the current $4 billion per year). The political will to meet this challenge remains a sticking point, and so scientists must do a better job explaining climate change to people, says Holdren. Since there is no silver bullet for the problem, he concludes, “we have got to do it all. If you look at the magnitude of the challenge and the amount by which we must reduce the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to useful energy supplied to the economy, we can leave no stone unturned, and that’s what we’re trying to get done.”

In a meaty lecture that serves as a concise and comprehensive primer on the twin challenge of energy and environment, John Holdren lays out the difficult options for contending with a world rapidly overheating.

“There is no question the world is growing hotter,” says Holdren, “and we do have a pretty good handle on … influences on climate that are changing the average temperature of the Earth,” he says. Since the mid-19th century, there has been a 20-fold increase in the world’s use of energy, the preponderance of which comes from burning fossil fuels. The U.S. is 82% dependent on these fuels, and the rest of the world is racing to catch up. If all nations continue business as usual, says Holdren, by 2030 energy use will increase by about 60% over 2005 levels, with fossil fuels comprising about 70% of world energy use. While there is legitimate concern about the economic, political and security risks of fossil fuel dependence, he says, CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions that result from fossil fuel combustion pose an immense, immediate threat to the planet. From urban and regional air pollution to massive wildfires and fierce storms that bring coastal inundation, dramatic climate disruption is upon us and demands action now.

In order to avoid the biggest risks, such as a temperature increase of several degrees centigrade, we must “sharply change the ratio of energy used essentially immediately,” Holdren says. But it would cost around $15 trillion to convert the world’s fossil fuel dependent energy system into something less destructive, and this conversion would take too long, even if nations could agree on an alternative system. So we are confronted with striking a balance between mitigation and adaptation. Scientists think stabilizing CO2 emissions at 450 parts per million by 2030 might give humanity a shot at avoiding a planet with temperatures as high as those 30 million years ago (when crocodiles swam off Greenland and palm trees swayed in Wyoming).

Looking to cut CO2 emissions drastically, the Obama Administration is intent on achieving changes in vehicle fuel efficiency, promoting public transportation and other measures. But realistically, adaptation must also come into play, including changes in agricultural practices, engineering defenses against rising coastal waters, and warding off tropical diseases. The longer we wait, says Holdren, the more expensive mitigation and adaptation become.

The wrenching changes needed across the board to reach the ambitious goal of 450 ppm require “barrier-busting incentives,” and cannot be accomplished without eliminating “perverse incentives” that encourage business as usual. Holdren believes carbon pricing is essential and inevitable, despite the current climate in Washington. Nuclear power has a critical role to play in this transformation -- including the elusive goal of fusion reactors -- but it must be part of a larger surge in R&D spending on new energy technology ($15 billion versus the current $4 billion per year). The political will to meet this challenge remains a sticking point, and so scientists must do a better job explaining climate change to people, says Holdren. Since there is no silver bullet for the problem, he concludes, “we have got to do it all. If you look at the magnitude of the challenge and the amount by which we must reduce the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to useful energy supplied to the economy, we can leave no stone unturned, and that’s what we’re trying to get done.”

“Imagine what it’s like to go through life without understanding what people you are with are thinking,” poses Gerald Fischbach. “You have no way of gauging whether they are angry, sad or happy.” At the core of the group of disorders known as autism, says Fischbach, is damaged social cognition, a kind of prison of the mind. First defined in 1943, autism has not readily yielded its secrets to scientists, but in the past decade, says Fischbach, there has been “remarkable progress” in working out the disorder’s likely causes and mechanisms.

As many as one in 100 people are now said to live with autism, up from one in 1000 a few years ago, but Fischbach believes the increasing numbers are more likely due to broadening public awareness and continually expanding definitions of the disorder, rather than an “epidemic.” Research on this pervasive problem proceeds on several fronts: genetic risk factors, molecular mechanisms, and neural circuits, cognition and behavior. Fischbach notes a plethora of genetic approaches to autism but says, “We researchers feel we are on to something” focusing on a type of genetic change called a copy number variant.

Ordinarily, individuals inherit a gene from each parent, but sometimes this process goes awry, leading to variances in the number of copies of genes. Studies show that deletions in copy numbers that occur in a certain region of DNA correspond to a “big risk factor” for autism. But these clues are just the start, says Fischbach. Now researchers must begin “figuring out precisely which gene is at fault, and what it is doing in the nervous system.”

Fischbach’s Simons Foundation is assembling a research pool of families with autistic members to serve as a long-term resource for scientists investigating not just copy number variants, but also other disorders with autistic features, including Rett syndrome and Fragile X syndrome. McGovern Institute research is revealing the central role of the synapse in these disorders, and imaging work is helping to point out regions of the brain central to the performance of social tasks and possibly to autistic behaviors.

Fischbach hopes in the next decade science will figure out not just gene factors, but the neural circuitry at play in autism. Says Fischbach, “In the end, we need to develop theories and models to account for the link between genes and behavior … It’s not enough to say autism is a disorder of synapses, or of connections. Of course it is. We need more specific hypotheses about autism and how it relates to social behavior.”

