150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:30:47 GMT

Recorded Feb. 13, 2013

Susan Lindquist: Protein Folding Prions

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 07:10:01 GMT

Susan Lindquist
Professor of Biology
Member, Whitehead Institute

Read more: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html

Susan Lindquist: Collaboration in Cambridge, MA

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:30:16 GMT

Susan Lindquist
Professor of Biology
Member, Whitehead Institute

Read more: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html

Susan Lindquist: Protein Folding Amyloids

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:30:16 GMT

Susan Lindquist
Professor of Biology
Member, Whitehead Institute

Read more: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html

Susan Lindquist: Protein Folding and Nanotechnology

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:30:16 GMT

Susan Lindquist
Professor of Biology
Member, Whitehead Institute

Read more: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html

Susan Lindquist: Protein Folding/Misfolding

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 20:30:16 GMT

Susan Lindquist
Professor of Biology
Member, Whitehead Institute

Read more: http://www.wi.mit.edu/research/faculty/lindquist.html

The Good Side of Nightmares

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:52:10 GMT

The average person dreams several hundred times a week. Most are about relatives, friends, colleagues and loved ones. Most of the time, nothing special happens - and we tend to forget most dreams. However, once in a while people wake up screaming or sweating from dreams so frightening that they can't be forgotten. While no one likes such nightmares, reporter Wojciech (Voytek) Mikoluszko reports on why it they aren't necessarily a bad thing. The songs are performed by Irena Mikoluszko.

Samuel Jay Keyser - Interview No. 3 - Dec. 17, 2010

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 20:35:31 GMT

Third of three oral history interviews with Samuel Jay Keyser, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, jazz trombonist, poet. Interviewed by Forrest Larson, MIT Lewis Music Library. Topics include: scientific and artistic creativity, historical state of linguistics, phonology, argument structure, poetry analysis, generative grammar, jazz and linguistics, music and language, poetry, free verse poetry, Theory of Evolution and the arts, linguistics at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, writing poetry and short stories, dixieland jazz, Noam Chomsky, Kenneth Hale, Sylvain Bromberger, Morris Halle, Leonard Bernstein, Ray Jackendoff, Ernie Clark (trombone), Bobby MacInnis (trumpet), Dan MacInnis (banjo), Dave Whitney Orchestra, New Liberty Jazz Band, Everett Longstreth (band leader). Professor Keyser reads two of his poems, and plays two tunes on the trombone.

