MITPressLog

Neuroscience 2009

2009-11-10T11:08:05-05:00

Promotions Coordinator, Allison Hoch, was one of four MIT Pressers manning our booth at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Chicago last month. Here are some highlights:

Society for Neuroscience is one of my favorite meetings to attend as an exhibitor. The folks at this meeting - all 30,000+ of them - spend plenty of time on the exhibits floor and especially along publisher's row. Our reputation seems to proceed us - our strong history in this field garners us a lot of attention. I love getting to interact with our customers who seem as equally passionate about buying our books as I am about selling them. It was a thrill to attend this conference for the fourth time and be greeted by familiar faces returning to our booth to purchase new titles and beloved favorites for their friends or students.

This is the largest conference we attend and one of the longest; my co-workers and I spent a week in Chicago where this year's Society for Neuroscience meeting was held. Two days of travel, one day to set-up, four days of selling, and one day off in-between. The days in the convention center start for us at 8:30 am when we arrive early to set-up our computers and end at 5:30 when we finally close up shop and usher the last straggling customers out of the booth. This year things were so busy that we even brought packed lunches to eat between sales. And we celebrated successful work days with hot pastrami, deep-dish pizza, or one of the famous Illinois "Horseshoe" sandwiches.

This year was a record one for us - we practically sold out of every title we brought. Whether it was our new 30% conference discount or just a hunger for knowledge, we'd be hard-pressed to say, but the economy did not seem to waylay the majority of our customers. As always, our bestseller was Ramon y Cajal's Advice for a Young Investigator but we also saw a lot of interest in our new titles: Charles Gross' A Hole in the Head, Why We Cooperate by Michael Tomasello, Computational Modeling Methods for Neuroscientists by Erik De Schutter, Wednesday is Indigo Blue by Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman, and of course Michael Gazzaniga's new book (4th) editon of The Cognitive Neurosciences.

Charles Gross Reading in SoCal

2009-11-06T15:31:02-05:00

MIT Press author and Princeton neuroscientist Charles Gross reads from his latest book, A Hole in the Head tonight at The Book Works in Southern California. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in and listen to this great storyteller.

Another Brick in the Wall?

2009-11-05T15:31:53-05:00

This coming Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and much hoopla has been planned: a grand public party at the Brandenburg Gate, and a new symbolic falling of the Wall to take place in the form of 1000 giant dominoes that will be toppled along the strip that had once divided East Germany from West. U2’s free on-site concert in Berlin to commemorate the occasion has given rise to some interesting outrage,though: a 2-meter high metal barrier has been installed around where the concert is to take place, in order to block viewing by those who missed out on obtaining any of the 10,000 free tickets. The unpleasant irony of the new barrier points to the contradictions and conflict always to be faced and addressed in any country and political climate when walls are addressed, be they mental or physical. It is in recognition of these contradictions that Semiotext(e) has just rereleased its infamous “German issue,” the 1982 installment of the journal that explored all the invisible walls of suspicion, rebellion, hatred, and hope within the cities of Berlin and New York, with the issue itself serving as a conflict-ridden communicative wall between the two. The German Issue evoked the wall through a horizontal division by means of a visual wall of photographs of the Berlin Wall intermingled with Wall Street. In the journal’s memorable and substantive dialogue between Semiotext(e) founder Sylvère Lotringer and the now deceased German dramatist and author Heiner Müller, Lotringer commented: “The wall of history is totally visible here. I’d rather see it that way than in people’s minds.” As the dominoes tumble this Monday, it is good, then, to reflect on the “Mauer im kopf” [the wall in the head] every political and social nation and body must still contend with. The Wall is down, but a new look at The German Issue raises the question as to whether the “German Issue” may today just be everyone’s issue.

Alphabet City Festival

2009-10-29T10:44:44-04:00

If you are in Toronto this weekend, visit the Alphabet City Festival. This year's theme is water, which coincides with the newly published book.

The festival will include gallery exhibitions, a book launch and signing, and performances.

Mataric in the New Yorker

2009-10-28T10:48:33-04:00

This week's New Yorker features a lengthy profile of Maja Matarić, USC computer science professor and author of The Robotics Primer. New Yorker writer Jerome Groopman writes about Matarić's work with stroke and Alzheimer’s patients and autistic children. She and her lab are trying to design machines that can engage directly with such patients and encourage both physical and cognitive rehabilitation.

