Online courses directory (423)

This seminar will be a scientific exploration of the food we eat and enjoy. Each week we shall have a scientific edible experiment that will explore a specific food topic. This will be a hands-on seminar with mandatory attendance of at least 85%. Topics include, but are not limited to, what makes a good experiment, cheese making, joys of tofu, food biochemistry, the science of spice, what is taste?

This course is the second in a series of two courses in kitchen chemistry. The prerequisite to Advanced Kitchen Chemistry is ES.287 Kitchen Chemistry, which is also on OCW.

This course deals with the biology of cells of higher organisms: The structure, function, and biosynthesis of cellular membranes and organelles; cell growth and oncogenic transformation; transport, receptors, and cell signaling; the cytoskeleton, the extracellular matrix, and cell movements; chromatin structure and RNA synthesis.

This course focuses on computational and experimental analysis of biological systems across a hierarchy of scales, including genetic, molecular, cellular, and cell population levels. The two central themes of the course are modeling of complex dynamic systems and protein design and engineering. Topics include gene sequence analysis, molecular modeling, metabolic and gene regulation networks, signal transduction pathways and cell populations in tissues. Emphasis is placed on experimental methods, quantitative analysis, and computational modeling.

Covers the major results in the study of first language acquisition concentrating on the development of linguistic structure, including sentence structure and morphology. Universal aspects of development are discussed, as well as a variety of cross-linguistic phenomena. Theories of language learning are considered, including parameter-setting and maturation.

This course covers central topics in language processing, including: the structure of language; sentence, discourse, and morphological processing; storage and access of words in the mental dictionary; speech processing; the relationship between the computational resources available in working memory and the language processing mechanism; and ambiguity resolution. The course also considers computational modeling, including connectionist models; the relationship between language and thought; and issues in language acquisition including critical period phenomena, the acquisition of speech, and the acquisition of words. Experimental methodologies such as self-paced reading, eye-tracking, cross-modal priming, and neural imaging methods are also examined.

This course provides an introduction to the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, including experience with computer codes. It is intended for undergraduates and first year graduate students.

The MIT Biology Department core courses, 7.012, 7.013, and 7.014, all cover the same core material, which includes the fundamental principles of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and cell biology. Biological function at the molecular level is particularly emphasized and covers the structure and regulation of genes, as well as, the structure and synthesis of proteins, how these molecules are integrated into cells, and how these cells are integrated into multicellular systems and organisms. In addition, each version of the subject has its own distinctive material.

7.012 focuses on the exploration of current research in cell biology, immunology, neurobiology, genomics, and molecular medicine.

Acknowledgments

The study materials, problem sets, and quiz materials used during Fall 2004 for 7.012 include contributions from past instructors, teaching assistants, and other members of the MIT Biology Department affiliated with course #7.012. Since the following works have evolved over a period of many years, no single source can be attributed.

Probability theory captures a number of essential characteristics of human cognition, including aspects of perception, reasoning, belief revision, and learning. Expressions of degree of belief were used in language long before people began codifying the laws of probability theory. This course explores the history and debates over codifying the laws of probability, how probability theory applies to specific cognitive processes, how it relates to the human understanding of causality, and how new computational approaches to causal modeling provide a framework for understanding human probabilistic reasoning.

This class is suitable for advanced undergraduates or graduate students specializing in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and related fields.

This course emphasizes statistics as a powerful tool for studying complex issues in behavioral and biological sciences, and explores the limitations of statistics as a method of inquiry. The course covers descriptive statistics, probability and random variables, inferential statistics, and basic issues in experimental design. Techniques introduced include confidence intervals, t-tests, F-tests, regression, and analysis of variance. Assignments include a project in data analysis.