Celebrating Science and Engineering Breakthroughs II

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 04:00:00 GMT

03/28/2011 3:30 PM KresgeAngela Belcher, Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Biological Engineering; Christine Ortiz, Dean for Graduate Education MIT, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; Sara Seager, Professor of Physics and Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, MIT:; Dr. Maria T. Zuber, E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, Head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT ; Description: Four women who have made ground"breaking contributions in different disciplines describe their research, which has not only involved 'thinking outside the box,' but in some cases persevering in the face of skepticism. Two presenters work on the frontier of biological systems and materials science, and find both inspiration and practical subject matter in aquatic life forms. For Angela Belcher, the abalone offers a model for development of organic/inorganic hybrid structures. The shell of this creature, which is 3000 times tougher than its purely geological counterpart, consists of stacks of calcium carbonate in precise geometries, made from just 20 different amino acids, says Belcher. Some years ago, she had the insight that it might be possible to fabricate hybrid materials, kind of like an abalone, "at a living/nonliving interface." She set about creating an organism that could build structures like battery electrodes, using bacterial hosts injected with viruses that had an affinity for a particular material. "When I said I was trying to develop a genetic link between semiconductor materials and biology, I was told I was insane," says Belcher. "But it came out OK." Undaunted, Belcher is now developing biological batteries with virus"sized electrodes and other devices for environmental and medical applications. Christine Ortiz can probe structural biological materials down to the molecular level. She wants to understand the bio"mechanical architecture of organisms inside and out that contribute to their ability to withstand harsh conditions such as high temperatures and pressures, and physical blasts, and find ways of emulating these systems for human use. She was drawn to biological materials "because of their complexity and beauty," and collected a lab full of live, exotic animal models. She fastened on one particularly helpful organism: the three"spined stickleback fish whose flexible ceramic armor resists penetration. Ortiz examined this fish armor all the way to a nano scale, to understand and possibly recreate its unique geometry, strength, load"bearing capacity, and flexibility. She is discovering "some uniform, universal design principles" that may come in handy developing better protective devices for people. Two planetary scientists describe their bold ventures. A physicist by training, Sara Seager became interested in exoplanets in 1996. "People were still uncertain these were real, and said, don't work on this." Increasing numbers of candidate planets began to emerge, as detection techniques improved. Seager was refining her own search strategy, investigating distant chemical signatures of exoplanet atmospheres, and found a home at MIT in 2007, where "people are really open to new ideas that the rest of the world thinks are crazy and impossible." She connected with space systems engineering, and a team of eager students in the "technologically challenging" quest of "finding Earths suitable for follow"up observations." They are designing a fleet of inexpensive nanosatellites to launch into low"earth orbit to detect possible exoplanets. Seager describes an imagined Earth"like planet, orbiting close to its sun. With one side locked in permanent night, and one side in permanent day, "it might not be such a great place to visit." Maria Zuber seems convinced that Mars, so inhospitable at the moment, at one point offered the right conditions for life. She walks through the 3+ billion year Martian history, with an early period featuring astonishingly prolific volcanic flows ("10 thousand Mauna Loas worth of volcanism"), which yielded CO2 for the atmosphere, water for the surface, and ample warmth. The current surface of the planet, she shows, reveals evidence of this water, with riverbeds and mudcracks. Liquid water remains, but beneath the surface, where it is warmer. While there is "an incredible emotional bias" to discover Earth"like life on Mars, Zuber knows it will look different. She's seeking "life in extreme environments," and sniffing for ribosomal RNA -- the stuff of "extraterrestrial genomes." She has eager accomplices: "It's fantastic to be at a place like MIT where when you say you want to do something like look for life on Mars, people actually want to help you rather than tell you you're out of your mind." About the Speaker(s): In 2006, Angela Belcher was named 2006 Research Leader of the Year and a member of the Scientific American 50," the magazine's annual list of individuals, teams, companies and other organizations whose accomplishments demonstrate outstanding technological leadership. Belcher was recognized for "the use of custom"evolved viruses to advance nanotechnology," according to the magazine. Belcher won a MacArthur Fellowship Award in 2004 and has also received the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (2000), and the Du Pont Young Investigators Award (1999). Prior to MIT, Belcher was an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. She received her B.S. in 1991 from the University of California, Santa Barbara and her Ph.D. from the same institution in 1997. Host(s): Office of the President, MIT150 Inventional Wisdom

Richard C. Larson - "The Transformation of Service Systems

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:13:39 GMT

"The Transformation of Service Systems" is a presentation given by Richard C. Larson, Mitsui Professor of Engineering Systems, MIT Engineering Systems Division, Director, MIT Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals at the MIT System Design and Management's 2010 Systems Thinking for Contemporary Challenges Conference on October 22, 2010. Please reference the following link for Richard Larson's presentation http://sdm.mit.edu/systems_thinking_conference_2010/presentations/larson.pdf

Darwin Debate

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:57:38 GMT

Lunch with a Laureate: Jack Szostak

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:00:00 GMT

Jack Szostak started his first lab as a "freshly minted assistant professor" working in DNA recombination and repair reactions.