“Imagine what it’s like to go through life without understanding what people you are with are thinking,” poses Gerald Fischbach. “You have no way of gauging whether they are angry, sad or happy.” At the core of the group of disorders known as autism, says Fischbach, is damaged social cognition, a kind of prison of the mind. First defined in 1943, autism has not readily yielded its secrets to scientists, but in the past decade, says Fischbach, there has been “remarkable progress” in working out the disorder’s likely causes and mechanisms.

As many as one in 100 people are now said to live with autism, up from one in 1000 a few years ago, but Fischbach believes the increasing numbers are more likely due to broadening public awareness and continually expanding definitions of the disorder, rather than an “epidemic.” Research on this pervasive problem proceeds on several fronts: genetic risk factors, molecular mechanisms, and neural circuits, cognition and behavior. Fischbach notes a plethora of genetic approaches to autism but says, “We researchers feel we are on to something” focusing on a type of genetic change called a copy number variant.

Ordinarily, individuals inherit a gene from each parent, but sometimes this process goes awry, leading to variances in the number of copies of genes. Studies show that deletions in copy numbers that occur in a certain region of DNA correspond to a “big risk factor” for autism. But these clues are just the start, says Fischbach. Now researchers must begin “figuring out precisely which gene is at fault, and what it is doing in the nervous system.”

Fischbach’s Simons Foundation is assembling a research pool of families with autistic members to serve as a long-term resource for scientists investigating not just copy number variants, but also other disorders with autistic features, including Rett syndrome and Fragile X syndrome. McGovern Institute research is revealing the central role of the synapse in these disorders, and imaging work is helping to point out regions of the brain central to the performance of social tasks and possibly to autistic behaviors.

Fischbach hopes in the next decade science will figure out not just gene factors, but the neural circuitry at play in autism. Says Fischbach, “In the end, we need to develop theories and models to account for the link between genes and behavior … It’s not enough to say autism is a disorder of synapses, or of connections. Of course it is. We need more specific hypotheses about autism and how it relates to social behavior.”

Two seasoned media observers map out shifting terrain in the news industry, as digital forces shake up print journalism. They also predict some likely survivors and casualties of this upheaval.

David Carr now sees a porous border, if not a great deal of overlap, between once-segregated domains of traditional and online journalism. “Whether you’re looking at it on iPad, or enabled TV, or paper, there won’t be old media or new media, there will just be media.” As a New York Times media columnist, Carr both analyzes and participates in emerging hybrid news platforms. He has a quarter million followers on Twitter (“If my last name weren’t ‘NYT,’ it would be about 250”), and says one “can get hooked on that.”

The Times has seized on new technology to forge a path back to profitability. Says Carr, “We have a skunk works upstairs where propeller heads and mad scientists do who knows what…We get help from the tech heads to make things work better, and create more audience participation.” These innovations make reading The Times online a nearly endless experience --“You feel like you’re down a hobbit hole,” says Carr. Special online features and editions may be subject to “convenience charges” in the future, yielding new sources of revenue to help replace lost advertising dollars.

While he celebrates the proliferation of news websites, Carr has few kind words for online news aggregators such as Huffington Post, which he views as commoditizing content stolen from newspapers like The Times, leading to further decimation of old guard publications. He also frets about the transfer of audience loyalty from newspapers to blogs and Twitter. “The dispersal of authority is a threat over the long term for newspapers,” especially if pay walls go up around newspaper content. He worries about information becoming ghettoized. “I don’t want great journalism to be a high-class district where everyone isn’t invited,” says Carr.

“The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, papers in that weight class are the most threatened,” says
Dan Kennedy. “They’re struggling to make themselves essential” doing just regional stories, since they have neither the staff nor the rationale for covering international or even national news. Kennedy worries that these papers may not be able to make a case for themselves with readers, given such a narrow mission. But there is some consolation: In some cities where such papers have already disappeared, or are in retreat, new forms of journalism are emerging. Kennedy has been studying New Haven, where the old city newspaper has fled to the suburbs chasing ad revenue, and a nonprofit community website, the New Haven Independent, has risen to cover the inner city. Funded by foundations and contributions, this tiny newsroom of four fulltime reporters on bikes “covers anything that moves in the neighborhoods of New Haven,” using a blog format with picture stories and video, and getting the word out with Twitter and Facebook. “People kill themselves doing reporting,” says Kennedy.

Non-profit, and for-profit models of community journalism such as Patch.com and Wicked Local, are popping up everywhere in vacuums left by shrinking newspapers. But the financial viability of these small enterprises is uncertain, and Kennedy acknowledges advertising money will never again primarily power news operations, in any medium. “If we are going to preserve journalism, professional journalism -- and it’s not 100% clear there’s a huge desire to do that -- we must move toward a model in which the user pays for much larger share of content,” Kennedy says.

Two seasoned media observers map out shifting terrain in the news industry, as digital forces shake up print journalism. They also predict some likely survivors and casualties of this upheaval.

David Carr now sees a porous border, if not a great deal of overlap, between once-segregated domains of traditional and online journalism. “Whether you’re looking at it on iPad, or enabled TV, or paper, there won’t be old media or new media, there will just be media.” As a New York Times media columnist, Carr both analyzes and participates in emerging hybrid news platforms. He has a quarter million followers on Twitter (“If my last name weren’t ‘NYT,’ it would be about 250”), and says one “can get hooked on that.”

