Mobility Systems Center awards four projects for low-carbon transportation research

The Mobility Systems Center (MSC), one of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI)’s Low-Carbon Energy Centers, will fund four new research projects that will allow for deeper insights into achieving a decarbonized transportation sector.

"Based on input from our Mobility Systems Center members, we have selected an excellent and diverse set of projects to initiate this summer,” says Randall Field, the center’s executive director. “The awarded projects will address a variety of pressing topics including the impacts of Covid-19 on urban mobility, strategies for electric vehicle charging networks, and infrastructure and economics for hydrogen-fueled transportation.” The projects are spearheaded by faculty and researchers from across the Institute, with experts in several fields including economics, urban planning, and energy systems.

In addition to pursuing new avenues of research, the Mobility Systems Center also welcomes Jinhua Zhao as co-director. Zhao serves alongside Professor William H. Green, the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering. Zhao is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the director of the JTL Urban Mobility Lab. He succeeds Sanjay Sarma, the vice president for open learning and the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

“Jinhua already has a strong relationship with mobility research at MITEI, having been a major contributor to MITEI’s Mobility of the Future study and serving as a principal investigator for MSC projects. He will provide excellent leadership to the center,” says MITEI Director Robert C. Armstrong, the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering. “We also thank Sanjay for his valuable leadership during the MSC’s inaugural year, and look forward to collaborating with him in his role as vice president for open learning — an area that is vitally important in MIT’s response to research and education in the Covid-19 era.”

The impacts of Covid-19 on urban mobility

The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed all aspects of life in a remarkably short amount of time, including how, when, and why people travel. In addition to becoming the center’s new co-director, Zhao will lead one of the MSC’s new projects to identify how Covid-19 has impacted use of, preferences toward, and energy consumption of different modes of urban transportation, including driving, walking, cycling, and most dramatically, ridesharing services and public transit.

Zhao describes four primary objectives for the project. The first is to quantify large-scale behavioral and preference changes in response to the pandemic, tracking how these change from the beginning of the outbreak through the medium-term recovery period. Next, the project will break down these changes by sociodemographic groups, with a particular emphasis on low-income and marginalized communities.

The project will then use these insights to posit how changes to infrastructure, equipment, and policies could help shape travel recovery to be more sustainable and equitable. Finally, Zhao and his research team will translate these behavioral changes into energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions estimates.

“We make two distinctions: first, between impacts on amount of travel (e.g., number of trips) and impacts on type of travel (e.g., mixture of different travel modes); and second, between temporary shocks and longer-term structural changes,” says Zhao. “Even when the coronavirus is no longer a threat to public health, we expect to see lasting effects on activity, destination, and mode preferences. These changes, in turn, affect energy consumption and emissions from the transportation sector.”

The economics of electric vehicle charging

In the transition toward a low-carbon transportation system, refueling infrastructure is crucial for the viability of any alternative fuel vehicle. Jing Li, an assistant professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management, aims to develop a model of consumer vehicle and travel choices based on data regarding travel patterns, electric vehicle (EV) charging demand, and EV adoption.

Li’s research team will implement a two-pronged approach. First, they will quantify the value that each charging location provides to the rest of the refueling network, which may be greater than that location’s individual profitability due to network spillovers. Second, they will simulate the profits of EV charging networks and the adoption rates of EVs using different pricing and location strategies.

“We hypothesize that some charging locations may not be privately profitable, but would be socially valuable. If so, then a charging network may increase profits by subsidizing entry at ‘missing’ locations that are underprovided by the market,” she says. If proven correct, this research could be valuable in making EVs accessible to broader portions of the population. 

Cost reduction and emissions savings strategies for hydrogen mobility systems

Hydrogen-based transportation and other energy services have long been discussed, but what role will they play in a clean energy transition? Jessika Trancik, an associate professor of energy studies in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, will examine and identify cost-reducing and emissions-saving mechanisms for hydrogen-fueled mobility services. She plans to analyze production and distribution scenarios, evolving technology costs, and the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of hydrogen-based mobility systems, considering both travel activity patterns and fluctuations in the primary energy supply for hydrogen production.

“Modeling the mechanisms through which the design of hydrogen-based mobility systems can achieve lower costs and emissions can help inform the development of future infrastructure,” says Trancik. “Models and theory to inform this development can have a significant impact on whether or not hydrogen-based systems succeed in contributing measurably to the decarbonization of the transportation sector.

The goals for the project are threefold: quantifying the emissions and costs of hydrogen production and storage pathways, with a focus on the potential use of excess renewable energy; modeling costs and requirements of the distribution and refueling infrastructure for different forms of transportation, from personal vehicles to long-haul trucking based on existing and projected demand; and modeling the costs and emissions associated with the use of hydrogen-fueled mobility services.

Analysis of forms of hydrogen for use in transportation

MITEI research scientist Emre Gençer will lead a team including Yang Shao-Horn, the W.M. Keck Professor of Energy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Dharik Mallapragada, a MITEI research scientist, to assess the alternative forms of hydrogen that could serve the transportation sector. This project will develop an end-to-end techno-economic and greenhouse gas emissions analysis of hydrogen-based energy supply chains for road transportation.

The analysis will focus on two classes of supply chains: pure hydrogen (transported as a compressed gas or cryogenic liquid) and cyclic supply chains (based on liquid organic hydrogen carriers for powering on-road transportation). The low energy density of gaseous hydrogen is currently a barrier to the large-scale deployment of hydrogen-based transportation; liquid carriers are a potential solution in enabling an energy-dense means for storing and delivering hydrogen fuel. The scope of the analysis will include the generation, storage, distribution, and use of hydrogen, as well as the carrier molecules that are used in the supply chain. Additionally, the researchers will estimate the economic and environmental performance of various technology options across the entire supply chain.

“Hydrogen has long been discussed as a fuel of the future,” says Shao-Horn. “As the energy transition progresses, opportunities for carbon-free fuels will only grow throughout the energy sector. Thorough analyses of hydrogen-based technologies are vital for providing information necessary to a greener transportation and energy system.”

Broadening MITEI’s mobility research portfolio

The mobility sector needs a multipronged approach to mitigate its increasing environmental impact. The four new projects will complement the MSC’s current portfolio of research projects, which includes an evaluation of operational designs for highly responsive urban last-mile delivery services; a techno-economic assessment of options surrounding long-haul road freight; an investigation of tradeoffs between data privacy and performance in shared mobility services; and an examination of mobility-as-a-service and its implications for private car ownership in U.S. cities. 

“The pressures to adapt our transportation systems have never been greater with the Covid-19 crisis and increasing environmental concerns. While new technologies, business models, and governmental policies present opportunities to advance, research is needed to understand how they interact with one another and help to shape our mobility patterns,” says Field. “We are very excited to have such a strong breadth of projects to contribute multidisciplinary insights into the evolution of a cleaner, more sustainable mobility future.”