Denialism: Media in the Age of Disinformation

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:00:00 GMT

04/27/2010 7:00 PM MuseumMichael Specter, Staff Writer, The New Yorker; Chris Mooney, Discover Blogger and Knight Fellow ; Shannon Brownlee, Instructor, The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice; Shankar Vedantam, National Science Writer, The Washington PostDescription: A few hundred years after the Enlightenment, western civilization is rushing back to the Dark Ages. The causes are debatable, but, argue these science journalists, the public increasingly rejects the findings of science, from climate change to evolution, and is turning away from rationality and reason in general. "People are afraid of anything that will hammer away at their preconceived notions," says Michael Specter. He points to the fanatic opposition in some quarters to genetically engineered foods, and the worship of organic products. Almost everything we eat is the result of genetic modification, he notes, and "organics kill people, too." It doesn't make sense to think that returning to "the old ways" will keep us healthy and supply the world with food. "We're hurting ourselves in lots of ways," says Specter, when people insist on believing what they want. Human nature plays a big part in feeding denialism, believes Chris Mooney. "We all ... argue against information that contradicts our existing worldview." The unfortunate evolution of media in the digital age is feeding our inherent "confirmation bias," and today "Americans with different political leanings construct different realities." We must "give up" on the idea that truth triumphs and society advances as more people become critical thinkers. Concludes Mooney, "We have to work with the media and brains we have, and seek realistic change." Shannon Brownlee had an "epiphany" a decade ago when she realized that prostate cancer tests did not lead to a lower risk of dying, as researchers suggested, but instead to potentially harmful treatment. Her "awakening" led her to perceive "how much of medicine we take on faith." Brownlee's journalistic beat now involves the frequent occurrence of "bad science" in medicine. She believes we are not all that far removed from the days when medicine was based on "four humors of disease" and bleeding was the key remedy. Health care, on which Americans spend more than anything else, depends on "the perception of science as its underpinning"_ a terrible delusion, she implies. To contend with denialism, says Shankar Vedentam, we need a more nuanced view, one that recognizes its different shapes: One type rejects events from the past for which we have evidence, and another kind "says I'm not willing to trust projections of what will happen in the future." Climate change falls in the latter category, as people "are being asked to trust data rather than their intuitions." Some summers feel cold, and some winters feel hot, for instance. Also, he says, partisanship now holds sway in all aspects of life, with people swearing loyalty to particular positions in unrelated areas, and to fellow members of their "team." Given indifference to facts, good information "paradoxically, horrifyingly can amplify the effects of bad information," believes Vedentam. Just look at the explosive growth of the Obama birther movement, in spite of ample evidence that the president was indeed born in Hawaii. Panelists see no easy antidote to this large"scale retreat from reason. Specter recommends that schools teach statistics, and Brownlee concurs that kids "should know what a big denominator and small numerator means." Vendantam argues for a nonpartisan approach to such issues as climate change, and Mooney thinks hard scientists and social scientists should be "in better dialog" to craft an effective approach to the big scientific and policy questions of our time. About the Speaker(s): Michael Specter has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. His most recent book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, was published on October 29, 2009. Specter writes often about science, technology, and public health. Specter came to The New Yorker from The New York Times, where he had been a roving foreign correspondent based in Rome. Earlier, Specter worked at The Washington Post, where, from 1985 to 1991, he covered local news, before becoming the paper's national science reporter and, later, the newspaper's New York bureau chief. In 1996 he won the Overseas Press Club's Citation for Excellence for his reporting from Chechnya. He has twice received the Global Health Council's annual Excellence in Media Award, first for a 2001 article about AIDS, and second for his 2004 article "The Devastation," about the ethics of testing H.I.V. vaccines in Africa. He also received the 2002 AAAS Science Journalism Award, for his article, "Rethinking the Brain," about the scientific basis of how we learn. Chris Mooney is a science and political journalist and commentator and the author of three books, including the The Republican War on Science, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co"authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. They also write "The Intersection" blog together for Discover blogs. Moponey has also been a visiting associate in the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton University. For the summer of 2010, he is a Templeton"Cambridge Fellow in Science and Religion. He is also a contributing editor to Science Progress and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect magazine. Mooney's 2005 article for Seed magazine on the Dover evolution trial was included in the volume Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006. In 2006, Chris won the "Preserving Core Values in Science" award from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. His 2009 article for The Nation, "Unpopular Science" (co"authored with Sheril Kirshenbaum) will be included in Best American Science Writing 2010. Shannon Brownlee is a writer and essayist whose book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, was named the best economics book of 2007 by New York Times economics correspondent, David Leonhardt, and is being used by legislators and policy makers to craft health care reform legislation. A former senior editor at U.S. News & World Report, her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Glamour, More, Mother Jones, New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Slate, and Time, among others. In 2008"2009, Brownlee served as a visiting scholar at the National Institutes of Health, and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Scholar. In 2010, Brownlee received two awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors: the June Roth Award for Medical Journalism, and the ASJA's award for Reporting on a Significant Topic. Other honors include the Association of Health Care Journalists Award for Excellence, the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, the National Association of Science Writers Science"in"Society Award, and the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She holds an M.S. in Marine Sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shankar Vedantam writes about science and human behavior. He authored the weekly Department of Human Behavior column in The Washington Post from 2006 to 2009. He is the winner of several journalism awards and was a 2009"2010 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He previously worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Knight"Ridder's Washington Bureau, and New York Newsday. Vedantam has a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree in electronics engineering. He is interested in the history of conflict over the theory of evolution, the changes over time of religious theories concerning the creation of the universe, and the effects of religious faith on health. He has written about the interplay between neuroscience and spirituality, an area he would like to explore further. Host(s): Office of the Provost, MIT Museum