The Times has seized on new technology to forge a path back to profitability. Says Carr, “We have a skunk works upstairs where propeller heads and mad scientists do who knows what…We get help from the tech heads to make things work better, and create more audience participation.” These innovations make reading The Times online a nearly endless experience --“You feel like you’re down a hobbit hole,” says Carr. Special online features and editions may be subject to “convenience charges” in the future, yielding new sources of revenue to help replace lost advertising dollars.

While he celebrates the proliferation of news websites, Carr has few kind words for online news aggregators such as Huffington Post, which he views as commoditizing content stolen from newspapers like The Times, leading to further decimation of old guard publications. He also frets about the transfer of audience loyalty from newspapers to blogs and Twitter. “The dispersal of authority is a threat over the long term for newspapers,” especially if pay walls go up around newspaper content. He worries about information becoming ghettoized. “I don’t want great journalism to be a high-class district where everyone isn’t invited,” says Carr.

“The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, papers in that weight class are the most threatened,” says
Dan Kennedy. “They’re struggling to make themselves essential” doing just regional stories, since they have neither the staff nor the rationale for covering international or even national news. Kennedy worries that these papers may not be able to make a case for themselves with readers, given such a narrow mission. But there is some consolation: In some cities where such papers have already disappeared, or are in retreat, new forms of journalism are emerging. Kennedy has been studying New Haven, where the old city newspaper has fled to the suburbs chasing ad revenue, and a nonprofit community website, the New Haven Independent, has risen to cover the inner city. Funded by foundations and contributions, this tiny newsroom of four fulltime reporters on bikes “covers anything that moves in the neighborhoods of New Haven,” using a blog format with picture stories and video, and getting the word out with Twitter and Facebook. “People kill themselves doing reporting,” says Kennedy.

Non-profit, and for-profit models of community journalism such as Patch.com and Wicked Local, are popping up everywhere in vacuums left by shrinking newspapers. But the financial viability of these small enterprises is uncertain, and Kennedy acknowledges advertising money will never again primarily power news operations, in any medium. “If we are going to preserve journalism, professional journalism -- and it’s not 100% clear there’s a huge desire to do that -- we must move toward a model in which the user pays for much larger share of content,” Kennedy says.

Psychiatric illness and neurological disorders such as autism, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease cause countless families to suffer, and require prodigious economic resources to manage. Now, thanks to major advances in genomics, systems neuroscience, and human brain imaging, says Robert Desimone, scientists are unlocking key secrets in how the human brain functions, work that may herald new and more effective therapies for neural disorders.

In his keynote address, Desimone pays tribute to McGovern Institute researchers who are tackling a common problem: understanding the neural circuit.
Ed Boyden works with different wavelengths of light to turn targeted cells on and off in living brains, “much the way a conductor controls musicians in an orchestra,” says Desimone. Boyden has focused in particular on the “straightforward circuit” of the retina, replacing dead photoreceptors with genetically manipulated, light-sensitive molecules so that mice with impaired vision see light again. Someday, this research could help people with similar kinds of blindness.

McGovern researchers are also untangling the more complex neural circuitry associated with psychiatric diseases and developmental disorders. Michale Fee’s model of the neural basis for bird song identified a brain structure that has an exact parallel in mammals -- a loop connecting the cortex and basal ganglia in which motor sequences move through a chain of neurons in precise order, “like dominoes falling.” A mistake in this circuit in humans could result in behavioral disorders.
Guoping Feng demonstrates that a single malfunctioning synaptic protein can wreak havoc on the basal ganglia, disrupting learning in humans. He has also determined that related circuits bearing gene mutations create behavior in mice that remarkably mirrors obsessive compulsive disorders in humans.

Yingxi Lin has identified a gene that helps the brain regulate the excitatory and inhibitory synapses, keeping neurons in balance, the way a thermostat regulates temperature in a room. Without this gene, mice “get too much excitation” and develop seizure disorders. She has discovered a comparable gene in autistic people, who also are prone to seizures. Other McGovern researchers are developing next generation diagnostic tools.
John Gabrieli has mapped out the circuits central to high level cognitive functions, and will soon be deploying a new kind of imaging that gives a precise picture of dynamic changes in brain states, measured in milliseconds. And Alan Jasanoff uses genetic engineering techniques to create new molecules that act as sensors, showing the release and flow of chemicals in the brain that can highlight both healthy and diseased circuitry. Insights from McGovern research, says Desimone, “will lay down the foundation for therapeutics of the future.”

Psychiatric illness and neurological disorders such as autism, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease cause countless families to suffer, and require prodigious economic resources to manage. Now, thanks to major advances in genomics, systems neuroscience, and human brain imaging, says Robert Desimone, scientists are unlocking key secrets in how the human brain functions, work that may herald new and more effective therapies for neural disorders.

In his keynote address, Desimone pays tribute to McGovern Institute researchers who are tackling a common problem: understanding the neural circuit.
Ed Boyden works with different wavelengths of light to turn targeted cells on and off in living brains, “much the way a conductor controls musicians in an orchestra,” says Desimone. Boyden has focused in particular on the “straightforward circuit” of the retina, replacing dead photoreceptors with genetically manipulated, light-sensitive molecules so that mice with impaired vision see light again. Someday, this research could help people with similar kinds of blindness.

