Courses tagged with "Information control" (1404)

Course 12.307 is an undergraduate course intended to illustrate, by means of 'hands on' projects, the basic dynamical and physical principles that govern the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean and the day to day sequence of weather events.  The course parallels the content of the new undergraduate textbook Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Dynamics by John Marshall and R. Alan Plumb.

This 12 session course is designed for the beginning or novice weight lifter, or for those who have experience lifting but lack proper instruction. We will provide an understanding of the biomechanics involved, muscles used for a given exercise, and program development.

As we live in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis of 2008, there are renewed questions about the nature of the economic system—capitalism—within which we live. What are its benefits and drawbacks? Why does it garner both so much opposition and support? What are its moral, economic, social and political implications? Is it even a "system"? How has capitalism played out in different historical moments and regions of the world? This class addresses the question "what is capitalism?" from a social scientific point of view, rather than a classical economic one.

According to the United States Agency for International Development, 20 million people in developing countries require wheelchairs, and the United Nations Development Programme estimates below 1% of their need is being met in Africa by local production. Wheelchair Design in Developing Countries (WDDC) gives students the chance to better the lives of others by improving wheelchairs and tricycles made in the developing world. Lectures will focus on understanding local factors, such as operating environments, social stigmas against the disabled, and manufacturing constraints, and then applying sound scientific/engineering knowledge to develop appropriate technical solutions. Multidisciplinary student teams will conduct term-long projects on topics such as hardware design, manufacturing optimization, biomechanics modeling, and business plan development. Theory will further be connected to real-world implementation during guest lectures by MIT faculty, Third-World community partners, and U.S. wheelchair organizations.

This class is made possible by an MIT Alumni Sponsored Funding Opportunities grant with additional support from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, the MIT Public Service Center, and the MIT Edgerton Center; special thanks to CustomInk.com.

According to the United States Agency for International Development, 20 million people in developing countries require wheelchairs, and the United Nations Development Programme estimates below 1% of their need is being met in Africa by local production. Wheelchair Design in Developing Countries (WDDC) gives students the chance to better the lives of others by improving wheelchairs and tricycles made in the developing world. Lectures will focus on understanding local factors, such as operating environments, social stigmas against the disabled, and manufacturing constraints, and then applying sound scientific/engineering knowledge to develop appropriate technical solutions. Multidisciplinary student teams will conduct term-long projects on topics such as hardware design, manufacturing optimization, biomechanics modeling, and business plan development. Theory will further be connected to real-world implementation during guest lectures by MIT faculty, Third-World community partners, and U.S. wheelchair organizations.

This class is made possible by an MIT Alumni Sponsored Funding Opportunities grant with additional support from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, the MIT Public Service Center, and the MIT Edgerton Center; special thanks to CustomInk.com.

This seminar examines women's experiences during and after war, revolution, and genocide. The focus of the course is mostly on the 20^th century and on North America, Europe and the Middle East.

This course is designed to introduce and help students understand the changes and continuities in the lives of women in South Asia from a historical perspective. Using gender as a lens of examining the past, we will examine how politics of race, class, caste and religion affected and continue to impact women in South Asian countries, primarily in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. We will reflect upon current debates within South Asian women's history in order to examine some of the issues and problems that arise in re-writing the past from a gendered perspective and these are found in primary documents, secondary readings, films, newspaper articles, and the Internet.

This pass/fail seminar should be a fun setting where we can all enjoy a love of good books together. Students will read approximately one novel every two weeks, and the class will discuss each novel in a relaxed and interactive setting, with attention to whatever themes and issues interest them most about each book. We will read a wide mixture of classic and contemporary novels written by women, including: Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; and Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Recurrent issues likely to be discussed include: gender, race, and class; romance, love, and marriage; depression and suicide; and conception, childbirth, and parenthood.

This pass/fail seminar should be a fun setting where we can all enjoy a love of good books together. Students will read approximately one novel every two weeks, and the class will discuss each novel in a relaxed and interactive setting, with attention to whatever themes and issues interest them most about each book. We will read a wide mixture of classic and contemporary novels written by women, including: Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; and Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Recurrent issues likely to be discussed include: gender, race, and class; romance, love, and marriage; depression and suicide; and conception, childbirth, and parenthood.

This pass/fail seminar should be a fun setting where we can all enjoy a love of good books together. Students will read approximately one novel every two weeks, and the class will discuss each novel in a relaxed and interactive setting, with attention to whatever themes and issues interest them most about each book. We will read a wide mixture of classic and contemporary novels written by women, including: Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth; Toni Morrison, Jazz; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Alice Walker, The Color Purple; Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Sheri Reynolds, The Rapture of Canaan; Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; and Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. Recurrent issues likely to be discussed include: gender, race, and class; romance, love, and marriage; depression and suicide; and conception, childbirth, and parenthood.

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.

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 semester, we will read writing about travel and place from Columbus's Diario through the present. Travel writing has some special features that will shape both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the pressures of a real world only marginally under their control. Whether the traveler is a curious tourist, the leader of a national expedition, or a starving, half-naked survivor, the encounter with place shapes what travel writing can be. Accordingly, we will pay attention not only to narrative texts but to maps, objects, archives, and facts of various kinds.

