Böcker utgivna av MIT Press Ltd

The contributors represent the complete spectrum of positions between a relativism that challenges the very concept of a single world and the idea that there are ascertainable, objective universals.

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the computational material that forms the underpinnings of the currently evolving set of brain models.

"Wang places contemporary academic philosophy itself on trial, and reveals its shortcomings, in a truly masterful analysis." - Martin Davis, Courant Institute

'For an inventory of insights on the application of recent realist ideas, these are the best selections from the best journal in the field. This collection offers a particularly well-organized array of arguments about the relation of theory to policy, and the benefits and costs of the realist approach.'-Richard K. Betts, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

The seventeen contributions present current research in visual signal processing, in the retina and central pathways, and in the study of contrast sensitivity in humans.

Theory-based, empirical studies of the ways in which our sense of identity affects and is affected by our relationship with nature, and the implications for more effective environmental policy.

A compact and accessible history, from punch cards and calculators to UNIVAC and ENIAC, the personal computer, Silicon Valley, and the Internet.

The experience of digital art and how it is relevant to information technology.

A leading economist develops a supply-side approach to fighting climate change that encourages resource owners to leave more of their fossil carbon underground.The Earth is getting warmer. Yet, as Hans-Werner Sinn points out in this provocative book, the dominant policy approach—which aims to curb consumption of fossil energy—has been ineffective. Despite policy makers' efforts to promote alternative energy, impose emission controls on cars, and enforce tough energy-efficiency standards for buildings, the relentlessly rising curve of CO2 output does not show the slightest downward turn. Some proposed solutions are downright harmful: cultivating crops to make biofuels not only contributes to global warming but also uses resources that should be devoted to feeding the world's hungry. In The Green Paradox, Sinn proposes a new, more pragmatic approach based not on regulating the demand for fossil fuels but on controlling the supply.The owners of carbon resources, Sinn explains, are pre-empting future regulation by accelerating the production of fossil energy while they can. This is the "Green Paradox”: expected future reduction in carbon consumption has the effect of accelerating climate change. Sinn suggests a supply-side solution: inducing the owners of carbon resources to leave more of their wealth underground. He proposes the swift introduction of a "Super-Kyoto” system—gathering all consumer countries into a cartel by means of a worldwide, coordinated cap-and-trade system supported by the levying of source taxes on capital income—to spoil the resource owners' appetite for financial assets.Only if we can shift our focus from local demand to worldwide supply policies for reducing carbon emissions, Sinn argues, will we have a chance of staving off climate disaster.

A compilation of current scientific knowledge about psychoactive herbal drugs.

"This is a book that is full of things I have never seen before, and full of new things to say about things I thought I knew well. It is a book about houses and about culture and about how each affects the other, and it must stand as one of the major works on the history of modern housing." - Paul Goldberger, The New York Times Book Review

A study of ethnic identity among Azerbaijanis in Iran and in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

The author examines the interplay between evolutionary game theory and the equilibrium selection problem in noncooperative games.

A primer in urban literacy that teaches us in words and pictures what to notice if we want to understand the city.Cities speak, and this little book helps us understand their language. Considering the urban landscape not from the abstract perspective of an urban planner but from the viewpoint of an attentive observer, Urban Code offers 100 "lessons”—maxims, observations, and bite-size truths, followed by short essays—that teach us how to read the city. This is a user's guide to the city, a primer of urban literacy, at the pedestrian level. The reader (like the observant city stroller) can move from "People walk in the sunshine” (lesson 1) to "Street vendors are positioned according to the path of the sun” (lesson 2); consider possible connections between the fact that "Locals and tourists use the streets at different times” (lesson 41) and "Tourists stand still when they're looking at something” (lesson 68); and weigh the apparent contradiction of lesson 73, "Nightlife hotspots increase pedestrian traffic” and lesson 74, "People are afraid of the dark.”A lesson may seem self-evident ("Grocery stores are important local destinations”—of course they are!) but considered in the context of other lessons, it becomes part of a natural logic. With Urban Code, we learn what to notice if we want to understand the city. We learn to detect patterns in the relationships between people and the urban environment. Each lesson is accompanied by an icon-like image; in addition to these 100 drawings, thirty photographs of street scenes illustrate the text. The photographs are stills from films shot in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo; the lessons are inspired by the authors' observations of SoHo, but hold true for any cityscape.