McGovern researchers are also untangling the more complex neural circuitry associated with psychiatric diseases and developmental disorders. Michale Fee’s model of the neural basis for bird song identified a brain structure that has an exact parallel in mammals -- a loop connecting the cortex and basal ganglia in which motor sequences move through a chain of neurons in precise order, “like dominoes falling.” A mistake in this circuit in humans could result in behavioral disorders.
Guoping Feng demonstrates that a single malfunctioning synaptic protein can wreak havoc on the basal ganglia, disrupting learning in humans. He has also determined that related circuits bearing gene mutations create behavior in mice that remarkably mirrors obsessive compulsive disorders in humans.

Yingxi Lin has identified a gene that helps the brain regulate the excitatory and inhibitory synapses, keeping neurons in balance, the way a thermostat regulates temperature in a room. Without this gene, mice “get too much excitation” and develop seizure disorders. She has discovered a comparable gene in autistic people, who also are prone to seizures. Other McGovern researchers are developing next generation diagnostic tools.
John Gabrieli has mapped out the circuits central to high level cognitive functions, and will soon be deploying a new kind of imaging that gives a precise picture of dynamic changes in brain states, measured in milliseconds. And Alan Jasanoff uses genetic engineering techniques to create new molecules that act as sensors, showing the release and flow of chemicals in the brain that can highlight both healthy and diseased circuitry. Insights from McGovern research, says Desimone, “will lay down the foundation for therapeutics of the future.”

Who better to comment on current realities of real estate investment than practitioners immersed in the business at the highest level? Moderated by prominent real estate economist Ray Torto, this panel includes five senior executives with well over a century of collective experience at major development and investment firms and an industry information organization.

Kicking off the discussion from the audience, Jacques Gordon of LaSalle Investment Management asks about the stark contrast in previous panels between views of academics espousing the “complexity” of markets, historical data and prognostications, and the “simplicity” of the perspective of renowned developer Gerald Hines. The consensus is that quantitative analysis and technical skills are dazzling, but it is essential to streamline and make a case that real estate investors can easily comprehend. Joseph Azrack tells his staff, “You’ve got to be able to figure it out on a piece of paper. Don’t give me all the spreadsheets.” Lynn Thurber acknowledges that complexity is inevitable but you have “to focus, to make a decision and…course correct when the information later on tells you that you’re going the wrong way.”

Torto invites the panelists to nominate one key term to epitomize what students must learn for real estate careers. Tom Garbutt offers “global” -- adding, “Get experience outside the US … See how decisions are made in other cultures.” Thurber’s mantra is “risk management”; investment success comes from “being able to understand that risk and price that risk correctly.” Brad Case stresses discipline. Firms must have mechanisms in place to “minimize the opportunities to destroy value.” Azrack, citing renegade musician Frank Zappa, believes in being contrarian. He advises departing from conventional wisdom to identify fruitful investment opportunities in out-of-favor assets and markets.

On the critical topic of the impending trillion dollar debt rollover, Doug Linde refutes doomsayers, forecasting that well-located properties will provide redeeming value. “As long as the financial system has maintained enough cushion,” declares Linde, “I don’t think systemically we are going to be into this sort of Armageddon.” With measured optimism, Garbutt concurs that in today’s climate the risk premium for investors in real estate is better than in alternative assets, and high quality properties should create inflation protection.

All the speakers embrace environmental sustainability as paramount to their business. Energy efficiency is an ever-present consideration, and measuring a carbon footprint is common parlance. Azrack states, “If you have a choice between a LEED building and another one…you’re going to go with the LEED.” Thurber agrees that green buildings help “attract and retain tenants…reduce our operating expenses…and our investors are interested in the subject matter. Sustainability is going to be an integral part of everything we do…to make sure that our assets remain competitive.” Garbutt draws an analogy to the 1950s when air-conditioned office buildings came into vogue; without this amenity, “you were in big trouble,” unable to satisfy tenant demand.

In closing, Torto asks for research ideas that might enhance the real estate industry. Case proposes “a set of indexes…that will bring a lot more transparency to the market,” and the development of effective hedging instruments. He would also like to learn which methods of entering the asset class produce superior returns -- for example, REITs versus private funding.

Who better to comment on current realities of real estate investment than practitioners immersed in the business at the highest level? Moderated by prominent real estate economist Ray Torto, this panel includes five senior executives with well over a century of collective experience at major development and investment firms and an industry information organization.

Kicking off the discussion from the audience, Jacques Gordon of LaSalle Investment Management asks about the stark contrast in previous panels between views of academics espousing the “complexity” of markets, historical data and prognostications, and the “simplicity” of the perspective of renowned developer Gerald Hines. The consensus is that quantitative analysis and technical skills are dazzling, but it is essential to streamline and make a case that real estate investors can easily comprehend. Joseph Azrack tells his staff, “You’ve got to be able to figure it out on a piece of paper. Don’t give me all the spreadsheets.” Lynn Thurber acknowledges that complexity is inevitable but you have “to focus, to make a decision and…course correct when the information later on tells you that you’re going the wrong way.”

Torto invites the panelists to nominate one key term to epitomize what students must learn for real estate careers. Tom Garbutt offers “global” -- adding, “Get experience outside the US … See how decisions are made in other cultures.” Thurber’s mantra is “risk management”; investment success comes from “being able to understand that risk and price that risk correctly.” Brad Case stresses discipline. Firms must have mechanisms in place to “minimize the opportunities to destroy value.” Azrack, citing renegade musician Frank Zappa, believes in being contrarian. He advises departing from conventional wisdom to identify fruitful investment opportunities in out-of-favor assets and markets.

