Sustainable Labs

Come join the fun! Activities include bike mechanic safety checks, group rides to Allston and BU, an interactive scavenger hunt, and opportunities to meet with campus stakeholders, bike vendors and shops, and local advocacy groups.

Why have our writers, artists, thinkers, and scholars been compelled to turn their attention towards the ‘plant script’ in the last one hundred years? Beginning from Jagadish Chandra Bose’s “torulipi”—the handwriting of plants or the plant script through which he hoped plants would write their autobiography—and moving through Rabindranath Tagore’s songs about the language of flowers; to poets writing about the syntax of the falling of leaves to artists trying to coax a vocabulary out of plants or creating a “tree alphabet,” Sumana Roy shall speak about the quest for the plant script, its codes, its compulsions, and its intimate histories.

Join us on September 19th, to hear from Tom Chappell, MTS’ 91, Co-Founder of Tom’s of Maine and author of The Soul of a Business and Managing Upside Down, reflect on insights from his career, education, and current work, from founding and building two successfully socially-responsible and sustainable American brands to creating a values–centered business practicum to guide the next generation of socially responsible business leaders.

Harvard Forest’s seminar series features cutting-edge research in ecology, land-use history, and climatic change, and its applications to conservation biology, environmental policy, forestry, and management of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems. Seminars occur during the fall and spring on Wednesdays from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time unless otherwise noted.

Epidemiologists (and historians) have learned an enormous amount by studying past outbreaks of infectious disease. Histories of epidemics have been used to calibrate epidemiological models and to understand the ways in which societies will likely respond to future disease outbreaks. Over the past decade, researchers and government officials have become increasingly concerned about climate related threats to public health, including heat waves, droughts, forest fires, and other extreme weather events. Like epidemics, these all have historical precedents. It is possible to examine the history of past climate-health emergencies in search of both epidemiological and historical insight into the nature of these threats. I will demonstrate this approach with an analysis of the heat wave that produced the hottest day in Boston history, July 4, 1911.