This excerpt from Groopman's piece shows how human interaction with robots has progressed light years from the Star Wars-Isaac Asimov images that many of us still carry around in our heads:

A woman I will call Mary, a schoolteacher in Los Angeles, suffered a stroke in 2001, when she was forty-six. She spent six months working with a physical therapist at the U.S.C. Medical Center to regain strength in her weakened right arm and leg, before taking part in Matarić’s study. I watched a videotape of her session with Matarić. Mary, who was dressed in a white blouse and dark slacks, shuffled slowly to a desk stacked with magazines. There was a shelf nearby, set above shoulder level. She looked at the robot, several feet away, and waved to it. “Come over here,” she said warmly.

The robot, which was three feet high and looked a little like R2-D2, in “Star Wars,” scooted close to her and stopped. “Very good,” Mary said.

Set on a mobile base with rotary wheels, the robot could turn in any direction and move around the room, guided by sonar. It tracked Mary’s movement with a scanning laser range finder; a pan-tilt-zoom camera allowed it to look at Mary, turn away, or shake its head. A speaker, embedded in the robot’s side, produced prerecorded speech and sound effects.

Glancing at the robot, Mary lifted a magazine from the top of the pile and guided it into a rack on top of the shelf. As soon as the magazine was in place, the robot emitted a beep. During the next few minutes, Mary moved each magazine, one by one, to the rack. Gradually, she increased her pace, and the beeps from the robot came faster. Mary began to laugh.

The whole thing's fascinating - read it here. Dying to know more about the book? Dig the video!

Journalist Amira Hass wins IWMF Lifetime Achievement Award

2009-10-26T12:03:01-04:00

Israeli journalist Amira Hass (author of Reporting from Ramallah) is best known for her reports on Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and Gaza - and for living in those places while writing about them. She was recently honored with a lifetime achievement award from International Women's Media Foundation:

For almost 20 years, Amira Hass has written critically about both Israeli and Palestinian authorities. A reporter and columnist for Ha’aretz Daily, she has demonstrated her ability to defy boundaries of gender, ethnicity and nationality in her pursuit of the truth in her reporting. In covering the Palestinian Occupied Territories, her goal has been to provide her readers with detailed information about Israeli policies and especially that of restrictions of the freedom of movement. For many years, she made her home first in Gaza City and then in Ramallah.

Watch Hass's acceptance speech here, or read more about her and the award in The Guardian, Huffington Post, or Democracy Now!.

Special Issue of Innovations

2009-10-23T15:41:49-04:00

In conjunction with the clean energy address that President Obama is delivering at MIT today, MIT Press is releasing essays from the soon to be published fall special issue of Innovations journal on energy and climate solution. The pre-released essays are authored by White House Science Adviser John Holdren, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Economics Thomas Schelling, and the Director of MIT’s Washington office, William Bonvillian.

In his introducing to the special issue, Holdren states that the forthcoming publication is “as thorough a survey of energy and climate solutions as has yet been compiled.” Of the climate challenge, he writes:

“Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs.”

Schelling, a leader in the study of climate change for over three decades, advances a new proposal for international coordination. Writing with reference to next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, Schelling states,

“Among the ideas that I do not believe will get serious attention in Copenhagen is one I see as critical to addressing the climate challenge: creating a new institutional structure to coordinate assistance from advanced industrialized countries to developing countries with the objective of transforming the way that people in the developing world produce and utilize energy.”

Bonvillian’s essay, co-authored with GeorgetownUniversity’s Charles Weiss, summarizes and advances the core arguments presented in the authors’ MIT Press book title Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution. Bonvillian and Weiss argue that the transformation of the energy technology infrastructure represents an unprecedented challenge for policy-makers as well as for technological innovators:

“Where complex technology sectors like energy are involved, we need to have Congress legislate standard packages of incentives and support across common technology launch areas, so that some technology neutrality is preserved and the optimal emerging technology has a chance to prevail.”

The Director of the MIT Press, Ellen Faran, states that “The Innovations special issue reflects the commitment of MIT and the MIT Press to promote innovative solutions to global issues and to encourage the widest dissemination of its scholarship.”

