Kik has started a crowdfunding campaign to support its legal battle, asserting that its kin coins are not securities.
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Intro Video
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Fertility Treatment Gets Less Clinical, More ‘Grammable
South Africa gets gender-balanced cabinet
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Burkina Faso's war against militant Islamists
Cameroon atrocity: What happened after Africa Eye found who killed this woman
BLACK GLAM: Costume designer Brea Stinson reveals how she built her enviable empire
Black Glam is back with another installment and this time, celebrity stylist Johnny Wright sits down with costume designer to the stars, Brea Stinson to find to how she built her enviable empire.
You may not know it, but you’ve already been treated to Stinson’s talents several times, thanks to her work with superstars like Salt N Pepa, Ciara, TLC, and H.E.R. among others.
Black Glam: Johnny Wright peels back the curtain of Black beauty and fashion with industry experts
Her delicious designs have even been worn by Beyonce, who enlisted Stinson’s help when she needed a special look for her Formation tour.
“It was kind of like a full circle moment for me because I had met her back in early 2000s. I was a wardrobe stylist for a long time that would design every once in a while and during that time in New York when I was wardrobe styling I worked with Jay-Z,” she explains. “When he did the collab with Reebok when he did his sneakers, she was on set during that. I had some exchanges with her but my official time being hired and getting a check was the Formation tour…It was kind of a surprise because it was a 24 hour turnaround.”
Before she was a sought after designer for big names, she was a fan of the greats.
“I thought that I would be Diana Ross because I’m from Detroit and I grew up totally obsessed with Motown and The Supremes. I was just obsessed with those girls and the glamour of it all,” she says during her sit down with Johnny Wright. “I had no idea that those people that I love like Diana Ross and Madonna actually had someone who was in the background curating for them.”
WATCH Black Glam: Johnny Wright on his incredible road to success and how he became #HOTUS
You can also catch Johnny as he hosts our style series, The Fashion Cafe, alongside Ariana Soleil as they both deliver all the details of the latest fashion finds and trends to try.
Check out the full episode above.
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Rappers Chamillionaire and E-40 Are Looking to Invest $25,000 in a Minority-Owned Startup
Earlier this year, Hakeem Seriki, a Grammy-winning hip hop artist, entrepreneur, and angel investor better known as Chamillionaire, launched a contest for black-founded start-ups and invested $10,000 in the winner. Now, the stakes are higher for round two. He, along with West Coast rapper and investor Earl “E-40” Stevens, and the equity investing platform Republic have teamed up to award a minority and/or women-founded startup with a $25,000 investment. The contest was announced on Convoz, an app and social video conversation platform that Chamillionaire launched last year.
In terms of Venture Capital investment, Caucasians make up 87% of VC-backed CEO’s and 97% of those positions are held by men. Chamillionaire and his celebrity friends, however, are working to change that.
“I think there is a lack of diversity in the industry,” Chamillionaire told Yahoo! Finance when asked why founders of color aren’t getting financed. “Now that I’m here, I see that there is a certain type of founder that gets funding from these companies and I understand that people tend to spend money on things that they’re comfortable with so when you’re used to seeing somebody like Mark Zuckerburg walk in the door and you have an example of Marck Zuckerburg being successful then, of course, it’s more likely for you to spend money on investing in a startup like that.”
There’s no surprise that Chamillionaire teamed up with Republic for his new initiative. The rapper has been in the investment space for years and has championed the inclusion of more minorities in the tech and investing world. That mission makes Republic the perfect partner since the platform is built on the ethos of equalization of the fundraising landscape. Republic was created for startups to raise capital, giving the opportunity for everyone to invest.
The deadline for submitting your investment pitch is June 15 and the winner will be announced June 21. To enter the competition, download the Convoz app for iOS or Android.
Muhlaysia Booker’s life honored by friends, family and City of Dallas during funeral services
Hundreds of mourners gathered and paid homage to the life of Muhlaysia Booker during her funeral at the Dallas’ Cathedral of Hope after she was brutally murdered, The Dallas Morning News reports.
Dallas city officials, Bookers friends, family and faithful members of the LGBT community attended her funeral and came together Tuesday with the clear intention to lift up her life that was “cut short by hatred.”