On the critical topic of the impending trillion dollar debt rollover, Doug Linde refutes doomsayers, forecasting that well-located properties will provide redeeming value. “As long as the financial system has maintained enough cushion,” declares Linde, “I don’t think systemically we are going to be into this sort of Armageddon.” With measured optimism, Garbutt concurs that in today’s climate the risk premium for investors in real estate is better than in alternative assets, and high quality properties should create inflation protection.

All the speakers embrace environmental sustainability as paramount to their business. Energy efficiency is an ever-present consideration, and measuring a carbon footprint is common parlance. Azrack states, “If you have a choice between a LEED building and another one…you’re going to go with the LEED.” Thurber agrees that green buildings help “attract and retain tenants…reduce our operating expenses…and our investors are interested in the subject matter. Sustainability is going to be an integral part of everything we do…to make sure that our assets remain competitive.” Garbutt draws an analogy to the 1950s when air-conditioned office buildings came into vogue; without this amenity, “you were in big trouble,” unable to satisfy tenant demand.

In closing, Torto asks for research ideas that might enhance the real estate industry. Case proposes “a set of indexes…that will bring a lot more transparency to the market,” and the development of effective hedging instruments. He would also like to learn which methods of entering the asset class produce superior returns -- for example, REITs versus private funding.

Few better personify the vitality and ambition fueling China’s economic surge than Charles C-Y Zhang. In this energetic and revelatory talk, Zhang relates his personal evolution from MIT physicist to leading Chinese entrepreneur.

An industrious student from a poor family, Zhang was one of the fortunate few in his university to qualify for an education in the U.S. “In terms of IQ, I’m OK. Everywhere, smart kids were studying physics and math,” he says. While completing a Ph.D. at MIT in the early ‘90s, Zhang discovered “the wonderland of computers.” During post-doctoral research, he became involved in a program fostering MIT/China cooperation, and decided to make a career of the “two big trends of the time”: an emerging China and the internet.

“For a Chinese student in 1995, returning to China was considered crazy,” says Zhang. He joined an internet company opening offices in emerging markets, and set off for China on his 31st birthday, committed to making “major changes in my life.” With his MIT background, Zhang found he was well situated to “crack open the wall” in Chinese society and forge a path for this new company. But Zhang soon became restless, convinced that the internet could be more than just a means of communicating financial information. He set about raising money for his own startup, leveraging investment and help from such MIT friends as Ed Roberts and Nick Negroponte. In 1996, Zhang’s new company, Internet Technologies China, went online, using China’s first internet backbone (a $1000 PC running Linux).

Zhang’s directory of links as well as navigation assistance to sites on China’s early internet, became SOHU.com in 1998 -- a company, Zhang proudly recounts, of many “firsts.” It was China’s first free and open website; the first Chinese company to use venture capital, and professional marketing. Says Zhang, “The first few years, I ran SOHU like a presidential campaign operation, and I became the digital power boy and messenger of China.”

Many internet entrepreneurs followed hard on Zhang’s heels, and a group of companies now jockey for dominance in China. So Zhang is intent on recreating his company in the next two years, to establish unassailable market share in online video content, microblogs, and gaming among China’s 400 million+ internet users. To achieve this, Zhang says he must inject “more technology genes” into the company, broaden management talent, and continue pushing China for judicial relief from intellectual property “piracy.” Says Zhang, “We either become an internet giant…or we will shrink into history. There is no middle position -- winner takes all.”

Few better personify the vitality and ambition fueling China’s economic surge than Charles C-Y Zhang. In this energetic and revelatory talk, Zhang relates his personal evolution from MIT physicist to leading Chinese entrepreneur.

An industrious student from a poor family, Zhang was one of the fortunate few in his university to qualify for an education in the U.S. “In terms of IQ, I’m OK. Everywhere, smart kids were studying physics and math,” he says. While completing a Ph.D. at MIT in the early ‘90s, Zhang discovered “the wonderland of computers.” During post-doctoral research, he became involved in a program fostering MIT/China cooperation, and decided to make a career of the “two big trends of the time”: an emerging China and the internet.

“For a Chinese student in 1995, returning to China was considered crazy,” says Zhang. He joined an internet company opening offices in emerging markets, and set off for China on his 31st birthday, committed to making “major changes in my life.” With his MIT background, Zhang found he was well situated to “crack open the wall” in Chinese society and forge a path for this new company. But Zhang soon became restless, convinced that the internet could be more than just a means of communicating financial information. He set about raising money for his own startup, leveraging investment and help from such MIT friends as Ed Roberts and Nick Negroponte. In 1996, Zhang’s new company, Internet Technologies China, went online, using China’s first internet backbone (a $1000 PC running Linux).

Zhang’s directory of links as well as navigation assistance to sites on China’s early internet, became SOHU.com in 1998 -- a company, Zhang proudly recounts, of many “firsts.” It was China’s first free and open website; the first Chinese company to use venture capital, and professional marketing. Says Zhang, “The first few years, I ran SOHU like a presidential campaign operation, and I became the digital power boy and messenger of China.”

