As we get caught up in elections cycles and endless political debates, we can sometimes forget what democracy is and its institutions; how they work, their strengths and weaknesses. It's divided into 5 sections.

The state of democracy
The first part looks at the overall state of democracy across the world. After definining what a democracy is, we're look at how not all democracies are equal in measure, with some having more functioning democratic institutions than others. A useful recap of the other major types of government will feature.

Checks and balances
The separation of powers (legislative, executive and judicial) come from the premise that concentrating power in the hands of one person, party or government can have a detrimental effect on society. Hence why power and functions are distributed across separate and independent entities.

Thriving political culture
A democracy is more than voting once every x number of years. It's first of all making sure everyone who is elligible to vote can easily do so (obstacles are common). Political culture is also determined through the freedom to contest and protest.

Transparency, accountability & corruption
It is a given that a functioning democracy, with politicians elected by the people who get to decide how tax-payer money is spent, decision-making processes and accounting should be as transparant and corruption-free as possible. Unfortunately, lobbying and other forms of corruption are proven to be a hindrance on democracy as a whole.

Media: the fourth power
What is discussed in media outlets - from podcasts to TikTok videos, news articles to TV news bulletins - can have a significant impact on society, raising matters of public interest, forcing politicians to take position, debate and take action.
Hence the importance of a free press. One that is independent, can speak openly about any issue, criticise the government if need be, without fear of reprisal. It is also crucial that information is transparent, that journalists can access information on what governments are doing without hindrance.

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Part of the political science collection.

Students will understand difference and community by exploring a special place in their lives.

Environmental and earth science students seldom have an opportunity to apply what they learn in class to the solution of real-world problems. With NSF support we have developed the prototype Plume Busters software, in which students take on the role of an environmental consultant. Following a pipeline spill, the environmental consultant is hired by the pipeline owner to locate the resulting plume created by the spill and remediate the contaminated aquifer at minimum monetary and time cost. The contamination must be removed from the aquifer before it reaches the river and eventually a downstream public water supply. The software consists of an interactive Java application and accompanying HTML linked pages. The application simulates movement of a plume from a pipeline break through a shallow alluvial aquifer towards the river. The accompanying web pages establish the simulated contamination scenario and provide students with background material on ground-water flow and transport principles. To make the role-play more realistic, the student must consider cost and time when making decisions about siting observation wells and wells for the pump-and-treat remediation system.

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Students write and share original poems and stories about community issues or themes present in the central text.

Point of View asks students to demonstrate their narrative skills when applying different points of view in writing.

This course takes a broad-based look at poker theory and applications of poker analytics to investment management and trading.
This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT in January. IAP provides members of the MIT community including students, faculty, staff, and alums with an opportunity to organize, sponsor and participate in a wide variety of activities and topics that are often outside of the regular MIT curriculum.
Faculty Advisor: Paul Mende

This course is about solving complex problems. Our favorite problems are not just technically complex but also characterized by the presence of many different social actors that hold conflicting interests, objectives, and perceptions and act strategically to get the best out of a problem situation. This course offers guidance for policy analysts who want to assess if and how their analysis could be of help, based on the premise that problem formulation is the cornerstone in addressing complex problems. After this course, students would have obtained a theoretical insight into different models of decision-making processes, their implications in terms of supporting decision making and the potential roles that analysts; they can make a structured problem analysis in a complex situation, and can lay down their findings in an ‰"issue paper‰;" they know how to use a range of different methods and techniques to support attainment of these objectives; can formulate plans for a further analysis and closer examination, including the specification and the choice of possible mathematical models to be used.The completion of the practical part of this course will be an issue paper (written in pairs).

Policy of Multi-Actor Systems is an introduction into the art of craft of problem exploration and problem structuring. It positions policy analysis as a scientific discipline focused on systems analysis in a multi-actor context to support better informed decision-making. The approach presented in this book is considered to be the cornerstone of the curricula of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of Delft University of Technology and underlies the research on (the governance of) socio-technical systems. Systems thinking applied in a multi-actor environment and its inherent multi-disciplinary character is what makes this work stand out from traditional hard- and soft systems approaches. The core of the book is dedicated to systems analysis, actor- or stakeholder-analysis and discusses methods for dealing with uncertainty. These analytical activities combined lead to a rich problem description and to plans for further research. Due to the stepwise approach this book serves as a basis for any problem analysis both for our bachelor and master students, our alumni worldwide and any interested practitioners.

The course is a survey of models for analyzing and supporting design and decision-making in multi-actor settings. Participants: will learn to recognize the difference between games and decisions, and will identify their occurrence in public policy. will be able to apply a principled technique for resolving dilemmas through the appropriate selection of policies. will learn to formulate, design and communicate games and decisions. will learn to implement by computer (and otherwise logically analyze) games and decisions.

This edition represents the collection of seminal ideas that have shaped the postsecondary institutions in Canada. The chapters in this edition correspond to the animating ideas that are relevant in this era of increased participation of the public in tertiary education. The chapters that have been chosen to present the reader with the salient issues concerning functioning, accountability, policy framework, inter alia, constitute the sessions of a course on post secondary policy and governance offered to adults who either work at or aspire to work at universities and colleges. This text is interactive insofar as it offers stimuli for the engaged student to co-construct knowledge and their own gloss of pertinent issues. This text introduces concepts through various examples and contemporary cases and provides a plethora of resources primarily from Canadian context for further engagement. Finally, it offers an activity, through case studies, for students to play the part of various roles in the postsecondary sector to bring together the ideas explored in the text.