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A scientific approach to education reform

The Covid-19 pandemic has upended educational systems around the world, from kindergartens through graduate schools. Classes with students packed into seats and a teacher giving lessons from the front were suddenly transformed into some combination of online Zoom lessons, home instruction by parents, or solitary work. When things eventually stabilize and return to “normal,” what will that normal be?

Sanjay Sarma, MIT’s vice president for open learning, sees this unprecedented upheaval as a moment to get rid of outmoded methods with little pedagogical basis, and replace them with new approaches based on the latest scientific research on how learning works.

In a new book called “Grasp” Sarma has drawn on his years of experience directing MIT’s many online learning systems, including MITx and OpenCourseWare. With lessons from the use of these platforms and from ongoing research on cognitive science, he offers a vision of how teaching and learning can be radically improved using new methods.

Though the book was completed before the pandemic struck, its lessons have become all the more timely as the world has shifted toward online learning. Sarma recently published an essay on the lessons from the research on learning that are especially relevant to the present situation.

Online learning, he says, offers both advantages and disadvantages compared to in-person classes; it all depends on the approach taken, the subject matter, and the circumstances. Ultimately, looking ahead to a post-pandemic education system, the goal should be to combine the advantages of both online and in-person approaches — and jettison what doesn’t work.

One thing that has become clear from research in recent years is the benefit of what has been called a “flipped” classroom approach. In such a system, lessons that would typically be taught in the classroom would instead be given through online, video, audio, or written materials that students could absorb at their own pace, being able to pause and rewind a lecture repeatedly if necessary in order to grasp a point.

In scenarios where students have safely returned to school, classroom time would instead be devoted to the kinds of things that have traditionally been “homework,” such as working on math problems or on a project, where teachers could be there to offer help and guidance when needed, as students work away individually or in pairs or teams.

When it comes to the time spent lecturing in front of classrooms, Sarma says, “that could be done better online.” Another benefit to this approach is that providing information in shorter units of 10 or 15 minutes each, instead of fitting everything into one-hour or 90-minute lecture formats, has been shown to be much more effective, he says.

As for the interactive parts of teaching, Sarma points out that in some ways there can be advantages to having some kinds of classroom-like discussions in an online Zoom-style format, since that acts as a kind of equalizer so that nobody gets lost in the back rows. “At least they’re all in front of you,” he says. “There are no back-benchers.”

The real hope, of course, is to get back as soon as safely possible to learning situations that really do benefit from face-to-face interaction, he says. For example, projects that entail generating ideas, narrowing down choices, and ending up with a finished product — whether that’s a simple robot or a successful lab experiment or a musical composition — are an important way to build new knowledge and skills, he says. Such activities can benefit immensely from interactions while working hands-on as a team, and from judicious one-on-one coaching by an instructor who is watching carefully as the project unfolds.

The old view of education, Sarma says, saw students’ minds as pieces of paper, and the teacher’s job was essentially to write information on that paper. That’s all wrong, he says. “The student is building a model of the world, like a plant growing. What you need to do is tend to that plant.”

Every student is different, he says, and it’s important to serve the individual interests and needs of individual students. But, he says, that’s very different from the notion of “learning styles” that is prevalent in some educational circles, suggesting that some people learn better visually and others through sound, for example. That notion, he says, is totally unsupported by evidence. Rather, it’s more useful to home in on an individual student’s specific areas of confusion and struggle.

Much of Sarma’s book, which is subtitled “The science transforming how we learn,” is based on recent research using tools such as magnetic resonance imaging to study what takes place in the brain during the learning process. One key lesson, he says, is the importance of circling back to a topic multiple times, and of integrating different parts of a lesson with each other.

Traditionally, classes have often involved teaching a concept, giving an exam, and moving on, he says. But long-term learning is greatly reinforced if that concept is also reintroduced alongside the next one being taught, and if some exercises involve how the two concepts can interact. “If you’re teaching two or three concepts in succession, integrate across them. Give problems along the way that mix them up. It causes them to reload the thinking required for that first problem. It’s in the reloading where the learning occurs,” Sarma says.

For learning to last, he says, it’s also important to “ask [students] now, ask them a week later, and ask them a month later.”

The book delves into a wide variety of other aspects of how recent research is changing our understanding of many aspects of learning and teaching. For example, new ways of detecting the different ways brains process visual information could lead to very early detection of dyslexia, and to ways of applying early and more effective measures to help address it.

One key message of the book is the need for a new way of looking at the whole purpose of education. For a long time, a major function of educational institutions was what Sarma describes as “winnowing” — progressively sorting out the best and brightest students from the rest.

But that’s not an effective or useful strategy, he suggests. An approach that is built on inclusiveness and encouragement, which gives learners a chance to struggle and wrestle with a problem — though not to the point of discouragement and giving up — is likely to produce much better outcomes, Sarma says.

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Nergis Mavalvala named School of Science dean

Astrophysicist Nergis Mavalvala has been named the new dean of MIT’s School of Science, effective Sept. 1. She will succeed Michael Sipser, who will return to the faculty as the Donner Professor of Mathematics, after six years of service.

Mavalvala, the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics, is renowned for her pioneering work in gravitational-wave detection, which she conducted as a leading member of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. She has received numerous awards and honors for her research and teaching, and since 2015 has been the associate head of the Department of Physics. Mavalvala will be the first woman to serve as dean in the School of Science.

“Nergis’s brilliance as a researcher and educator speaks eloquently for itself,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “What excites me equally about her appointment as dean are the qualities I have seen in her as a leader: She is a deft, collaborative problem-solver, a wise and generous colleague, an incomparable mentor, and a champion for inclusive excellence. As we prepare for the start of this most unusual academic year, it gives me great comfort to know that the School of Science will remain in such capable hands.”

Provost Martin Schmidt announced the news today in a letter emailed to the MIT community, writing, “I very much look forward to working with Nergis and to benefiting from her unerring sense of scientific opportunity, infectious curiosity, down-to-earth manner and practical wisdom. I hope you will join me in congratulating her as she brings her great gifts as a leader to this new role.”

As with most everything she takes on, Mavalvala is energized and optimistic about the role ahead, even as she acknowledges the unprecedented challenges that the school, and the Institute as a whole, are facing in these shifting times.

“We’re in this moment where enormous changes are afoot,” Mavalvala says. “We’re in the middle of a global pandemic and economic challenge, and we’re also in a moment, at least in U.S. history, where the imperative for racial and social justice is really strong. As someone in a leadership position, that means you have opportunities to make an important and hopefully lasting impact.”

Leading with heart and mind

For the past five years as associate head of physics, Mavalvala oversaw the department’s academic programming and student well-being. She implemented new, more flexible doctoral requirements and exams, and expanded the department’s digital learning portfolio with the development of online versions for a number of core subjects. She also introduced changes to the department’s undergraduate and graduate advising, and helped to set in motion an extensive mentoring program. 

In collaboration with department head Peter Fisher, she co-founded the Physics Values Committee, a group of faculty, staff, and students who advise the department on issues of well-being, respect, inclusion, collaboration, and mentorship. The committee developed the department’s first values statement, which has become a model for departments and units across MIT, and at other universities.

