Bøger udgivet af MIT Press Ltd

"Accessible overview of gain of function, virological research that seeks to alter features of a pathogen, and what it might mean for the future of biological research"--

All about bilingualism, in science and in life: the benefits and controversies, the individual experience, and the social significance.Nearly half the world's people are bilingual, but many have no clear understanding of what—aside from being fluent in more than one language—bilingualism means. This lively introduction by linguist Penelope Gardner-Chloros covers everything a bilingual (or curious monolingual) individual might want to know. The book discusses how bilingualism affects brain development and performance in the young and old, its social and political significance throughout time and around the globe, and how people experience and describe it. Gardner-Chloros looks at how both children and adults, become bilingual, how this affects learning, and what it means to be a bilingual family or family member. Drawing on the latest research, she offers a comprehensive but accessible account of the cognitive effects of bilingualism, and how the bilingual brain differs from the monolingual one. With the help of real examples, she outlines the impact of bilingualism on everyday speech and writing, from formal literature to social media, and lets speakers of various languages and backgrounds describe, in their own words, their experience of bilingualism and its impact on their lives. Informative, engaging, and wide-ranging, Bilingualism is the indispensable resource on a common but little understood phenomenon of far-reaching personal, social, political, and historical significance.

"A century defined by climate change, shifting global alliances, and remote work requires a reinvention of industry in America"--

A fascinating and beautifully illustrated account of trying to conceive in both the past and the present.Inspired by the author’s own experiences, Conceiving Histories brings together history, personal memoir, and illustration to investigate the culturally hidden experience of trying to conceive. In elegant, engaging prose, Isabel Davis explores the combination of myth, fantasy, science, and pseudo-science that the (un)reproductive body encounters in pursuit of a viable pregnancy. The book chronicles the trying-to-conceive lifecycle arc from sex education at school, through the desire to be a parent, into the specifics of trying and struggling to conceive. It also looks back at conception throughout history to open a new vista on what we live with today.A central argument of Davis’s is that historical people lived with the unknown just like we do but were more explicitly able to acknowledge it. In an age of assistive reproductive technologies, the act of embracing uncertainty seems difficult. Although the topic of not conceiving is potentially painful, this is not a grim book; more than grief, it is motivated by curiosity, wonder, compassion, and even humor. With 108 full-color illustrations, Conceiving Histories is also a beautiful material object, an intentionally playful antidote and supplement to online search engines—the resort of so many embroiled in fertility challenges.

How digital social reading apps are powerfully changing—and nurturing—the way we read.Conventional wisdom would have us believe that digital technology is a threat to reading, but in Digital Social Reading, Federico Pianzola argues that reading socially through digital media can help people grow a passion for reading and, in some cases, even enhance text comprehension. Digital social reading (DSR) is a term that encompasses a wide variety of practices related to the activity of reading and using digital technologies and platforms (websites, social media, mobile apps) to share thoughts and impressions about books with others. This book is the first systematization of DSR practices, drawing on case studies from Wattpad, AO3, and Goodreads on a worldwide scale.Using a combination of qualitative and computational methods, Pianzola offers fresh insight into the reading experience on the scale of big data. He discusses the impact of digital technology on reading skills and shows that a change of methodological perspective is necessary to understand the positive potential of DSR for promoting reading more broadly. He argues that it is not just the medium that changes, but also the context and the attitudes of readers. He also believes that grassroots media and open, bottom-up communities are crucial to the success of many reading practices today, especially with young audiences.

"Pearce explores a new theory of play, to help us get at the question: How do we know we are playing? The book is broken into three parts: the first explores a variety of concepts derived from social theory, the second shows how we can apply these frames in practice, and the third part then focuses on a series of specific case studies and examples"--

"A new paradigm of research, policy, and practice that acknowledges the multiple scales at which we live every day-addresses, streets, and neighborhoods"--

"This book presents real-life opportunities that can be unleashed with AI working alongside a human partner"--

"The book discusses an empirically-based approach to constructing macroeconomic models"--

"A critical history of how Taiwan rose to global prominence in high-tech manufacturing"--

The first anthology of texts on the luminary contemporary artist David Hammons.David Hammons is a collection of essays on the one of the most important living Black artists of our time, David Hammons (b. 1943). Documenting five decades of visual practice from 1982 to the present, the book features contributions from scholars, artists, and cultural workers, and includes numerous images of the artist and his work that are not widely available. Contributions include essays from cultural critics including Guy Trebay and Greg Tate; artists Coco Fusco and Glenn Ligon; and scholars such as Robert Farris Thompson, Alex Alberro, and Manthia Diawara.A star of the West Coast Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and the winner of a Prix de Rome prize as well as a MacArthur Fellowship, David Hammons rose to fame in Los Angeles with his body prints, in which he used his entire body as a printing plate. His later work engaged with materials that he found in urban environments—from greasy brown paper bags, discarded hair from barber shops, and empty bottles of cheap wine—which he turned into things of wonder while also commenting on a country’s neglect of its citizens. In this volume, a new generation of scholars, Tobias Wofford, Abbe Schriber, and Sampada Aranke, broaden the theoretical mapping of Hammons’s career and its impact, challenging viewers to imagine, in the words of Aranke, “how to see like Hammons.”

"A collection of often iconoclastic essays on a number of key Renaissance artists"--

"Covers all fixed income instruments, the basis of their analysis, the portfolio strategies with them, and portfolio management"--

"The aim of this book is to provide the simplest formulations that can be derived "from first principles" with simple arguments"--

"This book provides an accessible technical introduction to the field of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL)"--

"This richly illustrated book explores the drive to shape life as a spatial project--from Plato to the isolation of digital space--and is aimed at recovering the feeling of space as a sensory realm"--

How the innate physical properties of different technologies influence the strategy and structure of the organizations implementing the technologies, the sequel to Design Rules: The Power of Modularity.In Design Rules, volume 2, Carliss Baldwin offers a comprehensive view of the digital economy by putting forth an original theory that explains how technology shapes organizations in a market economy. The theory claims that complementarities arising from the physical nature of technologies can be arrayed on a spectrum ranging from strong to very weak. Two basic types of technologies in turn exhibit different degrees of complementarity between their internal components. Flow production technologies, which are found in steel mills and auto factories, specify a series of steps, each of which is essential to the final product. In contrast, platform technologies, which are characteristic of computer hardware, software, and networks, are modular systems designed to provide options.Baldwin then investigates the dynamics of strategy for firms in platform ecosystems. Such firms create value by solving technical bottlenecks—technical barriers to performance that arise in different parts of the system as it evolves. They capture value by controlling and defending strategic bottlenecks—components that are (1) essential to the functioning of some part of the system; (2) unique; and (3) controlled by a profit-seeking enterprise. Strategic bottlenecks can be acquired by solving technical bottlenecks. They can be destroyed via tactics such as substitution, reverse engineering, bypassing the bottleneck, and enveloping a smaller bottleneck within a larger one. Strategy in platform ecosystems can thus be viewed as the effective management of technical and strategic bottlenecks within a modular technical system.

"Time Machines examines the relationship between art and technology in the decades following the French Revolution, focusing on optical telegraphy, a novel form of visual communication developed in the 1790s that remained in use until the mid-1850s"--

"A study of the US architect Albert Kahn, architect of the Ford motor company, and one that combines a scholarly history and interpretation with a set of remarkable archival images"--