Courses tagged with "Information environments" (1105)

This seminar will explore the difficulties of getting agreement on global definitions of sustainability; in particularly building international support for efforts to combat climate change created by greenhouse gas emissions as well as other international resource management efforts. We will focus on possible changes in the way global environmental agreements are formulated and implemented, especially on ways of shifting from the current "pollution control" approach to combating climate change to a more comprehensive strategy for taking advantage of sustainable development opportunities.

This graduate class is designed as a Ph.D.-level overview of international political economy (IPE), with an emphasis on the advanced industrial countries. It also serves as preparation for the IPE portion of the International Relations general exam. An important goal of the course is to use economic theories to identify the welfare effects, distributional consequences, and security implication of foreign economic policy decisions, and to use the tools of political science to analyze how interest groups, voters, political parties, electoral institutions, ideas, and power politics interact to share policy outcomes.

This course examines the interconnections of international politics and climate change. Beginning with an analysis of the strategic and environmental legacies of the 20th Century, it explores the politicization of the natural environment, the role of science in this process, and the gradual shifts in political concerns to incorporate "nature". Two general thrusts of climate-politics connections are pursued, namely those related to (a) conflict – focusing on threats to security due to environmental dislocations and (b) cooperation – focusing on the politics of international treaties that have contributed to emergent processes for global accord in response to evidence of climate change. The course concludes by addressing the question of: "What Next?"

The aim of this course is to introduce and analyze the international relations of East Asia. With four great powers, three nuclear weapons states, and two of the world's largest economies, East Asia is one of the most dynamic and consequential regions in world politics. This course will examine the sources of conflict and cooperation in both periods, assessing competing explanations for key events in East Asia's international relations. Readings will be drawn from international relations theory, political science and history.

This course examines cyber dynamics and processes in international relations from different theoretical perspectives. It considers alternative theoretical and empirical frameworks consistent with characteristic features of cyberspace and emergent transformations at all levels of international interaction. Theories examined include realism and neorealism, institutionalism and liberalism, constructivism, and systems theory and lateral pressure. The course also highlights relevant features and proposes customized international relations theory for the cyber age.

Students taking the graduate version are expected to pursue the subject in greater depth through reading and individual research.

"Parrhesia" was an Athenian right to frank and open speaking, the right that, like the First Amendment, demands a "fearless speaker" who must challenge political powers with criticism and unsolicited advice. Can designer and artist respond today to such a democratic call and demand? Is it possible to do so despite the (increasing) restrictions imposed on our liberties today? Can the designer or public artist operate as a proactive "parrhesiatic" agent and contribute to the protection, development and dissemination of "fearless speaking" in Public Space?

This course examines civic media in comparative, transnational and historical perspectives through the use of various theoretical tools, research approaches, and project design methods.

This course introduces the basic computational methods used to understand the cell on a molecular level. It covers subjects such as the sequence alignment algorithms: dynamic programming, hashing, suffix trees, and Gibbs sampling. Furthermore, it focuses on computational approaches to: genetic and physical mapping; genome sequencing, assembly, and annotation; RNA expression and secondary structure; protein structure and folding; and molecular interactions and dynamics.

This course presents the fundamentals of object-oriented software design and development, computational methods and sensing for engineering, and scientific and managerial applications. It cover topics, including design of classes, inheritance, graphical user interfaces, numerical methods, streams, threads, sensors, and data structures. Students use Java^® programming language to complete weekly software assignments.

How is 1.00 different from other intro programming courses offered at MIT?

1.00 is a first course in programming. It assumes no prior experience, and it focuses on the use of computation to solve problems in engineering, science and management. The audience for 1.00 is non-computer science majors. 1.00 does not focus on writing compilers or parsers or computing tools where the computer is the system; it focuses on engineering problems where the computer is part of the system, or is used to model a physical or logical system.

1.00 teaches the Java programming language, and it focuses on the design and development of object-oriented software for technical problems. 1.00 is taught in an active learning style. Lecture segments alternating with laboratory exercises are used in every class to allow students to put concepts into practice immediately; this teaching style generates questions and feedback, and allows the teaching staff and students to interact when concepts are first introduced to ensure that core ideas are understood. Like many MIT classes, 1.00 has weekly assignments, which are programs based on actual engineering, science or management applications. The weekly assignments build on the class material from the previous week, and require students to put the concepts taught in the small in-class labs into a larger program that uses multiple elements of Java together.

Second of two modules facilitating a basic understanding of computing in planning and public management. Students develop problem-solving skills using computer-based tools for "what-if" analyses. Emphasis on spatial analysis using geographic information systems and database query tools.

This course aims to give students the tools and training to recognize convex optimization problems that arise in scientific and engineering applications, presenting the basic theory, and concentrating on modeling aspects and results that are useful in applications. Topics include convex sets, convex functions, optimization problems, least-squares, linear and quadratic programs, semidefinite programming, optimality conditions, and duality theory. Applications to signal processing, control, machine learning, finance, digital and analog circuit design, computational geometry, statistics, and mechanical engineering are presented. Students complete hands-on exercises using high-level numerical software.

Acknowledgements

The course materials were developed jointly by Prof. Stephen Boyd (Stanford), who was a visiting professor at MIT when this course was taught, and Prof. Lieven Vanderberghe (UCLA).

This subject explores the varied nature and practice of computation in design. We will view computation and design broadly. Computation will include both work done on the computer (digital computing) and by-hand. Design will include both the process of making designs and artifacts, as well as the designs and artifacts themselves. The aim of the course is to develop a view of computation and design beyond the specifics of techniques and tools, and a critical, self-awareness of our own approaches and metaphors for computation and design.

This course is an introductory subject in the field of electric power systems and electrical to mechanical energy conversion. Electric power has become increasingly important as a way of transmitting and transforming energy in industrial, military and transportation uses. Electric power systems are also at the heart of alternative energy systems, including wind and solar electric, geothermal and small scale hydroelectric generation.

This course is the first subject in the Environmental Policy and Planning sequence. It reviews philosophical debates including growth vs. deep ecology, "command-and-control" vs. market-oriented approaches to regulation, and the importance of expertise vs. indigenous knowledge. Its emphasis is placed on environmental planning techniques and strategies. Related topics include the management of sustainability, the politics of ecosystem management, environmental governance and the changing role of civil society, ecological economics, integrated assessment (combining environmental impact assessment (EIA) and risk assessment), joint fact finding in science-intensive policy disputes, environmental justice in poor communities of color, and environmental dispute resolution.

This course studies basic concepts of financial and managerial reporting. The viewpoint is that of readers of financial and managerial reports rather than the accountants who prepare them.

This class provides a space for medical students and MD/PhD students, as well as HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society) PhD students to discuss social and ethical issues in the biosciences and biotechnologies as they are being developed. Discussions are with course faculty and with leading figures in developing technologies such as George Daley or George Church in stem cell or genomics research, Bruce Walker or Pardis Sabeti in setting up laboratories in Africa, Paul Farmer and Partners in Health colleagues in building local support systems and first world quality care in Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda, and Amy Farber in building patient-centered therapeutic-outcome research for critical but "orphan" diseases. Goals include stimulating students to think about applying their learning in Boston to countries around the world, including using the experiences they have had in their home countries or research experience abroad. Goals also include a mix of patient-doctor care perspectives from medical anthropology, and moving upstream in the research chain to questions of how to move discoveries from basic research through the pipelines into clinical and bedside care.