READ MORE: Family of Black trans woman Muhlaysia Booker believes killer knew her
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we should not be here today. But we are,” the Rev. Neil G. Cazares-Thomas preached to a crowd of mourners at the church.
“She was a young woman whose life was cut short by hatred,” said Stephanie Martin, pastor of the Cosmopolitan Congregation of Dallas.
Booker, 22, was shot to death May 18 in Dallas. Just a month before she was brutally beaten by a group of people but survived and was seeking the help of a therapist to cope with the remnants of that traumatic event.
The video of the beating went viral and police arrested a man in the April attack but haven’t yet tied that suspect to Booker’s murder and they don’t know if there is a connection.
The April attack wasn’t the first for Booker, her mother, Stephanie Houston said.
“Muhlaysia had many fights,” Houston said. “Muhlaysia didn’t start trouble, but she would finish it. … She just always had to defend, defend, defend, defend.”
READ MORE: Sisters not just Cisters: Why do we keep failing Black transgender women?
Will Horn, the pastor of the Cosmopolitan Congregation who delivered the eulogy at Booker’s service let it be known that her life would be praised.
“I came here for a celebration,” he said.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings sent a statement sharing those sentiments to celebrate the slain woman’s life.
“The people of Dallas and across Texas and this country mourn the loss of a bright, fun and loving woman,” read the statement.
The service ended with a video tribute of Booker, a proclamation by city of Dallas and the Texas Legislature, and a recessional with Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” playing.
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Study finds white people in the South still have racial bias against Blacks
According to a new research study, southern whites are more likely to harbor unconscious racial bias against Blacks that stem from times of the region’s dependence on slavery, well over a century ago
The environment of someone could foster their racism and prejudice, the study purports, according to Pacific Standard magazine. The question of whether one region’s deep roots in racism has a strong link with “the implicit, or unconscious, bias of its current-day inhabitants” is examined.
READ MORE: Angry white woman points gun at Black couple enjoying Mississippi lake
Based on the report, white people do hold a higher rate of bias against Blacks; “counties and states more dependent on slavery before the Civil War display higher levels of pro-white implicit bias today,” a research team led by University of North Carolina psychologist B. Keith Payne wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Payne’s team determined it “may be better understood as a cognitive manifestation of historical and structural inequalities” than as something that is “solely a feature of individual minds.”
“Counties and states with a higher proportion of their populations enslaved in 1860 had greater anti-Black implicit bias among white residents,” the researchers report.
Researchers found, for whites, unconscious bias “was associated with [1860] slave populations, but not with modern Black populations.”
“Structural inequalities cue biased thoughts, which may in turn lead to greater inequalities,” the researchers wrote.
READ MORE: ‘We still have a terribly inequitable system’: Study finds $23 billion school funding disparity
The states that had the highest levels of slaves 160 years ago were found to be the most biased and have high levels of racial segregation still today, researchers found. Those states also have the greatest number of impoverished Blacks. And those conditions are linked to implicit bias
They report that counties and states with a greater percentage of slaves 160 years ago have higher levels of racial segregation today, as well as a higher proportion of Blacks living in poverty. Further analysis revealed that such conditions are linked to implicit bias and the belief that Blacks are less intelligent or lazier than whites.
In order to enact change, the researchers contend that “more attention should be given to modifying social environments, as opposed to changing the attitudes of individuals.”
Read more about the report here.
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Neicy Nash says she had to reintroduce herself in an effort to land better roles
Before Niecy Nash booked her role in the Netflix movie, When They See Us, she brought together her team to ensure that she reintroduces herself so they would note that she was looking to land more riveting roles beyond just comedic ones.
“I don’t want to be a sassy, black anything,” Nash said during a Drama Actress Roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t want to be a sassy, black mama. I don’t want to be a sassy, black neighbor. I don’t want to be a sassy, black friend. There’s so many more notes to be played.”
REVIEW: ‘When They See Us’ is the story the Central Park Five actually deserved
“Back then, I was just hungry,” Nash explained about why she first took on stereotypical roles. “I wanted to eat. Now the refrigerator is full.”
Nash is full and fulfilled by her latest role in the movie centered on the story behind the Central Park Five. She says about her character;
“Leaning into this woman that I played, she wasn’t a sassy anything. It was absolutely delicious to find her pain, and her brokenness. In some places, it overlapped mine.”