Mavalvala launched initiatives to meet the department’s goals of education and advising, while aiming to reduce stress and workload on students, faculty, and staff. She also helped to revise the department’s graduate admissions procedures in order to increase equity and promote a more diverse student body.

Mavalvala has also made it a priority to listen to students, through town hall meetings, open office hours, and by including student representatives in key departmental committees.

“I have had the privilege of working with some amazing people,” she says of her time as associate department head. She credits the many students and colleagues she has worked closely with, especially Fisher: “Through him, I’ve learned about leadership with compassion, with heart.”

“Learning the language”

Mavalvala was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and grew up in Karachi. A tinkerer by nature, she often got up to her elbows in grease as she absorbed herself in the mechanics of bike repair. In school, she gravitated to math and physics early on, and her parents, strong advocates of both their daughters’ education, encouraged her to apply to college overseas.

At Wellesley College, she earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy, before moving to MIT in 1990, where she pursued a PhD in physics. Her advisor, Rainier Weiss, now professor emeritus of physics, was working out how to physically realize his idea of an interferometer to detect gravitational waves — minute disturbances rippling out through space from cataclysmic events millions to billions of light years away.

Mavalvala dove into the fledgling project, helping Weiss to build an early prototype of a gravitational-wave detector as part of her PhD thesis. Weiss’ idea would eventually take shape as LIGO, the twin 4-kilometer-long interferometers that in 2016 made the first direct detection of gravitational waves, a historic discovery that won Weiss and others the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics.

After completing her PhD work at MIT, Mavalvala went to Caltech in 1997 as a postdoc, studying the cosmic microwave background. In 2000, she joined on as a staff scientist at the LIGO Laboratory, where researchers were collaborating with Weiss’ group at MIT to build LIGO’s detectors. She spent two years with the Caltech team before accepting a position that took her back to MIT, where she joined the faculty in 2002 as assistant professor of physics.

Since then, she has helped to build up the MIT LIGO group, where she has worked to design and improve different parts of the interferometers. She also has led a team of scientists in developing tools to study and manipulate the barely perceptible quantum effects on LIGO’s massive detectors.

“To make an experiment like LIGO work, as large and complex that it is, takes the collaboration of hundreds of scientists, across geographical and cultural distances,” says Mavalvala, who sees useful crossover with her new role at the School of Science helm. “It’s good training for the dean’s position, because that’s going to require also spanning not just different fields of physics, but different fields of science, and learning the language of those fields.”

Mavalvala is a recipient of numerous honors and awards, including in 2010 the MacArthur Fellowship. In 2014, the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals recognized her as the LGBTQ+ Scientist of the year, and in 2015 she was awarded the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, as part of the LIGO team. In 2017, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. That same year, the Carnegie Corporation of New York recognized Mavalvala as a Great Immigrant honoree. She is also the first recipient of the Lahore Technology Award, given by the Information Technology University, a public university in Pakistan.

“A better MIT”

Mavalvala is optimistic about the road ahead and credits her predecessors, and especially Michael Sipser, for paving the way.

“In some ways, the years leading up to the pandemic have been good years for MIT from the side of scientific discovery, and our impact on the world,” Mavalvala says. “I’m awed by the number of things that Mike has done and has left in good shape. I will always be grateful for that, and plan to carry on with the many things that work well, while also continually improving what we do and how we do it, as needs and demands shift.”

Since LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves was reported in 2016, Mavalvala, with her deep passion for science and lively personality, has been sought after as a sort of unofficial ambassador to the public on behalf of astrophysics and STEM more broadly. Her identity as an openly queer immigrant woman scientist of color has also brought her public attention. As she takes on her new role, Mavalvala plans to continue to engage a wide audience with her passion for science and discovery.

“MIT is one of the top places in the world for doing cutting-edge science, and we will continue to maintain that eminence. At the same time, we also have to push on issues of diversity, issues of racial and social justice, and of work-life balance,” says Mavalvala, who is also a parent of two children. “There’s this idea at places like MIT that to be as excellent as we are in science and education, that has to come at the cost of all other aspects of being human. I reject that idea. So part of what I’d like to do, and part of my vision of a better MIT, is to find ways for those things to coexist, in good balance. I don’t have any illusions that some of these things will be harder to do, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

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The 14 Best Weekend Deals: Earbuds, Robot Vacuums, and More

In news that’s surprisingly not bad, a lot of Nintendo Switch games are on sale.

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A Standing Desk Changed My Life—It Can Save Yours Too

These motor-powered desks aren’t all hype. They actually do make you feel better—physically and mentally.

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Uganda: A ride-hailing app helps deliver contraceptives during lockdown

SafeBoda is a ride-hailing app which ensures access to contraceptives during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Celebs raise $7M for Biden-Harris campaign after convention

The event occurred the day after the former VP accepted the Democratic nomination for President.

Byron Allen, Jeffrey Katzenberg and George Clooney co-hosted a virtual fundraiser Friday (Aug. 21) for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, raising $7 million from about 25 Hollywood Democratic donors.

The intimate virtual event was organized by consulting firm GLS, and featured appearances from Biden, running mate Kamala Harris, and their spouses. 

Allen and his wife Jennifer Lucas co-hosted the event with Katzenberg and his wife Marilyn, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and Andrew Hauptman, and Clooney and his wife Amal, Deadline reports. 

Read More: Biden vows to defeat Trump, end US ‘season of darkness’

In a statement, Quibi founder Katzenberg said, “We are in the home stretch now. There is no question this is the most consequential election of our lifetime.”

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Allen, the founder and CEO of Entertainment Studios and Allen Media Group, said, “This is an extremely important moment in our nation’s history. We must all lean in, and I strongly believe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will give America the leadership and the must-needed change that we all deserve.”

Hauptman, chairman of Andell Inc., added, “Ellen and I are proud to lock arms with our co-hosts in support of the Biden-Harris campaign. The change coming in November can’t come fast enough.”

Biden and Harris previously announced at a grassroots fundraising event that his campaign had raised over $26 million in the first 24 hours after his running mate announcement. After 48 hours, a reported 48 million was raised.

Friday’s event was hosted the day after the former vice president accepted the Democratic nomination for President.

theGrio previously reported, in his strongest remarks of the campaign, Biden spoke both of returning the United States to its traditional leadership role in the world and of the deeply personal challenges that shaped his life. Virtually every sentence of his 22-minute speech was designed to present a sharp, yet hopeful, contrast with the Republican incumbent.

“Here and now I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. l’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America.”

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Only 11 percent of Senate aides are POC, study finds

The report found only 3.1 percent of top staff positions are held by Black people.

Diversity among top Senate staffers in Washington offices remains overwhelmingly white, which continues to receive scrutiny amid the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 crisis. 

While people of color make up 40 percent of the American population, only 11 percent of top staff in Senate offices represent this group, according to a new study conducted by LaShonda Brenson of the  Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, nonpartisan think tank. 