Evolution of the Vertebrate Eye Part 1

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:19:42 GMT

Recorded on 11/20/09

Opening Remarks/How the Brain Invents the Mind

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 04:00:00 GMT

06/06/2009 9:00 AM KresgeDr. Susan Hockfield, President, MIT; Rebecca Saxe, PHd 03, Assistant Professor of Cognitive NeuroscienceDescription: In trying financial times, Susan Hockfield remains optimistic and committed to pursuing MIT's massive, multi"year initiatives in energy and life sciences. She prefaces her "whirlwind" tour of MIT for an alumni audience by referencing the campus"wide relief at the change in presidential administrations, which promises to make science and engineering more central, and to make "MIT values more mainstream." If it indeed becomes "cool to be smart," Hockfield believes MIT can count on taking a prominent national role in research, policy and education. One key area in which MIT hopes to make a major contribution is sustainable energy. The MIT Energy Initiative, two years old, brings together faculty and students across all disciplines to develop a portfolio of new technologies (although the focus seems increasingly to fall on solar). Campus interest is so intense that the Institute has committed to a minor in energy, and it's seeking five new professorships in the area. The other major enterprise involves fusing biological sciences with engineering, especially in the study of cancer. At the new Koch Institute, cancer biologists and engineers have already made "fundamental discoveries underlying new targeted cancer drugs," and they are hard at work decoding the disease, and devising new methods for diagnosis and treatment. Hockfield also candidly describes the impact of the economic downturn on the Institute, acknowledging that "most revenue streams have been compromised," except for research. With the endowment down by 20"25%, departments across the board are making significant but strategic cuts for the next two to three years. MIT will not compromise on providing financial aid to needy students, a cost that understandably has risen in the past year, nor on hiring faculty. Hockfield hopes that private philanthropy will help MIT "preserve core strengths and values." At the end of the recession, she says, "We want to come out with a leaner, stronger Institute." Fellow neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe outlines her research investigating the neural basis for a Theory of Mind -- how the human mind seems geared to "glean what others are thinking and feeling." From her work with children and adults, Saxe has determined that there's a very specific region of the brain -- the right temporal"parietal junction -- dedicated to thinking about how others think. This area lights up in the fMRI scanner when people read stories involving another person's beliefs and moral judgments, but not when they digest other kinds of written material. The RTPJ develops this special function slowly (young children don't have it), and Saxe has discovered that she can interfere with this region's activities, altering her subjects' sense of what constitutes morally permissible behavior. She's exploring whether these distinct neural networks develop differently in children with autism, with the hope of finding therapies that might someday help treat the disorder. About the Speaker(s): Prior to her arrival at MIT in 2004, Susan Hockfield served as Provost at Yale University, where she was also William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology. She previously served as Dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Hockfield is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She earned a B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester in 1973, and a Ph.D. in anatomy and neuroscience from the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1979.Rebecca Saxe became an assistant professor at MIT in 2006. That same year, she was named a Kavli Fellow, National Academy of Sciences. In 2008, she received the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award. In 2009, she received the Robert L. Fantz Award for Young Psychologists. She was a Junior Fellow, in the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, from 2003 to 2006. Saxe received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Science in 2003 from MIT, and earned a B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from Oxford University.Host(s): Alumni Association, Alumni Association