Nash played Delores Wise, mother of Korey Wise, who was one of the five Black and Latino teenagers accused of brutally raping a white woman jogging through Central Park. Ava DuVernay directs the film. The material, Nash explained was so heavy that crisis counselors were on deck for the actors who assumed the roles.
READ MORE: Tiffany Haddish making plans to release show about women in comedy
“This is the first time I’ve ever done a project where they provided crisis counselors,” Nash.
“After the end of the day, there was a number you could call and somebody would talk to you. The material was so heavy.”
“I felt so full at the end of the day, but so driven to tell the story. You just get back up and you figure it out and you muscle through it, because that has to be more important than how you feel,” Nash said.
Nash is busy landing more meaty roles. She was nominated twice for an Emmy nominee for her work on HBO’s Getting On. She’s also returning for the third season of TNT’s Claws on June 10.
The full Drama Actress Roundtable will air on July 7 on SundanceTV. Nash sits down with with Patricia Arquette, Christine Baranski, Danai Gurira, Emilia Clarke and Michelle Williams.
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Kanye West talks about effects of manic bipolar episode; remarks on stigma
More than a year after his over the top rantings put him on the “cancelled” list of many, Kanye West’s appearance on an upcoming episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman has already been reported to clear the air on what’s been afflicting him: bipolar disorder.
But now West, who admitted that he’s never voted and have been off his bipolar meds for a while, has revealed even more about the depth of his affliction, which once landed him in handcuffs.
“When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything,” West said during the interview, Entertainment Tonight reports.
West also admits feeling paranoid most of the time.
“Everyone — this is my experience, other people have different experiences — everyone now is an actor. Everything’s a conspiracy,” he said. “You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you’re being recorded. You feel all these things.
“You have this moment [where] you feel everyone wants to kill you. You pretty much don’t trust anyone,” he continued.
Things got so intense for the rapper that he said he had to be handcuffed, given meds and separated from his family.
“They have this moment where they put you — they handcuff you, they drug you, they put you on the bed, and they separate you from everyone you know,” West said, according to ET. “That’s something that I am so happy that I experienced myself so I can start by changing that moment.
“When you are in that state, you have to have someone you trust. It is cruel and primitive to do that,” he added. “If you don’t take medication every day to keep you at a certain state, you have a potential to ramp up and it can take you to a point where you can even end up in the hospital. And you start acting erratic, as TMZ would put it,” West said.
Last year he went negatively viral after a TMZ interview in which he said slavery was a choice which spiraled out of control in the media.
“When you ramp up, it expresses your personality more. You can become almost more adolescent in your expression,” West said. “This is my specific experience that I’ve had over the past two years, because I’ve only been diagnosed for two years now.”
West admits that he wants to advocate for bipolar disorder in an effort to break the stigma.
“It’s a health issue that has a strong stigma on it and people are allowed to say anything about it and discriminate in any way,” he said. “This is like a sprained brain, like having a sprained ankle. And if someone has a sprained ankle, you’re not going to push on him more.”
“With us, once our brain gets to a point of spraining, people do everything to make it worse,” he reportedly continued. “They do everything possible. They got us to that point and they do everything to make it worse.”
West will appear on the May 31 streaming episode of the Netflix show.
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Tiffany Haddish making plans to release show about women in comedy
Tiffany Haddish wants to be sure the women who have made us laugh are not forgotten.
Her new project, she tells The Hollywood Reporter, during the magazine’s Comedy Actress Roundtable. will be a show that highlights and pays tribute to female comedians.
“I haven’t seen a show that’s dealing with female comedies,” she said, noting that female comedians have to navigate “in a man’s world.”
READ MORE: Tiffany Haddish set to host ABC’s revival of ‘Kids Say The Darnedest Things’
“It’s such a boys’ club, and really doing stand-up, like, for real female stand-up comics, and how difficult it is, and how you have to kind of fight your way into that boys’ club and be, like, ‘Yo, I’m just as funny as you. I can be up here just as long as you. I can pack out this theater just as much as you can pack out this —’ Sorry, I’m getting passionate about it.”
