Online courses directory (2511)

This Communication and Argumentation seminar is an intensive writing workshop that focuses on argumentation and communication. Students learn to write and present their ideas in cogent, persuasive arguments and other analytical frameworks. Reading and writing assignments and other exercises stress the connections between clear thinking, critical reading, and effective writing.

An opportunity for graduate study of advanced subjects in Brain and Cognitive Sciences not included in other subject listings. The key topics covered in this course are Bipolar Disorder, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, Genetics of Psychiatric Disorder, DISC1, Ca++ Signaling, Neurogenesis and Depression, Lithium and GSK3 Hypothesis, Behavioral Assays, CREB in Addiction and Depressive Behaviors, The GABA System-I, The GABA System-II, The Glutamate Hypothesis of Schizophrenia, The Dopamine Pathway and DARPP32.

This course is an intensive seminar on the foundations of analytic philosophy for first-year graduate students. A large selection of classic texts, such as Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic, Russell's Problems of Philosophy, and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, is covered in this course.

This course examines the economic, political, social, and spatial dynamics of urban growth and decline in cities and their key component areas (downtown, suburbs, etc.). Topics include impacts of industrialization, technology, politics, and social practices on cities. Students will examine the role of public and private sector activities, ranging from zoning and subsidies to infrastructure development and real estate investment, in affecting urban growth and decline. Readings are both theoretical and empirical, with considerable thought paid to comparative and historical differences.

This course discusses the principles and methods of statistical mechanics. Topics covered include classical and quantum statistics, grand ensembles, fluctuations, molecular distribution functions, other concepts in equilibrium statistical mechanics, and topics in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of irreversible processes.

Welcome to 2.007! This course is a first subject in engineering design. With your help, this course will be a great learning experience exposing you to interesting material, challenging you to think deeply, and providing skills useful in professional practice. A major element of the course is design of a robot to participate in a challenge that changes from year to year. This year, the theme is cleaning up the planet as inspired by the movie Wall-E.

From its beginnings in 1970, the 2.007 final project competition has grown into an Olympics of engineering.  See this MIT News story for more background, a photo gallery, and videos about this course.

For all of the bodies attached to the many great minds that walk the Institute's halls, in the work that goes on at MIT the body is present as an object of study, but is all but unrecognized as an important dimension of our intelligence and experience. Yet the body is the basis of our experience in the world; it is the very foundation on which cognitive intelligence is built. Using the MIT gymnastics gym as our laboratory, the Physical Intelligence activity will take an innovative, hands-on approach to explore the kinesthetic intelligence of the body as applicable to a wide range of disciplines. Via exercises, activities, readings and discussions designed to excavate our physical experience, we will not only develop balance, agility, flexibility and strength, but a deep appreciation for the inherent unity of mind and body that suggests physical intelligence as a powerful complement to cognitive intelligence.

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 course covers the fundamental concepts of structural mechanics with applications to marine, civil, and mechanical structures. Topics include analysis of small deflections of beams, moderately large deflections of beams, columns, cables, and shafts; elastic and plastic buckling of columns, thin walled sections and plates; exact and approximate methods; energy methods; principle of virtual work; introduction to failure analysis of structures. We will include examples from civil, mechanical, offshore, and ship structures such as the collision and grounding of ships.

In this year's Geodynamics Seminar, we will explore the depth and breadth of scientific research related to Earth's present and past ice-sheets, glaciers and sea-ice, as well as extraterrestrial planetary ice.

Invited speakers have been chosen from experts in the current frontiers in ice-related research, including planetary ice, climate records from polar and tropical ice cores, the Snowball Earth, subglacial volcanoes, ice rheology, ice sheet modeling, ice microkinetics, glacial erosion and tectonics, subglacial life and polar remote sensing.

A field trip to Iceland in Summer 2006 will allow us to view some of the island's ice caps and glacial geology, the exposed mid Atlantic Ridge and evidence of ice-volcano interactions.

