What are the odds your vote will not count?

This is part 2 of a two-part MIT News series on voting research and the 2020 election. Part 1 focuses on shifts in post-Election Day vote tallies.

In elections, every vote counts. Or should count. But a new study by an MIT professor indicates that in the 2016 U.S. general election, 4 percent of all mail-in ballots were not counted — about 1.4 million votes, or 1 percent of all votes cast, signaling a significant problem that could grow in 2020.

The study quantifies the range of reasons for this, including late-arriving ballots, problems with ballot signatures and envelopes, and improperly marked ballots, among other things.

“Mail ballots tend to have more mistakes on them,” says Charles Stewart, a professor in MIT’s Department of Political Science and author of a paper detailing the study, which looks at data from all 50 U.S. states.

Voting by mail — the same thing as absentee voting — will probably be more prevalent than ever in 2020, as voters seek to avoid crowds at polling places during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the study suggests, states that have more experience with mail-in voting tend to have a slightly lower percentage of lost votes. Thus the 2020 election could feature an unusually high percentage of lost mail-in voting attempts, and the odds of your mail-in ballot counting may vary a bit, depending on where you live.

“The likelihood of a vote being lost by mail is, in part, determined by how the state feels about that,” says Stewart, who is the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science and head of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. “States can put more or less effort into ensuring that voters don’t make mistakes. … There are different mail-ballot regimes, they handle the ballots differently, they operate under different philosophies of what mail balloting is supposed to achieve, and who bears the risk of mail balloting.”

The paper, “Reconsidering Lost Votes by Mail,” appears as a working paper on the Social Science Research Network, and will be published by the Harvard Data Science Review.

Check your work

The concept of “lost votes” was first studied comprehensively by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (VTP) following the contested 2000 U.S. presidential election. The VTP concluded that of 107 million votes cast in 2000 — of all kinds, not just mail-in voting — between 4 million and 6 million went unrecorded. The federal Help America Vote Act of 2003 (HAVA) subsequently reduced that number to between 2 million and 3 million.

The current paper extends that line of analysis to absentee votes, and updates a 2010 Stewart study. Overall, there are three main types of problems with mail-in votes: postal issues, procedural problems involving things like signatures and ballot envelopes, and vote-scanning problems.

In the first case, about 1.1 percent of all mail-in votes are lost because of problems during the mailing process — from unfilled absentee ballot requests to the return of those ballots. Some of those lost votes represent election-administration errors, not postal issues. Stewart does not think recent reductions in U.S. Postal Service capacity will necessarily change that, although many experts are urging voters to mail in their ballots promptly.

“Postal service problems, literally the ballot not arriving, the ballot arriving late, getting lost in the office, that’s one source,” Stewart says. “But it’s probably the least important source of loss, despite all the controversy about the postal service.”

Secondly, votes can also be lost when voters handle the process incorrectly: They fail to sign ballots, are judged to have submitted mismatched signatures, or do not use the ballot’s safety envelope, among other things. About 1.5 percent of mail-in votes suffer from these problems, Stewart estimates.

“The voter can make a mistake in the certification process,” Stewarts says. “They don’t sign the envelope where they’re supposed to, they don’t seal it properly … there are all sorts of things that lead to rejected ballots.” Still, Stewart observes, “Election offices could be less persnickety about technical issues.”

The third type of problem, comprising 1.5 percent of all attempts at absentee voting, occurs when scanning machines in polling places reject ballots.

“The scanning problems, nobody really talks about because it’s the most abstract, but I think it may be the most important,” Stewart says.

This category includes voter mistakes that could be corrected in person, but lead to rejection on absentee ballots. When people “overvote,” selecting too many candidates, scanning machines catch the errors — and HAVA mandates that in-person voters can re-do the ballot.

“If you overvote, there’s a requirement in federal law that the ballot be kicked back to you,” Stewart says about in-person voting. “If you undervote, there’s not a requirement, but many states will kick back the ballot [to voters]. But if you do that and drop your ballot in the mailbox, there’s nobody to kick the ballot back to you.”

One frequent type of overvote happens when voters redundantly add their chosen candidate’s name to the write-in line, Stewart says: “The most common reason for overvotes is people will fill in the bubble for their candidate, and then they’ll go down to the bottom and write in the name of their candidate.”

There are other ways a voter can foul up a ballot as well.

“It could be, if you’re making choices and put your pencil down next to every name, that could be picked up as a vote by the scanners,” Stewart says. “There are things you just don’t think about that could go wrong.”

The geography of lost votes

To conduct the study, Stewart used a variety of data sources, including U.S. Postal Service on-time rates, the Survey of the Performance of American Elections, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and the Current Population Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.

One finding of the study is that the percentage of lost mail-in votes is lower in states that lean more heavily on absentee balloting overall. It is 3.5 percent in states that conduct their elections almost completely by mail (Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) and in those that keep a permanent absentee ballot list (Arizona, California, Hawaii, Montana, and Utah, plus Washington, D.C.). But the lost votes percentage for mail-in ballots is higher, at 4.4 percent, in states that honor absentee ballot requests with no excuse needed, and it’s 4.9 percent in states that require an excuse for absentee balloting.

That suggests both that voters become more proficient when they have more experience at mail-in voting, and that states may process mail ballots more effectively when it becomes routine for them. Stewart, for one, believes that election officials do an exceptional job overall.

“I’m very sanguine about the integrity of the process, from what I know about election officials,” Stewart says. Still, he acknowledges, absentee voting can be a tricky process, and a significant number of votes may be lost in 2020.

“That’s why we have a lot of voter education going on right now,” Stewart says.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/2Hf2Cto
via Gabe's Musing's

Designing off-grid refrigeration technologies for crop storage in Kenya

For smallholder farmers living in hot and arid regions, getting fresh crops to market and selling them at the best price is a balancing act. If crops aren’t sold early enough, they wilt or ripen too quickly in the heat, and farmers have to sell them at reduced prices. Selling produce in the morning is a strategy many farmers use to beat the heat and ensure freshness, but that results in oversupply and competition at markets and further reduces the value of the produce sold. If farmers could chill their harvests — maintaining cool temperatures to keep them fresh for longer — then they could bring high-quality, fresh produce to afternoon markets and sell at better prices. Access to cold storage could also allow growers to harvest more produce before heading to markets, making these trips more efficient and profitable while also expanding consumers’ access to fresh produce.

Unfortunately, many smallholder farming communities lack access to the energy resources needed to support food preservation technologies like refrigeration. To address this challenge, an MIT research team funded by a 2019 seed grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) is combining expertise in mechanical engineering, architecture, and energy systems to design affordable off-grid cold storage units for perishable crops. Three MIT principal investigators are leading this effort: Leon Glicksman, professor of building technology and mechanical engineering in the Department of Architecture; Daniel Frey, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the faculty director for research at MIT D-Lab; and Eric Verploegen, a research engineer at MIT D-Lab. They are also collaborating with researchers at the University of Nairobi to study the impact of several different chamber designs on performance and usability in Kenya. Together, they are looking to develop a cost-effective large-scale cooperative storage facility that uses the evaporative cooling properties of water to keep harvests fresher, longer.

Evaporative cooling

Evaporative cooling involves the energy dynamics of the phase change of water from its liquid state into its gas state. Simply put, when dry air moves across a saturated surface such as a container full of water, the water molecules absorb a large amount of heat as they change from liquid to gas, cooling the surrounding air. Evaporative cooling isn’t a new concept. People have been leveraging this property of water to cool buildings and keep harvests fresh for thousands of years. Today, in many arid regions, people use a double clay pot system to harness the evaporative cooling process to prolong the freshness of fruit and vegetables. Known as a pot-in-pot cooler or Zeer pot, the space between a larger and smaller ceramic pot is filled with sand and kept wet. As water evaporates through the vessel walls, it lowers the temperature of the inner chamber. 

However, while clay pot coolers can be effective for individual household use, they are limited by their storage capacity. Some larger-scale produce storage strategies that use evaporative cooling exist and are in use in Kenya and other countries and arid regions. In fact, Verploegen has focused his research at MIT D-Lab on evaporative cooling technologies since 2016, resulting in the production of several designs currently at the pilot stage.

Yet size still remains a challenge. Few designs exist today that are large enough to effectively store several metric tons of produce and that satisfy important criteria like ease of construction, quality of performance, and affordability, which would meet the storage needs for larger harvests or groups of farmers. Designs exist for solar-powered mechanical refrigeration; however, the costs associated with the energy, implementation, and maintenance of these units is prohibitive to many smallholder farmers around the world. Teaming up with Frey and Gliskman for this J-WAFS-funded effort, the group is aiming to address this lack of access. “For us, the questions became, ‘How can we scale evaporative cooling techniques and improve upon the existing ways that people have been using it for centuries?’” Glicksman reflects. With this in mind, the team set out to find a solution.

Sustainability as a design throughline

Initially the team’s focus was on improving the performance of existing cooling chamber technologies. “We worked with local folks [in Kenya] and built some of the more traditional designs that use charcoal,” says Verploegen. “However, what we found was that these efforts were very labor-intensive, time-consuming, and overall not very replicable.” Building on the ongoing user research performed by teams at the University of Nairobi and MIT D-Lab, the researchers have been exploring different kinds of materials for the structure, and settled on shipping containers as the basis for the chamber. 