Haddish, who co-stars with Tracy Morgan on TBS’ The Last O.G. also added that a part of her dating life would also be seen in the new project. “Trying to have that regular life where you want to date and stuff, but guys are afraid to date you because they think you’re going to talk about them onstage, which is, like, ‘Please, you’re not that poppin’,'” Haddish said. “It would be about my life. I wrote it already. It’s written.”
She also talked about tricks she used during auditions to see what the people in the room would say about her.
READ MORE: Tiffany Haddish, still caught in lawsuit from ex-husband, gets 2020 court date
“You know what I would do? I would put my phone on voice memo and put it in my bag. I’d do the audition, walk out of the room, leave my bag, come back, [and] be like, ‘Oh, I forgot my purse in here,’ get my purse and get in my car,” Haddish said.
Although some of this feedback was negative and some said “She’s not as urban as I thought she would be,” she took their advice to sharpen her skills.
“I want to hear so I can grow,” she said. “And also so I could write jokes about it and use it to my advantage.”
The Comedy Actress Roundtable airs June 23 on SundanceTV. Other actresses who will appear on the roundtable panel include Regina Hall, Jane Fonda, Natasha Lyonne, Alex Borstein, Maya Rudolph and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
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Your “Employer Brand” Online Presence Is More Important Than You Think
It’s essential to share your brand with people who will potentially purchase your goods and services. However, whether you operate a small or large business, you cannot succeed, grow, or thrive if potential customers cannot get a sense of who you are, what you offer, and why it is of benefit to them. Forbes now reports that nearly 25% of consumers admittedly declined to give business to a company based on negative employee feedback they read online. This shows that your employer brand is just as important as your consumer brand.
What is Employer Branding?
An employer’s brand is made up of what a company communicates to potential employees and current employees about its mission, vision, values, and culture. Just like the customer-facing brand, the employer brand should communicate the company’s value proposition and personality as it relates to the people who work there. If you don’t control your online employer brand message, someone else will. And that someone could be disgruntled former (and sometimes current) employees.
Sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Kununu and FairyGodBoss allow current and former employees to post anonymous reviews about your company. Eighty-five percent of recruiting experts encourage job seekers to review these pages in making decisions about where to apply for and accept work. A 2018 study showed 33% of women and people of color opt out of applying or accepting a job when the company’s employer review scores were low or the profiles appeared unmanaged. This means online employer reviews are having a direct impact on your company’s ability to recruit and retain diverse talent.
The Effects of a Poor Employer Brand
Without an employer brand presence, potential new hires will sense and see a lack of authenticity and either choose not to apply or reject your job offers. They will not know what your organization stands for and what their future path could look like while working there. Morale and retention with current employees will also suffer as they will feel embarrassed to rep your company and may leave to work somewhere with a better reputation. Plus, your growth and profitability will take a hit as consumers choose to spend their money with companies who have a better or more clear online image. Furthermore, when your online employer brand is ignored, your employees, potential employees, and consumers may feel confused about your overall brand integrity.
How To Cultivate Your Employer Brand Online
- Get social. This seems like an obvious tip for managing your online employer brand. However, many companies leave their online brand in the hands of the employer review sites. Don’t leave your online reputation solely in the hands of someone else. Instead, set up social media accounts on the major platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube) and regularly share updates about what’s going on inside your organization for your employees, applicants, and consumers to see. Depending on the size of your company and your brand needs, these accounts may need to be separate from your product-related, consumer-facing accounts.
- Claim your profiles. Reach out to the employer review sites to set up administrator access to your company’s profile. With administrator access, you can share specific information about your company — including its history, pay philosophy, benefits, and perks. Claiming your profile also gives you the ability to respond to the feedback posted about you. There may be some fees for this depending on how much access and control you want.
- Respond to all feedback. Whether positive or negative, you should respond fully and sincerely to every comment and review that isn’t trolling, threatening, or hateful in its content. Don’t automatically hide, delete, and block feedback just because it is negative. There is wisdom and insight to be gained from both praise and criticism, regardless of the format. Honor that through the practice of responding timely and candidly. This will demonstrate to those interacting with you and reading about you that engaging with people is a priority for your organization.