Contemplative Dimensions of Human Experience

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:00:00 GMT

04/28/2009 7:00 PM Simmons HallFr. Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O., Trappist MonkDescription: In a mind"stretching talk covering the history of the planet, development of higher"order consciousness, and East"West religious practices, Trappist monk Thomas Keating claims that humanity is poised to take its next evolutionary step, to the "furthest levels of human understanding." While Keating's focus is on the "human family," he begins his talk with Earth's emergence from the cosmos, and the origins of life on this planet. He dwells on human evolution, especially development of the neocortex. This "point at which the human spirit began to function" is captured by scripture, when God breathes life into Adam, suggests Keating. The greatest achievement of this long sweep of history, Keating proposes, is the reflective human brain, plastic and responsive to experience, like a mesa shaped by the forces of nature over time. We're born predisposed to seek security and survival, and base our definitions of happiness on gratification of such needs, leading to lives in search of power, control, esteem, sensual pleasure. These primitive "emotional programs for happiness" obstruct what may be the ultimate opportunity: "fulfilling human capacitythrough access of spiritual levels of our being." We find evidence for this potential in "sages and saints who have understood the rational capacities of the brain to open itself to love in the fullest sense and levels of happiness, peace, freedom and joy." But this higher state isn't limited to mystics, says Keating: Humankind stands "at a significant crossroads," ready to pass through the gate of rational consciousness to "further levels of human understanding." Finding this gate will prove a challenge to most, because of ingrained habits and cultural reinforcements. Fortunately, we have the words and examples of "spiritual traditions of the world" to help us break from the "straitjacket of emotional programs," and attempt to achieve "the contemplative dimension of human experience." Keating describes how Jesus invites "everyone into the ultimate reality" in the Sermon on the Mount, and recounts the story of Elijah, the Jewish prophet, who "heard the sound of sheer silence" in the desert. The great religions show that it is possible to achieve the "discipline of quieting the mind, letting go of desires or attachments we're overly committed to, so we can be free to relate to our inmost being, where ultimate reality dwells" _ even or especially when enmeshed in the difficulties of daily life. Keating invites his audience to join him in "a place of silence," where they may "let go of interior dialog, thinking about a past and future," and "let God act in us." About the Speaker(s): Thomas Keating was born in New York City, and attended Deerfield Academy, Yale University, and Fordham University, graduating in December 1943. He is a founder of the Centering Prayer movement and of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. Keating entered the Cistercian Order in Valley Falls, Rhode Island in January, 1944. He was appointed Superior of St. Benedict's Monastery, Snowmass, Colorado in 1958, and was elected abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts in 1961. He returned to Snowmass after retiring as abbot of Spencer in 1981, where he established a program of ten"day intensive retreats in the practice of Centering Prayer, a contemporary form of the Christian contemplative tradition. In 1984, along with Gustave Reininger and Edward Bednar, he co"founded Contemplative Outreach, Ltd., an international, ecumenical spiritual network that teaches the practice of Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina, a method of prayer drawn from the Christian contemplative tradition. Contemplative Outreach provides a support system for those on the contemplative path through a wide variety of resources, workshops, and retreats. Keating also helped found the Snowmass Interreligious Conference in 1982 and is a past president of the Temple of Understanding and of the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue among other interreligious activities. Host(s): Dean for Student Life, The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values