As it turns out, the height and width of a shipping container meets the dimension specifications of users’ requirements. Plus, using shipping containers provides the opportunity to up-cycle existing, used materials. “I’m always checking out where used shipping containers are available and checking prices in various countries for our cost model,” Verploegen admits. So, in their current design, they retrofitted a shipping container with a double-layered insulating wall, a solar-powered fan to force air through a central matrix of wet pads, and interior storage crates arranged to maximize convection and cooling rates and ease of use. 

This design is informed by several analytical models that the research team continues to develop. The models evaluate the effect that different evaporative cooling materials, arrangements of produce storage crates, and exterior insulating materials have on the efficiency and functionality of the cooling chamber. These models help maximize cooling capabilities while minimizing water and energy usage, and also inform decisions on material choices.

One such decision was the transition away from wetted charcoal as an evaporative cooling medium. Charcoal is commonly used as a cooling membrane material, but the release of CO₂ during the burn-treatment process and subsequent negative environmental effects made it less attractive to the team. Currently, they are experimenting with plant-based aspen fiber and corrugated cellulose pads, which are both a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable solution. Lastly, the team has installed a solar-powered electronic control system that allows farmers to automate the chamber’s fan and water pumps, increasing efficiency and minimizing maintenance requirements. 

Collaborating overseas

Critical to the research project’s development is collaboration with researchers at the University of Nairobi (UON) in Kenya. Professor Jane Ambuko, a leading horticulturist at UON in the Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection, is well-versed in post-harvest technologies. In addition to her expert knowledge on crop physiology and the effects of cooling on produce, Ambuko is well-connected within the local Kenyan farming community and has provided the team with critical introductions to local farmers willing to test out the team’s chamber prototypes. Another collaborator, Duncan Mbuge, an agricultural engineer in the UON Department of Environmental and Biosystems Engineering, has been able to provide insight into the design, construction, and materials selection for the cooling chambers.

The project has also involved exchange between MIT D-Lab and UON students, and this collaboration has opened up additional avenues for both institutions to work together. “The exchange of ideas [with MIT] has been mutually beneficial,” says Mbuge, “the net result has been an overall improvement in the technology.” The two professors, along with their research students, have continued monitoring and managing the pilot structure built in Kenya. “Together, with expertise from the MIT team, we complete each other­,” adds Ambuko.

“The researchers at UON have a whole history and institutional knowledge of challenges that previously tried designs have come up against in real-world contexts,” Verploegen says, adding this has been essential to moving the MIT designs from concept to practice. Farmers have also played a major role in shaping the design and implementation of this technology. Following the D-Lab model, the MIT and UON research teams worked together to run a number of interviews and focus groups in farming communities in order to learn directly from users about their needs. The farmers in these communities have important insights into how to design a practical and effective cooling chamber that is suitable for use by farming cooperatives. Given that it will have more than one user, farmers have asked for a crate-stacking arrangement that will allow for easy inventory management. Farmers have pointed out additional benefits of the evaporative cooling chambers. “We have been told that these containers can also provide special protection from rodents,” Frey explains, “that turns out to be a very important for the farmers that we’re working with.”

Potential impacts

Overall, the team’s models indicate that a standard 40-foot-long shipping container outfitted as an evaporative cooler will be able to store between 6,500-8,000 kilograms of produce. The cost of constructing the chamber will likely be $7,000-$8,000, which, compared to mechanically refrigerated options of a similar size, offers over a 50 percent reduction in cost, making this new design very lucrative for farming cooperatives. One of the ways the team is keeping the production costs down is by using local materials and a centralized manufacturing strategy. “We are of the mindset that building a technology of this size and complexity centrally and then distributing it locally is the best way to make it accessible and affordable for these communities,” Verploegen says. 

There are many benefits to making technologies accessible to and replicable by members of specific communities. Collaborative development is a cornerstone of D-Lab’s work, the academics and research program that Verploegen and Frey are a part of. “At D-Lab, we're interested in planting the idea that community involvement is critical in order to adapt technological solutions to people’s needs and to maximize their use of the resulting solution,” says Frey. While an emphasis on co-creation is expected to result in community buy-in for their cooling solution, centralized manufacturing and construction of the containers is an additional strategy aimed at ensuring the accessibility and affordability of the technology for the communities they aim to serve. 

While the current design has been developed for farmers near Nairobi in Kenya, these evaporative cooling devices could be deployed in a host of other regions in Kenya, as well as parts of West Africa and regions of western India such as Rajasthan and Gujarat. Verploegen, who is also leading a related J-WAFS-funded effort on evaporative cooling through the J-WAFS Grant for Water and Food Projects in India, is developing designs for crop storage for farms in western India. He says that “the scale of need is what determines what kind of evaporative cooling technology a community might need.” His work in India is focused on helping to disseminate technologies that are smaller and constructed at the location where they will be used, using brick and sand. He is also “helping to make them more efficient and improving the design to best fit local needs.”

Ultimately, the research team’s goal is to make their evaporative cooling chamber something that local farming communities will consistently use and benefit from. To do this, they have to “come up with not only the MIT solution, but a solution that the people on the ground find is the best for them,” says Glicksman. They hope that this technology will not only help producers economically, but that it will also enable widespread food storage and preservation capabilities, allowing better access for populations to fresh produce.

To read more about this work, visit the project site via J-WAFS.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/2FwV3NV
via Gabe's Musing's

How many votes will be counted after election night?

This is part 1 of a two-part MIT News series on voting research and the 2020 election.

When you watch election returns on Nov. 3, keep this in mind: In some U.S. states, it will take days to count all the ballots, and the winner might only be clear later, rather than sooner.

Four straight U.S. presidential elections have featured a “blue shift,” in which the post-Election Day ballot count helped the Democratic Party candidate gain ground on the Republican nominee. And the GOP’s Richard Nixon twice enjoyed a “red shift” from post-Election Day vote counting.

A study co-authored by an MIT political scientist quantifies this effect by state, analyzes its causes, and shows why the 2020 election might indeed be decided after Nov. 3.

“It’s one of the reasons people are bracing for a bit of a rocky ride after the polls close,” says Charles Stewart, a professor in MIT’s Department of Political Science and co-author of a paper detailing the study’s results.

As the study shows, a growing share of votes since 1992 have been counted after Election Day; in 2016, it was about 10 percent of all votes. The use of provisional ballots and absentee ballots is the leading driver of this trend. Last time out, Hillary Clinton’s national popular-vote margin increased by 0.30 percentage points due to votes counted after Election Day.

Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic seems likely to generate more absentee voting than ever. These factors have led many political commentators to speculate that President Donald Trump, who has been mostly critical of mail-in voting, might verbally claim victory on election night despite an unfinished vote count. This may especially be relevant to Pennsylvania and Michigan, which have little or no advance counting of mail-in ballots.

However, Stewart notes, we do not know what will unfold. Fully 42 states start counting absentee ballots before Election Day, and if voters return mail-in ballots unusually quickly, some absentee vote counts might wrap up routinely. In that case, “There could be more [issues] with Election Day voting than mail voting,” Stewart says.

Additionally, Stewart says, if Democrats are particularly focused on sending in absentee ballots early, “We could have a red shift in 2020 in some of these states, if Democratic ballots [have] already been scanned and preloaded, and if Republican ballots are the last ones, which will get counted on Wednesday or Thursday.”

The paper, “Explaining the Blue Shift in Election Canvassing,” is co-authored by Stewart, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, and Edward Foley, the Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, and director of the election law program at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. It appeared this summer in the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy.

Why more votes are counted later …

To conduct the research, Foley and Stewart examined all presidential elections since 1948. First, to gain an overall sense of the size of the post-Election Day vote count, they compared the vote tabulations appearing in The New York Times on the Thursday after every Election Day with the eventual vote totals (using Dave Leip’s Election Atlas as the source for final results).

From 1948 through 1956, the number of votes counted after Election Day was higher than it is now, above 10 percent, which the researchers attribute to the slower forms of communication (and thus vote reporting) of the time. That number generally stayed under 5 percent for a few decades but ticked up in 1992 and again starting in 2004.

Two main factors likely account for this growth: greater use of provisional ballots and more mail-in voting (also known as absentee voting). In the first case, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 2002, modernized voting equipment and required all states to issue provisional ballots to voters.

Provisional ballots allow people whose registration is challenged at the polls to vote anyway; their ballot is evaluated again after Election Day. Prior to 2002, only half of the states used provisional ballots. In 2016, about 2.5 million provisional ballots were cast; about 1.7 million of those were fully or partially counted, with around 800,000 provisional ballots being rejected.

At the same time, voting by mail has grown in popularity. Using the federal Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) and U.S. Census Bureau data, Foley and Stewart conclude in their paper that “there is a correlation between the number of provisional and mail ballots that must be processed by a state’s election officials and the number of overtime votes” — that is, those counted after Election Day.

“The reforms after the 2000 election routinized some of these dynamics,” Stewart says, while state-level changes “removed [the need for] excuses for voting by mail.”

… and why has the shift been blue?

Still, if an increasing number of votes are counted after Election Day, why has that boosted the Democratic Party candidate? The post-Election Day vote count generated a 0.12 percentage point shift in the national popular vote in favor of John Kerry in 2004, a 0.35 point shift for Barack Obama in 2008, and a 0.39 point shift for Obama in 2012, before Clinton’s 0.30 point gain in 2016.