Brenson defines “top staff” in Senate offices of the chief of staff, legislative director and communications director. Overall, the report found only 3.1 percent of top staff positions are held by Blacks, 3.8 percent are Latinos and Asian American/Pacific Islanders makeup 2.7 percent, per the New York Times. 

Read More: Senate details Trump campaign’s contact with Russia, draws final conclusion

Seven senators reportedly have staff that are over 50 percent nonwhite. Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.) allegedly has the most diverse staff, with 65 percent nonwhite.

Senator Corry Booker (D-NJ) (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii had the second-most diverse staff, with 64 percent non-Caucasian. When it comes former presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris of California, 28 percent of her staff reportedly identified as Latino and 26 percent as Black.

“A lot of it has to do with how hiring is done on the Hill. A lot of times the folks who are in these positions to make hiring decisions often times choose within their own network that is likely not diverse,” Brenson told The Hill as to why the diversity problem persists.

“I think hiring managers need to think more about not just what is on someone’s résumé, while important, but also the kind of experiences that can’t be written on a résumé, but can be felt in a room when you’re negotiating policy, when you’re interacting with different communities and different constituents,” she added. 

Benson called out the Trump administration’s response to how the COVID-19 crisis has disproportionately hurt Black Americans. Perhaps a more diverse staff would support inclusive legislation that provides “significant relief,” she said.

“If you look at what’s going on right now with the pandemic, African Americans, specifically, are disproportionately dying and getting ill from COVID-19. There’s a failure in the Trump administration and Congress to enact real policy that going to provide significant relief,” Benson said.

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5 Highlighting Moments From the DNC You’ll Want to Watch Again

The promise of equality, liberty, and justice underscored the 2020 Democratic National Convention this week. The four-day virtual event featured a number of establishment leaders, Party favorites, celebrity performances, and testimonies from everyday people struggling in Trump’s America. From race relations to immigration to climate change to women’s rights, the convention stressed how these issues are being exacerbated under the Trump administration. The speakers also emphasized how the White House has failed to protect Americans from the global COVID-19 pandemic while highlighting the calls for justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

The DNC culminated in a final acceptance speech from Joe Biden, who opened with a quote from civil rights activist Ella Baker.

“Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way,” he said. “Give people light. Those are words for our time. The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division,” he continued. “Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness,” he said.

Here are five of the best moments from the 2020 DNC.

Kamala Harris Accepts the VP Nomination

Sen. Kamala Harris made history Wednesday evening, becoming the first Black woman to accept the nomination as vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. During her speech, the HBCU grad praised her mother, who immigrated from India at the age of 19 years old, and emphasized how Black and brown communities are being affected by the coronavirus and systemic racism.

“Black, Latino, and Indigenous people are suffering and dying disproportionately,” Harris said. “This is not a coincidence. It is the effect of structural racism, of inequities in health care and housing, job security, and transportation. The injustice in reproductive and maternal health care.”

Michelle Obama Slams Trump

The convention kicked off Monday night with former first lady Michelle Obama, who delivered a passionate speech, stressing the importance of voting and her support for Joe Biden. She also offered sharp criticism of President Trump.

“So, let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

Obama, who wore a VOTE necklace by a Black designer, also noted how Trump has failed to address the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests.

“Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided, and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention,” she continued. “But enough of you know me by now. You know that I tell you exactly what I’m feeling. You know I hate politics. But you also know that I care about this nation. You know how much I care about all of our children.”

Barack Obama’s Sober Speech

Rather than offering words of hope and inspiration, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech that warned Americans about the devastation that would be caused if Trump is reelected.

“Do not let them take away your power,” Obama said during his stark address from Philadelphia. “Don’t let them take away your democracy.”

Viral Security Guard Sensation Endorses Joe Biden

A security guard at The New York Times, who went viral last year after meeting Biden in an elevator, was the first person to nominate him at the convention.

“I take powerful people up on my elevator all the time. When they get off, they go to their important meetings. Me? I just head back to the lobby. But in the short time I spent with Joe Biden, I could tell he really saw me, that he actually cared, that my life meant something to him,” said Jacquelyn Brittany, who escorted Biden through the Times building and blurted out “I love you” on camera.

“And I knew, that even when he went into his important meeting, he’d take my story in there with him,” Brittany continued. “We’ve been through a lot, and we have tough days ahead, but nominating someone like that to be in the White House is a good place to start. “That’s why I nominate my friend as the next president of the United States,” Brittany concluded.

Jacquelyn Brittany nominates “my friend” Joe Biden for president of the United States.

She is a security guard who last year told Biden “I love you” as she escorted him in an elevator. pic.twitter.com/lW1Ji4In9o

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) August 19, 2020

Colin Powell Endorses Joe Biden

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was one of several Republicans who endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate at the convention.

“The values I learned growing up in the South Bronx and serving in uniform were the same values that Joe Biden’s parents instilled in him in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I support Joe Biden for the presidency of the United States because those values still define him, and we need to restore those values to the White House,” Powell said in a video released by the DNC ahead of the second night of convention programming.

Powell served as the Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 in George W. Bush’s administration. Other noted Republicans who appeared at the DNC included former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Cindy McCain, the wife of late Sen. John McCain.

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‘Nellyville’ producer charged in plot to kill Sweetie Pie owner’s nephew

Waiel ‘Wally’ Yaghnam allegedly conspired with the victim’s uncle, Timothy Norman, in the murder scheme. 

A St. Louis record producer behind Nelly’s 2002 hit album “Nellyville” has been indicted in connection with the murder-for-hire plot to kill the grandson of Sweetie Pie’s owner Robbie Montgomery.

Federal prosecutors say Waiel “Wally” Yaghnam, 42, a music producer-turned insurance agent, worked with Timothy Norman, 41, Montgomery’s son, to fraudulently obtain a life insurance policy on his nephew, 21-year-old Andre Montgomery Jr., St. Louis Dispatch reports.

Yaghnam worked as Norman’s insurance agent, and faces one charge of conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud after he allegedly made false statements on life insurance applications for Montgomery, prosecutors allege.

Read More: Sweetie Pie’s owner charged in murder for hire plot in nephew’s death

theGRIO previously reported, Norman and his alleged co-conspirator, Terica Ellis, were arrested on federal charges earlier this week over the death of Montgomery, for whom Norman obtained a $450,000 life insurance policy in 2014. The nephew was fatally shot in St. Louis two years later. Norman tried unsuccessfully to collect on the policy one week after his death.

Norman, who starred in the OWN reality series Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s, was charged on Tuesday with conspiracy to use interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire, resulting in death, according to a criminal complaint published by local TV station WLBT.

Prosecutors connected him to the shooting based on his alleged communications with Ellis.

Ellis used a prepaid cell phone “to communicate with Montgomery and learn his physical location for the purpose of luring Montgomery outside,” according to a news release obtained by The Associated Press. “Immediately after learning Montgomery’s location, Ellis placed a call to Norman.”

Authorities have not said who shot the victim, but Yaghnam is not charged in the murder.

