This course focuses on cyberspace and its implications for private and public, sub-national, national, and international actors and entities.
D-Lab Health provides a multidisciplinary approach to global health technology design via guest lectures and a major project based on fieldwork. We will explore the current state of global health challenges and learn how to design medical technologies that address those problems. Students may travel to Nicaragua during spring break to work with health professionals, using medical technology design kits to gain field experience for their device challenge. As a final class deliverable, you will create a product design solution to address challenges observed in the field. The resulting designs are prototyped in the summer for continued evaluation and testing.
Humans are social animals; social demands, both cooperative and competitive, structure our development, our brain and our mind. This course covers social development, social behaviour, social cognition and social neuroscience, in both human and non-human social animals. Topics include altruism, empathy, communication, theory of mind, aggression, power, groups, mating, and morality. Methods include evolutionary biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology and anthropology.
Democracy in Brief touches on topics such as rights and responsibilities of citizens, free and fair elections, the rule of law, the role of a written constitution, separation of powers, a free media, the role of parties and interest groups, military-civilian relations and democratic culture.
Esta publicación es posible gracias al proyecto “Fortaleciendo la Democracia a través del Ciudadanía Digital en Chile y México”, desarollado por La Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile y el Instituto Belisario Domínguez del Senado de México, y financiado por el Fondo Conjunto de Cooperación México–Chile (convocatoria 2015). Dicho fondo es administrado por la Agencia de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo de Chile (AGCID) y la Agencia Mexicana de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AMEXCID).
This course emphasizes dynamic models of growth and development. Topics covered include: migration, modernization, and technological change; static and dynamic models of political economy; the dynamics of income distribution and institutional change; firm structure in developing countries; development, transparency, and functioning of financial markets; privatization; and banks and credit market institutions in emerging markets.
At MIT, this course was team taught by Prof. Robert Townsend, who taught for the first half of the semester, and Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, who taught during the second half. On OCW we are only including materials associated with sessions one through 13, which comprise the first half of the class.
Topics include productivity effects of health, private and social returns to education, education quality, education policy and market equilibrium, gender discrimination, public finance, decision making within families, firms and contracts, technology, labor and migration, land, and the markets for credit and savings.
Summary and links to further reading on the question "Did Slavery Just Happen in the South?"
Digital Anthropology is a Spring 2003 applied social science and media arts seminar, surveying the blossoming arena of digital-artifact enabled experimental sociology/anthropology.ĺĘWe will emphasize onĺĘboth (a) Technology Testbeds -- systematically deploying research lab prototypes and corporate pre-production products in a sample human organizational population and carefully observing the social consequences, and (b) Sociometrics -- using digital artifacts to better observe and measure the complex social reality of interesting human systems.
An introduction to the cross-cultural study of bio-medical ethics. Examines moral foundations of the science and practice of western bio-medicine through case studies of abortion, contraception, cloning, organ transplantation and other issues. Evaluates challenges that new medical technologies pose to the practice and availability of medical services around the globe, and to cross-cultural ideas of kinship and personhood. Discusses critiques of the bio-medical tradition from anthropological, feminist, legal, religious, and cross-cultural theorists.
In recent years, the redistribution of risk has created conditions for natural and technological disasters to become more widespread, more difficult to manage, and more discriminatory in their effects. Policy and planning decision-makers frequently focus on the impact that human settlement patterns, land use decisions, and risky technologies can have on vulnerable populations. However, to ensure safety and promote equity, they also must be familiar with the social and political dynamics that are present at each stage of the disaster management cycle. Therefore, this course will provide students with: 1) An understanding of the breadth of factors that give rise to disaster vulnerability; and 2) A foundation for assessing and managing the social and political processes associated with disaster policy and planning.
This textbook presents core concepts common to introductory courses. The 15 units cover the traditional areas of intro-to-psychology; ranging from biological aspects of psychology to psychological disorders to social psychology. This book can be modified: feel free to add or remove modules to better suit your specific needs.
This book includes a comprehensive instructor's manual, PowerPoint presentations, a test bank, reading anticipation guides, and adaptive student quizzes.