Many internet entrepreneurs followed hard on Zhang’s heels, and a group of companies now jockey for dominance in China. So Zhang is intent on recreating his company in the next two years, to establish unassailable market share in online video content, microblogs, and gaming among China’s 400 million+ internet users. To achieve this, Zhang says he must inject “more technology genes” into the company, broaden management talent, and continue pushing China for judicial relief from intellectual property “piracy.” Says Zhang, “We either become an internet giant…or we will shrink into history. There is no middle position -- winner takes all.”

This group of luminaries from the formative years of the laser expresses both wonder and delight at the astonishing ubiquity this technology has achieved in their lifetime. They recount their parts of a 50-year tale, and convey the excitement of scientific discovery and the pleasures of advancing knowledge in a new field.

Writer Jeff Hecht kicks off the celebration with a fast-paced, illustrated tour of laser technology. Although Einstein theorized early in the 20th century that photons could be excited to produce radiation, it was not until the 1950s that the race began in earnest to demonstrate this physics. Charles Townes and James Gordon came up with a microwave-based version of the technology, but it was graduate student Gordon Gould at Columbia who figured out it was possible to amplify visible light, says Hecht. Gould also coined the term LASER, for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

In May 1960, Theodore “Ted” Maiman cooked up the first actual device, using a synthetic ruby crystal inside a coiled flash lamp. Newspapers heralded the achievement with typical, Cold War hyperbole: “LA Man Builds Death Ray.” From that moment, breakthroughs in the technology came in a rush: the first gas laser, emitting a continuous beam; semiconductor diode lasers; green light and argon-fluorine excimer lasers (deployed in eye surgery); lasers used in 3D holography; supermarket scanners; millions of CD and DVD players; and fiber optic cable. While the Reagan-era “Star Wars” defense envisioned orbiting laser battle stations, says Hecht, the only real laser weapon has been the “anti-mosquito laser.”

Hecht pays tribute to “laser dignitaries” in the audience who were integral to these and other laser applications. He also notes two central figures sadly absent:
Michael Feld, Director of MIT’s George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory, and Charles Freed, who developed the first stable carbon dioxide laser at Lincoln Lab, and who donated to the MIT Museum a laser used to verify the Nobel Prize-winning work of Charles Townes and his collaborators. Both Feld and Freed died in 2010.

Among the pioneers who speak are Peter Moulton, who describes early failures while working to find “broadly tunable” materials for solid state lasers. Moulton helped develop a “cool” titanium sapphire laser, and his work continues to have a major impact in the scientific laser industry.

Richard M. Osgood, Jr. worked with gas lasers, which he found “tremendously exciting” because they had “a tremendous amount of optical power.” As a U.S. Air Force Captain, he helped develop a carbon monoxide laser that emitted a wavelength 10 times longer than extreme light and was the most efficient laser of its time.

Dick Williamson describes the challenge of moving from his original perch at Lincoln Lab developing surface acoustic wave devices to taking over a laser group there: “It was my ultimate Dilbert moment. I knew nothing about lasers.” He oversaw work to expand the wavelength range of diode lasers. “That’s where I got my kicks.”

Starting at Bell Labs in the 60s and during his MIT career, Erich Ippen has been intrigued with creating super short flashes of laser light, measured in femtoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second). This research permits greater accuracy with time-keeping (it has revolutionized the clock, says Ippen), 3D imaging of cells in real-time, and is opening up the field of optical biopsy. “Still at it, trying to make shorter pulses,” says Ippen; it continues to be “a wonderful ride.”

This group of luminaries from the formative years of the laser expresses both wonder and delight at the astonishing ubiquity this technology has achieved in their lifetime. They recount their parts of a 50-year tale, and convey the excitement of scientific discovery and the pleasures of advancing knowledge in a new field.

Writer Jeff Hecht kicks off the celebration with a fast-paced, illustrated tour of laser technology. Although Einstein theorized early in the 20th century that photons could be excited to produce radiation, it was not until the 1950s that the race began in earnest to demonstrate this physics. Charles Townes and James Gordon came up with a microwave-based version of the technology, but it was graduate student Gordon Gould at Columbia who figured out it was possible to amplify visible light, says Hecht. Gould also coined the term LASER, for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

In May 1960, Theodore “Ted” Maiman cooked up the first actual device, using a synthetic ruby crystal inside a coiled flash lamp. Newspapers heralded the achievement with typical, Cold War hyperbole: “LA Man Builds Death Ray.” From that moment, breakthroughs in the technology came in a rush: the first gas laser, emitting a continuous beam; semiconductor diode lasers; green light and argon-fluorine excimer lasers (deployed in eye surgery); lasers used in 3D holography; supermarket scanners; millions of CD and DVD players; and fiber optic cable. While the Reagan-era “Star Wars” defense envisioned orbiting laser battle stations, says Hecht, the only real laser weapon has been the “anti-mosquito laser.”

Hecht pays tribute to “laser dignitaries” in the audience who were integral to these and other laser applications. He also notes two central figures sadly absent:
Michael Feld, Director of MIT’s George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory, and Charles Freed, who developed the first stable carbon dioxide laser at Lincoln Lab, and who donated to the MIT Museum a laser used to verify the Nobel Prize-winning work of Charles Townes and his collaborators. Both Feld and Freed died in 2010.