- Invite reviews and sharing. Ask job candidates and employees in the organization to provide reviews about your company online. After an interview or after a promotion is a great opportunity for this because the person is usually feeling good about the company and likely to share positive feedback. Also, ask employees to share and post photos from workplace events and everyday happenings that you can post online as well. The goal here is not to manipulate or force feedback; rather the goal is to make sure the feedback about your company is balanced and properly represents your brand.
When done right, these tips will help the people inside and outside of your organization get an accurate depiction of what working for your company is like. It will give current employees a greater sense of pride about working for your organization, making them less likely to look for and/or accept jobs from other places. Most importantly, it will allow applicants and consumers to learn and make choices about your company with the full picture of your brand in mind.
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A shooting in Detroit puts robberies linked to Cartier glasses in focus
An arrest has been made in the fatal shooting of an unidentified 18-year-old man at a gas station in Detroit on Saturday in an incident officials believe was over a pair of Cartier glasses, which have become the focal point of a rash of violence over the highly sought after fashion item.
According to The Detroit News, the suspect was taken into custody Tuesday afternoon and is believed to be the gunman who attempted to grab eyewear being worn by Lateo Garrett, opened fire on him, then fled — without the glasses. The victim died after being transported to a hospital where he died on Sunday.
READ MORE: Atlanta rapper recorded his own murder on his cellphone
A city’s history with Cartier glasses and violence
Shootings over Cartier glasses is nothing new to the city. According to the Detroit Police Department, between 2012 and 2016, Cartier glasses were the result of nine homicides, 17 non-fatal shootings, and 2,158 robberies. The Metro Times, a Detroit alternative newsweekly reported in 2014, in exchange for a watch and Cartier glasses, a man identified as Timothy Jones helped a neighbor dispose of his wife’s corpse. In a 2010 incident, former high school basketball star Darryle Miller was killed when he tried to run from a robber attempting to hold him up for his Cartiers.
The glasses, which retail at $2,650 have long represented status and fashion in Detroit culture. “It was a symbol in the city of ‘I’m seeing some type of success, I’m seeing some type of money,'” Detroit-based rapper Big Sean told The Metro Times. Other items dating back to the 1980s like Cazal glasses, Air Jordan sneakers and other gear can make the wearer feel elevated, particularly in a city with a 40 percent poverty rate, the newspaper said.
READ MORE: ‘When They See Us’ actors revisit Central Park Five case and their own troubling police encounters
Before Garrett’s homicide, the incidents of Cartier-linked fatal shootings seemed to be decreasing and Detroit’s police chief James Craig insists the glasses recently have had no connection to crime.
“Prior to my arrival there may have been some instances where Cartier glasses have been one target of a robbery, but I cannot say definitively to you that they are necessarily an object of attack,” said Craig, who became Detroit’s top cop in 2013.
Meanwhile, Garrett’s mother, who remained anonymous described her son’s final moments to Detroit station WJBK. After he was shot, he lay in his brother’s arms bleeding.
“Lateo was like ‘I’m losing it bro,’ and my son was like ‘I’m here, I’m with you bro I’m just hot.'” said his mother. “I’m on the phone talking to them the whole time.”
Garrett was planning on attending college next year but his mother is now planning his funeral.
“You took a child away,” she said. “You took somebody’s kid for something that you didn’t even get was it worth it?
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Robert Mueller Speaks, Amazon’s New Echo Show, and More News
Ultra-Quantum Matter research gets $8 million boost
MIT professors Senthil Todadri and Xiao-Gang Wen are members of the newly established Simons Collaboration on Ultra-Quantum Matter. The effort, funded by the Simons Foundation, is an $8 million four-year award, renewable for three additional years, and will support theoretical physics research across 12 institutions, including MIT.
The science of the collaboration is based on a series of recent developments in theoretical physics, revealing that even large macroscopic systems that consist of many atoms or electrons — matter — can behave in an essentially quantum way. Such ultra-quantum matter (UQM) allows for quantum phenomena beyond what can be realized by individual atoms or electrons, including distributed storage of quantum information, fractional quantum numbers, and perfect conducting boundary.
While some examples of UQM have been experimentally established, many more have been theoretically proposed, ranging from highly entangled topological states to unconventional metals that behave like a complex soup. The Simons Collaboration on Ultra-Quantum Matter will classify possible forms of UQM, understand their physical properties, and provide the key ideas to enable new realizations of UQM in the lab.