One explanation, which Foley and Stewart detail in the paper, is that Democrats are more likely to cast provisional ballots. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2016, they note, 60.1 percent of respondents who said they had cast a provisional ballot identified as Democrats, whereas only 47.8 percent of those who did not cast provisional ballots identified as Democrats.

Digging into state-level data, the scholars find the same pattern. In North Carolina, which has the most extensive public data about provisional ballots of any state, 39 percent of voters casting a provisional ballot in 2016 were Democrats, although just 34.6 percent of the state electorate consisted of Democrats.

But why are Democrats casting more provisional ballots in the first place? One reason, the scholars suggest, is that new voter registrations since 2000 have tended to favor the Democratic Party; many challenges that lead to provisional ballots being cast are due to either new voter registration records that not reflected at the polls, or changes of address.

Stewart suggests another reason, though, which stems from the campaign side of politics.

“Starting in 2008, I think something else happened,” he says. “The Obama campaign recognized the strategic opportunity in some states to lock down the Democratic vote early, so that the election-day get-out-the-vote effort could be more [focused] and less costly. And ever since then Democratic [Party] strategists, more so than Republican [Party] strategists, have looked to mail balloting as a way of getting their votes in.”

Certainly the blue shift has not been constant. Nixon enjoyed a red shift of 0.20 percentage points in 1960, while narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and then a smaller red shift while winning in 1968.

Eyes on the Midwest

As Foley and Stewart also detail in the paper, states vary widely in how quickly they process votes. Florida starts counting absentee votes 22 days before the election. Conversely, Pennsylvania and Michigan, key states Trump won narrowly in 2016, have just implemented no-excuses absentee voting — but Pennsylvania will not start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day. Michigan will start processing mail-in ballots — taking them out of their envelopes, marking names off the voter list, and more — the day before the election and will feed them into vote-scanning machines on Election Day.

Another factor is whether states count absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive later. In 2016 in Washington, which uses entirely mail-in ballots, 31.3 percent of votes were counted after Election Day. In Oregon, which also is a vote-by-mail state, that figure was just 6.0 percent. Why? Washington allows ballots to be counted if they are received five days after Election Day, while in Oregon, ballots must be received by Election Day.

Those states are not likely to tip the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and historically some of the biggest post-Election Day shifts have not, either. The single biggest shift the researchers found for any state in the 1948-2016 time period was a 6.9 percentage point shift for George Wallace in his home state of Alabama in 1968, but Nixon won the state anyway.

Still, in a few places, a relatively small shift could change the state and national results.

“When you do the math, you’re not talking about big [numbers of] votes,” Stewart says. “It’s going to be outcome-determinative only under a narrow range of conditions. It’s a game of inches.”

from MIT News https://ift.tt/33XjsFO
via Gabe's Musing's

David Autor receives Heinz Award

MIT economist David Autor has been named the recipient of the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award, as part of the 25th anniversary of the Heinz Awards, in a distinction announced today.

The honor, granted by Teresa Heinz and the Heinz Family Foundation as part of its set of prominent annual awards, is for Autor’s research on labor, trade, and economic security, “and for transforming our understanding of how globalization and technological change are impacting jobs and earning prospects for American workers,” according to the foundation’s citation.

“I’m honored and flattered to be receiving this award,” Autor told MIT News. “It makes me feel my work has an an impact in the policy space.”

Established in memory of U.S. Senator John Heinz (1938-1991), the Heinz Awards recognize contributors in the categories of Arts and Humanities; Environment; Human Condition; Public Policy; and Technology, the Economy and Employment. The foundation also bestows special awards, including the one given to Autor.

The Heinz Awards have recognized 151 individuals and granted more than $30 million to the recipients since 1995. Autor will receive an unrestricted cash award of $250,000.

“We honor David for developing methodologies of research that shed new light on the deep and lingering impacts of globalization and technological change on American workers and their communities,” Teresa Heinz, chair of the Heinz Family Foundation, said in a statement released today.

She added: “His findings lay bare the obstacles faced by so many who are seeking economic opportunity and better lives for their families, the need for policies that support these families, and the economic factors, such as educational status, that are contributing to wage inequality. David’s research should be a wake-up call for policy makers to address systemic shortcomings in labor standards and reduce the barriers that place both higher education and opportunities it creates to access good jobs out of reach for so many.”

The foundation also noted Autor’s work as co-chair of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, an Institute-wide project examining technology, employment, and labor policy, and specifically cited some of his influential papers about work and social mobility. Autor’s 2020 paper “The Faltering Urban Opportunity Escalator,” the foundation stated, identifies and highlights “the elimination of middle-skill jobs such as clerical and administration positions in large urban areas,” and reveals it to have an especially large impact on people of color.

The foundation’s citation also notes that in his 2016 paper “The China Shock,” co-written with David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, Autor “upends prevailing economic wisdom that the U.S. job market is large enough and flexible enough to absorb and redirect workers displaced by manufacturing job loss.” The study found that Chinese imports were sufficient to replace about 1.53 million U.S. manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2007, with area employment and wages remaining depressed in affected areas for a decade or more after those jobs were eliminated.

“Senator Heinz was very concerned with the state of working conditions, in Pennsylvania and beyond, especially due to globalization and how it was affecting the blue-collar work force,” says Autor, who is the Ford International Professor in the Department of Economics. “I’m heartened to know my research has helped advance understanding of these issues.”

When it comes to trade, Autor added, “There are real distributional consequences, and the benefits are quite dispersed, but the losses are quite concentrated. Policy needs to wake up to that and stand up to that. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trading, but we should be preparing for the consequences.”

Other MIT faculty who have received a Heinz Award in the last two decades include biomedical engineer Sangeeta Bhatia, in 2015; biomechatronic engineer Hugh Herr, in 2007; physicist Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus, in 2005; and biomedical engineer Robert Langer, in 2003.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/36Xufld
via Gabe's Musing's

Kofi Blake is bringing people together

It was the middle of his first night at MIT, but Kofi Blake couldn’t sleep. Instead, he was waiting anxiously outside the door to be let into a residential hall called Chocolate City. The current members were having their house meeting, and it was carrying on for much longer than expected. Blake, then a high school senior visiting for an event called Weekend Immersion in Science and Engineering (WISE), could feel his curiosity growing with every minute.

When the doors finally opened, Blake stepped inside to find a room full of students who had been excitedly planning for his arrival. The wait was worth it. The Chocolate City brothers welcomed him with pride, sharing with him their personal experiences and what it meant to be Black at MIT. That was the night when he found his community, recalls Blake, who is now a senior double-majoring in aerospace engineering and physics, with a minor in political science.

“There weren’t that many Black people where I went to high school. I never knew what it was like to go to school around others who looked like me and were into the same type of things,” Blake says. “Now, after four years of living in Chocolate City, I’ve really gotten to see the support that comes from within the brotherhood. They’re why I came to MIT.”

The organization was founded in 1975, at a time when Black men were struggling at MIT. The lack of a support system was leading to students with lower GPAs and higher dropout rates. Today, Chocolate City acts as a living community, providing growth and leadership opportunities for its members.

Throughout his career at MIT, Blake has been focused on uniting the Black community on campus by supporting his fellow brothers academically, socially, and professionally. He began by serving as Chocolate City’s historian his first year due to his love for photography, and is now the senior co-chair of the organization.

This past summer, Chocolate City used its platform to advocate and fundraise for the Black Lives Matter movement. Blake and his brotherhood worked together to raise $2,000 for different social justice organizations. Their call to action inspired other MIT cultural organizations as well, who also raised awareness and money using social media.

Blake has served as the student body president of the Class of 2021 throughout all of his four years at MIT. “It was actually a Chocolate City brother who inspired me to run,” he recalls. “He explained to me how you get to advocate for the class and put on fun events that bring people together. That really got me interested!”

Yet, it wasn’t until the campaigning process that Blake truly began to develop an appreciation for the complexities of the role. Class presidents must connect with peers and work with the MIT administration to plan social events that will engage the entire student population. Along the way, he met with hundreds of students and listened to what they each wanted out of Class Council. By the end of the race, Blake felt he had an even deeper understanding of the importance of diversity.

“The role really makes you appreciate just how many different people there are [in terms of] race, ethnicity, sexuality, background, thought. People will come to the table and they have so much to offer,” Blake says. “You have that realization and then you take it to whatever you’re doing to try and make something that accommodates everyone. It’s been a humbling experience.”

One of Blake’s accomplishments as class president was organizing a field trip to the Six Flags amusement park for over 200 students. The planning process began with building a consensus on how to use the budget, which became a major challenge with so many students involved. Ideas ranged from Marvel movie screenings to inviting Michelle Obama as commencement speaker. “People will ask for some pretty interesting things,” Blake says, laughing.

Eventually, the idea came together, and soon Blake found himself and his classmates on a bus heading out to western Massachusetts. They spent that Saturday jumping between rides and recharging before another challenging semester. Blake remembers the event as one of his favorite experiences at MIT.

“There’s no greater feeling than when you’re with all your classmates and they’re having a great time. The students are really appreciative.” Blake says. Despite the many conflicting suggestions, he had finally found a way to bring people together through the simple joy of having fun.

In addition to representing over 1,100 students on campus, Blake has also worked to encourage more minority students in STEM. Last spring, he collaborated with a team of Boeing engineers to develop aerospace curriculum to teach local high school students.