Among the pioneers who speak are Peter Moulton, who describes early failures while working to find “broadly tunable” materials for solid state lasers. Moulton helped develop a “cool” titanium sapphire laser, and his work continues to have a major impact in the scientific laser industry.

Richard M. Osgood, Jr. worked with gas lasers, which he found “tremendously exciting” because they had “a tremendous amount of optical power.” As a U.S. Air Force Captain, he helped develop a carbon monoxide laser that emitted a wavelength 10 times longer than extreme light and was the most efficient laser of its time.

Dick Williamson describes the challenge of moving from his original perch at Lincoln Lab developing surface acoustic wave devices to taking over a laser group there: “It was my ultimate Dilbert moment. I knew nothing about lasers.” He oversaw work to expand the wavelength range of diode lasers. “That’s where I got my kicks.”

Starting at Bell Labs in the 60s and during his MIT career, Erich Ippen has been intrigued with creating super short flashes of laser light, measured in femtoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second). This research permits greater accuracy with time-keeping (it has revolutionized the clock, says Ippen), 3D imaging of cells in real-time, and is opening up the field of optical biopsy. “Still at it, trying to make shorter pulses,” says Ippen; it continues to be “a wonderful ride.”

An iconic figure in real estate development,
Gerald D. Hines relates lessons learned over his half-century career to an admiring industry audience.

Leveraging know-how in mechanical systems and project management, and not a small amount of chutzpah, Hines opened a one-man office in 1957 Houston, intent on buying, renovating and managing his own buildings. From this tiny start-up, the Hines development business has grown into an international powerhouse, controlling $22 billion in assets, and employing 3,300 people in 245 cities dealing with hundreds of millions of square feet of commercial, residential and mixed-use projects.

Hines ticks off a handful of reasons for this spectacular success. First, he believes in “quality architecture” and mechanical systems that provide good service at low cost. When buildings embody these principles, he says, you can “mitigate risk in any economic cycle.” Such architects as Philip Johnson and Kevin Roche have drawn tenants to his buildings. You want to be the “last to lose occupancy and the first to gain it back,” says Hines. Second, he advocates a steadfast commitment to sustainable technologies, which also “makes good business sense.” Even in the era prior to LEED standards, Hines sought ways to streamline buildings for greater operating and energy efficiencies. Other lessons he imparts: there are opportunities in acquiring existing buildings if you are “sure you can add value;” and “mixed use development makes for better communities and a better world.”

The average tenure for Hines’ employees runs in the decades, and the company’s organizational structure contributes in great part to this retention rate, as well as to its global successes. Hines describes the autonomy top managers enjoy in their various divisions. The company also offers these managers 50% of equity in new ventures. The “people leading the project have something to lose,” says Hines, and a great deal to gain as well.

Hines sees a real estate landscape that is a lot tougher to break into today, and one fraught with great uncertainty, especially in current economic times. He was chairman of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank in the early 1980s, and witnessed a bust that “wiped out the real estate industry.” He sees parallels today to those times, and warns his listeners, “Button down your hatches, guys, it could come overnight.”

An iconic figure in real estate development,
Gerald D. Hines relates lessons learned over his half-century career to an admiring industry audience.

Leveraging know-how in mechanical systems and project management, and not a small amount of chutzpah, Hines opened a one-man office in 1957 Houston, intent on buying, renovating and managing his own buildings. From this tiny start-up, the Hines development business has grown into an international powerhouse, controlling $22 billion in assets, and employing 3,300 people in 245 cities dealing with hundreds of millions of square feet of commercial, residential and mixed-use projects.

Hines ticks off a handful of reasons for this spectacular success. First, he believes in “quality architecture” and mechanical systems that provide good service at low cost. When buildings embody these principles, he says, you can “mitigate risk in any economic cycle.” Such architects as Philip Johnson and Kevin Roche have drawn tenants to his buildings. You want to be the “last to lose occupancy and the first to gain it back,” says Hines. Second, he advocates a steadfast commitment to sustainable technologies, which also “makes good business sense.” Even in the era prior to LEED standards, Hines sought ways to streamline buildings for greater operating and energy efficiencies. Other lessons he imparts: there are opportunities in acquiring existing buildings if you are “sure you can add value;” and “mixed use development makes for better communities and a better world.”

The average tenure for Hines’ employees runs in the decades, and the company’s organizational structure contributes in great part to this retention rate, as well as to its global successes. Hines describes the autonomy top managers enjoy in their various divisions. The company also offers these managers 50% of equity in new ventures. The “people leading the project have something to lose,” says Hines, and a great deal to gain as well.

Hines sees a real estate landscape that is a lot tougher to break into today, and one fraught with great uncertainty, especially in current economic times. He was chairman of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank in the early 1980s, and witnessed a bust that “wiped out the real estate industry.” He sees parallels today to those times, and warns his listeners, “Button down your hatches, guys, it could come overnight.”

The built environment consumes a very large share of the nation’s energy, and so offers rich opportunities for reducing our overall carbon footprint. MIT researchers share innovations that could soon radically alter the energy profile, as well as form and function, of buildings. Their work may prove invaluable to those in the real estate or construction industries seeking not just efficiency, but a good investment.