Sample articles from the issue follow below. Members of the media wishing to see an advance copy of the issue should contact: editors@innovationsjournal.net.

How Low Can They Go?

2009-10-21T09:11:32-04:00

Target enters the book price war with Amazon and Walmart. The New York Times reports today that Target matched online prices with Walmart's $8.99 for the top 10 pre-ordered books, which prompted Walmart to lower its price to $8.98.

In the article, Barbara Kingsolver said, “Obviously, authors don’t own our physical books, just the words inside, so we have no control over how they’re sold.” She added, “But we can ask our readers to consider how much they value their local bookstores. If this price war is another way of using volume discounts to put independent booksellers out of business, then every thoughtful reader is going to lose in the long run.”

Any guesses on how low these prices will go?

On the Road: Abdellah Taïa

2009-10-20T06:00:00-04:00

Best-known as "the only openly gay man in Morocco", the Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa kicks off his first US tour today, in support of his autobiographical novel Salvation Army.

Hailed by Edmund White as a "brilliant young writer", Taïa's novel and short stories have earned him recognition in France, where he now resides. Salvation Army was recently translated into English and published by Semiotext(e). It is both naive and cunning, funny and moving, and exposes the complex melange of fear and desire projected onto Arabs by the west.

Tour dates:

Oct 20, New York NY, 12:30-2:00pm:
Lecture in French: La Naïda: Une «Movida» Marocaine
Institute of French Studies at NYU
15 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003

Oct 21, Brooklyn NY, 7:30-9:30pm:
An evening with Bidoun and Semiotext(e): A screening of outsiders' Visions of Morocco, introduced by Addellah Taïa
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor, Brooklyn NY 111232

Oct 22, New York NY, 12:00-2:00pm:
Lecture in English: "Moroccan Literature in French"
Maison Francaise at Columbia University, Buell Hall2960 Broadway, New York, NY 10027

Oct 23, Cambridge MA, 2:00-4:00pm:
Lecture in English: "Moroccan Fiction: Problems of Gender and Translation"
Harvard University, Barker Center, Room 133
Cambridge, MA 02138

Oct 26, Los Angeles CA, 4:30pm:
Lecture in English by Abdellah Taïa
UCLA, Royce Hall 236
340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Oct 27, Los Angeles CA, 8:00pm:
Rockypoint Press present a Book Party for Salvation Army: Readings by Abdellah Taïa and Veronica Gonzalez
China Art Objects
933 Chung King Road
Los Angeles, California 90012
213 613 0384

Oct 29, Los Angeles CA, 8:30pm:
Life As We Show It: Writing on Film, with Rebecca Brown, Myriam Gurba, Abdellah Taïa and Masha Tupitsyn
RedCat
631 W 2nd St. Los Angeles, CA 90012

Nov 1, San Francisco CA, 5:00pm:
Abdellah Taia reading from Salvation Army
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA, 94133

Nov 2, Berkeley CA, 5:00-7pm:
Lecture in English—"The Invention of the Moroccan "I" and Gay Writing"
Berkeley University, 4229 Dwinelle Hall, French Dept Library
Berkeley, CA 94720

Nov 5, New York NY, 7pm:
Semiotext(e) Party for Penny Arcade's Bad Reputation, Abdellah Taia's Salvation Army, and Jean-Luc Hennig's The Little Black Book of Griselidis Real, translated by Ariana Reines. Arcade, Taia and Reines will read and perform from these books, hosted by Semiotexte co-editor Chris Kraus.
Bluestockings
172 Allen St.
New York, NY 10002

Nov 11, Coral Gables FL, 6:30pm:
Abdellah Taia reading from Salvation Army
Books & Books, Coral Gables
265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134

Japanese Aesthetics

2009-10-19T17:03:37-04:00

The Japanese lunchbox aesthetic is catching on in the US, according to this article in the New York Times. But how did such an aesthetic come about in Japan? The New York Times editors asked four experts, including John Maeda (The Laws of Simplicity), for their theories on why so much value is placed on aesthetics in Japan.

Of course, we have more answers in our book The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox by Kenji Ekuan, who in 1998 introduced his "lunchbox theory" as the key to understanding Japanese civilization.