Online courses directory (19947)

This landscape and environmental planning workshop investigates and propose a framework for the enhancement, development and preservation of the natural and cultural landscape of the Cardener River Corridor in Catalunya, Spain. The workshop is carried out in conjunction with the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, and the Barcelona Provincial Council (Diputació de Barcelona).

This class examines how anthropology and speculative fiction (SF) each explore ideas about culture and society, technology, morality, and life in "other" worlds. We investigate this convergence of interest through analysis of SF in print, film, and other media. Concepts include traditional and contemporary anthropological topics, including first contact; gift exchange; gender, marriage, and kinship; law, morality, and cultural relativism; religion; race and embodiment; politics, violence, and war; medicine, healing, and consciousness; technology and environment. Thematic questions addressed in the class include: what is an alien? What is "the human"? Could SF be possible without anthropology?

Everyday we are bombarded with the word "global" and encouraged to see globalization as the quintessential transformation of our age. But what exactly does "globalization" mean? How is it affecting the lives of people around the world, not only in economic, but social and cultural terms? How do contemporary changes compare with those from other historical periods? Are such changes positive, negative or simply inevitable? And, finally, how does the concept of the "global" itself shape our perceptions in ways that both help us understand the contemporary world and potentially distort it? This course begins by offering a brief overview of historical "world systems," including those centered in Asia as well as Europe. It explores the nature of contemporary transformations, including those in economics, media & information technologies, population flows, and consumer habits, not through abstractions but by focusing on the daily lives of people in various parts of the world. This course considers such topics as the day-to-day impact of computers in Silicon Valley and among Tibetan refugees; the dilemmas of factory workers in the US and rural Java; the attractions of Bombay cinema in Nigeria, the making of rap music in Japan, and the cultural complexities of immigrant life in France. This course seeks not only to understand the various forms globalization takes, but to understand its very different impacts world-wide.

How do we sense hunger? How do we sense pain? What causes growth in our bodies? How are we protected from pathogens? The answer to many of these questions involves small polymers of amino acids known as peptides. Peptides are broadly used as signal molecules for intercellular communication in prokaryotes, plants, fungi, and animals. Peptide signals in animals include vast numbers of peptide hormones, growth factors and neuropeptides. In this course, we will learn about molecular bases of peptide signaling. In addition, peptides potentially can be used as potent broad-spectrum antibiotics and hence might define novel therapeutic agents.

This course is one of many Advanced Undergraduate Seminars offered by the Biology Department at MIT. These seminars are tailored for students with an interest in using primary research literature to discuss and learn about current biological research in a highly interactive setting. Many instructors of the Advanced Undergraduate Seminars are postdoctoral scientists with a strong interest in teaching.

This free online course was built specifically as an aid to teachers of the technology subjects to help them in their understanding of safety, health and welfare, particularly within the technology classroom. <br />

This class deals with the fundamentals of characterizing and recognizing patterns and features of interest in numerical data. We discuss the basic tools and theory for signal understanding problems with applications to user modeling, affect recognition, speech recognition and understanding, computer vision, physiological analysis, and more. We also cover decision theory, statistical classification, maximum likelihood and Bayesian estimation, nonparametric methods, unsupervised learning and clustering. Additional topics on machine and human learning from active research are also talked about in the class.

Adobe Flash is the leading software programme for producing multimedia applications. In this free online tutorial for Adobe Flash CS3, you will learn in a step-by-step manner how to use the Flash interface, how to create basic ActionScript code, and how to incorporate video into Adobe Flash CS3. You will also learn how to create interactive quiz questions. Use this course to learn more about Abode Flash CS3 and you will be able to create sophisticated multimedia presentations.<br />

This course is aimed at the aspiring planning practitioner, policy-maker, or industry decision-maker with an interest in urban transportation and environmental issues in Latin America. The course will focus on current transport-related themes confronting many cities in the region, including: rapid motorization and suburbanization and subsequent impacts on transportation infrastructure and quality of life; public sector management and improvement of privately-owned and operated transit systems; and, transportation air pollution problems and potential solutions.

