Böcker utgivna av MIT Press Ltd

How eliminating "risk illiteracy" among doctors and patients will lead to better health care decision making.

A theoretical examination of the surprising emergence of software as a guiding metaphor for our neoliberal world.New media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: from celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing. In Programmed Visions, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability. New media proliferates "programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict—even embody—a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, for a general logic of substitutability. Chun argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known—its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware—makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.

A framework for the theory and practice of organizing that integrates the concepts and methods of information organization and information retrieval.Organizing is such a common activity that we often do it without thinking much about it. In our daily lives we organize physical things—books on shelves, cutlery in kitchen drawers—and digital things—Web pages, MP3 files, scientific datasets. Millions of people create and browse Web sites, blog, tag, tweet, and upload and download content of all media types without thinking "I'm organizing now” or "I'm retrieving now.”This book offers a framework for the theory and practice of organizing that integrates information organization (IO) and information retrieval (IR), bridging the disciplinary chasms between Library and Information Science and Computer Science, each of which views and teaches IO and IR as separate topics and in substantially different ways. It introduces the unifying concept of an Organizing System—an intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they support—and then explains the key concepts and challenges in the design and deployment of Organizing Systems in many domains, including libraries, museums, business information systems, personal information management, and social computing.Intended for classroom use or as a professional reference, the book covers the activities common to all organizing systems: identifying resources to be organized; organizing resources by describing and classifying them; designing resource-based interactions; and maintaining resources and organization over time. The book is extensively annotated with disciplinary-specific notes to ground it with relevant concepts and references of library science, computing, cognitive science, law, and business.

A solutions manual for all 582 exercises in the second edition of Intermediate Public Economics.

Mapping the new geography of the visual arts, from the explosion of biennials to the emerging art markets in Asia and the Middle East.

In The Creation of Value, the first volume of his Meaning in Life trilogy, Singer studies the nature of imagination, idealization, and love in the context of humanity's attempt to define itself through the pursuit of meanings and values that it creates. Singer confronts life's most troubling problems: the meaning of death, the place of anxiety in daily existence, the conditions needed for us to have a life worth living, and the possibility of a love of life in others as well as in ourselves.

A study of the pragmatic roots of American environmentalism-as seen in the work of Liberty Hyde Bailey, Lewis Mumford, Benton MacKaye, and Aldo Leopold-and how it can inform a new, civic-minded environmentalism today.

By systematically confronting theoretical models with econometric data, a leading macroeconomist and microeconomist present a unified and coherent view how and when productivity gains and economic growth are aided or hindered by competition policy.

A comprehensive anthology of real-life cases, integrating diverse perspectives on moral problems in medicine.

In this "blue-sky" effort to rethink humanity's basic challenges, Philip Morrison and Kosta Tsipis - both scientists with expertise in arms control issues - sketch the broad outlines for a global approach to the problems of security and development.

Essays explore the world of Michael of Rhodes, examining the historical context, the discovery of his manuscript, and Michael's knowledge of mathematics, shipbuilding, navigation, and other topics.In the fifteenth century, a Venetian mariner, Michael of Rhodes, wrote and illustrated a text describing his experiences in the Venetian merchant and military fleets. He included a treatise on commercial mathematics and treatments of contemporary shipbuilding practices, navigation, calendrical systems, and astrological ideas. This manuscript, “lost,” or at least in unknown hands for over 400 years, has never been published or translated in its entirety until now. In volume 3, nine experts, including the editors, discuss the manuscript, its historical context, and its scholarly importance. Their essays examine the Venetian maritime world of the fifteenth century, Michael's life, the discovery of the manuscript, the mathematics in the book, the use of illustration, the navigational directions, Michael's knowledge of shipbuilding in the Venetian context, and the manuscript's extensive calendrical material.

Using bioinformatics methods to generate a systems-level view of the immune system; description of the main biological concepts and the new data-driven algorithms.

A new edition of a comprehensive text, updated throughout, with new material on behavioral economics, international taxation, cost-benefit analysis, and the economics of climate policy.Public economics studies how government taxing and spending activities affect the economy—economic efficiency and the distribution of income and wealth. This comprehensive text on public economics covers the core topics of market failure and taxation as well as recent developments in both policy and the academic literature. It is unique not only in its broad scope but in its balance between public finance and public choice and its combination of theory and relevant empirical evidence.The book covers the theory and methodology of public economics; presents a historical and theoretical overview of the public sector; and discusses such topics as departures from efficiency (including imperfect competition and asymmetric information), issues in political economy, equity, taxation, fiscal federalism, and tax competition among independent jurisdictions. Suggestions for further reading, from classic papers to recent research, appear in each chapter, as do exercises. The mathematics has been kept to a minimum without sacrificing intellectual rigor; the book remains analytical rather than discursive. This second edition has been thoroughly updated throughout. It offers new chapters on behavioral economics, limits to redistribution, international taxation, cost-benefit analysis, and the economics of climate policy. Additional exercises have been added and many sections revised in response to advice from readers of the first edition.

An overview of neurotechnology, the engineering of robots based on animals and animal behavior.

An integrated overview of hearing and the interplay of physical, biological, and psychological processes underlying it.Every time we listen—to speech, to music, to footsteps approaching or retreating—our auditory perception is the result of a long chain of diverse and intricate processes that unfold within the source of the sound itself, in the air, in our ears, and, most of all, in our brains. Hearing is an "everyday miracle" that, despite its staggering complexity, seems effortless. This book offers an integrated account of hearing in terms of the neural processes that take place in different parts of the auditory system.Because hearing results from the interplay of so many physical, biological, and psychological processes, the book pulls together the different aspects of hearing—including acoustics, the mathematics of signal processing, the physiology of the ear and central auditory pathways, psychoacoustics, speech, and music—into a coherent whole.