Ultra dream team
In particular, the collaboration will draw upon lessons from recently discovered connections between topological states of matter and unconventional metals, and seeks to develop a new theoretical framework for those phases of ultra-quantum matter. Achieving these goals requires ideas and tools from multiple areas of theoretical physics, and accordingly the collaboration brings together experts in condensed matter physics, quantum field theory, quantum information, and atomic physics to forge a new interdisciplinary approach.
Directed by Professor Ashvin Vishwanath at Harvard University, the collaboration comprises researchers at MIT, Harvard, Caltech, the Institute for Advanced Study, Stanford University, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of California at San Diego, University of Chicago, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Innsbruck, University of Maryland, and University of Washington.
“I am looking forward to scientific interactions with MIT theorists Senthil and Wen, who are key members of our Simons collaboration on Ultra-Quantum Matter, and hope this will further strengthen collaborations within the Cambridge area and beyond. Their research on highly entangled quantum materials is of fundamental significance, and may provide new directions for device applications, quantum computing, and high-temperature superconductors,” says collaboration director Ashvin Vishwanath of Harvard University.
“They have also been mentors for several collaboration members,” says Vishwanath, who worked with Senthil as a Pappalardo Fellow in physics from 2001 to 2004.
Senthil has played a leading role in the field of non-Fermi liquids, in the classification of strongly interacting topological insulators and related topological phases, and in the development of field theory dualities with diverse applications in condensed matter physics.
Wen is one of the founders of the field of topological phases of matter, introducing the concept of topological order in 1989 and opening up a new research direction in condensed matter physics. Wen’s research has often exposed mathematical structures that have not appeared before in condensed matter physics problems.
MIT-grown
Of the 17 faculty members who are participating in the collaboration, more than half, including Senthil, Wen, and Vishwanath, have MIT affiliations.
Michael Hermele, the collaboration’s deputy director and an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was a postdoc in the MIT Condensed Matter Theory group.
Associate professors Xie Chen PhD ’12 and Michael Levin PhD ’06, at Caltech and the University of Chicago, respectively, earned their doctorates at MIT under Wen.
Other principal investigators include alumni Subir Sachdev ’82, now chair of the Department of Physics at Harvard, and Leon Balents ’89, a physics professor at UC Santa Barbara's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. John McGreevy, a string theorist who conducted research in the Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP), is now a professor of physics at UC San Diego. Dam Thanh Son and Andreas Karch, former CTP postdocs, are now with the University of Chicago and the University of Washington, respectively.
The collaboration is part of the Simons Collaborations in Mathematics and Physical Sciences program, which aims to “stimulate progress on fundamental scientific questions of major importance in mathematics, theoretical physics and theoretical computer science.” The Simons Collaboration on Ultra-Quantum Matter is one of 12 such collaborative grants ranging across these fields.
The first meeting of the newly established collaboration will take place Sept. 12-13 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
from MIT News http://bit.ly/2XfGIJp
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Caster Semenya: Olympic 800m champion files appeal to Swiss court
J-WAFS announces seven new seed grants
Agricultural productivity technologies for small-holder farmers; food safety solutions for everyday consumers; sustainable supply chain interventions in the palm oil industry; water purification methods filtering dangerous micropollutants from industrial and wastewater streams — these are just a few of the research-based solutions being supported by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT. J-WAFS is funding these and other projects through its fifth round of seed grants, providing over $1 million in funding to the MIT research community. These grants, which are funded competitively to MIT principal investigators (PIs) across all five schools at the Institute, exemplify the ambitious goals of MIT’s Institute-wide effort to address global water and food systems challenges through research and innovation.
This year, seven new projects led by nine faculty PIs across all five schools will be funded with two-year grants of up to $150,000, overhead-free. Interest in water and food systems research at MIT is substantial, and growing. By the close of this grant cycle, over 12 percent of MIT faculty will have submitted J-WAFS grant proposals. Thirty-four principal investigators submitted proposals to this latest call, nearly one third of whom were proposing to J-WAFS for the first time. “The broad range of disciplines that this applicant pool represents demonstrates how meeting today’s water and food challenges is motivating many diverse researchers in our community," comments Renee Robins, executive director of J-WAFS. "Our reach across all of MIT’s schools further attests to the strength of the Institute’s capabilities that can be applied to the search for solutions to pressing water and food sector challenges.” The nine faculty who were funded represent eight departments and labs, including the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, and Economics, as well as the Media Lab (School of Architecture and Planning), MIT D-Lab (Office of the Vice Chancellor), and the Sloan School of Management.
