An argument that health is optimal responsiveness and is often best treated at the system level.Medical education centers on the venerable "no-fault” concept of homeostasis, whereby local mechanisms impose constancy by correcting errors, and the brain serves mainly for emergencies. Yet, it turns out that most parameters are not constant; moreover, despite the importance of local mechanisms, the brain is definitely in charge. In this book, the eminent neuroscientist Peter Sterling describes a broader concept: allostasis (coined by Sterling and Joseph Eyer in the 1980s), whereby the brain anticipates needs and efficiently mobilizes supplies to prevent errors.Allostasis evolved early, Sterling explains, to optimize energy efficiency, relying heavily on brain circuits that deliver a brief reward for each positive surprise. Modern life so reduces the opportunities for surprise that we are driven to seek it in consumption: bigger burgers, more opioids, and innumerable activities that involve higher carbon emissions. The consequences include addiction, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and climate change. Sterling concludes that solutions must go beyond the merely technical to restore possibilities for daily small rewards and revivify the capacities for egalitarianism that were hard-wired into our nature.Sterling explains that allostasis offers what is not found in any medical textbook: principled definitions of health and disease: health as the capacity for adaptive variation and disease as shrinkage of that capacity. Sterling argues that since health is optimal responsiveness, many significant conditions are best treated at the system level.
The first comprehensive survey of Czech avant-garde photography of the first half of the twentieth century.Not until the fall of the communist regime in 1989 and the end of Czechoslovakia's cultural isolation did the world begin to appreciate the Czech avant-garde photographers of the first half of the twentieth century. This first survey of Czech avant-garde photography introduces the important work of Frantisek Drtikol, Jaromir Funke, Jaroslav Rössler, Jindøich Styrský, Josef Sudek, and numerous others whose work made Czech photography synonymous with visions of modernity. The essays introduce the period and explore the background and connections among the photographers. Biographical profiles are also included. But the book's main attraction is its outstanding collection of duotone and color images, many published here for the first time. The Czech edition of this book received the "Best Photographic Publication of 1999-2000" award from Primavera Fotográfica in Barcelona and from Month of Photography in Bratislava and was one of six finalists for the 2001 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.
A bold and timely collection that brings feminist theory and critical thinking to life through vital, approachable design methods and practices.Feminist Designer brings together a constellation of voices and perspectives to examine the intersection of design and feminist theory. For decades, the feminist refrain within design has hinged on the representation and inclusion of women in the field. This collection, edited by Alison Place, however, is a call to move beyond this narrow application of a feminist lens. Feminist design is not just about who does design—it is about how we do design and why. Feminist frameworks for design activism are now more relevant than ever, as they emphasize collaborative processes that aim to disrupt and dismantle power hierarchies while centering feminist ways of knowing and doing. The first book in nearly three decades to address feminist practices in design, Feminist Designer contains essays, case studies, and dialogues by 43 contributors from 16 different countries. It engages a wide variety of design disciplines, from graphic design to disability design to algorithmic design, and explores key feminist themes, such as power, knowledge, care, plurality, liberation, and community. Through diverse, sometimes conflicting, intersectional perspectives, this book contributes new design methods informed by a multiplicity of feminisms that confront design’s patriarchal origins while ushering in new pathways for making critical and meaningful change.ContributorsClaudia Marina, Griselda Flesler, Aggie Toppins, Aasawari Kulkarni, Jennifer Armbrust, Maryam Mustafa, Elizabeth Pérez, Aimi Hamraie, Gaby Hernández, Ashley K. Eberhart, Elizabeth Byrd, Madeline Avram Blount, Manon Vergerio, Velvet A. Johnson Ross, Eden Laurin, Ellen Kellogg, Rebecca Tegtmeyer, Jeff Kasper, Rachael Dietkus, Laura Devendorf, Attia Taylor, Becky Nasadowski, Benedetta Crippa, Cami Rincon, Andrew Mallinson, Margaret Middleton, Ayako Takase, Heather Snyder Quinn, Dina Benbrahim, Jenn Roberts, Alexis Hope, Joana Varon, Marie Louis Juul Søndergaard, Alexandra Crosby, Ilaria Vanni, Una Lee, Dann Toliver, Tawana Petty, Jane Im, Boaz Sender, Sarah Williams, Mandy Harris Williams, Lauren Lee McCarthy, In-ah Shin, Victor G. Martinez, Nina Paim, Maya Ober
How design can transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism: a framework, theoretical grounding, and practical principles.The designed things, experiences, and symbols that we use to perceive, understand, and perform our everyday lives are much more than just props. They directly shape how we live. In Design after Capitalism, Matthew Wizinsky argues that the world of industrial capitalism that gave birth to modern design has been dramatically transformed. Design today needs to reorient itself toward deliberate transitions of everyday politics, social relations, and economies. Looking at design through the lens of political economy, Wizinsky calls for the field to transcend the logics, structures, and subjectivities of capitalism—to combine design entrepreneurship with social empowerment in order to facilitate new ways of producing those things, symbols, and experiences that make up everyday life. After analyzing the parallel histories of capitalism and design, Wizinsky offers some historical examples of anticapitalist, noncapitalist, and postcapitalist models of design practice. These range from the British Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century to contemporary practices of growing furniture or biotextiles and automated forms of production. Drawing on insights from sociology, philosophy, economics, political science, history, environmental and sustainability studies, and critical theory—fields not usually seen as central to design—he lays out core principles for postcapitalist design; offers strategies for applying these principles to the three layers of project, practice, and discipline; and provides a set of practical guidelines for designers to use as a starting point. The work of postcapitalist design can start today, Wizinsky says—with the next project.