The classes were taught through MIT’s OEOP SEED Academy and touched on fundamental concepts in aerospace engineering. For many students, Blake’s class was their first introduction to the world of flight. While learning about everything from conservation of momentum to the rocket equation, students could determine whether this was a field that they might want to pursue further.

Blake made it his mission to share his passion for the technical challenges of aerospace engineering alongside words of encouragement. “It’s intimidating to look toward academia and industry and not see yourself represented,” he says. “I wanted to teach the students to never let their identities hold them back. To me, Black excellence is the standard, not the exception.”  

Blake sees himself entering academia after graduation. His current research focuses on improving space propulsion systems. Combining his technical and political science classes, he hopes to one day serve in a position of national space policy leadership. Along with advancing aerospace technology, Blake aspires to make the field more inclusive by serving as a mentor and role model.

“After teaching younger kids, I’ve found that they’re so eager to learn — you just have to put the content in front of them. When we value their input and respect them, there’s nothing they won’t do.”

Blake credits MIT’s Black alumni, many of whom were previously a part of Chocolate City, as his own source of motivation. Their determination to succeed against all boundaries is evidence that the support of a community makes anything possible, he says.

“The more I talk to recent graduates, the more I realize that there’s so many powerful people that slept in the same bed as I have. They struggled with the same classes, the same feelings, but now they’re leaders and scholars,” Blake says.

“I want that to be something that every student like me believes — that we’re going to come together. We’re going to be the ones to break these barriers.”

from MIT News https://ift.tt/3dmneeT
via Gabe's Musing's

Sheila Widnall: A lifetime exploring the unknown

On Sept. 30, the MIT community came together to celebrate the career of Institute Professor Emerita Sheila Widnall, who recently retired after spending 64 years at MIT. The virtual event featured remarks from MIT leaders, current and former secretaries of the U.S. Air Force, and Widnall’s faculty colleagues from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), who spoke of her impact at MIT and beyond.

MIT was not only a springboard for a hungry young tinkerer who became a remarkable engineer and a visionary leader, both at MIT and on the national stage. Widnall would also become one of the curious few who make MIT their intellectual home for their full adult lives. Her work in fluid dynamics would have major implications in aviation and space flight. She would become the first woman to lead a branch of the U.S. military when she was secretary of the Air Force in the 1990s. And her leadership in supporting women in the STEM fields, both at MIT and internationally, would blaze trails for six decades.

The call to adventure

It was a small chunk of uranium, a gift from an uncle who worked for a mining company that first brought Widnall face to face with her future. 

It may seem like an odd choice of present for teenager, but in the 1950s when Widnall was in high school in Tacoma, Washington, America was hot for uranium. Hollywood produced two uranium-themed movies: “Uranium Boom” and “Dig That Uranium.” The Atomic Energy Commission was paying between $3,000 and $7,000 a ton for the stuff — half the cost of a new home.

To Widnall, however, the rock had a more practical purpose. An 11^th grader at Aquinas Academy, a Catholic girls’ school, she had a science project due: “I used it, along with models of atoms, to explain radioactive decay,” she told a reporter in 2009.

Her project on the degradation of uranium won first prize at the Tacoma Science Fair, and from there it was on to a national competition. She traveled with her science teacher on a two-day, 2,000-mile train trip to Ohio, where Widnall’s life was about to change forever.

Her project impressed a Tacoma civil engineer, Arthur Anderson SM ’35, SCD ’38. As a businessman he’d developed pre-stressed concrete, which could be used to create curved beams, the kind you see in monorails like the ones at Walt Disney World. Anderson thought Widnall had a future in science and told her she should apply to his alma mater, MIT.

“Where’s that?” she asked.

Soon enough, Widnall would discover how the Institute launched the intellectually curious, helping them explore the boundary where the known meets the unknown.

From Tacoma to Cambridge

Widnall attributes the fearlessness with which she faced a career in engineering to her parents, Rolland and Genevieve Evans. At a time when women were only a third of the U.S. labor force, Widnall was unique among her friends in having a mother with a full-time job. Genevieve Evans was a probation officer whose cases sometimes required her to reach back to her earlier professional experience as a social worker. “She worked with families, kids who were accused of violent crimes,” Widnall says with pride. “It was a big deal.”

Her father, Rolland Evans, was an insurance salesman. Later in his life, he went back to school to obtain a master’s degree and teach college-level business. He also taught his daughter self-reliance. “We worked together on various projects, building things. He fixed things and I’d tag along and he’d show me how. I was 20 years old before I realized you could hire people to do work on your house,” Widnall says.

After being accepted to MIT, Widnall arrived on campus in the fall of 1956. Of 6,000 students at that time, just 2 percent were female, including 23 first-years. The women felt isolated, Widnall remembers, forced to live in a rowhouse a mile off campus. While she personally experienced few instances of outright sexism, one episode stood out: “When I came to MIT and was introduced to my freshman advisor, he said “Why are you here?’, Which I took as an insult. I thought, ‘This guy is a jerk.’ But every other advisor was supportive.”

One of these, math professor George Thomas, author of the famous textbook, “Thomas’ Calculus,” brought cookies to sustain her during a test. Another, Holt Ashley, an aeronautical engineering professor known for his patience and humor, first suggested to Widnall that she pursue an advanced degree — and she readily agreed.

By then, Widnall already knew what she would study. “I love airplanes. There was never an issue about what I was going to choose,” she says. Much later in her career, she would read reports suggesting many women entering science and engineering chose fields where they believe they can make the biggest contribution. By her example, it was true. Less than a decade into her career she’d already conducted research that had an impact in aeronautics, one that every air traveler ought to appreciate.

After obtaining her PhD in 1964, Widnall was hired as the first female faculty member in the MIT School of Engineering, where she established her research program with a focus on fluid dynamics. Eventually, she published research that analyzed vortices trailing from the wing tips of aircraft. This work was used to gauge the hazards of wake turbulence. It was no small matter, as some of the largest commercial aircraft were taking to the skies, the Lockheed L10-11, the DC-10 and the jumbo jet that started it all, the 400 plus seat Boeing 747. Turbulence from the wing vortices of these enormous airplanes could and sometimes did upset the flight of airplanes nearby.

But as Widnall’s MIT colleague Dave Darmofal, the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, notes, there was a smaller phenomenon in Widnall’s research that had even larger applications for wing, engine and rocket design. “Yes, she made an impact in understanding the wing tip vortex with the obvious aviation application, but the fundamental understanding of the Widnall instability you see in many more situations,” Darmofal says. “With any kind of fluid motion this instability plays a role.”

Widnall also kept an analytical eye on how MIT and other academic institutions could contribute their research expertise to government policy. Transportation was evolving in the seventies. America’s interstate highway system was brand new, but the increasing emphasis on cars had many environmental and social consequences, not all of them positive. Could academia help government think through these issues?

Widnall got the chance to find out when fellow engineering professor Robert Cannon asked her to be the first director of the office of university research for the U.S. Department of Transportation. In the early seventies, Widnall oversaw the distribution of $6.5 million, ($31 million in 2020 dollars) for university research projects from Alaska to Atlanta.

Around this same time, Widnall was thinking about improving outcomes for MIT students who came to the Institute without strong backgrounds in engineering, and who ultimately missed out on careers in this area. She teamed up with MIT physicist and electrical engineer Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus to spearhead a new course for first-year MIT students that introduced avenues for career advancement in various engineering fields. “We had hoped for 15 students per semester, but we got over 100,” Widnall recalled in 2017. “Many MIT women and minority students took the course, and quite a few decided to major in engineering.”

Later, Widnall saw how MIT’s own research provided a way through the persistent gender imbalance in admissions. In the 1980s, as chair of MIT’s admission committee, she proposed a simple solution: accept more of the women who apply to MIT. Her proposal relied on the research of then-engineering professor Art Smith. He had discovered that the Scholastic Aptitude Tests under-predict the actual academic performance of women students — at least as far as the math scores were concerned. The proposal, based on the data, was to add a small percentage to their SAT score. MIT was casting about for ways to increase the number of women while at the same time using an irrelevant barrier.

“People in the administration were saying, ‘We have to do more advertising we have to do more searching” for women students, Widnall says. “And I said, ‘Why are we searching? The women we should admit are the women who have applied.’”

The idea was effective. A year later, she says, “the number of women admitted rose from 26 percent to 38 percent.”

Not satisfied to stop at undergrad admissions, Widnall turned her attention to graduate applicants.

Daniel Hastings, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Education and head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, remembered Widnall’s presence at a meeting of faculty for admissions in the early 1990s. When all the candidates had been considered, the applications sat on the table, divided into stacks of yes, no, and waitlist. Then Widnall summarized the proceedings, noting that all of the women had been waitlisted while they accepted many of the men. 

“Every time there was a question, ‘Is this candidate capable?’ the men were given the benefit of the doubt and the women were not. The women went to the waitlist pile,” says Hastings. “We felt collectively ashamed and we went back to correct that.”

Hasting’s summary was simple. “Wise people are the backbone of this place.”

Leadership on a national stage

Her reputation for wise sensibility was not confined within MIT’s walls. In 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton cited Widnall’s scientific acheivements when he nominated her to become secretary of the U.S. Air Force. Prior to the nomination, Widnall had served on several Air Force advisory boards and had served as chair of the Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors in the 1980s. Accepting Clinton’s nomination, she became the first woman to lead a branch of the U.S. military.