The course will be geared towards interactive problem-solving, taking advantage of students' skills and experiences in: institutional analysis, policy analysis, and project and program evaluation and implementation. Detailed knowledge of transportation planning is not required; instead, the course will attempt to place the general practitioner into a specific transportation public policy situation and draw from her skills to devise real solutions. To fulfill this problem-solving orientation, the course will be divided into two parts. Part I of the course will consist of a series of lectures on the principal issues surrounding transportation in the developing world (including motorization, fiscal pressures, urban sprawl), concepts of  sustainability as they relate to urban transportation, regional strategic planning approaches, and transportation policy and technology options and examples of successful implementation.  After these lectures, Part II of the course will be dedicated to the two case studies, where students will apply the knowledge gained in Part I to develop strategic solutions to the transport-land use-environment challenges in two different cities.

SI 508 has been taught in various forms from 2006 to 2008 to master

This course is designed for high-intermediate ESL students who need to develop better listening comprehension and oral skills, which will primarily be achieved by detailed instructions on pronunciation. Our focus will be on (1) producing accurate and intelligible English, (2) becoming more comfortable listening to rapidly spoken English, and (3) learning common expressions, gambits, and idioms used in both formal and informal contexts.

What is a "life" when it's written down? How does memory inform the present? Why are memoirs so popular? This course will address these questions and others, considering the relationship between biography, autobiography, and memoir and between personal and social themes. We will closely examine some recent memoirs: Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Students will write two brief papers: a critical essay and an experiment in memoir.

As a "Sampling," this class offers 6 units, with a strong emphasis on close reading, group discussion, focused writing, and research and presentation skills.

This course offers a rigorous treatment of linear algebra, including vector spaces, systems of linear equations, bases, linear independence, matrices, determinants, eigenvalues, inner products, quadratic forms, and canonical forms of matrices. Compared with 18.06 Linear Algebra, more emphasis is placed on theory and proofs.

China's rise as a great power raises important questions about how that power might be used in its relations with other states. Nowhere are such questions more salient than in the future trajectory of China's conflict behavior, including its approach to deterrence, crisis management and the use of force. To explore these important questions in China's international relations, this seminar examines the evolution of Chinese strategic thought, in primary sources as well as its reflection in the interactions among Chinese states and between China and other states.

In keeping with the tradition of the last twenty-some years, the Readings in Optimization seminar will focus on an advanced topic of interest to a portion of the MIT optimization community: randomized methods for deterministic optimization. In contrast to conventional optimization algorithms whose iterates are computed and analyzed deterministically, randomized methods rely on stochastic processes and random number/vector generation as part of the algorithm and/or its analysis. In the seminar, we will study some very recent papers on this topic, many by MIT faculty, as well as some older papers from the existing literature that are only now receiving attention.

This course discusses the basics every manager needs to organize successful technology-driven innovation in both entrepreneurial and established firms. We start by examining innovation-based strategies as a source of competitive advantage and then examine how to build organizations that excel at identifying, building and commercializing technological innovations. Major topics include how the innovation process works; creating an organizational environment that rewards innovation and entrepreneurship; designing appropriate innovation processes (e.g. stage-gate, portfolio management); organizing to take advantage of internal and external sources of innovation; and structuring entrepreneurial and established organizations for effective innovation. The course examines how entrepreneurs can shape their firms so that they continuously build and commercialize valuable innovations. Many of the examples also focus on how established firms can become more entrepreneurial in their approach to innovation.

City to City, as a class, will jump into the complexity of planning in New Orleans, a post-disaster city. City-to-City will ask how a post-disaster city grapple with its ideas of identity, what it is, who it represents, and how it projects its sense of self to residences, businesses, tourists, and to the outside world. In considering its people, how do city planners think about who lives where and why? At the same time, how can city planners celebrate a city's history and its culture and how can these elements be woven into reconstruction? Students will travel from Cambridge to New Orleans over Spring Break to meet and consult with their alumni clients, and continue to work on projects.

Using an interactive, multimedia design, this course introduces the learner to government policy from an economic perspective. Learners are given a rigorous introduction to budgetary policy via topics such as resource allocation and distribution of wealth. Microeconomic policy is then examined in the context of strengths and weaknesses and finally, the course delves into the topic of government market intervention and investigates a variety of markets types, the reasons for intervention and how intervention occurs. This course is a useful introduction to those who wish to learn and understand the role government policies play in shaping economic outcomes.