Next Meeting

Monday 10/15 meeting in Barker Library.

UTF Email Archive

All UTF class-related emails will be posted here for easy reference. They are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first.

September Emails

Thursday October 11; "Update Your Memberships" in the wikis

Hi all,

The next time you log into any of the Mission wikis, click Renew My
Membership on the top right corner. We re-did the permissions to
clean up a little. If you find you can't log in and clicking that
button doesn't help, let me know.

Mariela

Wednesday, October 10; Showing up to class, Friday's Meeting Times

Hi all,

I heard from a few UTFs that lots of you did not show up to class on Wednesday. We would like to think that this is because you couldn't find your room, so I am sending you Friday's class locations again at the end of this email.

It is extremely important that you show up for class. This is not like TEAL, where you will lose a certain number of points if you are not there, but we do consider participation to be extremely important. Also, this is not a class where you can read the textbook on your own and do just as well as someone who is there every day. Discussing your research with your team and coming up with new ideas and theories is EXTREMELY important. For that, you have to be IN class.

If you think your team would do better using the class time for something different, talk to your UTF. You might be able to work something out. This is YOUR class. You decide what to do with your time. What you do, however, determines how much you get out of it and how good your proposed solution is.

You should now be moving on to thinking globally about your problem and coming up with preliminary proposals. You have deadlines coming up (check the website, under Web Design). Your final presentation is two months away. That's about 8 weeks. Not that much time.

These are the classrooms for Friday:

Friday, October 12

56-162 - Team 1

56-167 - Team 2

56-180 - Team 3

56-191 - Team 4

66-154 - Team 5

66-156 - Team 6

66-160 - Team 7

66-168 - Team 89

16-168 - Team 10

Wednesday, October 10; Fwd: Presentation Questions

----- Forwarded message from lisa_s@MIT.EDU -----
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 15:51:58 -0400
From: Lisa Song <lisa_s@MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: Lisa Song <lisa_s@MIT.EDU>
Subject: presentation Q's
To: Kathryn Pesce <kpesce@mit.edu>, Levon Thomas <levont@mit.edu>, Kristin
Uhmeyer <uhmeyer@mit.edu>

Hi everyone,

I wrote down these questions/comments during team A's presentation last
week. Just thought I'd share them...I'll be asking my team these tomorrow.

1. Learn more about the economic impacts of your plan. Compare your plan to
existing plans. Can your plan enhance preservation and still have the same
economic impact on fishermen as current quotas/government regulations do?
Can your plan improve preservation and improve the fishermen's current
economic status at the same time?

2. Do you think fishermen will want to act as regulation-control for their
fellow fishermen? (A question you could ask the Gloucester fishermen next
weekend on the field trip)

3. What is your system to monitor the effectiveness of your closed areas?
Will there be a mechanism in place to adapt your plans as you monitor the
fish stocks?

Enjoy the rest of your super-long weekend!
--Lisa

----- End forwarded message -----

Wednesday, October 10 (From Professor Bowring)

Greetings,

I hope you enjoyed your long weekend and that your group meetings today were
fruitful. Some of you managed to hear Daniel Pauly's talk on Tuesday and it
was quite good and very relevant. I have attached two papers by him, one
describes "The Sea around us Project" and the other is a paper on the dangers
of overfishing deep water species. I strongly encourage you to read both of
these, if you have not already done so.

As we move into October each group should now start thinking more about the
problem of fishery collapse on a more global scale. As dire as the situation
is in the Northeast, the situation for much of the rest of the planet is even
worse. Pauly's paper is sobering to say the least. Our planet needs you to
come up with some solutions and very quickly. I have every confidence that the
solutions you propose will be better than current policies. If we are to lose
vast marine ecosystems due to lack of action the consequences for us as a
species could indeed be very serious.

Your presentations on the Mini project were every good and showed your abilities
to synthesize and integrate. However I am sure you have come to appreciate how
much more difficult it will be to scale up to the whole planet.

On Wednesday and Friday the 17th and 19th I would like each group to address
the class with a brief description of their progress to date--their ideas for
interactions with other groups and a beginning sense of where each group is
headed. On Wednesday groups 1-4, and on Friday 5-10 will present to the
class. On Monday the 22nd we will have a whole class discussion about the
problem, the status of the project, and where you would like to go from here.
So you have this Friday the 12th and Monday the 15th to organize your work.

Sam

Wednesday October 10, Mission today 36-144

Hi Team 5,

Welcome back from your long weekend. Great job last week, guys. Please be on
time for our group-only meeting today in 36-144, which is the same building as
your middle-size team meeting last week.

If you have an unavoidable conflict with Mission on a particular day, please
send me an email or let me know some other way and tell me that you're not
expecting to be in class for the day. We're not keeping attendance like they
might in TEAL or a HASS class or something, but it's just courteous and helps
me be aware of what will be going on, and your participation level in general
does have weight on your grade. Also, if there's a problem that's preventing
you from getting to class, I can help try to work it out with you. However,
your team will function best with full participation, especially as we meet
solely as a team for the next stretch to develop your team plans and wiki.