While Widnall called it “an incredible experience,” to lead the Air Force, with an $84 billion budget, it was a time of international strife as well as domestic controversies and sexual harassment scandals, all of which were serious business. “Many pressures are brought on the secretary of the Air Force. The person has to make the tough calls and live with the key decisions,” says a successor to Widnall, 23^rd Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James.

When she announced she would return to MIT in 1997, Widnall’s legacy at the Air Force was writ large and small. On the larger side is a program to develop the expendable launch vehicle used for Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, which began under her direction. “These vehicles still provide the majority of the launch capability for National Security launches,” she says, adding, “There has never been a launch failure.”

Less obvious, but equally important, was her contribution to defining the character of the Air Force. The branch had no stated core values when Widnall arrived, so she elevated those of the Air Force Academy — “Integrity first. Service before self. Excellence in all we do.” — to define all 400,000 airmen and women.

“If you ask any airmen, ‘What are our values?’ my guess is 99 percent would be able to tell you,” says Heather Wilson, who became the 24^th Air Force secretary two decades after Widnall broke the glass ceiling. “The best values are those when a leader says, ‘This is who we are.’”

Back to the Tech

Widnall’s return to campus was a thrilling development for MIT’s ROTC students because she volunteered to be their academic advisor.

“It was awesome,” says 1^st Lt. John Graham, now an F-16 pilot. Graham found his highly accomplished advisor down-to-Earth, fun-loving, and — most important — a talented instructor.

“What she taught me I wouldn’t have learned in a different astrodynamics class,” Graham says. “She could simplify the complex.”

Meanwhile, Widnall’s service continued on the national level. Most recently she served as co-chair of a 2018 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that examined the costs and consequences of sexual harassment in these fields. It was another example of Widnall applying her experience and intellectual energy to improve the environment for female students.

Among other things, the book-length report analyzes the effectiveness of harassment awareness training programs and finds them wanting. The report concludes changing behavior is key, and efforts should be regularly assessed.

“Schools have to create a climate that supports proper behavior,” Widnall says. “They don’t do it by passing rules and regulations; they change the environment.”

To Capt. Jay Pothula ’14, a former ROTC student at MIT, this message was clear: He and all students have a role to play in creating an atmosphere conducive to achievement. “Adhering to the core values is one way we can reduce the incidents of harassment and assault,” says Pothula, now in F-15 pilot training at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.

Widnall also had a unique approach to testing students, according to Pothula, who took her aerodynamics class.

“Most of the quizzes and learning moments took place in knowledge tests,” he says. “You would go into a room with her and the teaching assistant and you would be given a problem and you would try to solve it in front of them.”

At first, Pothula found the method intimidating but before long his thoughts were flying. “These were great experiences because she would always know the right thing to say to push you ever so slightly in the right direction. She would always get you there. There was a dual purpose, testing your knowledge but you would learn a lot in the experience.”

Widnall did not reserve that kind of thought-prodding for students only. Olivier de Weck, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of engineering systems, joined the faculty of MIT in 2001, occupying an office across the hall from Widnall, who he describes as a friend, colleague, and mentor. He hadn’t been in the job long when Widnall was asked to serve on the board looking into the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, which came apart on its return to Earth in February 2003, killing seven astronauts.

Over the course of seven months, Widnall and her fellow investigators examined the physical chain of events as well as the systemic pressures that played a role. De Weck watched in fascination as his colleague participated in writing one of the best-ever analyses of an accident.

“She is able to look under the covers,” he says describing Windall as having “an uncanny ability to peel away layers of complexity and get to the core reason about why things are and why they happen.”

It was de Weck’s habit to stop by Widnall’s office most mornings for a quick conversation or to catch up on MIT news. On occasion, though, de Weck would seek her advice. Widnall would steer the search for a solution right back to him, de Weck says, using her decades of experience to provide relevant context.

“She never tells you what to do, just how to look at the question from a holistic perspective,” de Weck says. “After leaving Sheila’s office, I felt I had a different way to think about the problem.”

When Widnall naively stepped onto the campus of MIT in 1956, she began a journey that would help her live up to the expectations of those who saw her potential in her youth and pushed her to do more. She became a role model for those who came after, inspiring those who benefited from her pioneering efforts for women and for science.

All the while she was becoming what she set out to be at the age of 15, considering that chunk of uranium; a traveler on never-ending journey along the border between the known and the unknown.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/2SDp2a7
via Gabe's Musing's

MIT begins testing wastewater to help detect Covid-19 on campus

This week, MIT began piloting a wastewater testing program as a new tool to help keep the campus community safe this semester. In a project that will run through the fall semester, wastewater from seven buildings on campus will be tested each day for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

The project is designed to determine if wastewater testing can be an effective early warning system for Covid-19 outbreaks on campus, and is being evaluated as a complementary tool in the Institute’s response to the pandemic, along with clinical testing, contact tracing, and other measures.

Results of the wastewater testing will be communicated to MIT’s Covid Monitoring Team, a cross-Institute collaboration that looks at health trends on campus and makes recommendations to the Covid Decision Team, which is made up of MIT’s senior leadership, to determine next steps. Buildings will not be quarantined on the basis of the test results, but people in the buildings where the virus is detected may be asked to get tested at MIT Medical sooner than otherwise scheduled. The project team members stress that the sampling data is aggregate and cannot be used to identify individuals.

“We view the wastewater treatment data as a part of [the larger portfolio of data] that goes to the Covid Decision Team that helps make strategic choices about campus operations,” MIT Medical Chief of Staff Brian Schuetz says. “It gives us interesting insight into populations, which is really what we’re focused on. [Responding to Covid-19] is a population health initiative, and this fits into that.”

Wastewater testing offers complementary advantages to clinical testing because it reflects health at the community level, is not limited by clinical testing availability, and sheds light on both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. The lab of biological engineering Professor Eric Alm, which has been testing municipal wastewater for Covid-19 around the country since March, has shown that at the population level, wastewater data precede clinical observations of Covid-19 by four or more days.

“It makes a lot of sense when you think about the fact that there’s a lag between the time somebody gets sick and starts shedding the virus, and the time when they’re symptomatic enough to seek care and get a clinical test,” says Katya Moniz, a research scientist in the Alm Lab.

Wastewater testing is already being used at a number of colleges across the country. In one case, at the University of Arizona, wastewater testing helped detect an outbreak among asymptomatic individuals and officials were able to take precautionary measures before the virus spread.

At MIT, the following buildings have been selected for sewage testing during the pilot:

·           MIT Sloan School of Management (E62)

·           Random Hall (NW61)

·           Sidney-Pacific (NW86)

·           McCormick Hall (W4)

·           Simmons Hall (W79)

·           Tang Hall (W84)

·           Westgate (W85)

Sampling ports installed on the sewage exit lines of each building will extract a small amount of wastewater from the pipes every two minutes. A subsample of that wastewater will be tested each day by the Alm Lab. The test results will then be sent to MIT’s Covid Monitoring Team.

“The goal of this pilot is to build this infrastructure for a subset of buildings on campus and use that data to decide if this is an effective method of monitoring Covid-19 outbreaks on campus,” says Moniz.

The wastewater-based testing project team has met with the faculty, student, and staff leaders of the buildings where the initiative is being piloted, explaining how wastewater-based testing monitors pathogens and guides interventions. The team members also explained that they will only be testing for Covid, and that detection will be aggregate — it will not identify individuals.

The program, which has been approved by the Legal, Ethical, Equity Committee for MIT Campus Planning, is part of a collaboration between MIT Facilities, the Environment, Health, and Safety Office, Housing and Residential Services, and the Alm Lab.

For more information, contact wb-pilot@mit.edu.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/3l5IU1z
via Gabe's Musing's

A champion of renewable energy

It’s an amazing moment when a topic learned in the classroom comes to life. For senior Darya Guettler, that moment came on a sweltering day while installing solar panels in low-income communities in Los Angeles, alongside workers who had been previously incarcerated.

Guettler was volunteering with an MIT Energy Initiative program called Solar Spring Break, which had partnered with Homeboy Industries, an organization that supports formerly incarcerated individuals through career opportunities in green energy. Drilling the panels into the roofs while sweat dripped down her neck, Guettler finally got a chance to see the utility of solar panels in action. When the volunteers switched on the lights, the members of the community got together and celebrated.

“I’ve never done that before, and it was a very unique experience,” Guettler says, recalling the internship. “As students, we’re usually designing the solar panels. Actually installing them and then turning the power on — it’s like all these families now have power for free and can finally run their air conditioning during the day. It made it all feel real.”

Guettler’s fascination with renewable energy began back in high school geography class. Listening to lectures on fuel scarcity, she wondered why renewable energy sources weren’t more widely implemented. Her curiosity encouraged her to research solar panel efficiency and galvanic cell temperature concentrations.

She arrived at MIT with the goal of mitigating climate change through technological innovation, and soon joined the MIT Undergraduate Energy Club, where she says she met inspiring and equally passionate students. Over time, they helped to shape her mindset about what her role could be in helping with the climate crisis. Now the club’s president, Guettler has been working to expand the club’s education outreach programs and encourage kids to get excited about ways they can use engineering to help the planet.