Our materials are organized around three regions: North America, Africa and the Atlantic world, the Arctic and Antarctic. The historical scope of these readings will allow us to know something not only about the experiences and writing strategies of individual travelers, but about the progressive integration of these regions into global economic, political, and knowledge systems. Whether we are looking at the production of an Inuit film for global audiences, or the mapping of a route across the North American continent by water, these materials do more than simply record or narrate experiences and territories: they also participate in shaping the world and what it means to us.

Authors will include Olaudah Equiano, Caryl Philips, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid, William Least Heat Moon, Louise Erdrich, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

Expeditions will include those of Lewis and Clark (North America), Henry Morton Stanley (Africa), Ernest Shackleton and Robert F. Scott (Antarctica).

Students, scholars, bloggers, reviewers, fans, and book-group members write about literature, but so do authors themselves. Through the ways they engage with their own texts and those of other artists, sampling, remixing, and rethinking texts and genres, writers reflect on and inspire questions about the creative process. We will examine Mary Shelley's reshaping of Milton's Paradise Lost, German fairy tales, tales of scientific discovery, and her husband's poems to make Frankenstein (1818, 1831); Melville's redesign of a travel narrative into a Gothic novella in Benito Cereno (1856); and Alison Bechdel's rewriting of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) in her graphic novel Fun Home (2006). Showings of film versions of some of these works will allow us to project forward in the remixing process as well.

This course focuses on traditional nature writing and the environmentalist essay. Students will keep a Web log as a journal. Writings are drawn from the tradition of nature writing and from contemporary forms of the environmentalist essay.

Does race still matter, as Cornel West proclaimed in his 1994 book of that title, or do we now live, as others maintain, in a post-racial society? The very notion of what constitutes race remains a complex and evolving question in cultural terms. In this course we will engage this question head-on, reading and writing about issues involving the construction of race and racial identity as reflected from a number of vantage points and via a rich array of voices and genres. Readings will include literary works by such writers as Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, and Sherman Alexie, as well as perspectives on film and popular culture from figures such as Malcolm Gladwell and Touré.

In this course we will read essays, novels, memoirs, and graphic texts, and view documentary and experimental films and videos which explore race from the standpoint of the multiracial. Examining the varied work of multiracial authors and filmmakers such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Kip Fulbeck, James McBride and others, we will focus not on how multiracial people are seen or imagined by the dominant culture, but instead on how they represent themselves. How do these authors approach issues of family, community, nation, language and history? What can their work tell us about the complex interconnections between race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship? Is there a relationship between their experiences of multiraciality and a willingness to experiment with form and genre? In addressing these and other questions, we will endeavor to think and write more critically and creatively about race as a social category and a lived experience.

In this course we will read essays, novels, memoirs, and graphic texts, and view documentary and experimental films and videos which explore race from the standpoint of the multiracial. Examining the varied work of multiracial authors and filmmakers such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Kip Fulbeck, James McBride and others, we will focus not on how multiracial people are seen or imagined by the dominant culture, but instead on how they represent themselves. How do these authors approach issues of family, community, nation, language and history? What can their work tell us about the complex interconnections between race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship? Is there a relationship between their experiences of multiraciality and a willingness to experiment with form and genre? In addressing these and other questions, we will endeavor to think and write more critically and creatively about race as a social category and a lived experience.

MIT students bring rich cultural backgrounds to their college experience. This course explores the splits, costs, confusions, insights, and opportunities of living in two traditions, perhaps without feeling completely at home in either. Course readings include accounts of growing up Asian-American, Hispanic, Native American, and South-East Asian-American, and of mixed race. The texts include selections from Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Kesaya E. Noda's "Growing Up Asian in America," Sandra Cisneros's Woman Hollering Creek, Gary Soto's "Like Mexicans," Sherman Alexie's The Toughest Indian in the World, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, the movies Smoke Signals and Mississippi Masala, Danzy Senna's Caucasia, and others. We will also use students' writings as ways to investigate our multiple identities, exploring the constraints and contributions of cultural and ethnic traditions. Students need not carry two passports in order to enroll; an interest in reading and writing about being shaped by multiple influences suffices.

In this era of globalization, many of us have multi- or bi-cultural, multilingual or bilingual backgrounds, and even if we don't have such a background, we need urgently to understand the experiences of people who do. You will very likely work outside the United States at some point in your future; you will almost certainly work with people who speak more than one language, whose ancestry or origins are in a country other than the U.S., who have crossed borders of nation, language, culture, class to amalgamate into the large and diverse culture that is America. In this class we will read the personal narratives of bilingual and bicultural writers, some of whom have struggled to assimilate, others of whom have celebrated their own contributions to a culture of diversity. You will write four personal essays of your own for the class, each of which will receive workshop discussion in class and response from me; you will then revise the essays to polish them for possible publication. One of your essays will be an investigative one, where you will focus on a subject of your choice, investigate it thoroughly, and then write with authority about it. The process of the class will encourage you to both improve your writing significantly and gain a greater understanding of experiences of people who are in some way like you as well as those who are in some way different.