Read More: ‘Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s’ Miss Robbie suing son Tim

As a business partner in Sweetie Pie’s, Norman’s mother sued him in 2016 for copyright infringement after he opened several restaurants outside the St. Louis market.

Both Norman and his nephew appeared on OWN’s Sweetie Pie’s, which followed the restaurant family business in Mississippi and aired for nine seasons on OWN from 2011 to 2018.

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The post ‘Nellyville’ producer charged in plot to kill Sweetie Pie owner’s nephew appeared first on TheGrio.

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Libya crisis: Rival authorities announce ceasefire

The announcement for a nation riven by violence since 2011 is hailed by the UN.

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11 Tips for Creating Work/Life Balance in the Virtual Workplace

When you work remotely—as so many people are doing in the age of COVID-19—there’s no natural boundary between your workday and the rest of your life. Jackie Gaines, an award-winning senior executive with more than 40 years of sustained leadership experience, shows you how to build and maintain greater work/life balance so work doesn’t take over everything else.

According to a recent report, the average “pandemic workday” is 48.5 minutes longer than before. It also shows we are attending about 13% more meetings and sending 1.4 more emails per day to our colleagues. But this uptick in productivity has a downside: It’s destroying many people’s work/life balance.

“Our work/life balance is already in jeopardy thanks to the impact of COVID-19,” says Gaines, author of Wearing the Yellow Suit: A Guide for Women in Leadership. “Extended workdays only intensify the situation. We are all working hard at our jobs while trying to homeschool our kids, keep the household in order, and still carve out time to connect with loved ones and enjoy our lives. It’s a challenge for everyone.”

When you work from home, the “workday” becomes a slippery slope—especially when you’re constantly interrupted by your kids to help them get their schoolwork done online. If you’re not careful, meeting your work demands in this chaotic environment can crowd out your other priorities. But Gaines says you can take back control by getting very intentional about protecting your work/life balance in these unusual times.

(Image: Facebook/Jackie Gaines)

“We all need time to recharge from work,” says Gaines. “By setting some healthy habits for greater balance, you’ll be a much better employee or leader during work hours, and you’ll have more energy and focus for the other things you value.”

Here is your to-do list for living a balanced life:

Recognize the need for balance and commit to addressing it in your life. If you just devote all your time to work, then you’re going to be neglecting the social, spiritual, and a multitude of other important aspects of your life. Be a whole person; be fulfilled in all different aspects of your life.

Figure out what works for you. The “right balance” is a very personal thing and will change for each person at different times in their lives. There is no “one-size-fits-all.” What we need as a young adult is very different from what we need in our senior years … it also may be very different based on our culture, our gender, or any variety of factors. The point is … it is unique for each of us, but definitely something that we all require in our lives.

Beware of the technology chains that bind. Cell phones and PCs blur the distinction between work and personal time. Don’t fall victim to this temptation.

“In the age of nonstop virtual work meetings, you’re probably already sick of technology by the end of the workday,” says Gaines. “Spend time outside of work away from your devices. Have a conversation with someone in your household. Take a short walk for fresh air. Read a chapter in a book.”

Use your faith to help put life into perspective. “Faith makes all things possible,” says Gaines. “It offers me a healthy way to balance all personal, interpersonal, work-related, and community responsibilities. It is a rock to stand on in this crazy world … strength.”

Be organized. The most important issues related to having a good balance are organization, planning, and time management. This could mean planning meals a week in advance, laying out clothes the night before, and spending as much evening time with young children as possible.

(Image: Amazon.com)

Recognize that balance takes work. Balance is a necessary part of life—especially right now. It’s up to you to manage it. The choices made have costs and benefits associated with them. It is something that always has to be kept in mind to ensure that no component is neglected for too long. Here are some choices to think about:

• Consciously separate work and home.
• Consciously put family first.
• Work fewer hours. In work-from-home scenarios, set boundaries between work time and leisure time.
• Choose shift work so one partner is home to care for other family members.
• Learn to make do with less.

Have goals. Know your goal and plan accordingly. Know your priorities in life and what’s important.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. “I don’t stress out about daily life situations and I remember how fortunate I am to be healthy and safe,” says Gaines. “Most of all, you live only once and you need to strive for what you want and make the best of it. I don’t want to regret anything I didn’t do now when I am older.”

Enjoy life—focus on what is going well, not what is stressful. Take time to play, laugh, love, work, cry together, and respect each other. We all make mistakes at home and work. Take time for yourself and smile.

Remain fit and use exercise as a way to deal with stress. “I feel people who exercise regularly are better able to handle stress,” says Gaines. “Whether it’s 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 in the evening, exercising can improve the quality of your day. I also believe in recognizing the need for leisure activities that you enjoy, feeling connected to the community, and having goals for the future.”

Make a date with yourself. “You have probably heard about this trend for married couples to have a date night actually scheduled,” says Gaines. “I would like to push you into starting a new trend: date night, or morning … lunch … weekend … with yourself. If scheduling works best for you (it does for me), go for it! During your date time, do whatever it is that makes you happy—exercise, read, meditate, pray—whatever gives you just a small break for yourself. You will be surprised at the change you immediately start to feel in the quality of your life.”

Remember, there is no magic pill that helps you find balance. We have to spark that journey in ourselves or continue on the cycle of madness. Finding balance has to be a priority.

“A balanced life does not equate to 50/50 at all times either,” concludes Gaines. “However, if we are always running crazy, we will eventually implode. Strive to tilt the scales in the other direction periodically.”

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97,000 People Got Convalescent Plasma. Who Knows If It Works?

A treatment made from the blood of recovered Covid-19 patients seemed promising in March. Today … well, it’s still just promising.

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How One Man Broke Through Google's Election Ad Defenses

A Long Island search marketer found a way to exploit Google search ads and spread misinformation about candidates. The company pledges to fix the issue.

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5 Password Manager Perks You Might Not Be Using

These tools don't just keep your accounts safe and secure. Here's how you can use them to streamline your whole online experience.

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A Rocket Scientist’s Love Algorithm Adds Up During Covid-19

On the brink of a breakup, a JPL engineer computed a relationship prediction formula. It eventually became a dating app—and its value is rising in the midst of a pandemic.

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Mali's coup is cheered at home but upsets neighbours

Crowds cheered the ousting of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta but regional allies are not happy.

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This Team Made a $500 Ventilator—but It May Never Be Used

Fears of a ventilator shortage inspired doctors and engineers to improvise new designs. Inside the race to build a cheap, reliable machine.

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15+ practical Python projects with full walk-through tutorials

15+ practical Python projects for beginners. Use these projects to learn to code, build useful apps or build your portfolio.

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Biden vows to defeat Trump, end US ‘season of darkness’

‘If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst,’ the Democratic presidential nominee said on Thursday night.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Joe Biden accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night with a vow to be a unifying “ally of the light” who would move an America in crisis past the chaos of President Donald Trump’s tenure.

In his strongest remarks of the campaign, Biden spoke both of returning the United States to its traditional leadership role in the world and of the deeply personal challenges that shaped his life. Virtually every sentence of his 22-minute speech was designed to present a sharp, yet hopeful, contrast with the Republican incumbent.

