Essential Knowledge

Billions of people around the globe use various applications of spatial computing daily - by using a ride-sharing app, GPS, social media check-ins, even Pokemon Go. Scientists and researchers use spatial computing to track diseases, map the bottom of the oceans, chart the behavior of endangered species, and create election maps in real time. Drones and driverless cars use a variety of spatial computing technologies. Spatial computing works by understanding the physical world, knowing and communicating our relation to places in that world, and navigating through those places.

In this audiobook, machine learning expert Ethem Alpaydin offers a concise overview of the subject for the general listener, describing its evolution, explaining important learning algorithms, and presenting example applications. Alpaydin offers an account of how digital technology advanced from number-crunching mainframes to mobile devices, putting today's machine learning boom in context.

Most of the information available on cloud computing is either highly technical, with details that are irrelevant to nontechnologists, or pure marketing hype, in which the cloud is simply a selling point. This book, however, explains the cloud from the user's viewpoint - the business user's in particular. Nayan Ruparelia explains what the cloud is, when to use it (and when not to), how to select a cloud service, how to integrate it with other technologies, and what the best practices are for using cloud computing.

This introduction to cyborg theory provides a critical vantage point for analyzing the claims around emerging technologies like automation, robots, and AI. Cyborg analyzes and reframes popular and scholarly conversations about cyborgs from the perspective of feminist cyborg theory.

The Internet of Things is a networked world of connected devices, objects, and people. In this book Samuel Greengard offers a guided tour through this emerging world and how it will change the way we live and work. Greengard explains that the Internet of Things (IoT) is still in its early stages. Smartphones, cloud computing, RFID (radio-frequency identification), technology, sensors, and miniaturization are converging to make possible a new generation of embedded and immersive technology.

Fifty years ago, neuroscientists thought that a mature brain was fixed like a fly in amber, unable to change. Today, we know that our brains and nervous systems change throughout our lifetimes. This concept of neuroplasticity has captured the imagination of a public eager for self-improvement - and has inspired countless Internet entrepreneurs who peddle dubious "brain training" games and apps. In this book, Moheb Costandi offers a concise and engaging overview of neuroplasticity for the general listener.

Welcome to Crafting Your Cybersecurity Career from Cyberafi! This book is designed for anyone interested in starting a career in cybersecurity, whether you're a recent graduate, experienced professional, or simply want to learn more about this exciting field. Our goal is to provide you with the knowledge and resources you need to accelerate your journey to a lucrative six-figure cybersecurity career.

Although it is among the oldest of market institutions, the auction is ubiquitous in today's economy, used for everything from government procurement to selling advertising on the Internet to course assignment at MIT's Sloan School. Yet beyond the small number of economists who specialize in the subject, few people understand how auctions really work. This concise, accessible, and engaging book explains both the theory and the practice of auctions.

Drone Essential Knowledge and Skills (DEKS) is about helping students go from general awareness of drones to flying safely as part of a team, then earning the FAA Part 107 commercial license, and starting their own drone business. Drones are becoming more relevant and pervasive in our schools and society. DEKS are designed to scaffold students through knowledge of drones, safety and responsible usage, technical knowledge, and skills to become a commercial drone operator, intern with a drone business, then build their own drone business in their local community.

Critical thinking is regularly cited as an essential 21st century skill, the key to success in school and work. Given our propensity to believe fake news, draw incorrect conclusions, and make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, it might even be said that critical thinking is vital to the survival of a democratic society. But what, exactly, is critical thinking? Haber describes the term's origins in such disciplines as philosophy, psychology, and science.

There is a great gift buried deep within you that is begging to come out now. And that gift is reality shifting: the power to experience new realities with just the specific use of your mind and a simple script. For beginners, newbies, and struggling shifters, this is the simple and succinct reality shifting resource you've been looking for and will teach you everything you need to shift to your desired reality for goal achievement or new experiences. This book will also serve as your "all-in-one" place to find shifting-related information and learn some advanced shifting methods!

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and glass tube to inject half a drop of sperm into a woman's uterus, marking the first recorded instance of artificial insemination. From that day forward, doctors and scientists have turned to technology in ever more innovative ways to facilitate conception. Fertility Technology surveys this history in all its medical, practical, and ethical complexity, and offers a look at state-of-the-art fertility technology in various social and political contexts around the world.

The dream of a universal translation device goes back many decades, long before Douglas Adams's fictional Babel fish provided this service in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since the advent of computers, research has focused on the design of digital machine translation tools - computer programs capable of automatically translating a text from a source language to a target language. This has become one of the most fundamental tasks of artificial intelligence.

This audiobook will tell you how Machiavellian people are adept at hiding the truth from you, and how they manipulate, persuade, and negotiate with other people. Full of stories, practical advice, and revealing information that helps you learn just how dark a Machiavellian’s mind is, this guide will teach you how you can shield yourself from their ploys.

In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive.

In this accessible guide to the meanings of sustainability, Kent Portney describes the evolution of the idea and examines its application in a variety of contemporary contexts - from economic growth and consumption to government policy and urban planning.

In this book the philosopher Jonathan Westphal examines the mind-body problem in detail, laying out the reasoning behind the solutions that have been offered in the past and presenting his own proposal. The sharp focus on the mind-body problem, a problem that is not about the self or consciousness or the soul or anything other than the mind and the body, helps clarify both problem and solutions. Westphal outlines the history of the mind-body problem, beginning with Descartes.

Peter Bandettini covers the essentials of fMRI, providing insight and perspective from his nearly three decades of research. He describes other brain imaging and assessment methods; the sources of fMRI contrasts; the basic methodology, from hardware to pulse sequences; brain activation experiment design strategies; and data and image processing. A unique, stand-alone chapter addresses major controversies in the field, outlining 26 challenges that have helped shape fMRI research.

The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?