The Computational Nature of Language Learning

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

10/19/2007 11:15 AM Wong AuditoriumPartha Niyogi, SM '92, PhD '95, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science; Associate Professor, Physical Sciences Collegiate Division; Senior Fellow, Computation Institute, University of ChicagoDescription: Language learning research becomes more robust when it incorporates insights from evolutionary theory, Partha Niyogi demonstrates. The principles of natural selection and variation in a population come into play not only when exploring how children learn language but how languages alter over time. All languages are learnable and more or less uniformly learnable, says Nyogi: "It doesn't take 25 years to learn Chinese and two years to learn Bengali." But in the last 30"odd years, Nyogi says, there's been a great deal of debate about the most useful models of learning theory, with efforts to explain how the human language faculty makes use of linguistic input at different developmental stages. One model of language acquisition depicts the child, armed with a basic grammar "map," extrapolating from data (interactions with adults), and assembling the components of language by some algorithm. Analysis has been conducted as if there were "a target grammar, which produces data, and an algorithm which is trying to acquire this target grammar." But, says Niyogi, "that's not true in the world." A child is exposed to lots of variation from within its population; parents and others all produce different grammars, different data sets. Niyogi believes that an "evolutionary trajectory" links how acquisition happens at an individual level, and how variation in language springs up from one generation to the next. But rather than inheriting the grammar of your parents, you have to learn it. Examining language variation over time as if it were genetic variation, "you get a different mathematical structureand probabilities start playing an important role." Small differences "can have very subtle consequences giving rise to bifurcation in nonlinear dynamics of evolution." For instance, 1000 years ago, the English were speaking a language that's unrecognizable to us today. How has it come to be that "we have moved so far from that point through learning which is mimicking the previous generation?" Niyogi explains that within a single population two varying languages may be in competition (say, a German and an English"type grammar). While a majority may speak the dominant variant, some children will likely be exposed to a mixture of the two. There's a "drift" in language use, "and suddenly, what was stable becomes unstable." In the next generation, even more learners pick up the minority variant. It's possible to determine the probability of learners in successive generations using new expressions, and tracking the evolutionary transformation of language. The "ubiquitous fact of languages is that they change with time," concludes Nyogi, and "even a slight effect of frequency can wipe out something that looks stable." About the Speaker(s): Partha Niyogi studied Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. He also studied at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT, where he completed a master's thesis on speech recognition. He received a Ph.D. in learning theory in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He was briefly a postdoctoral fellow and research associate in the Brain and Cognitive Science Department, MIT, then worked for Bell Laboratories. He joined the the University of Chicago in 2000. Host(s): School of Engineering, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems

Foundations of the Second Law

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

10/04/2007 1:30 PM Broad InstituteSeth Lloyd, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems, Engineering Systems Division, MIT; ; Gian Paolo Beretta, SM '80, SCD '82; Jochen Gemmer; Speranta Gheorghiu" Svirschevski; Silviu Guiasu; Bernard Guy; Owen Maroney; Dorion Sagan; Ping AoDescription: The nine panelists set out to address, very briefly, some of the key questions of the symposium. Seth Lloyd discusses the Maxwell demon paradox and the spin"echo effect, and how in some cases, in an apparent violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics "entropy goes up and whoa, goes down then up." He notes that when the laws of thermodynamics appear not to be true, "we simply revise our opinions and re"describe" them, which is "a pathetic situation." Owen Maroney invokes "straightforward statistical mechanical assumptions" in his discussion of whether "something can violate the Second Law or not," and raises Szilard's engine and Landauer's erasure principle. Silviu Guiasu aims to show there is no contradiction between microscopic reversibility of classical mechanics, as described by Hamilton's equations of motion, and macroscopic irreversibility as described by the increase of entropy. Ping Ao believes the dynamics behind Darwinian evolution "provide a natural framework" for thermodynamics, and it remains to translate "global statements to precise mathematical language." Jochen Gemmerdiscusses bubbles in Hilbert space, while examining how we might overcome the apparent contradiction between quantum dynamics and thermodynamics. Bernard Guy focuses on the link between the Second Law and the problem of time, seeking clues for understanding the opposition of reversibility and irreversibility. He sees clashing constructs of time and space in the separate worlds of cognitivists and physicists. Gian Paulo Berretta praises the seminal work and "pioneering intuition" of Keenan and Hatsopoulos, which inspires new answers to such fundamental issues as whether entropy is an intrinsic property of matter, and if irreversibility is an intrinsic feature of microscopic dynamics. Speranta Gheorghiu"Svirschevski believes a nonlinear approach can help reconcile the Second Law and quantum evolution. In particular, she looks for ways to "reconcile locality and separability," while acknowledging that general wisdom says it's not exactly possible. Dorion Sagan says that "ever since Darwin, life has been considered an exception to the Second Law." On the contrary, "entropy, rather, energy spread, and evolution are inextricably linked." Sagan suggests that "life may just be another energy spreading system," and "death is the name we give the inevitable disruption of a specific part of life's network." About the Speaker(s): Robert J. Silbey joined the MIT faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1966. He became Head of the Chemistry Department in 1990"1995. He was appointed Director of the Center for Materials Science & Engineering in 1998. Silbey's primary research concerns the theoretical studies of a) the low temperature thermal properties of glasses, b) energy and electron transfer and relaxation in molecular aggregates, c) the optical and electronic properties of conjugated polymers and d) in collaboration with Professor Field, the dynamics of highly vibrationally excited molecules. Silbey has received numerous teaching awards at MIT, and has lectured extensively throughout the world. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1965.Host(s): School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Frontiers of the Second Law