New approaches to ensure safe drinking water
Nearly 1 billion people worldwide receive their drinking water through underground pipes that only operate intermittently. In contrast to continuous water supplies, pipes like these that are only filled with water during limited supply periods are vulnerable to contamination. However, it is challenging to quantify the quality of water that comes out of these pipes because of the vast differences in how the pipe networks are arranged and where they are located, especially in dense urban settings. Andrew J. Whittle, the Edmund K. Turner Professor in Civil Engineering, seeks to address this problem by gathering and making available more precise data on how water quality is affected by how the pipe is used — i.e., during periods of filling, flushing, or stagnation. Supported by the seed grant, he and his research team will perform tests in a section of abandoned pipe in Singapore, one that is still connected to the urban water pipe network there. By controlling flushing rates, monitoring stagnation, and measuring contamination, the study will analyze how variances in flow affect water quality, and evaluate how these data might be able to inform future water quality studies in cities with similar piped water challenges.
Patrick Doyle, the Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical Engineering, is taking a different approach to water quality: creating a filter to remove micropollutants. Wastewater from industrial and agricultural processes often contains solvents, petrochemicals, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, hormones, and pesticides, which can enter natural water systems. While these micropollutants may be present at low concentrations, they can still have a significant negative impact on aquatic ecosystems, as well as human health. The challenge is in detecting and removing these micropollutants, because of the low concentrations in which they occur. For this project, Doyle and his team will develop a system to remove a variety of micropollutants, at even the smallest concentrations, using a special hydrogel particle that can be “tuned” to fit the size and shape of particular particles. Leveraging the flexibility of these hydrogels, this technology can improve the speed, precision, efficiency, and environmental sustainability of industrial water purification systems, and improve the health of the natural water systems upon which humans and our surrounding ecosystems rely.
Developing support tools for small-holder farmers
More than half of food calories consumed globally — and 70 percent of food calories consumed in developing countries — are supplied by approximately 475 million small-holder households in developing and emerging economies. These farmers typically operate through informal contracts and processes, which can lead to large economic inefficiencies and lack of traceability in the supply chains that they are a part of. Joann de Zegher, the Maurice F. Strong Career Development Professor in the operations management program at the MIT Sloan School of Management, seeks to address these challenges by developing a mobile-based trading platform that links small-holder farmers, middlemen, and mills in the palm oil supply chain in Indonesia. Rapid growth in demand in this industry has led to high environmental costs, and recently pressure from consumers and nongovernmental organizations is motivating producers to employ more sustainable practices. However, these pressures deepen market access challenges for small-holder palm oil farmers. Her project seeks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the current supply chain, and create transparency as a byproduct.
Another small-holder farmer intervention is being developed by Robert M. Townsend, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics. He is leading a research effort to improve access to crop insurance for small-holder farmers, who are particularly vulnerable to weather-related crop failures. Crop cultivation worldwide is highly vulnerable to unfavorable weather. In developing countries, farmers bear the financial burden of their crops’ exposure to weather ravages, the extent of which will only increase due to the effects of climate change. As a result, they rely on low-risk, low-yield cultivation practices that do not allow for the food and financial gains that can be possible when favorable weather supports higher yields. While crop insurance can help, it is often prohibitively expensive for these small-scale producers. Townsend and his research team seek to make crop insurance more accessible and affordable for farmers in developing regions by developing a new system of insurance pricing and payoff schedules that takes into account the widely varying ways through which weather affects crop’s development and yield throughout the growth cycle. Their goal is to provide a new, personalized insurance tool that improves farmers’ ability to protect their yields, invest in their crops, and adapt to climate change in order to stabilize food supply and farmer livelihoods worldwide.