Positive Imaging Collage

A Lesson Developed and Contributed by
Anna Alcalde

Objectives:
1. The participants will focus on positive attributes they possess or goals they wish to achieve
2. The participants will create a collage that will remind them of those positive qualities and goals to inspire them

Audiences:
Any age can enjoy this lesson but it may be particularly helpful for children, teens and those working on attaining a positive life style and self-image.

Welcome to "The Power of Positive Thinking: Building Resilience Through Self-Talk" activity. How we talk to ourselves can have a powerful impact on our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Negative self-talk can be damaging and lead to a lack of self-esteem, limiting beliefs, and difficulties in facing challenges. In contrast, positive self-talk can help us build resilience, develop a growth mindset, and cope better with challenges.This activity will take you through the process of identifying your negative self-talk patterns, replacing them with positive self-talk, and building resilience.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"There are currently no prediction models for survival of resectable pancreatic cancer used in clinical practice As more therapeutic options become available, the need for improved tools to predict outcomes and support shared-decision making grows A new article in the British Journal of Surgery systematically reviews studies describing survival models for resectable pancreatic cancer In total, 22 relevant models were found Eight models were developed for the preoperative setting and 13 for the postoperative setting But of these, only 2 were considered promising options It turns out that most available models are at high risk of bias and have not been externally validated The article also narrowed down useful prognostic factors among the models, such as biomarkers and pathological factors This knowledge was used to develop practical recommendations for future studies looking to design and validate new models....."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Preregistration, the act of specifying a research plan in advance, is becoming a central step in the way science is conducted. Preregistration for infant researchers might be different than in other fields, due to the specific challenges having to do with testing infants. Infants are a hard-to-reach population, usually yielding small sample sizes, they have a low attention span which usually can limit the number of trials, and they can be excluded based on hard to predict complications (e.g., parental interference, fussiness). In addition, as effects themselves potentially change with age and population, it is hard to calculate an a priori effect size. At the same time, these very factors make preregistration in infant studies a valuable tool. A priori examination of the planned study, including the hypotheses, sample size, and resulting statistical power, increase the credibility of single studies and thus add value to the field. It might arguably also improve explicit decision-making to create better studies. We present an in-depth discussion of the issues uniquely relevant to infant researchers, and ways to contend with them in preregistration and study planning. We provide recommendations to researchers interested in following current best practices.

For ppt 1: Introduction—Wireless Sensor Networks are densely deployed low cost, low processing power, less memory and limited energy resource networks.—In WSN, the nodes are called sensors which sense the data like temperature, humidity, noise or sound, pressure, soil variety, movements of objects, stress levels, detection of objects around etc. from the surrounding and send this information to the base station (sink) for further analysis and decision making. For ppt 2: Introduction •Three main components of Wireless Sensor Networks are  1) Sensor nodes  2) Cluster Head  3) Base Station•Increased application area of WSN.•Hence, increase in network traffic, increase in storage, increase in transmission power.

Did you know that it takes less than seven-seconds to decide whether you will buy most items? What influences us to make those snap decisions? Advertising? Packaging? The product? This theme unit investigated what drives consumer behaviors. Students examined often overlooked pieces of our environmental impact by analyzing the “stuff” in our lives…what we own, buy, consume, and discard. Inspired by Annie Leonard’s short film The Story of Stuff (www.storyofstuff.com), we followed the life cycle of products from extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. We considered the hidden costs, human costs, and environmental costs of our “stuff.”

Prices send signals and provide incentives for buyers and sellers in ways you possibly never thought about. In a market economy, price signals prevent massive shortages and ensure that consumer wants are largely satisfied. In this podcast, hear how price signals from gas prices influence decision-making for both a father of three and a production supervisor for an oil refinery. Do you see price signals influencing decisions in your life?

This course surveys a variety of reasoning, optimization and decision making methodologies for creating highly autonomous systems and decision support aids. The focus is on principles, algorithms, and their application, taken from the disciplines of artificial intelligence and operations research.
Reasoning paradigms include logic and deduction, heuristic and constraint-based search, model-based reasoning, planning and execution, and machine learning. Optimization paradigms include linear programming, integer programming, and dynamic programming. Decision-making paradigms include decision theoretic planning, and Markov decision processes.

Designed to meet the scope and sequence of your course, Principles of Finance provides a strong foundation in financial applications using an innovative use-case approach to explore their role in business decision-making. An array of financial calculator and downloadable Microsoft Excel data exercises also engage students in experiential learning throughout. With flexible integration of technical instruction and data, this title prepares students for current practice and continual evolution.

Principles of Macroeconomics 2e covers the scope and sequence of most introductory economics courses. The text includes many current examples, which are handled in a politically equitable way. The outcome is a balanced approach to the theory and application of economics concepts. The second edition has been thoroughly revised to increase clarity, update data and current event impacts, and incorporate the feedback from many reviewers and adopters.Changes made in Principles of Macroeconomics 2e are described in the preface and the transition guide to help instructors transition to the second edition.