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:00:00 GMT

10/04/2007 3:30 PM Broad InstituteSeth Lloyd, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems, Engineering Systems Division, MIT; Bjarne Andresen; Eric Schneider; Adrian Bejan, '71, SM '72, PhD '75; Lyndsay Gordon; Miroslav Grmela; George Hatsopoulos, '49, SM '50, ME '54, SCD '56, Chairman, American DG Energy; Signe Kjelstrup; David Jou, Univ of Catalonia; Miguel Rubi, univ of barcelonaDescription: These nine panelists describe ways in which the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be stretched, or applied in less traditional ways. Adrian Bejan has constructed a law that "covers every configuration in physics, from animate, to inanimate, to us, the societal. Bejan demonstrates how his law describes and predicts the tree"shaped flow of all rivers, animal locomotion and human settlement distribution. With it, says Bejan, "thermodynamics becomes a science of systems with configuration" Bjarne Andresen acknowledges "many fights about the Second Law," before declaring his belief that "entropy survives as a concept, and applies equally in the chemistry lab, to the quantum computer and to black holes." He discusses the importance of carefully defining the system under examination beforehand, "otherwise you get into fights with your neighbors. Miguel Rubi discusses how to use the Second Law to extract information about the evolution of small systems. Unlike "canonical thermodynamics," which describe systems in terms of energy, volume and mass, mesoscopic thermodynamics focuses on systems in terms of positions and movement of particles. Some examples of processes explicable by this kind of thermodynamics include the translocation of ions, RNA unfolding under tension, and muscular contractions. Signe Kjelstrup argues that mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics (MNET) can address a longstanding problem in classical nonequilibrium thermodynamics, by addressing "activated processes." Biological systems have heat flow, says Kjelstrup, and "that is as of yet not included in the description of enzyme kinetics. It should be there to quantify lost work in these important systems." "An important question arising in nonequilibrium thermodynamics is not just entropy but temperature," says David Jou, in particular, "the physical meaning of temperature." Jou invokes the extended thermodynamics of viscoelastic systems, and looks for a simple model valid for a modest range of equations. Miroslav Grmela suggests that any time one goes from details to some kind of pattern, "there is an entropy involvedby providing some kind of dissipation, some pattern recognition process." Grmela believes that thermodynamics "find a natural formulation in the setting of contact geometry." Lyndsay Gordon's talk involves Maxwellian valves. He discusses "a machine based on an osmophoretic engine," a simple system with a liquid membrane, solvent and solute, "that is fluctuating completely forever," without information. "This thing goes by itself," he says. Eric Schneider discerns "laws of ecology" in such gradient systems as the energy flow between the sun and earth. "We can determine "heat and entropy production in the system," as well as "ecological successions and directional processes that directly tie them to Darwinian evolution." He advises his colleagues "to encourage policy makers to use exergy analyses on future energy development projects." Symposium organizer George Hatsopoulos wraps up by noting "that as far as I know in thermodynamics, there is no statement that says the Second Law implies the increase of entropy. The Second Law only says that the entropy cannot decrease, but there's nothing wrong with entropy staying put." We have evidence that in some cases it appears the entropy increases, but that's not the "Second Law." About the Speaker(s): Seth Lloyd received a Ph.D. in Physics from Rockefeller University, under the supervision of Heinz Pagels. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the High Energy Physics Department at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked with Murray Gell"Mann on applications of information to quantum"mechanical systems. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he worked at the Center for Nonlinear Systems on quantum computation. Since 1988, Lloyd has also been an adjunct faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute.br> Lloyd is a principal investigator at the Research Laboratory of Electronics. He has performed seminal work in the fields of quantum computation and quantum communications, including proposing the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer, demonstrating the viability of quantum analog computation, proving quantum analogs of Shannon's noisy channel theorem, and designing novel methods for quantum error correction and noise reduction. Lloyd is a member of the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Host(s): School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering

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