This course examines interpersonal and group dynamics, considers how the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals are influenced by (and influence) the beliefs, values, and practices of large and small groups. Learning occurs through a combination of lectures, demonstrations and in-class activities complemented by participation in small study groups and completion of homework assignments.

This studio proposes to engage tectonics as a material process. By exploring transformation, indeterminacy and mutability inherent in material and landscape processes, students will be challenged to engage notions of duration as a design strategy for architecture and urbanism. While the second law of thermodynamics states that the material universe tends toward a state of increasing disorder, architects build and construct in opposition to these forces. Attempting to delay the processes of disorder, decay and collapse, tectonics is often seen as the embodied expression of an arrested moment the finite resolution of the building process. Yet the processes that enable and disable architecture extend beyond any arrested moment.

A more detailed description can be found in the syllabus section.

This course focuses on neural structures and mechanisms mediating the detection, localization and recognition of sounds. Discussions cover how acoustic signals are coded by auditory neurons, the impact of these codes on behavioral performance, and the circuitry and cellular mechanisms underlying signal transformations. Topics include temporal coding, neural maps and feature detectors, learning and plasticity, and feedback control. General principles are conveyed by theme discussions of auditory masking, sound localization, musical pitch, speech coding, and cochlear implants.

This course examines important transformations of organotransition-metal species with an emphasis on basic mechanisms, structure-reactivity relationships, and applications in organic synthesis.

This class is designed to provide the student with a global to molecular-level perspective of organic matter cycling in the oceans and marine sediments. Topics include: Organic matter (C,N,P) composition, reactivity and budgets within, and fluxes through, major ocean reservoirs; microbial recycling pathways for organic matter; models of organic matter degradation and preservation; role of anoxia in organic matter burial; relationships between dissolved and particulate (sinking and suspended) organic matter; methods for characterization of sedimentary organic matter; and application of biological markers as tools in oceanography. Both structural and isotopic aspects are covered.

This seminar explores experiments in education and discusses how education and learning might be done, through reading and discussion. This seminar is not a survey of experiments in education, but rather, its goal is to determine how learning should happen and what kinds of contexts allow it to happen.

This class deals with interactive art. Visiting artists will discuss their work from a theoretical and practical perspective. Discussions of the history of interactive digital art and contemporary issues in the field will take place. Students will develop an interactive art project for a final exhibition or submit a short paper.

This course provides a substantive overview of U.S. politics and an introduction to the discipline of political science. It surveys the institutional foundations of U.S. politics as well as the activities of political elites, organizations, and ordinary citizens. It also explores the application of general political science concepts and analytic frameworks to specific episodes and phenomena in U.S. politics.

Is marriage a patriarchal institution? Much feminist scholarship has characterized it that way, but now in the context of the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, the meaning of marriage itself demands serious re-examination. This course will discuss history, literature, film, and legal scholarship, making use of cross-cultural, sociological, anthropological, and many other theoretical approaches to the marriage question from 1630 to the present. As it turns out, sex, marriage, and the family have never been stable institutions; to the contrary, they have continued to function as flash points for the very social and cultural questions that are central to gender studies scholarship.

"Creative activity (isn't) the icing on the cake. Human creativity is the cake." (Jerry Hirschberg)

Creativity - "the mastery of information and skills in the service of dreams" (Hirschberg) - is much prized in the arts, science, business and the classroom. What does the creative process look like? Under what conditions does it flourish - what ignites the creative spark? Attempting to answer these questions, this class explores ways creativity has been understood in Western culture: what we prize and fear about creativity and its wellsprings; how writers, artists, scientists and inventors have described their own creative processes; how psychologists and philosophers have theorized it; ways in which creativity has been represented in Western culture, particularly in 20th century films; and creativity in everyday life, including our own lives. Readings include portions of psychologist Rollo May's The Courage To Create, and essays by Joan Didion, John Updike, Alice Walker, Oliver Sacks, and others. In addition, we'll watch video profiles of choreographer Paul Taylor, architect Maya Lin, and jazz musician Dave Brubeck. We'll keep journals in which we note our own observations and reflections on creative process. We will also watch a film together as a class one evening early in the term.