Online courses directory (2511)

Water supply is a problem of worldwide concern: more than 1 billion people do not have reliable access to clean drinking water. Water is a particular problem for the developing world, but scarcity also impacts industrial societies. Water purification and desalination technology can be used to convert brackish ground water or seawater into drinking water. The challenge is to do so sustainably, with minimum cost and energy consumption, and with appropriately accessible technologies.

This subject will survey the state-of-the-art in water purification by desalination and filtration. Fundamental thermodynamic and transport processes which govern the creation of fresh water from seawater and brackish ground water will be developed. The technologies of existing desalination systems will be discussed, and factors which limit the performance or the affordability of these systems will be highlighted. Energy efficiency will be a focus. Nanofiltration and emerging technologies for desalination will be considered. A student project in desalination will involve designing a well-water purification system for a village in Haiti.

The disciplines of music history and music theory have been slow to embrace the digital revolutions that have transformed other fields' text-based scholarship (history and literature in particular). Computational musicology opens the door to the possibility of understanding—even if at a broad level—trends and norms of behavior of large repertories of music. This class presents the major approaches, results, and challenges of computational musicology through readings in the field, gaining familiarity with datasets, and hands on workshops and assignments on data analysis and "corpus" (i.e., repertory) studies. Class sessions alternate between discussion/lecture and labs on digital tools for studying music. A background in music theory and/or history is required, and experience in computer programming will be extremely helpful. Coursework culminates in an independent research project in quantitative or computational musicology that will be presented to the class as a whole.

This course focuses on the complexities associated with security and sustainability of states in international relations. Covering aspects of theory, methods and empirical analysis, the course is in three parts, and each consists of seminar sessions focusing on specific topics.

This course is designed to provide you with a competitive advantage in negotiation. You will learn and practice the technical skills and analytic frameworks that are necessary to negotiate successfully with peers from other top business schools, and you will learn methods for developing the powerful social capital you will need to rise in the executive ranks of any organization.

In this course, you will learn to successfully face the challenge of negotiating materially rewarding deals while also building your social capital. You will work with training materials on leadership and relationship building that have been used with over 200 principals and partners in international professional service firms (40% were non-US nationals), and a social capital assessment tool used by these executives to receive feedback from senior partners and over 2000 clients. In addition, you will have the opportunity to participate in a lunchtime workshop on "Leadership and Emotional Intelligence" led by an executive coach, Charles Wolfe of Charles J Wolfe Associates.

Overall, this course is designed to enhance your ability to negotiate within the context of an ongoing relationship. As a manager, consultant, or professional service provider you will negotiate with your counterparts, team members, clients, and subordinates on an ongoing basis. Further, in today's less hierarchical organizations, you will be forced to negotiate with others to get your work done. Every time a project falls behind, critical new information is uncovered, or the competitive landscape of your industry changes, you will need to renegotiate tasks, plans, goals, or fees with your key stakeholders.

In sum, we will focus both on the analytic tools necessary to become a highly successful negotiator and on the relationship building skills necessary to negotiate deals that will enhance your social capital, your ability to lead others, and your book of loyal clients.

The doctoral seminar 15.764 focuses on theoretical work for studying operations planning and control problems. This term's special topic, "Customer-Driven Operations," considers how a number of companies have succeeded in focusing their operation systems on the customer. The class reviews the quantitative models and theoretical tools underlying some of the customer-driven operational practices of these cutting-edge companies. Students will read and present research papers on topics such as distribution systems, short life-cycle product management, and forecast evolution models.

This MIT OpenCourseWare site is dedicated to the memory of Bhuwan Singh, a member of the class.

This is an advanced graduate course on quantum computation and quantum information, for which prior knowledge of quantum mechanics is required. Topics include quantum computation, advanced quantum error correction codes, fault tolerance, quantum algorithms beyond factoring, properties of quantum entanglement, and quantum protocols and communication complexity.

This course presents a top-down approach to communications system design. The course will cover communication theory, algorithms and implementation architectures for essential blocks in modern physical-layer communication systems (coders and decoders, filters, multi-tone modulation, synchronization sub-systems). The course is hands-on, with a project component serving as a vehicle for study of different communication techniques, architectures and implementations. This year, the project is focused on WLAN transceivers. At the end of the course, students will have gone through the complete WLAN System-On-a-Chip design process, from communication theory, through algorithm and architecture all the way to the synthesized standard-cell RTL chip representation.

Does it matter in education whether or not you've got a Y chromosome? You bet it does. In this discussion-based seminar, we will explore why males vastly outrank females in math and science and career advancements (particularly in academia), and why girls get better grades and go to college more often than boys. Do the sexes have different learning styles? Are women denied advanced opportunities in academia and the workforce? How do family life and family decisions affect careers for both men and women?