“Here and now I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. l’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America.”

Read More: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris talk ‘modern family’ values in 1st joint interview

For the 77-year-old Biden, the final night of the Democratic National Convention was bittersweet. He accepted a nomination that had eluded him for over three decades because of personal tragedy, political stumbles and rivals who proved more dynamic.

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE – AUGUST 20: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivers his acceptance speech on the fourth night of the Democratic National Convention from the Chase Center on August 20, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. The convention, which was once expected to draw 50,000 people to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is now taking place virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

But the coronavirus denied him the typical celebration, complete with the customary balloon drop that both parties often use to fete their new nominees. Instead, Biden spoke to a largely empty arena near his Delaware home.

Afterward, fireworks lit the sky outside the arena where supporters waited in a parking lot, honking horns and flashing headlights in a moment that finally lent a jovial feel to the event.

The keynote address was the speech of a lifetime for Biden, who would be the oldest president ever elected if he defeats Trump in November. Trump, who is 74, publicly doubts Biden’s mental capacity and calls him “Slow Joe,” but with the nation watching, he was firm and clear.

Still, the convention leaned on a younger generation earlier in the night to help energize his sprawling coalition.

Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois senator who lost both legs in Iraq and is raising two young children, said Biden has “common decency.”

Cory Booker, only the ninth African American senator in U.S. history, said Biden believes in the dignity of all working Americans.

And Pete Buttigieg, the 38-year-old former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and a gay military veteran, noted that Biden came out in favor of same-sex marriage as vice president even before President Barack Obama.

“Joe Biden is right, this is a contest for the soul of the nation. And to me that contest is not between good Americans and evil Americans,” Buttigieg said. “It’s the struggle to call out what is good for every American.”

Above all, Biden focused on uniting the nation as Americans grapple with the long and fearful health crisis, the related economic devastation, a national awakening on racial justice — and Trump, who stirs heated emotions from all sides.

Biden’s positive focus Thursday night marked a break from the dire warnings offered by former President Obama and others the night before. The 44th president of the United States warned that American democracy itself could falter if Trump is reelected, while Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, the 55-year-old California senator and daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, warned that Americans’ lives and livelihoods were at risk.

Read More: Kamala Harris says ‘there is no vaccine for racism’ in rousing DNC speech

Democratic vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) speaks on the third night of the Democratic National Convention from the Chase Center August 19, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Biden’s Democratic Party has sought this week to put forward a cohesive vision of values and policy priorities, highlighting efforts to combat climate change, tighten gun laws and embrace a humane immigration policy. They have drawn a sharp contrast with Trump’s policies and personality, portraying him as cruel, self-centered and woefully unprepared to manage virtually any of the nation’s mounting crises and policy challenges.

Voting was another prime focus of the convention on Thursday as it has been all week. Democrats fear that the pandemic — and Trump administration changes at the Postal Service — may make it difficult for voters to cast ballots in person or by mail.

Comedian Sarah Cooper, a favorite of many Democrats for her videos lip syncing Trump’s speeches, put it bluntly: “Donald Trump doesn’t want any of us to vote because he knows he can’t win fair and square.”

Read More: Sarah Cooper gets Netflix special after going famous for trolling Trump

Biden’s call for unity comes as some strategists worry that Democrats cannot retake the White House simply by tearing Trump down, that Biden needs to give his sprawling coalition something to vote for. That’s easier said than done in a modern Democratic Party made up of disparate factions that span generation, race and ideology.

Though he has been in the public spotlight for decades as a Delaware senator, much of the electorate knows little about Biden’s background before he began serving as Obama’s vice president in 2008.

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) presents the Medal of Freedom to Vice-President Joe Biden during an event in the State Dining room of the White House. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)

Thursday’s convention served as a national reintroduction of sorts that drew on some of the most painful moments of his life.

“I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes,” Biden said. He added: “I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose.”

As a schoolboy, Biden was mocked by classmates and a nun for a severe stutter. He became a widower at just 30 after losing his wife and infant daughter to a car accident. And just five years ago, he buried his eldest son who was stricken by cancer.

From such hardship, Biden developed a deep sense of empathy that has defined much of his political career. And throughout the convention, Biden’s allies testified that such empathy, backed by decades of governing experience, makes him the perfect candidate to guide the nation back from mounting health and economic crises.

His allies Thursday included Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy from Concord, New Hampshire. The boy said he and Biden were “members of the same club,” each with a stutter they’re working to overcome.

He noted that Biden told him about a book of poems he liked to read aloud to practice his speech and showed the boy how he marks his speeches so they’re easier to read aloud.

“I’m just a regular kid, and in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me more confident about a thing that’s bothered me my whole life,” Harrington said.

The end of the carefully scripted convention now gives way to a far less-predictable period for Biden and his Democratic Party as the 2020 election season speeds to its uncertain conclusion. While Election Day isn’t until Nov. 3, early voting gets underway in several battleground states in just one month.

Biden has maintained a polling advantage over Trump for much of the year, but it remains to be seen whether the Democratic nominee’s approach to politics and policy will genuinely excite the coalition he’s courting in an era of uncompromising partisanship.

Trump’s Republican Party is expected to deliver a message next week squarely focused on the president’s most loyal supporters..

Biden summed up his view of the campaign: “We choose a path of becoming angry, less hopeful and more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion, or we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal.”

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Want to travel overseas? This website shows where you're allowed to go during the pandemic

A new website helps travelers plan for trips by collating Covid-19 information related to tourist restrictions, entrance requirements, lockdown limitations, and outbreak details for countries all over the world.

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Real-time data for a better response to disease outbreaks

Kinsa was founded by MIT alumnus Inder Singh MBA ’06, SM ’07 in 2012, with the mission of collecting information about when and where infectious diseases are spreading in real-time. Today the company is fulfilling that mission along several fronts.

It starts with families. More than 1.5 million of Kinsa’s “smart” thermometers have been sold or given away across the country, including hundreds of thousands to families from low-income school districts. The thermometers link to an app that helps users decide if they should seek medical attention based on age, fever, and symptoms.

At the community level, the data generated by the thermometers are anonymized and aggregated, and can be shared with parents and school officials, helping them understand what illnesses are going around and prevent the spread of disease in classrooms.

By working with over 2,000 schools to date in addition to many businesses, Kinsa has also developed predictive models that can forecast flu seasons each year. In the spring of this year, the company showed it could predict flu spread 12-20 weeks in advance at the city level.

The milestone prepared Kinsa for its most profound scale-up yet. When Covid-19 came to the U.S., the company was able to estimate its spread in real-time by tracking fever levels above what would normally be expected. Now Kinsa is working with health officials in five states and three cities to help contain and control the virus.

“By the time the CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control] gets the data, it has been processed, deidentified, and people have entered the health system to see a doctor,” say Singh, who is Kinsa’s CEO as well as its founder. “There’s a huge delay from when someone contracts an illness and when they see a doctor. The current health care system only sees the latter; we see the former.”