Pumping gas into a car, we can get a good sense of its energy costs, says John Ochsendorf. But when it comes to buildings, which are huge capital investments, “we have practically no literacy” around energy performance. Now we are entering a “new frontier,” says Ochsendorf, as pressure builds to achieve substantial, swift reductions in energy consumption. He is helping to develop new metrics for measuring the amount of energy a building uses over its entire lifespan, from construction through many years of occupancy.

Ochsendorf maps the material and energy flow involved in producing a can of Coke, from the extraction of minerals for aluminum smelting, to the French beets used in its sugar syrup, and suggests that this level of detail should be available for our buildings as well. This means “lifecycle assessment with rigorous benchmarking of building performance,” down to the CO2 emissions per square foot. Ochsendorf is working with concrete and cement manufacturers to help them achieve steep reductions quickly, and to design buildings that use local waste material such as clay, and operate with zero net energy use.

The value of buildings derives from their capacity to “protect and enhance the health, safety and well-being of occupants and communities,” says Sarah Slaughter. There are measurable benefits, too: Acoustically quiet classrooms improve student retention, and reinforced buildings can withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. Slaughter is interested in using “low impact development” for healthy, resilient buildings. She takes a “system of systems” approach, examining first the interaction of systems within a building. Could use of rainwater capture, for instance, decrease the need for non-potable water, or could “daylight harvesting” permit the downsizing of artificial lighting? Slaughter next considers the building’s connections to the larger environment, including its neighborhood and region.

She sees a “value-added chain” that ultimately includes municipalities and state and federal agencies. By targeting the right links in the chain, one can achieve both performance enhancement and cost efficiencies. This leads to “clearly demonstrable bottom-line benefits -- less than a year payback for some upgrades” as well as improved buildings that “allow people to complete their organizational missions more effectively.”

Alex (Sandy) Pentland hopes to make buildings more productive and efficient, but focuses on people rather than structures. He has devised methods for mapping human activities, following cellphone and other wireless signals. For example, Pentland can track face to face meetings taking place in an organization, and troubleshoot areas of low-productivity. He describes changing the time for coffee breaks in a Bank of America call center, and saving that business $15 million. He has detailed how “tribes” of people move about in cities, and can make astonishingly accurate predictions about where and when these groups go to eat and the kinds of things they buy. Real estate developers could look at transportation patterns, for instance, and build stores in places convenient to a target group. These tools are powerful enough to reveal socioeconomic patterns, such as crime rates, disease and even life expectancy among different groups. Data mapping, believes Pentland, will prove increasingly useful to many institutions, although it presents some perils around privacy issues.

The built environment consumes a very large share of the nation’s energy, and so offers rich opportunities for reducing our overall carbon footprint. MIT researchers share innovations that could soon radically alter the energy profile, as well as form and function, of buildings. Their work may prove invaluable to those in the real estate or construction industries seeking not just efficiency, but a good investment.

Pumping gas into a car, we can get a good sense of its energy costs, says John Ochsendorf. But when it comes to buildings, which are huge capital investments, “we have practically no literacy” around energy performance. Now we are entering a “new frontier,” says Ochsendorf, as pressure builds to achieve substantial, swift reductions in energy consumption. He is helping to develop new metrics for measuring the amount of energy a building uses over its entire lifespan, from construction through many years of occupancy.

Ochsendorf maps the material and energy flow involved in producing a can of Coke, from the extraction of minerals for aluminum smelting, to the French beets used in its sugar syrup, and suggests that this level of detail should be available for our buildings as well. This means “lifecycle assessment with rigorous benchmarking of building performance,” down to the CO2 emissions per square foot. Ochsendorf is working with concrete and cement manufacturers to help them achieve steep reductions quickly, and to design buildings that use local waste material such as clay, and operate with zero net energy use.

The value of buildings derives from their capacity to “protect and enhance the health, safety and well-being of occupants and communities,” says Sarah Slaughter. There are measurable benefits, too: Acoustically quiet classrooms improve student retention, and reinforced buildings can withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. Slaughter is interested in using “low impact development” for healthy, resilient buildings. She takes a “system of systems” approach, examining first the interaction of systems within a building. Could use of rainwater capture, for instance, decrease the need for non-potable water, or could “daylight harvesting” permit the downsizing of artificial lighting? Slaughter next considers the building’s connections to the larger environment, including its neighborhood and region.

She sees a “value-added chain” that ultimately includes municipalities and state and federal agencies. By targeting the right links in the chain, one can achieve both performance enhancement and cost efficiencies. This leads to “clearly demonstrable bottom-line benefits -- less than a year payback for some upgrades” as well as improved buildings that “allow people to complete their organizational missions more effectively.”

Alex (Sandy) Pentland hopes to make buildings more productive and efficient, but focuses on people rather than structures. He has devised methods for mapping human activities, following cellphone and other wireless signals. For example, Pentland can track face to face meetings taking place in an organization, and troubleshoot areas of low-productivity. He describes changing the time for coffee breaks in a Bank of America call center, and saving that business $15 million. He has detailed how “tribes” of people move about in cities, and can make astonishingly accurate predictions about where and when these groups go to eat and the kinds of things they buy. Real estate developers could look at transportation patterns, for instance, and build stores in places convenient to a target group. These tools are powerful enough to reveal socioeconomic patterns, such as crime rates, disease and even life expectancy among different groups. Data mapping, believes Pentland, will prove increasingly useful to many institutions, although it presents some perils around privacy issues.