Bücher veröffentlicht von MIT Press Ltd

A case study that explains the present location pattern of the synthetic-fiber industry, forecasts the regional distribution of future growth in terms of employment and capital investment, and evaluates the advantages of Puerto Rico as a site for fiber production.

The first systematic study of approximation methods in queueing network modeling and how these methods are developed.

It is generally known that the United States, a large country, has spawned business corporations that transcend international boundaries--multinationals. What is not generally known is that many smaller countries are rapidly following suit--they too are opening and expanding international operations for their own local firms. This book is the first organized effort by scholars to deal with non-American international corporations as a general phenomenon. Initially presented at a colloquium devoted to the subject held at MIT in January 1976, these seven essays bring to light the relatively unpublicized international activities of firms originating in a number of geographically and economically diverse smaller countries.

Elihu Thomson (1853-1937) was one of the most inventive scientists of his time and one of the few truly scientific inventors. Because he saw no reason for making sharp separations between the pure and the applied, between science and technology, he was able to illuminate each aspect of his work with the light of his experience in the other. The result, as his correspondence confirms, was a progressive reaching out into numerous areas, some far removed from the electrical studies on which his fame has chiefly rested.This collection of letters on scientific topics, both to and from Thomson, displays his interest in and knowledge of astronomy, telescope making, physical chemistry, x-ray studies, the history of science, industrial research and production, scientific education, military and naval armament, acoustics, air pollution, noise abatement, and other matters. His electrical and electromechanical interests are of course well represented in this selection. These areas the reader will in large part be able to match against the well-known scientists and inventors among those included in the book who shared concerns and exchanged letters with Thomson: Sir William H. Bragg, William D. Coolidge, R. E. B. Crompton, Thomas A. Edison, George E. Hale, Irving Langmuir, Robert A. Millikan, Michael I. Pupin, George W. Ritchey, George A. Sarton, Harlow Shapley, Samuel W. Stratton, and Willis R. Whitney.Thomson is credited with almost 800 electrical inventions. The process by which some of these were made are revealed in his letters in discussing generators, arc lights, measuring instruments, transformers, and other implements. Other letters reflect the rise of his company, which merged with Edison's to become the General Electric Company. It is of interest that Thomson chose to remain at General Electric all his life, as a consultant, even though he could have had almost any academic post he desired, including the M.I.T. presidency. Thomson was in fact an early advocate of the value of in-house industrial support of scientific activity of a sort transcending narrow and obvious self-interest; such support he felt would mutually benefit both science and industry. Some of the most interesting of the letters deal with his advice to Hale and others on the making of the great 100- and 200-inch telescope mirrors. Others describe how, as a young Philadelphia high school teacher, he was able to produce electromagnetic waves and detect them at a distance some twelve years before the experiments of Hertz. At that time, he realized their utility as a medium of communication twenty years before Marconi's successful transmissions.Thomson's letters to and from each correspondent are grouped together in order to show with greater continuity the development of Thomson's warm personal relationships and the unfolding of ideas and results in the various fields. The editors have provided an introduction, biographical accounts, and annotations. The latter are extensive and varied in nature, comprising explanations, anecdotes, commentaries, and identifications of now-obscure references.

A personal story of the ways in which persistence, chance, and creativity interact in biomedical research.

This classic guide teaches the art of programming to first time programmers.

An essential guide to the field, with papers drawn from disciplines as varied as neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, engineering, and physics.

A comprehensive survey of the theory and applications of meta-programming, covering problems of representation and of soundness and correctness of interpreters, analysis and evaluation of meta-logic programs, and applications to sophisticated knowledge-based systems.

The evolution of Robert McNamara's poverty-oriented redirections at the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.

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

Aronoff integrates an account of morphological structure into a general theory of generative grammar.

A comprehensive exposition of mathematics, tracing the history and cultural significance of mathematical ideas from antiquity to the present day.

A guide to first purchases in science and engineering undergraduate libraries.

The CLOS metaobject protocol is a high-performance extension to the CommonLisp Object System. The authors, who developed CLOS, introduce this approach to programming language design, describe its evolution and design principles and present a specification of a metaobject protocol for CLOS.

In Minimal Rationality, Christopher Cherniak boldly challenges the myth of Man the the Rational Animal and the central role that the "perfectly rational agent" has had in philosophy, psychology, and other cognitive sciences, as well as in economics.