Today Kinsa finds itself playing a central role in America’s Covid-19 response. In addition to its local partnerships, the company has become a central information hub for the public, media, and researchers with its Healthweather tool, which maps unusual rates of fevers — among the most common symptom of Covid-19 — to help visualize the prevalence of illness in communities.

Singh says Kinsa’s data complement other methods of containing the virus like testing, contact tracing, and the use of face masks.

Better data for better responses

Singh’s first exposure to MIT came while he was attending the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government as a graduate student.

“I remember I interacted with some MIT undergrads, we brainstormed some social-impact ideas,” Singh recalls. “A week later I got an email from them saying they’d prototyped what we were talking about. I was like, ‘You prototyped what we talked about in a week!?’ I was blown away, and it was an insight into how MIT is such a do-er campus. It was so entrepreneurial. I was like, ‘I want to do that.’”

Soon Singh enrolled in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, an interdisciplinary program where Singh earned his master’s and MBA degrees while working with leading research hospitals in the area. The program also set him on a course to improve the way we respond to infectious disease.

Following his graduation, he joined the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), where he brokered deals between pharmaceutical companies and low-resource countries to lower the cost of medicines for HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. Singh described CHAI as a dream job, but it opened his eyes to several shortcomings in the global health system.

“The world tries to curb the spread of infectious illness with almost zero real-time information about when and where disease is spreading,” Singh says. “The question I posed to start Kinsa was ‘how do you stop the next outbreak before it becomes an epidemic if you don’t know where and when it’s starting and how fast it’s spreading’?”

Kinsa was started in 2012 with the insight that better data were needed to control infectious diseases. In order to get that data, the company needed a new way of providing value to sick people and families.

“The behavior in the home when someone gets sick is to grab the thermometer,” Singh says. “We piggy-backed off of that to create a communication channel to the sick, to help them get better faster.”

Kinsa started by selling its thermometers and creating a sponsorship program for corporate donors to fund thermometer donations to Title 1 schools, which serve high numbers of economically disadvantaged students. Singh says 40 percent of families that receive a Kinsa thermometer through that program did not previously have any thermometer in their house.

The company says its program has been shown to help schools improve attendance, and has yielded years of real-time data on fever rates to help compare to official estimates and develop its models.

“We had been forecasting flu incidence accurately several weeks out for years, and right around early 2020, we had a massive breakthrough,” Singh recalls. “We showed we could predict flu 12 to 20 weeks out — then March hit. We said, let’s try to remove the fever levels associated with cold and flu from our observed real time signal. What’s left over is unusual fevers, and we saw hotspots across the country. We observed six years of data and there’d been hot spots, but nothing like we were seeing in early March.”

The company quickly made their real-time data available to the public, and on March 14, Singh got on a call with the former New York State health commissioner, the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the man responsible for Taiwan’s successful Covid-19 response.

“I said, ‘There’s hotspots everywhere,” Singh recalls. “They’re in New York, around the Northeast, Texas, Michigan. They said, ‘This is interesting, but it doesn’t look credible because we’re not seeing case reports of Covid-19.’ Low and behold, days and weeks later, we saw the Covid cases start building up.”

A tool against Covid-19

Singh says Kinsa’s data provide an unprecedented look into the way a disease is spreading through a community.

“We can predict the entire incidence curve [of flu season] on a city-by-city basis,” Singh says. “The next best model is [about] three weeks out, at a multistate level. It’s not because we’re smarter than others; it’s because we have better data. We found a way to communicate with someone consistently when they’ve just fallen ill.”

Kinsa has been working with health departments and research groups around the country to help them interpret the company’s data and react to early warnings of Covid-19’s spread. It’s also helping companies around the country as they begin bringing employees back to offices.

Now Kinsa is working on expanding its international presence to help curb infectious diseases on multiple fronts around the world, just like it’s doing in the U.S. The company’s progress promises to help authorities monitor diseases long after Covid-19.

“I started Kinsa to create a global, real-time outbreak monitoring and detection system, and now we have predictive power beyond that,” Singh says. “When you know where and when symptoms are starting and how fast their spreading, you can empower local individuals, families, communities, and governments.”

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Economist Antoine Levy is all over the map

Some of the stereotypical differences between the United States and France do check out, according to Antoine Levy: The weather and the food are much worse in New England, he says, and the people are much more welcoming. But for Levy, who is about to start the fifth year of his MIT PhD program in economics, the U.S. is starting to feel like his native France in some ways.

“For a long time, I thought France was obsessed by politics and the United States was not,” he recalls. However, his impression has changed over the last five years. In France, from urban neighborhoods to small villages, he says everyone has an opinion on every government minister. Lately, he has felt a transformation around him, and has observed his peers in the U.S. becoming more interested in local politics as well.

While this may be a reflection of recent changes in the American political climate, a local perspective on policy is also a key signature of Levy’s research at MIT. Whether in France or the U.S., the economist has long been fascinated by how politics and economics converge in different ways from one region or locality to another.

All over the place

Levy’s research looks at how different sociodemographic markers within a country, such as population density, can shape economic activity and policy across these areas.

His current projects focus on harnessing the power of regional data to inform economic policy, from housing development to unemployment to political influence. For example, he has studied the Economic and Monetary Union of the E.U. after the Great Recession, in relation to the Phillips curve, which, somewhat controversially, suggests there is an inverse relationship between unemployment and wage growth. While aggregated national data do not demonstrate a clear Phillips curve, Levy has found that regional European data do follow the pattern –– indicating that policy informed by regional data might be more important than ever.

“We’ve talked a lot about political polarization, but there’s also been a massive spatial polarization over the last 25 years,” he explains. “That conjunction of economic geography and political geography has massive implications for the relative influence of places, and for the policy and politics of trade, social insurance, and redistribution.”

His latest work has been inspired by recent historical events –– Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the “yellow vest” protests in his native France –– which have exposed the way one-size-fits-all economic policies have left behind people in vastly different geographical situations. Too often, Levy says, people rely on a mythicized idea of a region without drilling down into the patterns of population and economic behavior there. For example, in one working paper, he argues that a significant part of Emmanuel Macron’s success in the 2017 French presidential election can be attributed to a specific campaign promise to abolish a housing tax that affected 80 percent of households in the country.

A key theme in his work is how regional economics have an important influence on individuals’ political decisions — though this is often overlooked by economists.

“There’s this thing in economics where people are called agents,” Levy says. “People do stuff. People write laws, people vote, people get jobs and consume. And at some point, you have to still ask what you would do in their place.”

Taking it all in

Part of Levy’s interest in regional variations comes from personal experience. Growing up, he moved around often for his father’s work as an executive in the food industry, which took the family from the midsized city of Lyon, in the southeast, to the much smaller Périgueux, in the southwest; eventually they moved to Paris for his mother’s medical care and school. Experiencing the daily economic differences between those places, even commonplace details like the cost of coffee, have impressed upon him the way one’s economic circumstances affect one’s choices.

