Online courses directory (19947)

This course highlights the interplay between cellular and molecular storage mechanisms and the cognitive neuroscience of memory, with an emphasis on human and animal models of hippocampal mechanisms and function. Class sessions include lectures and discussion of papers.

This course is an investigation of affective priming and creation of rigorously counterbalanced, fully computerized testing paradigm. Includes background readings, study design, counterbalancing, study execution, data analysis, presentation of poster, and final paper.

This course is an investigation to distinguish episodic memory, which is memory of personal events, from semantic memory, which is general knowledge independent of time and place.

This course explores the fundamentals of optical and optoelectronic phenomena and devices based on classical and quantum properties of radiation and matter culminating in lasers and applications. Fundamentals include: Maxwell's electromagnetic waves, resonators and beams, classical ray optics and optical systems, quantum theory of light, matter and its interaction, classical and quantum noise, lasers and laser dynamics, continuous wave and short pulse generation, light modulation; examples from integrated optics and semiconductor optoelectronics and nonlinear optics.

Students in ESD.00 work on projects to address large, complex and seemingly intractable real-world problems, such as energy supply, environmental issues, health care delivery, and critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, water supply, and transportation). The course introduces interdisciplinary approaches - rooted in engineering, management, and the social sciences - to considering these critical contemporary issues. Small, faculty-led teams select an engineering systems term project to illustrate one or more of these approaches.

This course explores electromagnetic phenomena in modern applications, including wireless communications, circuits, computer interconnects and peripherals, optical fiber links and components, microwave communications and radar, antennas, sensors, micro-electromechanical systems, motors, and power generation and transmission. Fundamentals covered include: quasistatic and dynamic solutions to Maxwell's equations; waves, radiation, and diffraction; coupling to media and structures; guided and unguided waves; resonance; and forces, power, and energy.

Acknowledgments

The instructors would like to thank Robert Haussman for transcribing into LaTeX the problem set and Quiz 2 solutions.

1.040 Project Management focuses on the management and implementation of construction projects, primarily infrastructure projects. A project refers to a temporary piece of work undertaken to create a unique product or service. Whereas operations are continuous and repeating, projects are finite and have an end date. Projects bring form or function to ideas or need. Some notable projects include the Manhattan Project (developing the first nuclear weapon); the Human Genome Project (mapping the human genome); and the Central Artery Project (Boston's "Big Dig"). The field of project management deals with the planning, execution, and controlling of projects.

The course is divided into three parts:

Part 1: project finance
Part 2: project evaluation
Part 3: project organization

This course will cover the basic tools, skills, and knowledge necessary to successfully manage a project through its inception, design, planning, construction, and transition phases. There will be several guest lectures discussing current projects, and a construction site visit to MIT's Media Lab extension.

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.

We will examine current research and theory regarding the validity and utility of commonly accepted gender differences in many realms. Topics include: gender differences in cognitive abilities; the social construction of gender; developmental, family, educational and medical influences; and political and economic forces.

This subject will be an intensive introduction to neuroanatomy, involving lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on laboratories, including a brain dissection. The course will not assume any prior knowledge of neuroanatomy, though some general knowledge of brain structures will be helpful.

This comprehensive course on the visual system is designed to ground future researchers in the field of visual science and to provide scientists with an excellent basis for using the visual system as a model in research. In this graduate seminar, anatomical, neurophysiological, imaging and behavioral research is examined in an attempt to gain a better understanding of how information is processed in the primate visual system.

This course explores perspectives in the policy process - agenda setting, problem definition, framing the terms of debate, formulation and analysis of options, implementation and evaluation of policy outcomes using frameworks including economics and markets, law, and business and management. Methods include cost/benefit analysis, probabilistic risk assessment, and system dynamics. Exercises include developing skills to work on the interface between technology and societal issues; simulation exercises; case studies; and group projects that illustrate issues involving multiple stakeholders with different value structures, high levels of uncertainty, multiple levels of complexity; and value trade-offs that are characteristic of engineering systems. Emphasis on negotiation, team building and group dynamics, and management of multiple actors and leadership.

Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary approach and means to enable the realization of successful systems. It focuses on defining customer needs and required functionality early in the development cycle, documenting requirements, then proceeding with design synthesis and system validation while considering the complete problem including operations, performance, test, manufacturing, cost, and schedule. This subject emphasizes the links of systems engineering to fundamentals of decision theory, statistics, and optimization. It also introduces the most current, commercially successful techniques for systems engineering.