A practice-based guide to applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health challenges; updated and expanded with post–COVID-19 innovations. This book offers a practice-based guide to applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health challenges that range from drug packaging to breast cancer detection. Written by pioneers in the field—Bon Ku, a physician leader in innovative health design, and Ellen Lupton, an award-winning graphic designer—the book outlines the fundamentals of design thinking and highlights important products, prototypes, and research in health design. This revised and expanded edition describes innovations developed in response to the COVID-19 crisis, including an intensive care unit in a shipping container, a rolling cart with intubation equipment, and a mask brace that gives a surgical mask a tighter seal. The book explores the special overlap of health care and the creative process, describing the development of such products and services as a credit card–sized device that allows patients to generate their own electrocardiograms; a mask designed to be worn with a hijab; improved emergency room signage; and a map of racial disparities and COVID-19. It will be an essential volume for health care providers, educators, patients, and designers who seek to create better experiences and improved health outcomes for individuals and communities.
"An intimate understanding of what robots are for the average popular science reader, with a focus dispelling fears and showcasing how humans might interact with robots"--
"A work of literary non-fiction about the life of architect Minoru Yamasaki (architect of the Twin Towers), but also a parallel narrative about an artist (the author) interrogating art and architecture's role in culture in NYC"--
Images and text capture the astonishing beauty of the chemical processes that create snowflakes, bubbles, flames, and other wonders of nature.Chemistry is not just about microscopic atoms doing inscrutable things; it is the process that makes flowers and galaxies. We rely on it for bread-baking, vegetable-growing, and producing the materials of daily life. In stunning images and illuminating text, this book captures chemistry as it unfolds. Using such techniques as microphotography, time-lapse photography, and infrared thermal imaging, The Beauty of Chemistry shows us how chemistry underpins the formation of snowflakes, the science of champagne, the colors of flowers, and other wonders of nature and technology. We see the marvelous configurations of chemical gardens; the amazing transformations of evaporation, distillation, and precipitation; heat made visible; and more.
How science fiction has been a tool for understanding and living through rapid technological change.The world today seems to be slipping into a science fiction future. We have phones that speak to us, cars that drive themselves, and connected devices that communicate with each other in languages we don't understand. Depending the news of the day, we inhabit either a technological utopia or Brave New World nightmare. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge surveys the uses of science fiction. It focuses on what is at the core of all definitions of science fiction: a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness.
A new approach for defining causality and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degrees of blame, and causal explanation.
A study of water at the intersection of landscape and infrastructure in Paris, Berlin, Lagos, Mumbai, Los Angeles, and London.
The definitive presentation of Soar, one AI's most enduring architectures, offering comprehensive descriptions of fundamental aspects and new components.
An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of their computational properties.
A new edition of the leading text in monetary economics, a comprehensive treatment revised and enhanced with new material reflecting recent advances in the field.
Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the key ideas and algorithms of reinforcement learning. Their discussion ranges from the history of the field's intellectual foundations to the most recent developments and applications.
An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival.What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? "Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world.This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to "build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.
The debate over genetically modified organisms: health and safety concerns, environmental impact, and scientific opinions.Since they were introduced to the market in the late 1990s, GMOs (genetically modified organisms, including genetically modified crops), have been subject to a barrage of criticism. Agriculture has welcomed this new technology, but public opposition has been loud and scientific opinion mixed. In GMOs Decoded, Sheldon Krimsky examines the controversies over GMOs—health and safety concerns, environmental issues, the implications for world hunger, and the scientific consensus (or lack of one). He explores the viewpoints of a range of GMO skeptics, from public advocacy groups and nongovernmental organizations to scientists with differing views on risk and environmental impact.Krimsky explains the differences between traditional plant breeding and "molecular breeding” through genetic engineering (GE); describes early GMO products, including the infamous Flavr Savr tomato; and discusses herbicide-, disease-, and insect-resistant GE plants. He considers the different American and European approaches to risk assessment, dueling scientific interpretations of plant genetics, and the controversy over labeling GMO products. He analyzes a key 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences on GMO health effects and considers the controversy over biofortified rice (Golden Rice)—which some saw as a humanitarian project and others as an exercise in public relations. Do GMO crops hold promise or peril? By offering an accessible review of the risks and benefits of GMO crops, and a guide to the controversies over them, Krimsky helps readers judge for themselves.
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