This course is about maneuvering motions of surface and underwater vehicles. Topics covered include: derivation of equations of motion, hydrodynamic coefficients, memory effects, linear and nonlinear forms of the equations of motion, control surfaces modeling and design, engine, propulsor, and transmission systems modeling and simulation during maneuvering. The course also deals with stability of motion, principles of multivariable automatic control, optimal control, Kalman filtering, and loop transfer recovery. We will also explore applications chosen from autopilots for surface vehicles; towing in open seas; and remotely operated vehicles.

This course was originally offered in Course 13 (Department of Ocean Engineering) as 13.49. In 2005, ocean engineering subjects became part of Course 2 (Department of Mechanical Engineering), and this course was renumbered 2.154.

This is the second term of a theoretical treatment of the physics of solids. Topics covered include linear response theory; the physics of disorder; superconductivity; the local moment and itinerant magnetism; the Kondo problem and Fermi liquid theory.

The purpose of this seminar is to provide a context for understanding the challenges of urban food provisioning from a perspective of sustainability and social inclusion in cities of the global South. The seminar will be specifically geared towards preparing students for direct participation in urban markets and food policy project intervention in Cartagena, Colombia. 

To learn more about the Cartagena Practicum, visit the class website.

This course gives a mathematical introduction to neural coding and dynamics. Topics include convolution, correlation, linear systems, game theory, signal detection theory, probability theory, information theory, and reinforcement learning. Applications to neural coding, focusing on the visual system are covered, as well as Hodgkin-Huxley and other related models of neural excitability, stochastic models of ion channels, cable theory, and models of synaptic transmission.

Visit the Seung Lab Web site.

Carrier systems involve the design, operation and management of transportation networks, assets, personnel, freight and passengers. In this course, we will present models and tools for analyzing, optimizing, planning, managing and controlling carrier systems.

This course in organizational economics prepares doctoral students for further study in the field. The course introduces the classic papers and some recent research. The material is organized into the following modules: boundaries of the firm, employment in organizations, decision-making in organizations, and structures and processes in organizations. Each class session covers a few leading papers.

This course was joint-taught between faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The Harvard course is Economics 2670 Organizational Economics.

The course introduces the main debates about the "new" global economy and their implications for practice and policy. Experts from academia and business will share their findings about, and direct experiences with, different aspects of globalization.

This course explores artistic achievement in a culture that over the past century has engaged in constant and intense imaginative self-renewal. The class studies film, narrative (e.g., Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude), and poetry. Conducted in Spanish.

The principles and practice of tissue engineering (and regenerative medicine) are taught by faculty of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. The principles underlying strategies for employing selected cells, biomaterial scaffolds, soluble regulators or their genes, and mechanical loading and culture conditions, for the regeneration of tissues and organs in vitro and in vivo are addressed. Differentiated cell types and stem cells are compared and contrasted for this application, as are natural and synthetic scaffolds. Methodology for the preparation of cells and scaffolds in practice is described. The rationale for employing selected growth factors is covered and the techniques for incorporating their genes into the scaffolds are examined. Discussion also addresses the influence of environmental factors including mechanical loading and culture conditions (e.g., static versus dynamic). Methods for fabricating tissue-engineered products and devices for implantation are taught. Examples of tissue engineering-based procedures currently employed clinically are analyzed as case studies.

Archived webcast lecture videos for the Fall 2008 version of this class can be found at the HST.535 Fall 2008 website.

This course studies the national literature of the United States since the early 19th century. It considers a range of texts - including, novels, essays, and poetry - and their efforts to define the notion of American identity. Readings usually include works by such authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Toni Morrison.

This course examines in comparative prospective the health care policy problems facing the United States including providing adequate access to medical services for all, the control of rising health care costs, and the assurance that the quality of health care services is high and improving. It explores the market and regulatory policy options being debated politically in the United States to solve these problems and compares possible foreign models for reform including those offered by the Canadian, British, Japanese, and German systems. The course shows how the historical development of the American health care system limits greatly policy options that can be considered and creates pressures that favor a continuing emphasis on technology and structural decentralization. The course also examines important health risks and the political and organizational factors that distort the public's understanding of these risks.

This course is designed mainly for political science graduate students conducting or considering conducting research on identity politics. While 17.504 Ethnic Politics I is designed as a primarily theoretical course, Ethnic Politics II switches the focus to methods. It aims to familiarize the student with the current conventional approaches as well as major challenges to them. The course discusses definition and measurement issues as well as briefly addressing survey techniques and modeling.