Motion, speed and time are three fundamental concepts in basic physics and they are important building blocks for understanding more advanced topics. This free online course introduces you to how distance, speed, time and mass are combined to give displacement, velocity, force and acceleration. Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion, which are the bedrock of much of our understanding of physics today, are also introduced and explained in a clear and concise manner. Along with explanations of the formulae used, a number of examples are worked through, giving a full understanding of the subject. References are also made as to how these formulae are used in real-world situations. By studying this course you will gain a clearer knowledge and understanding of important topics in basic physics. This course will be of great interest to students who are studying physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and some medical sciences, and to students who wish to pursue a career in any of the sciences or engineering fields, and to the individual who wants to understand how the world around us works.<br />

This course covers the principles of materials science and cell biology underlying the design of medical implants, artificial organs, and matrices for tissue engineering. Methods for biomaterials surface characterization and analysis of protein adsorption on biomaterials. Molecular and cellular interactions with biomaterials are analyzed in terms of unit cell processes, such as matrix synthesis, degradation, and contraction. Mechanisms underlying wound healing and tissue remodeling following implantation in various organs. Tissue and organ regeneration. Design of implants and prostheses based on control of biomaterials-tissue interactions. Comparative analysis of intact, biodegradable, and bioreplaceable implants by reference to case studies. Criteria for restoration of physiological function for tissues and organs.

This course discusses the principles of genetics with application to the study of biological function at the level of molecules, cells, and multicellular organisms, including humans. The topics include: structure and function of genes, chromosomes and genomes, biological variation resulting from recombination, mutation, and selection, population genetics, use of genetic methods to analyze protein function, gene regulation and inherited disease.

This seminar focuses on the cognitive science of moral reasoning. Philosophers debate how we decide which moral actions are permissible. Is it permissible to take one human life in order to save others? We have powerful and surprisingly rich and subtle intuitions to such questions.

In this class, you will learn how intuitions can be studied using formal analytical paradigms and behavioral experiments. Thursday evening, meet to learn about recent advances in theories of moral reasoning. Overnight, formulate a hypothesis about the structure of moral reasoning and design a questionnaire-based experiment to test this. Friday, present and select 1-2 proposals and collect data; we will then reconvene to analyze and discuss results and implications for the structure of the moral mind.

This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

This course is a seminar in real-time language comprehension. It considers models of sentence and discourse comprehension from the linguistic, psychology, and artificial intelligence literature, including symbolic and connectionist models. Topics include ambiguity resolution and linguistic complexity; the use of lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, contextual and prosodic information in language comprehension; the relationship between the computational resources available in working memory and the language processing mechanism; and the psychological reality of linguistic representations.

Lectures and discussions in this course cover the clinical, behavioral, and molecular aspects of the brain aging processes in humans. Topics include the loss of memory and other cognitive abilities in normal aging, as well as neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Discussions based on readings taken from primary literature explore the current research in this field.

This course is designed to provide an understanding of how the human brain works in health and disease, and is intended for both the Brain and Cognitive Sciences major and the non-Brain and Cognitive Sciences major. Knowledge of how the human brain works is important for all citizens, and the lessons to be learned have enormous implications for public policy makers and educators.

The course will cover the regional anatomy of the brain and provide an introduction to the cellular function of neurons, synapses and neurotransmitters. Commonly used drugs that alter brain function can be understood through a knowledge of neurotransmitters. Along similar lines, common diseases that illustrate normal brain function will be discussed. Experimental animal studies that reveal how the brain works will be reviewed.

Throughout the seminar we will discuss clinical cases from Dr. Byrne's experience that illustrate brain function; in addition, articles from the scientific literature will be discussed in each class.

What are the circuits, mechanisms and representations that permit the recognition of a visual scene from just one glance? In this one-day seminar on Scene Understanding, speakers from a variety of disciplines - neurophysiology, cognitive neuroscience, visual cognition, computational neuroscience and computer vision - will address a range of topics related to scene recognition, including natural image categorization, contextual effects on object recognition, and the role of attention in scene understanding and visual art. The goal is to encourage exchanges between researchers of all fields of brain sciences in the burgeoning field of scene understanding.