“The fate of places and how it’s tied to economics: I think that’s something that you get to experience very concretely when you move around,” Levy says. “Especially in a country as diverse as France.”

Levy’s penchant for variety followed him to college, where he couldn’t bring himself to choose between a more academically oriented education at École Normale Supérieure and business school at HEC Paris. In an unusual move, he ended up enrolling in both. He says he wanted to keep an eye on everything in economics –– from fundamental research to more applied areas. His embrace of interdisciplinary approaches ultimately brought him to MIT, where he appreciates how his program has allowed him to fold together his early interests in macroeconomics and international finance, and his current work on microeconomic and spatial topics.

“The professors tend to always push you to explore your interests and be very open about your interests,” Levy says of the MIT economics department, where he is advised by professors Arnaud Costinot and Ivan Werning. “They were never excessively restrictive about what I should work on or what I should study, they were always very open to hear new ideas.”

That doesn’t mean the path has always been easy, especially with the sheer time investment of a doctoral degree. “I used to be the one who wanted to experience satisfaction in the very short run,” Levy says. “Sometimes you have to slow down and go back to the beginning instead of going through a project very quickly.” To keep himself going he also takes on smaller projects, like writing short proposals, book reviews, and popular press articles.

He also take the time to read the news or a favorite Philip Roth novel, and has fond memories of playing squash, picnicking on the Charles River, and bouncing research ideas with friends from his cohort and the French community at MIT. He has an affinity for his fellow ex-pats: “They made a choice of leaving France, and I think that’s always a sign of being ready to find out the limits of your openness.”

As he continues with his research, Levy plans to stay focused on issues that matter to the people around him, and remaining open to topics outside his expertise and immediate research field. Knowing that his work could have an impact on people’s lives keeps him passionate about economics, wherever it might take him in the future.

“It’s not something that you do for the sake of beauty,” he says of economics. “When you say you’re an economist, and you’re at the dinner table, people have tons of questions. If people have a question that they think is relevant for economics, then maybe it should be. You have to have an answer.”

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American Academy of Pediatrics apologizes for historic racism

Physicians group apologizes for intolerance of its first Black members and pediatricians. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued an apology for the organization’s past racism and intolerance of the first Black members.

The formal apology includes quotes from board meetings in the 1940s that highlight the initial rejections of Black doctors, specifically Alonzo deGrate Smith, MD, and Roland Boyd Scott, MD, who were refused membership in 1939 because of their race. 

Both men were ultimately accepted in the late 40’s. But they were only allowed to join for educational purposes and could not attend meetings in the South, per New York Times.

Read More: Pharrell says ‘We deserve a Black future’ in essay on racism

“This apology is long overdue,” said Dr. Sally Goza, the organization’s president, in a press release. “But we must also acknowledge where we have failed to live up to our ideals.” 

An excerpt of the minutes from the organization’s 1945 executive board meeting has been published online, check out out below:

“We talked with (Smith and Scott) for about a half hour and they conducted themselves as gentlemen. They said their only interest in wishing to join the Academy was for educational purposes. They said they would not attend any meetings held South of the Mason and Dixon line. They would attend meetings in other parts of the country, but under no circumstances enter into the social side for the reason that they did not want to get hurt themselves. I impressed upon them the importance should they be elected, of their being leaders and not pushers, and their acceptance in the Academy would be guidance for those who would come at a later time.”

Joseph Wright, MD, the first Black man elected to the AAP board, told Medscape Medical News that minutes from the organization’s executive board meetings in the 40’s had to be unearthed and shared in order to confront the organization’s history of discrimination. 

“There was an insistence that we make sure that we had this right, because no one in our leadership had the lived experience of these two gentlemen,” Wright said.

He also noted that the “torturous and shameful path” that Smith and Scott “endured to membership” had not previously been publicly shared.

“The surfacing of these transcripts renders no doubt in anyone’s mind about what it is that we’re talking about here,” Wright said.

“From their initial rejection in 1939 to their eventual acceptance in 1945, Drs. Smith and Scott were made to bear numerous indignities and clear many hurdles, despite being successful clinicians and established leaders in the pediatric academic community,” Goza said. “In fact, Dr. Scott would go on to receive the Abraham Jacobi Award, the Academy’s highest honor.”

“This apology is long overdue — and a precondition for a better future,” she added.

The AAP’s latest apology and statement will reportedly be published in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics.

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Megan Thee Stallion confirms Tory Lanez shot her: ‘Stop lying’

Citing police brutality, the hip-hop star said she did not tell police there was a gun in the car that fateful night.

Megan Thee Stallion took to social media on Thursday (Aug. 20) to finally confirm what has long been reported, that fellow rapper Tory Lanez shot her during an argument last month.

“Yes, this ni**a Tory shot me,” she said during an Instagram Live session, noting that Lanez “got his publicist and your people going to these blogs lying” about what really went down that night.

“I tried to keep the situation off the Internet. But you dragging it,” she added.

Read More: Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion gift $1 million via #WAPParty

Megan denies reports that she attacked Lanez because he was getting too cozy with Kylie Jenner at a pool party they attended at the home of the reality TV star. 

Megan Thee Stallion confirms that Tory Lanez shot her while she was trying to walk away after an argument. He’s done. pic.twitter.com/sqpTAY2pmQ

— Ronald Isley (@yoyotrav) August 21, 2020

She goes on to say that Lanez shot her after she decided to exit the car they were in following an argument. She makes clear that the incident did not occur outside of Jenner’s home, and that a witness in the neighborhood can backup her version of what happened. 

“I’m in the front seat, this ni**a in the back seat (as there were two other people in the car, her “homegirl” and Lanez’s bodyguard). “I’m done arguing,” she continued. “I don’t want to argue no more. I get out. I’m walking away, this ni**a, from out the backseat of the car, start shooting me. You shot me!”

Contrary to initial reports, Megan says she did not get cut by glass that was blown out from the bullets. 

Neighbors who overheard the commotion called police, and when law enforcement arrived at the scene, Megan said they were “aggressive” and ordered everyone out of the car. That’s when ultimate fear set in, as she was scared the cops were going to shoot them. 

Citing police brutality, Megan told her IG followers that she did not tell the police there was a gun in the car.

“I was scared,” she said. “You want me to tell the law that we got a gun in the car so they can shoot all us up?”

Hear/watch her tell it via the Twitter video embed above/below. 

Megan’s Live 8/20 Part 1 #MeganTheeStallion pic.twitter.com/t7kXKHq3N3

— Big Booty Joo Dee (@jd_rogers_) August 21, 2020

Read More: Megan Thee Stallion shooting could result in felony charges, prosecutors say

theGrio previously reported, Megan took to Instagram on Wednesday and posted a graphic photo of her injured foot, which showed peeled skin and stitches. She revealed the stitches were only just recently removed after being shot by Lanez.

“Lol what I have learned abt the majority of the people on social media is y’all like to hear bad news before good news, a lie spreads quicker than the truth, and y’all really be believing the sh– YALL make up,” she wrote in the since-deleted post.

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