Although Guettler had long understood the need to improve solar technologies, it wasn’t until her Solar Spring Break experience that she made the connection between climate change and the need to involve many different parties in putting together solutions.

“After that, I was kind of hooked on the policy side as well, because I saw that there’s really a space for combining all these things,” she says. “Now all of a sudden it wasn’t just about employing the technology, which I had always been interested in, but also about who was going to be employing it, where it was going to be placed, and how we could make that process as equitable as possible.”

Guettler decided to combine her mechanical engineering major with a degree in political science and has gravitated to classes focused on the intersection of sustainable technologies and climate policy.

“They’re really interesting classes. I’ve got a class about engineering democratic development, one about election modeling, and one in energy storage,” she says. “Honestly, sometimes it’s hard to pick. There’s so many I want to take!”

But of all her classes, one that Guettler is most looking forward to now is her capstone for mechanical engineering, 2.s009 (Explorations in Product Design). The class — which this year challenges students to create social impact projects centered around kindness — begins by placing students into groups and giving them a budget. The groups then design a product and come up with a prototype and a business pitch for it.

“The kindness aspect is pretty much up to the group to decide,” Guettler explains. “It can a project centered around climate change, environmental protection, helping people with disabilities, assisting marginalized communities — I’m super excited to see what people come up with.”

Guttler spent the past summer working in consulting, and in her spare time taught middle and high school students about climate change from her remote cabin in Maine. The classes were taught through MIT Splash, which allows MIT students to teach any topic of their choice to interested younger students.

“It was all online, but it was really fun,” she says. “We just kind of talked about climate models and used this cool tool where you can adjust different policy factors and just see what happens. The kids had so many questions, and I loved getting to build their interest and talk about it with them.”

Talking with people of all ages and backgrounds about ways we can develop a more sustainable future has been a consistent theme throughout Guettler’s experience at MIT. Last year, she visited West Point for the Student Conference on U.S. Affairs, where she spoke with military advisors and generals about the concerns of climate change from a national security perspective.

“I was really interested to see that climate change is also a really big issue to them too, since there’s a lot of bases near coastal waters that will be under threat when sea levels rise,” she says. “There’s definitely been a wide range of people I’ve interacted with about the climate change crisis, but at the end of the day, it’s always the same core concepts. I love hearing people’s different ideas, because more people means more potential solutions, and honestly, at this point, we need any solutions we can get.”

As an elected student to the MIT Committee on Outside Engagements, as well as a founding member of MIT Divest, Guettler hasn’t been shy about the importance of holding political leaders and officials accountable for their decisions.

“I was talking a lot with students to see what they held as important values and what they wanted MIT to represent. Climate action kept on coming up, which led to a bigger discussion of who MIT engages with.”

Her experience so far has been positive overall, and she notes that student representatives have been given a seat on MIT’s Climate Action Advisory Committee, as well as been able to contribute to the MIT Climate Action Plan. The inclusion has allowed students to advocate for ways MIT can take initiative to reduce and offset their energy emissions.

While Guettler recognizes that major institutions have the largest immediate impact on improving the climate crisis, she still wants everyone to recognize the importance of individual actions as well.

“My message to everyone right now is just go and vote, just please go and do that. I’ve been phone banking for different state races right now and people have been hanging up in my face or cursing me out, saying it’s not that serious. I’m like, are you serious?” she laughs. “I honestly think voting right now is the best thing you can do for the climate. Even if you’re feeling overwhelmed, even if you don’t feel like you can make an impact — you have an important decision that you can make. Now just go and vote for it!”

from MIT News https://ift.tt/2Si1rvh
via Gabe's Musing's

Antarctic sea ice may not cap carbon emissions as much as previously thought

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is a region where many of the world’s carbon-rich deep waters can rise back up to the surface. Scientists have thought that the vast swaths of sea ice around Antarctica can act as a lid for upwelling carbon, preventing the gas from breaking through the ocean’s surface and returning to the atmosphere.

However, researchers at MIT have now identified a counteracting effect that suggests Antarctic sea ice may not be as powerful a control on the global carbon cycle as scientists had suspected.

In a study published in the August issue of the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, the team has found that indeed, sea ice in the Southern Ocean can act as a physical barrier for upwelling carbon. But it can also act as a shade, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface ocean. Sunlight is essential for phytosynthesis, the process by which phytoplankton and other ocean microbes take up carbon from the atmosphere to grow.

The researchers found that when sea ice blocks sunlight, biological activity — and the amount of carbon that microbes can sequester from the atmosphere — decreases significantly. And surprisingly, this shading effect is almost equal and opposite to that of sea ice’s capping effect. Taken together, both effects essentially cancel each other out. 

“In terms of future climate change, the expected loss of sea ice around Antarctica may therefore not increase the carbon concentration in the atmosphere,” says lead author Mukund Gupta, who carried out the research as a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).

He emphasizes that sea ice does have other effects on the global climate, foremost through its albedo, or ability to reflect solar radiation.

“When the Earth warms up, it loses sea ice and absorbs more of this solar radiation, so in that sense, the loss of sea ice can accelerate climate change,” Gupta says. “What we can say here is, sea ice changes may not have such a strong effect on carbon outgassing around Antarctica through this capping and shading effect.”

Gupta’s coauthors are EAPS Professor Michael “Mick” Follows, and EAPS research scientist Jonathan Lauderdale.

The role of ice

Each winter, wide swaths of the Southern Ocean freeze over, forming vast sheets of sea ice that extend out from Antarctica for millions of square miles. The role of Antarctic sea ice in regulating the climate and the carbon cycle has been much debated, though the prevailing theory has been that sea ice can act as a lid to keep carbon in the ocean from escaping to the atmosphere.

“This theory is mostly thought of in the context of ice ages, when the Earth was much colder and the atmospheric carbon was lower,” Gupta says. “One of the theories explaining this low carbon concentration argues that because it was colder, a thick sea ice cover extended further into the ocean, blocking carbon exchanges with the atmosphere and effectively trapping it in the deep ocean.”

Gupta and his colleagues wondered whether an effect other than capping may also be in play. In general, the researchers have sought to understand how various features and processes in the ocean interact with ocean biology such as phytoplankton. They assumed that there might be less biological activity as a result of sea ice blocking microbes’ vital sunlight — but how strong would this shading effect be?

Equal and opposite

To answer that question, the researchers used the MITgcm, a global circulation model that simulates the many physical, chemical, and biological processes involved in the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean. With MITgcm, they simulated a vertical slice of the ocean spanning 3,000 kilometers wide and about 4,000 meters deep, and with conditions similar to today’s Southern Ocean. They then ran the model multiple times, each time with a different concentration of sea ice.

“At 100 percent concentration, there are no leaks in the ice, and it’s really compacted together, versus very low concentrations representing loose and sparse ice floes moving around,” Gupta explains.

They set each simulation to one of three scenarios: one where only the capping effect is active, and sea ice is only influencing the carbon cycle by preventing carbon from leaking back out to the atmosphere; another where only the shading effect is active, and sea ice is only blocking sunlight from penetrating the ocean; and the last in which both capping and shading effects are in play.

For every simulation, the researchers observed how the conditions they set affected the overall carbon flux, or amount of carbon that escaped from the ocean to the atmosphere.

They found that capping and shading had opposite effects on the carbon cycle, reducing the amount of carbon to the atmosphere in the former case and increasing it in the latter, by equal amounts. In the scenarios where both effects were considered, one canceled the other out almost entirely, across a wide range of sea ice concentrations, leading to no significant change in the carbon flux. Only when sea ice was at its highest concentration did capping have the edge, with a decrease in carbon escaping to the atmosphere.

The results suggest that Antarctic sea ice may effectively trap carbon in the ocean, but only when that ice cover is very expansive and thick. Otherwise, it seems that sea ice’s shading effect on the underlying organisms may counteract its capping effect.

“If one just considered the physics and the pure capping, or carbon barrier idea, that would be an incomplete way of thinking about it,” Gupta says. “This shows that we need to understand more of the biology under sea ice and how it underlies this effect.”

This research was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/2Sfnym8
via Gabe's Musing's

Revamped MIT Climate Portal aims to inform and empower the public

Stepping up its ongoing efforts to inform and empower the public on the issue of climate change, MIT today announced a dramatic overhaul of the MIT Climate Portal, climate.mit.edu, which provides timely, science-based information about the causes and consequences of climate change — and what can be done to address it.

“From vast wildfires to an unusually active hurricane season, we are already getting a glimpse of what our climate-changed future looks like,” says Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. “With this website, we aim to communicate in rigorous but accessible ways what the science tells us: Yes, human-caused climate change is an urgent, serious problem; and yes, we can do something about it. Addressing climate change is an institutional priority, and this kind of public engagement is one way we hope to accelerate solutions.”

Survey research shows that increasing numbers of people, both in the United States and around the world, are concerned about climate change. But in the U.S., research also shows that members of the public rarely hear about or discuss the issue. Researchers at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication have suggested that there might exist a climate change “spiral of silence,” in which “even people who care about the issue shy away from discussing it because they so infrequently hear other people talking about it.”

MIT’s efforts at public engagement on climate change are intended to help break this “spiral” — encouraging people to discuss climate change while also providing them with resources to discuss it in a way informed by the latest science and research. These engagement efforts are part of a commitment the Institute made in its 2015 Plan for Action on Climate Change “to offer the public a trusted source of climate change information, to engage leaders and citizens in the effort for solutions, and to use MIT’s expertise in online education to dramatically expand our reach.”