Detailed advice on writing papers, giving presentations, and refereeing, plus an essential guide to the basics of being a graduate student in economics.This book is an invaluable handbook for young economists working on their dissertations, preparing their first articles for submission to professional journals, getting ready for their first presentations at conferences and job seminars, or undertaking their first refereeing assignments. In clear, concise language—a model in itself—William Thomson describes how to make written and oral presentations both engaging and efficient. Declaring "I would certainly take up arms for clarity, simplicity, and unity," Thomson covers the basics of clear exposition, including such nuts-and-bolts topics as titling papers, writing abstracts, presenting research results, and holding an audience's attention. This second edition features a substantial new chapter, "Being a Graduate Student in Economics," that offers guidance on such essential topics as the manners and mores of graduate school life, financial support, selecting an advisor, and navigating the job market. The chapter on giving talks has been rewritten to reflect the widespread use of presentation software, and new material has been added to the chapter on writing papers.

The former president of MIT discusses challenges and policy issues confronting academia, science and technology, and the world at large.

The odyssey of a group of "refugees" from a closed-down online game and an exploration of emergent fan cultures in virtual worlds.

An expert explains how the conventional wisdom about decision making can get us into trouble—and why experience can't be replaced by rules, procedures, or analytical methods.In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyze every option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Most of us would probably agree that for important decisions, we should follow certain guidelines—gather as much information as possible, compare the options, pin down the goals before getting started. But in practice we make some of our best decisions by adapting to circumstances rather than blindly following procedures. In Streetlights and Shadows, Gary Klein debunks the conventional wisdom about how to make decisions. He takes ten commonly accepted claims about decision making and shows that they are better suited for the laboratory than for life. The standard advice works well when everything is clear, but the tough decisions involve shadowy conditions of complexity and ambiguity. Gathering masses of information, for example, works if the information is accurate and complete—but that doesn't often happen in the real world. (Think about the careful risk calculations that led to the downfall of the Wall Street investment houses.) Klein offers more realistic ideas about how to make decisions in real-life settings. He provides many examples—ranging from airline pilots and weather forecasters to sports announcers and Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander novels—to make his point. All these decision makers saw things that others didn't. They used their expertise to pick up cues and to discern patterns and trends. We can make better decisions, Klein tells us, if we are prepared for complexity and ambiguity and if we will stop expecting the data to tell us everything.

A commonsense, self-contained introduction to the mathematics and physics of music; essential reading for musicians, music engineers, and anyone interested in the intersection of art and science.

A collection of the most important recent work on reasons for action and the question "why be moral?”Some of the most challenging questions in philosophical ethics concern the justification of action. Can you have reasons to do something that you are not, and perhaps cannot be, motivated to do? If reasons rest on desires, why respect the rights and interests of others when doing so prevents us from getting what we want? In other words, why be moral?In his 1979 essay, "Internal and External Reasons,” Bernard Williams framed the dispute about reason and motivation in a way that captured the philosophical imagination. An explosion of work on reasons and action followed, with influential responses by Christine Korsgaard, John McDowell, and Michael Smith. This volume collects the most important work on the topic, including Williams's seminal essay, the responses by Korsgaard, McDowell, and Smith, and more recent contributions by central figures.Taken together, the selections offer a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art work on internal reasons and a distinctive, focused approach to foundational questions of ethical objectivity. A substantive introduction by Kieran Setiya skillfully guides the reader through the theoretical and conceptual terrain, explaining what is at stake in the larger debate.

An examination of political conflicts over pesticide drift and the differing conceptions of justice held by industry, regulators, and activists.

The paradox at the heart of the return to realism in the interwar years, as seen in work by Moholy-Nagy, Brecht, and others.

The first complete account in English of the evolution of 'pataphysics from its French origins, with explications of key ideas and excerpts from primary sources, presented in reverse chronological order.

The historical roots, key practitioners, and artistic, theoretical, and technological trends in the incorporation of new media into the performing arts.

The thoroughly updated edition of a guide to parallel programming with MPI, reflecting the latest specifications, with many detailed examples. This book offers a thoroughly updated guide to the MPI (Message-Passing Interface) standard library for writing programs for parallel computers. Since the publication of the previous edition of Using MPI, parallel computing has become mainstream. Today, applications run on computers with millions of processors; multiple processors sharing memory and multicore processors with multiple hardware threads per core are common. The MPI-3 Forum recently brought the MPI standard up to date with respect to developments in hardware capabilities, core language evolution, the needs of applications, and experience gained over the years by vendors, implementers, and users. This third edition of Using MPI reflects these changes in both text and example code. The book takes an informal, tutorial approach, introducing each concept through easy-to-understand examples, including actual code in C and Fortran. Topics include using MPI in simple programs, virtual topologies, MPI datatypes, parallel libraries, and a comparison of MPI with sockets. For the third edition, example code has been brought up to date; applications have been updated; and references reflect the recent attention MPI has received in the literature. A companion volume, Using Advanced MPI, covers more advanced topics, including hybrid programming and coping with large data.

A theory of control, equally grounded in syntax and semantics, that argues that obligatory control is achieved either through predication or through logophoric anchoring.