Noba Project (www.nobaproject.com) is an OER psychology textbook. Noba offers a ready-made full textbook (https://nobaproject.com/textbooks/introduction-to-psychology-the-full-noba-collection) and a ready-made brief textbook (https://nobaproject.com/textbooks/discover-psychology-v2-a-brief-introductory-text). Faculty can select from among the many chapters to customize their own textbook - which is what I did.
For most of the chapters within Noba, there is a Cerego quiz. This is an adaptive learning technology that asks students to assess their mastery and then answer questions. There is no penalty for wrong answers and students can take as much time as they want with the quizzes. The quizzes rely on distributed practice to deepen learning. Students cannot complete the quizzes in one sitting. Students complete the free registration and receive reminders when it is time to review the text and pick up the quizzes again.
Below I will list the authors for the chapters that are included in the customized book for my classes.
This course examines how medicine is practiced cross-culturally, with particular emphasis on Western biomedicine. Students analyze medical practice as a cultural system, focusing on the human, as opposed to the biological, side of things. Also considered is how people in different cultures think of disease, health, body, and mind.
This course examines the growing importance of medicine in culture, economics and politics. It uses an historical approach to examine the changing patterns of disease, the causes of morbidity and mortality, the evolution of medical theory and practice, the development of hospitals and the medical profession, the rise of the biomedical research industry, and the ethics of health care in America.
This is a course about how research knowledge and other types of knowledge come to be actionable and influential in the worldŰÓor not. The course explores ways to make research knowledge more accessible, credible, and useful in the realm of public policy and practiceŰÓa project in which the course faculty collectively bring decades of professional experience, in both academic and non-academic roles. The course addresses the politics of the policymaking process, the power of framing and agenda-setting, fads and paradigms in the design professions and society in general, how knowledge diffuses along knowledge and influence networks, and how varied types of knowledge (rational, craft, other) and deliberation shape decision-making and action. The course engages a number of guests to present case studies of research in use (and abuse) in varied fields, highlighting rich areas for potential research contribution, along with major conflicts in public values, political interests, ethical obligations, and more. The resulting dilemmas confront scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and others as they look to researchŰÓsometimesŰÓfor useful guidance, influence, or both.
This class examines the relationship between a number of mind-altering substances and cultural processes. We look at the relationship between drugs and such phenomena as poverty, religion, technology, inter-generational conflict, colonialism, and global capitalism. We read about the physiological and psychological effects of these substances -- ranging from alcohol to LSD, cocaine and ecstasy -- and ask why different societies prohibit and sanction different drugs. We examine the use of mind-altering substances in a number of "traditional" societies, and follow the development of a global trade in such substances as sugar, coffee, tea, nicotine, cocaine, and marijuana concurrent with the evolution of global capitalism. We look at the use of LSD as a mind-control substance by the CIA and as a mind-altering substance in the 1960's counter-culture, and we look at the rise of Prozacĺ¨ and Viagraĺ¨ as popular, if controversial, pharmaceutical products in recent years. Finally, we evaluate America's current drug laws.
This course focuses on dynamic optimization methods, both in discrete and in continuous time. We approach these problems from a dynamic programming and optimal control perspective. We also study the dynamic systems that come from the solutions to these problems. The course will illustrate how these techniques are useful in various applications, drawing on many economic examples. However, the focus will remain on gaining a general command of the tools so that they can be applied later in other classes.
Course covers deterministic and stochastic dynamic optimization using dynamic programming analysis.
Deterministic optimization: maximum principle, dynamic programming, calculus of variations, optimal control, dynamic games. Stochastic optimization: stochastic optimal control and dynamic programming, Markov processes, Ito calculus, Markov games. Applications. Dynamical systems: local and global analysis and chaos. The unifying theme of this course is best captured by the title of our main reference book: "Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics". We start by covering deterministic and stochastic dynamic optimization using dynamic programming analysis. We then study the properties of the resulting dynamic systems. Finally, we will go over a recursive method for repeated games that has proven useful in contract theory and macroeconomics. We shall stress applications and examples of all these techniques throughout the course.