Topics of discussion for today: last week's presentation, use of the wiki/email
and group work strategy, and where to move forward as a team.

Friday we will be in 66-154. No more big group meetings at least for the rest of
the week.

-Kristin

Monday, October 8; Gloucester Trip (Professor Bowring)

Greetings,

I hope you are all enjoying your long weekend. This is just a
reminder to those of you who have not yet responded about the field
trip on October 20th and for the symposium tomorrow. The talk by
Pauly is very relevant and I urge as many of you to attend as possible.

Sam

> Announcing the 2007 MIT ESI/CGCS Symposium:
>
> "Earth System Revolutions: Key Turning Points in the History of our
> Planet"
>
> Tuesday, October 9, 2007
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> Building 10, Room 250
>
> Co-sponsored by the MIT Earth System Initiative <http://esi.mit.edu/
> > and
> the MIT Center for Global Change Science <http://mit.edu/cgcs/>
>
> The MIT ESI/CGCS Symposium "Earth System Revolutions" is organized
> in three
> sections, starting at 8:30 am on Tuesday, October 9 in MIT Building
> 10-250,
> running until 6:15 pm. MIT students are particularly encouraged to
> attend as
> it is being held on a class-vacation day.
>
> In the first session of the symposium, key examples of revolutions
> early in
> the history of the Earth System such as the advent of oxygenic
> photosynthesis, the origin of Life and the Cambrian Explosion, will be
> presented to bring to light the ever-evolving nature of the
> biosphere. In
> the second session, speakers will discuss the "Anthropocene", that
> is, the
> ways in which humans have fundamentally altered the chemical,
> physical and
> biological systems on this planet. Topics include the impact of our
> energy
> portfolio, our changing climate, biodiversity, and other ways that
> society
> and industry have intentionally or unintentionally shaped the
> Earth. The
> final session will focus on the possible futures of the Earth
> System. To
> highlight two simple extremes, should we as a society attempt to
> mitigate
> the effects of our changing planet through geo-engineering? Or
> should we
> accept the inevitable and adapt to a new planet? What middle ground
> is the
> best balance? What options are most likely to succeed in protecting
> Earth's
> resources for future generations? Discussion time is scheduled
> following
> each session to allow for audience participation.
>
> Agenda
> 8:30 - Welcome - Prof. Penny Chisholm
> <http://web.mit.edu/chisholm/www/people/chisholm.html> (ESI
> Director) and
> Prof. Ronald Prinn <http://mit.edu/rprinn/> (CGCS Director)
> 8:45 - Prof. Paul Falkowski
> <http://marine.rutgers.edu/faculty_pfalkowski.html> (Rutgers
> Univ.) "The
> Rise of Oxygen on Earth"
> 9:30 - Prof. Dianne Newman
> <http://web.mit.edu/biology/www/facultyareas/facresearch/
> newman.html> (MIT)
> "From Rocks to Genes and Back: Stories about the Evolution of
> Photosynthesis"
> 10:15 - Discussion
> 10:45 - Prof. Daniel Pauly <http://www.fisheries.ubc.ca/members/
> dpauly/>
> (Univ. British Columbia) "Fisheries and Global Warming: Impacts on
> Marine
> Ecosystems and Food Security"
> 11:30 - Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig
> <http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/crosenzweig.html> (NASA-GISS)
> "Climate
> Variability and Change and their Impacts on the Global Harvest"
> 12:15 - Lunch break
> 1:30 - Prof. Ronald Prinn <http://mit.edu/rprinn/> (MIT)
> "Anthropogenic
> Climate Change"
> 2:15 - Prof. Daniel Nocera
> <http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/www/faculty/nocera.html> (MIT)
> "Whales to
> Wood: Wood to Coal/Oil: What's Next?"
> 3:00 - Discussion
> 3:30 - Prof. Roger Angel
> <http://www.optics.arizona.edu/Faculty/Resumes/Angel.htm> (Univ.
> Arizona)
> "Solar Energy as a Major Replacement for Fossil Fuel"
> 4:15 - Dr. Margaret Leinen <http://www.climos.com/bios/
> mleinenbio.html>
> (Climos Inc.) "Geosciences and Carbon Sequestration to Address Climate
> Change"
> 5:00 - Prof. Braden Allenby <http://www.cspo.org/about/people/
> allenby.htm>
> (Arizona State Univ.) "Earth Systems Engineering and Management"
> 5:45 - Discussion
> 6:15 - Close
>
> The public is welcome to attend this symposium and no registration is
> necessary. Further information can be found at http://mit.edu/cgcs/
> and
> http://esi.mit.edu/content/view/139/1/.

Friday, October 5; Subject: 34-101 today

Meet today in 34-101 at 3 for the final group presentation.