A new philosophy of movement that explores the active relation between sensation and thought through the prisms of dance, cinema, art, and new media.

A comprehensive introduction to machine learning that uses probabilistic models and inference as a unifying approach.Today's Web-enabled deluge of electronic data calls for automated methods of data analysis. Machine learning provides these, developing methods that can automatically detect patterns in data and then use the uncovered patterns to predict future data. This textbook offers a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to the field of machine learning, based on a unified, probabilistic approach.The coverage combines breadth and depth, offering necessary background material on such topics as probability, optimization, and linear algebra as well as discussion of recent developments in the field, including conditional random fields, L1 regularization, and deep learning. The book is written in an informal, accessible style, complete with pseudo-code for the most important algorithms. All topics are copiously illustrated with color images and worked examples drawn from such application domains as biology, text processing, computer vision, and robotics. Rather than providing a cookbook of different heuristic methods, the book stresses a principled model-based approach, often using the language of graphical models to specify models in a concise and intuitive way. Almost all the models described have been implemented in a MATLAB software package—PMTK (probabilistic modeling toolkit)—that is freely available online. The book is suitable for upper-level undergraduates with an introductory-level college math background and beginning graduate students.

A history of color and commerce from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design.When the fashion industry declares that lime green is the new black, or instructs us to "think pink!,” it is not the result of a backroom deal forged by a secretive cabal of fashion journalists, designers, manufacturers, and the editor of Vogue. It is the latest development of a color revolution that has been unfolding for more than a century. In this book, the award-winning historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk traces the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture.Blaszczyk examines the evolution of the color profession from 1850 to 1970, telling the stories of innovators who managed the color cornucopia that modern artificial dyes and pigments made possible. These "color stylists,” "color forecasters,” and "color engineers” helped corporations understand the art of illusion and the psychology of color. Blaszczyk describes the strategic burst of color that took place in the 1920s, when General Motors introduced a bright blue sedan to compete with Ford's all-black Model T and when housewares became available in a range of brilliant hues. She explains the process of color forecasting—not a conspiracy to manipulate hapless consumers but a careful reading of cultural trends and consumer taste. And she shows how color information flowed from the fashion houses of Paris to textile mills in New Jersey.Today professional colorists are part of design management teams at such global corporations as Hilton, Disney, and Toyota. The Color Revolution tells the history of how colorists help industry capture the hearts and dollars of consumers.

An empirically supported proposal for synthesizing multiple approaches to the study of the mind in the past.

An introduction to the basic concepts of 3D computer graphics that offers a careful mathematical exposition within a modern computer graphics application programming interface.

Abusing Science is a manual for intellectual self-defense, the most complete available for presenting the case against Creationist pseudo-science. It is also a lucid exposition of the nature and methods of genuine science. The book begins with a concise introduction to evolutionary theory for non-scientists and closes with a rebuttal of the charge that this theory undermines religious and moral values. It will astonish many readers that this case must still be made in the 1980s, but since it must, Philip Kitcher makes it irresistibly and forcefully.Not long ago, a federal court struck down an Arkansas law requiring that "scientific" Creationism be taught in high school science classes. Contemporary Creationists may have lost one legal battle, but their cause continues to thrive. Their efforts are directed not only at state legislatures but at local school boards and textbook publishers. As Kitcher argues in this rigorous but highly readable book, the integrity of science is under attack. The methods of inquiry used in evolutionary biology are those which are used throughout the sciences. Moreover, modern biology is intertwined with other fields of science—physics, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. Creationists hope to persuade the public that education in science should be torn apart to make room for a literal reading of Genesis.Abusing Science refutes the popular complaint that the scientific establishment is dogmatic and intolerant, denying "academic freedom" to the unorthodox. It examines Creationist claims seriously and systematically, one by one, showing clearly just why they are at best misguided, at worst ludicrous.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the mathematical foundations of economics, from basic set theory to fixed point theorems and constrained optimization. Rather than simply offer a collection of problem-solving techniques, the book emphasizes the unifying mathematical principles that underlie economics. Features include an extended presentation of separation theorems and their applications, an account of constraint qualification in constrained optimization, and an introduction to monotone comparative statics. These topics are developed by way of more than 800 exercises. The book is designed to be used as a graduate text, a resource for self-study, and a reference for the professional economist.

Bicycling in cities is booming, for many reasons: health and environmental benefits, time and cost savings, more and better bike lanes and paths, innovative bike sharing programs, and the sheer fun of riding. City Cycling offers a guide to this urban cycling renaissance, with the goal of promoting cycling as sustainable urban transportation available to everyone. It reports on cycling trends and policies in cities in North America, Europe, and Australia, and offers information on such topics as cycling safety, cycling infrastructure provisions including bikeways and bike parking, the wide range of bike designs and bike equipment, integration of cycling with public transportation, and promoting cycling for women and children. The book also offers detailed examinations and illustrations of cycling conditions in different urban environments: small cities (including Davis, California, and Delft, the Netherlands), large cities (including Sydney, Chicago, Toronto and Berlin), and ¿megacities¿ (London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo).

An attempt to integrate two theories about how the mind works, one that says that the mind is a computer-like manipulator of symbols, and another that says that the mind is a large network of neurons working together in parallel.