Two experts show that innovation is a skill that can be learned and describe eight essential practices for achieving success.Innovation is the ruling buzzword in business today. Technology companies invest billions in developing new gadgets; business leaders see innovation as the key to a competitive edge; policymakers craft regulations to foster a climate of innovation. And yet businesses report a success rate of only four percent for innovation initiatives. Can we significantly increase our odds of success? In The Innovator's Way, innovation experts Peter Denning and Robert Dunham reply with an emphatic yes. Innovation, they write, is not simply an invention, a policy, or a process to be managed. It is a personal skill that can be learned, developed through practice, and extended into organizations.Denning and Dunham identify and describe eight personal practices that all successful innovators perform: sensing, envisioning, offering, adopting, sustaining, executing, leading, and embodying. Together, these practices can boost a fledgling innovator to success. Weakness in any of these practices, they show, blocks innovation. Denning and Dunham chart the path to innovation mastery, from individual practices to teams and social networks.

The contentious history of the computer programmers who developed the software that made the computer revolution possible.

An engaging introduction to the science of vision that offers a coherent account of vision based on general information processing principlesIn this accessible and engaging introduction to modern vision science, James Stone uses visual illusions to explore how the brain sees the world. Understanding vision, Stone argues, is not simply a question of knowing which neurons respond to particular visual features, but also requires a computational theory of vision. Stone draws together results from David Marr's computational framework, Barlow's efficient coding hypothesis, Bayesian inference, Shannon's information theory, and signal processing to construct a coherent account of vision that explains not only how the brain is fooled by particular visual illusions, but also why any biological or computer vision system should also be fooled by these illusions.This short text includes chapters on the eye and its evolution, how and why visual neurons from different species encode the retinal image in the same way, how information theory explains color aftereffects, how different visual cues provide depth information, how the imperfect visual information received by the eye and brain can be rescued by Bayesian inference, how different brain regions process visual information, and the bizarre perceptual consequences that result from damage to these brain regions. The tutorial style emphasizes key conceptual insights, rather than mathematical details, making the book accessible to the nonscientist and suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate study.

A new edition of a foundational work of cognitive science that outlines a theory of the development of specifically human higher mental functions.Since it was introduced to the English-speaking world in 1962, Lev Vygotsky's Thought and Language has become recognized as a classic foundational work of cognitive science. Its 1962 English translation must certainly be considered one of the most important and influential books ever published by the MIT Press. In this highly original exploration of human mental development, Vygotsky analyzes the relationship between words and consciousness, arguing that speech is social in its origins and that only as children develop does it become internalized verbal thought.In 1986, the MIT Press published a new edition of the original translation by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar, edited by Vygotsky scholar Alex Kozulin, that restored the work's complete text and added materials to help readers better understand Vygotsky's thought. Kozulin also contributed an introductory essay that offered new insight into Vygotsky's life, intellectual milieu, and research methods. This expanded edition offers Vygotsky's text, Kozulin's essay, a subject index, and a new foreword by Kozulin that maps the ever-growing influence of Vygotsky's ideas.

An exploration of the dialogue that emerged after 1776 between different visions of what it meant to use new technologies to transform the land.

Learning through original texts can be a powerful heuristic tool. This book collects a dozen classic readings that are generally accepted as the most significant contributions to the philosophy of space. The readings have been selected both on the basis of their relevance to recent debates on the nature of space and on the extent to which they carry premonitions of contemporary physics. In his detailed commentaries, Nick Huggett weaves together the readings and links them to our modern understanding of the subject. Together the readings indicate the general historical development of the concept of space, and in his commentaries Huggett explains their logical relations. He also uses our contemporary understanding of space to help clarify the key ideas of the texts. One goal is to prepare the reader (both scientist and nonscientist) to learn and understand relativity theory, the basis of our current understanding of space. The readings are by Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Clarke, Berkeley, Kant, Mach, Poincaré, and Einstein.

How the history of technology emerged as a coherent intellectual discipline.

Words, Thoughts, and Theories articulates and defends the "theory theory" of cognitive and semantic development--the idea that infants and young children, like scientists, learn about the world by forming and revising theories, a view of the origins of knowledge and meaning that has broad implications for cognitive science.

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.

An exploration of Cope's experimentation in artificial musical creativity; includes a CD containing performances of music discussed in the text.

A new, social epistemology of science that addresses practical as well as theoretical concerns.

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.