“We often talk about reaching people whom we call the ‘climate curious’ –— people who want to learn more about what climate change means for them and their communities and, of course, what they can do about it,” says John Fernández, the director of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative and a professor in the Department of Architecture. “Our goal is for this website to become a dependable resource for people across the U.S. and all over the world, so that they can have effective conversations about the urgency of the climate problem and our ability, even now, to reduce the grave risks it presents.”

Managed by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, the MIT Climate Portal features a range of content, including a comprehensive climate change primer and climate-related news from all corners of the Institute. New features launched today include brief “explainers,” written by faculty and scientists at MIT, that provide high-level overviews of important topics like wildfires, carbon pricing, renewable energy, and ocean acidification. Also new to the website is an “Ask MIT Climate” feature, where members of the public can get answers to their own questions about climate change. (If you have a question about climate change that you would like the MIT Climate Portal to answer, email climate@mit.edu.)

The site also offers a clearinghouse of everything climate-related happening at MIT, from events to course offerings, to keep interested students, alumni, parents, faculty, and staff members up to date. Just as importantly, it creates a digital meeting place for members of the MIT community to share their latest work on climate change. Faculty, students, and staff across the Institute for years have made significant contributions to improving public understanding of and engagement with climate change, with tools like the climate simulators created by the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative; the Climate CoLab platform; and a number of public events, contests, and educational materials. The site will make these resources accessible in one place.

In addition to the MIT Climate Portal, MIT had previously launched two other digital resources for the public: an online, Webby Award-winning interactive primer on climate change, and a podcast series, TILclimate (short for “Today I Learned: Climate”). Both of these resources are accessible through the portal.

By enlisting MIT students in editorial aspects of the new website, the project is also proving to be a valuable hands-on educational tool. For example, for the “Ask MIT Climate” feature, students take questions about climate change submitted by users and then, under the guidance of MIT faculty members, research the answers and write responses.

“We see this as a powerful learning opportunity, a way for MIT students to strengthen their content knowledge about climate change, energy, and sustainability, but also to improve their ability to effectively communicate complex science and engineering topics to diverse audiences, a critical skill that will serve them well after they leave MIT,” says Fernández.

The new website is not static: New content will be developed and added over time, and all departments, labs, and centers at MIT that work on climate change are invited to contribute to it. Members of the MIT community who want to learn more about getting involved, or who have ideas for subjects to cover, are encouraged to contact the Climate Portal team.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/34eCfLD
via Gabe's Musing's

MIT and Indigenous Peoples Day

The following letter was sent to the MIT community today by President L. Rafael Reif.

To the members of the MIT community,

I write to announce three encouraging and related steps in our ongoing efforts to make MIT more welcoming and inclusive.

First, this summer, I asked Institute Community and Equity Officer John Dozier and Vice President for Human Resources Ramona Allen to reexamine our roster of Institute holidays. After outreach that included students, staff and faculty – and building on extensive work by then-interim ICEO Alyce Johnson – they concluded that while the overall reconsideration of holidays can and should continue, we should move swiftly now to consider renaming the holiday we recognize each year on the second Monday in October.

With the endorsement of Academic Council, beginning this year MIT will change the name of this holiday from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day, in recognition and celebration of the Native presence and voices in our community. You can learn more about the holiday’s significance through an October 14 lecture by MLK Visiting Scholar Patricia Saulis.

I offer my thanks to John, Ramona, Alyce, Chair of the Faculty Rick Danheiser and ICEO Program Director Beatriz Cantada for their care in advancing this recommendation.

And we owe a special debt of gratitude to two student groups – the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and the Native American Students Association (NASA) – for their dedication to promoting equity and visibility on behalf of our Indigenous community.

Second, in the spring, Professor Craig Wilder, a former faculty advisor to AISES and the current advisor to NASA, will lead a class that will research and document MIT’s Native American history. The class will anchor a collaborative project that invites students, staff, alumni, community members and faculty from diverse fields to study and research MIT’s connections to Native nations and tribal lands, the histories of Native communities in the New England region, and the history of Indigenous students, faculty and staff at the Institute.

Third, before the pandemic, the Office of the Provost was in conversation with students and other MIT community members about designating a campus space for members of our Indigenous community to gather and share traditions and experiences. I am glad to report that we have identified options for such a space and are committed to act, once in-person indoor gatherings on campus are again permitted.

*   *   *

I would like to pause and recognize that, for many in our community, Columbus Day is an important and meaningful tradition, independent of its namesake. For many Italian Americans, Columbus Day presents an opportunity to celebrate their history, heritage and contributions to this nation, and to honor the struggle of immigrants from Italy who faced many decades of violence, exclusion and discrimination in the United States. We move forward with deep respect for every member of our community as we work to acknowledge the complex and evolving story of our nation.

It is natural to cherish our roots. They nourish the spirit and they keep us grounded. Yet they also enable us to grow new branches of understanding that rise upward to the light – and toward each other.

I am grateful for the partnership of our entire community as we aspire and work toward a better and stronger MIT.

Sincerely,

L. Rafael Reif

from MIT News https://ift.tt/34144XN
via Gabe's Musing's

Saving Iñupiaq

MIT graduate student Annauk Denise Olin didn’t grow up speaking Iñupiaq, the language of her Alaska Native community. Nevertheless, she’s raising her son in the language — thanks in part to the grounding in linguistics she is gaining through the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative (MITILI), a master’s program for members of communities whose languages are threatened.

“The beauty of the Iñupiaq language is that the perspective and the wisdom of my ancestors has been preserved in the language,” says Olin, who is developing a curriculum for teaching Iñupiaq through MITILI. “If we lose our language, we lose our ability to see into the minds of the people who were able to thrive — for millennia — in one of the harshest climates in the world.”

That climate has been rapidly changing in the last two decades, with disastrous consequences for Olin’s family’s village, Shishmaref. A small community of about 600 people, Shishmaref is perched on tiny Sarichef Island just south of the Arctic Circle — a place where reduced sea ice, melting permafrost, and other impacts of climate change have come to threaten the community’s very existence. The effect of global climate change on Shishmaref is seen as among “the most dramatic in the world.”

“We’ve had several homes fall into the ocean. We’ve lost hundreds and hundreds of feet of land on our island. Historically, we would expect sea ice to form around our island in September or October. In the last few years, we had winters where sea ice would not form until January. This should serve as a warning to the rest of the world,” says Annauk, noting that the village has sought federal help to move to a new location — so far in vain.

Navigating climate change in Shishmaref

Helping her community to navigate the huge challenges presented by climate change is a key motivator for Olin, who started learning the Iñupiaq language intensively in 2016. At the time, she was working full time at the Alaska Institute for Justice (AIJ), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the human rights of all Alaskans. As the research director of the AIJ’s climate change research and policy center, she worked with 15 Alaska Native villages (including Shishmaref) to begin developing a community-led relocation governance framework.

She says that language issues can present a barrier to such projects because elders in Alaska Native communities are not always fluent and literate in English, and the government rarely communicates in Iñupiaq. In fact, just this past January, Olin and members of the native village of Shishmaref partnered with the Alaska Public Research Interest Group to help produce census materials in Iñupiaq to fill this gap.

“Alaska has been historically underrepresented in the census,” she says. “We created public service announcements with speakers of Alaska Native languages to get more Alaska Native people to participate in the census so we can get adequate funding for our communities.”
 
A language shaped by the Arctic

Olin began teaching Iñupiaq after just one year of study at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. “Teaching and learning a language at the same time is very challenging and time-consuming, but it's common for second-language learners of endangered languages,” she says. One thing she’s learned so far is that Iñupiaq has almost 100 different terms for ice, but not for all of the conditions that people see today in Alaska; essentially, words fail to convey the devastation that climate change has wrought on the Arctic landscape.

“The Iñupiaq language has a complex and robust lexicon related to ice conditions in part because it is linked to our survival. If you’re out hunting and you aren’t able to describe to your hunting partner whether the ice is stable enough, it could cost your lives,” she says. “With climate change, some elders don’t have in their vocabulary words to describe how the ice is changing, so I think what’s important in the future is for us to be able to adapt the language to be able to describe these changing conditions exactly.”

For Olin, that means there need to be more young Iñupiaq speakers. “We need resources to teach in the language so that we have an upcoming generation of speakers even after our beloved elders pass on,” she said, noting that she is hoping her efforts will help undo the damage done by missionaries and the U.S. government, which for more than 100 years forced Iñupiat children to speak English in school.

A foundation in linguistics

Olin is beginning this work at home by speaking Iñupiaq to her son. “When I speak English to my son, it feels like a watered-down version of love, but when I speak Iñupiaq to him, the connection I feel with him is much stronger and intimate.”

To ensure that she is using the language properly, she is working with a mentor, native speaker Edna Ahgeak MacLean, a former faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and former president of Iḷisaġvik College. MacLean, who has produced both an Iñupiaq dictionary and a grammar, has helped Olin to script conversations so that she and her husband (a tribal member from another Alaska Native group, the Koyukon Athabascan, who speak Denaa’kke) can engage in simple activities — such as making pancakes — while conversing entirely in Iñupiaq.