Access to affordable fertilizer is another challenge that small holders face. Ammonia is the key ingredient in fertilizers; however, most of the world’s supply is produced by the Haber-Bosch process, which directly converts nitrogen and hydrogen gas to ammonia in a highly capital-intensive process that is difficult to downscale. Finding an alternative way to synthesize ammonia could transform access to fertilizer and improve food security, particularly in the developing world where current fertilizers are prohibitively expensive. For this seed grant project, Yogesh Surendranath, Paul M Cook Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry, will develop an electrochemical process to synthesize ammonia, one that can be powered using renewable energy sources such as solar or wind. Designed to be implemented in a decentralized way, this technology could enable fertilizer production directly in the fields where it is needed, and would be especially beneficial in developing regions without access to existing ammonia production infrastructure.
Even when crops produce high yields, post-harvest preservation is a challenge, especially to fruit and vegetable farmers on small plots of land in developing regions. The lack of affordable and effective post-harvest vegetable cooling and storage poses a significant challenge for them, and can lead to vegetable spoilage, reduced income, and lost time. Most techniques for cooling and storing vegetables rely on electricity, which is either unaffordable or unavailable for many small-holder farmers, especially those living on less than $3 per day in remote areas. The solution posed by an interdisciplinary team led by Daniel Frey, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and D-Lab faculty director, along with Leon Glicksman, professor of architecture and mechanical engineering, is a storage technology that uses the natural evaporation of water to create a cool and humid environment that prevents rot and dehydration, all without the need for electricity. This system is particularly suited for hot, dry regions such as Kenya, where the research team will be focusing their efforts. The research will be conducted in partnership with researchers from University of Nairobi’s Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection, who have extensive experience working with low-income rural communities on issues related to horticulture and improving livelihoods. The team will build and test evaporative cooling chambers in rural Kenya to optimize the design for performance, practical construction, and user preferences, and will build evidence for funders and implementing organizations to support the dissemination of these systems to improve post-harvest storage challenges.
Combatting food safety challenges through wireless sensors
Food safety is a matter of global concern, and a subject that several J-WAFS-funded researchers seek to tackle with innovative technologies. And for good reason: Food contamination and foodborne pathogens cause sickness and even death, as well as significant economic costs including the wasted labor and resources that occur when a contaminated product is disposed of, the lost profit to affected companies, and the lost food products that could have nourished a number of people. Fadel Adib, an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, will receive a seed grant to develop a new tool that quickly and accurately assesses whether a given food product is contaminated. This food safety sensor uses wireless signals to determine the quality and safety of packaged food using a radio-frequency identification sticker placed on the product’s container. The system turns off-the-shelf RFID tags into spectroscopes which, when read, can measure the material contents of a product without the need to open its package. The sensor can also identify the presence of contaminants — pathogens as well as adulterants that affect the nutritional quality of the food product. If successful, this research, and the technology that results, will pave the way for wireless sensing technologies that can inform their users about the health and safety of their food and drink.
With these seven newly funded projects, J-WAFS will have funded 37 total seed research projects since its founding in 2014. These grants serve as important catalysts of new water and food sector research at MIT, resulting in publications, patents, and other significant research support. To date, J-WAFS’ seed grant PIs have been awarded over $11M in follow-on funding. J-WAFS’ director, Professor John Lienhard, commented on the influence of this grant program: “The betterment of society drives our research community at MIT. Water and food, our world’s most vital resources, are currently put at great risk by a variety of global-scale challenges, and MIT researchers are responding forcefully. Through this, and J-WAFS’ other grant programs, we see MIT's creative innovations and actionable solutions that will help to ensure a sustainable future.”
J-WAFS Seed Grants, 2019
PI: Fadel Adib, assistant professor, MIT Media Lab
PI: Joann de Zegher, Maurice F. Strong Career Development Professor, Sloan School of Management
PI: Patrick Doyle, Robert T. Haslam (1911) Professor of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering
PIs: Daniel Frey, professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and faculty research director, MIT D-Lab; Leon Glicksman, professor of building technology and mechanical engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering
PI: Yogesh Surendranath, Paul M Cook Career Development Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry
PI: Robert M. Townsend, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Department of Economics
PI: Andrew J. Whittle, Edmund K. Turner Professor in Civil Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
from MIT News http://bit.ly/2Z19LB3
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