At the same time, Olin is developing a curriculum for teaching Iñupiaq through her work at MITILI. Inspired by the work of the late MIT Professor Ken Hale, who dedicated his career to the study and support of indigenous languages of the Americas and of Australia, MITILI is a two-year program that provides a full scholarship that covers tuition, fees and health insurance, plus a stipend.

Olin is taking linguistics classes and working with her MIT advisor, Professor Norvin Richards, to gain an understanding of phonology, syntax, and language acquisition. “Some of the critical materials my mentor has written use many linguistic terms and concepts,” she says. “It has made a huge difference to be able to understand what tools are available to break down a lot of these linguistics-heavy resources.”

For example, Richards has helped Olin better understand how to combine morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in a language, to create words. “There are complicated rules that must be followed and practiced to correctly string morphemes together in Iñupiaq,” she says. For instance, in Iñupiaq it’s common for a morpheme to be attached to a word stem to indicate an action or state of being, a function usually performed in English by a verb.
 
Long-term survival of indigenous languages

“One of the things I appreciate about Annauk's work on Iñupiaq is how intellectually omnivorous she is,” says Richards, who has for decades worked to help revive endangered languages, including Wampanoag, a native language of Eastern Massachusetts, and Lardil, an Aboriginal language of Australia. “She's able to build on very careful work by the great Iñupiaq scholar Edna Ahgeak MacLean, but she's clearly determined to develop a language program that incorporates every technique that she thinks will work.”

Noting that the indigenous languages of the United States are all threatened, Richards says Olin is doing work that is critical to maintaining the world's linguistic diversity — learning Iñupiaq “through sheer force of will.” “She's tireless and dedicated, and very smart,” he says. “It's a real privilege to get to work with her.”

Supporting students like Olin has been the central mission of the MITILI since its founding in 2004. “The goals of the MITILI are ones that Ken Hale spoke and wrote about, eloquently and often,” Richards says. “One is to improve our understanding of the languages of the world, not by subjecting indigenous languages to study by outsiders, but by offering indigenous scholars ways to study their own languages with the tools that academic linguists have developed. And another, at least as important, is to try to help indigenous communities give their traditional languages their best chance of long-term survival.”

Olin’s ultimate goal is to fulfill this mission for her community, and her initial plan is to create an Iñupiaq mentor-apprenticeship program. “I’m also very interested in creating a school where the mission, leadership, and content is driven by Iñupiaq people and community — where we learn the language but also how to harvest and process traditional foods, sew traditional clothing, and most importantly, how to treat one another as human beings,” she says.

“As an Iñupiat, it is my responsibility to help provide a place where young people can have access to their identity and culture,” Olin says. “Many of our Iñupiat people are working to overcome historical trauma. Language is a powerful medicine that will help heal our communities.”

Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications
Editorial and design director: Emily Hiestand
Senior writer: Kathryn O'Neil

from MIT News https://ift.tt/341yZDi
via Gabe's Musing's

Why social media has changed the world — and how to fix it

Are you on social media a lot? When is the last time you checked Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? Last night? Before breakfast? Five minutes ago?

If so, you are not alone — which is the point, of course. Humans are highly social creatures. Our brains have become wired to process social information, and we usually feel better when we are connected. Social media taps into this tendency.

“Human brains have essentially evolved because of sociality more than any other thing,” says Sinan Aral, an MIT professor and expert in information technology and marketing. “When you develop a population-scale technology that delivers social signals to the tune of trillions per day in real-time, the rise of social media isn’t unexpected. It’s like tossing a lit match into a pool of gasoline.”

The numbers make this clear. In 2005, about 7 percent of American adults used social media. But by 2017, 80 percent of American adults used Facebook alone. About 3.5 billion people on the planet, out of 7.7 billion, are active social media participants. Globally, during a typical day, people post 500 million tweets, share over 10 billion pieces of Facebook content, and watch over a billion hours of YouTube video.

As social media platforms have grown, though, the once-prevalent, gauzy utopian vision of online community has disappeared. Along with the benefits of easy connectivity and increased information, social media has also become a vehicle for disinformation and political attacks from beyond sovereign borders.

“Social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our health,” says Aral, who is the David Austin Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Now Aral has written a book about it. In “The Hype Machine,” published this month by Currency, a Random House imprint, Aral details why social media platforms have become so successful yet so problematic, and suggests ways to improve them.

The book covers some of the same territory as “The Social Dilemma,” a popular documentary on Netflix. But Aral’s book, as he puts it, "starts where ‘The Social Dilemma’ leaves off and goes one step further to ask: What can we do to achieve the promise of social media and avoid its peril?”

“This machine exists in every facet of our lives,” Aral says. “And the question in the book is, what do we do? How do we achieve the promise of this machine and avoid the peril? We’re at a crossroads. What we do next is essential, so I want to equip people, policymakers, and platforms to help us achieve the good outcomes and avoid the bad outcomes.”

When “engagement” equals anger

“The Hype Machine” draws on Aral’s own research about social networks, as well as other findings, from the cognitive sciences, computer science, business, politics, and more. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, for instance, have found that people obtain bigger hits of dopamine — the chemical in our brains highly bound up with motivation and reward — when their social media posts receive more likes.

At the same time, consider a 2018 MIT study by Soroush Vosoughi, an MIT PhD student and now an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College; Deb Roy, MIT professor of media arts and sciences and executive director of the MIT Media Lab; and Aral, who has been studying social networking for 20 years. The three researchers found that on Twitter, from 2006 to 2017, false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true ones. Why? Most likely because false news has greater novelty value compared to the truth, and provokes stronger reactions — especially disgust and surprise.

In this light, the essential tension surrounding social media companies is that their platforms gain audiences and revenue when posts provoke strong emotional responses, often based on dubious content.

“This is a well-designed, well-thought-out machine that has objectives it maximizes,” Aral says. “The business models that run the social-media industrial complex have a lot to do with the outcomes we’re seeing — it’s an attention economy, and businesses want you engaged. How do they get engagement? Well, they give you little dopamine hits, and … get you riled up. That’s why I call it the hype machine. We know strong emotions get us engaged, so [that favors] anger and salacious content.”

From Russia to marketing

“The Hype Machine” explores both the political implications and business dimensions of social media in depth. Certainly social media is fertile terrain for misinformation campaigns. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russia spread  false information to at least 126 million people on Facebook and another 20 million people on Insta­gram (which Facebook owns), and was responsible for 10 million tweets. About 44 percent of adult Americans visited a false news source in the final weeks of the campaign.

“I think we need to be a lot more vigilant than we are,” says Aral.

We do not know if Russia’s efforts altered the outcome of the 2016 election, Aral says, though they may have been fairly effective. Curiously, it is not clear if the same is true of most U.S. corporate engagement efforts.

As Aral examines, digital advertising on most big U.S. online platforms is often wildly ineffective, with academic studies showing that the “lift” generated by ad campaigns — the extent to which they affect consumer action — has been overstated by a factor of hundreds, in some cases. Simply counting clicks on ads is not enough. Instead, online engagement tends to be more effective among new consumers, and when it is targeted well; in that sense, there is a parallel between good marketing and guerilla social media campaigns.

“The two questions I get asked the most these days,” Aral says, “are, one, did Russia succeed in intervening in our democracy? And two, how do I measure the ROI [return on investment] from marketing investments? As I was writing this book, I realized the answer to those two questions is the same.”

Ideas for improvement

“The Hype Machine” has received praise from many commentators. Foster Provost, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says it is a “masterful integration of science, business, law, and policy.” Duncan Watts, a university professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says the book is “essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and how we can get somewhere better.”

In that vein, “The Hype Machine” has several detailed suggestions for improving social media. Aral favors automated and user-generated labeling of false news, and limiting revenue-collection that is based on false content. He also calls for firms to help scholars better research the issue of election interference.

Aral believes federal privacy measures could be useful, if we learn from the benefits and missteps of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and a new California law that lets consumers stop some data-sharing and allows people to find out what information companies have stored about them. He does not endorse breaking up Facebook, and suggests instead that the social media economy needs structural reform. He calls for data portability and interoperability, so “consumers would own their identities and could freely switch from one network to another.” Aral believes that without such fundamental changes, new platforms will simply replace the old ones, propelled by the network effects that drive the social-media economy.

“I do not advocate any one silver bullet,” says Aral, who emphasizes that changes in four areas together — money, code, norms, and laws — can alter the trajectory of the social media industry.

But if things continue without change, Aral adds, Facebook and the other social media giants risk substantial civic backlash and user burnout.

“If you get me angry and riled up, I might click more in the short term, but I might also grow really tired and annoyed by how this is making my life miserable, and I might turn you off entirely,” Aral observes. “I mean, that’s why we have a Delete Facebook movement, that’s why we have a Stop Hate for Profit movement. People are pushing back against the short-term vision, and I think we need to embrace this longer-term vision of a healthier communications ecosystem.”

Changing the social media giants can seem like a tall order. Still, Aral says, these firms are not necessarily destined for domination.

“I don’t think this technology or any other technology has some deterministic endpoint,” Aral says. “I want to bring us back to a more practical reality, which is that technology is what we make it, and we are abdicating our responsibility to steer technology toward good and away from bad. That is the path I try to illuminate in this book.”

from MIT News https://ift.tt/2RVG8iR
via Gabe's Musing's