English

This course provides perspective about how a number of both common and rare diseases arise, and explores the associated changes that are seen at the cellular and tissue level. The course uses a number of specific examples of diseases that arise from single point mutations (for example skeletal deformities such as Smith-McCort dysplasia), as well as complex disease that arise from wider sets of gene alterations (for example various cancer types). Lectures are complemented by a series of laboratory classes that expose students to key aspects of how molecular cell biology approaches are used to understand and combat various diseases. Students gain experience with advanced disease models, three-dimensional spheroids, and their characterization by microscopy, as well as how they can be used to assess the efficacy of bioactive compounds. In addition, the laboratory classes teach students how molecular biology methods can be used to diagnose a disease and guide treatment. 

This course covers methods and techniques to summarize and communicate the underlying patterns of different types of data. Students practice preprocessing (Python) and various data visualization tools, working on projects with real-world data. Topics include overview of data visualization, graph visual perception and design principles, data types and visualization techniques, basic and advanced charts and graphs, effective communication, time series data visualization and interactive visualizations, statistical visualizations, network data, machine learning, and data visualization trends.  

his course is offered for beginners in Chinese calligraphy. It describes the basic concepts and techniques of Chinese calligraphy, the selection and use of materials and tools, and teaches students the regular, clerical and seal scripts. 

The course provides students with a first introduction to language acquisition research – with particular reference to second language acquisition (SLA) research. It identifies the central issues on which such research has focused, reviews some of the principal findings which have emerged and explores the implications of such findings for language teaching. The course encourages students to reflect on their own experience as a language learner and to make sense of that experience. Topics include child language acquisition, the nature/nurture debate, errors and learning strategies, the learner’s "internal syllabus," individual learner differences, theories of second language acquisition, communication strategies, and second language teaching.

The aim of this seminar is to enact the reality of creating an artwork when elements of the agency are taken out of one's hands and are mediated by an institution, budget and timescale. Students are asked to make an artwork in response to a fictitious curator‘s proposal for an exhibition. They are given details of why the curator has picked them and the themes the curator is working with, along with a time scale and budget. The instructor guides them through the process of responding to the curator’s emails along with making their work at the same time as keeping the curators concept and intentions in their head. The course is conceived in line with the art history department's mission of advancing the study of art history and one's understanding of art by way of an active engagement with artistic practice. The course therefore offers students of art history and related disciplines the rare opportunity of assuming the perspective of the artist. Complementing this approach, students are also offered the alternative option of taking on the role of curator.

This course examines various ethical theories applied to various health care issues. It covers topics such as drug legalization, euthanasia, abortion, addiction, suicide and mental illness.  

Using literary sources as well as material evidence (archaeological finds, artwork, inscriptions), this course explores customs, beliefs, institutions, and identities of the early Christians within the social, political, religious, and cultural context of the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity. The course helps students to think about central questions in the study of early Christianity such as: who were the early Christians? How did they articulate their identities across different languages and in different areas of the late antique world? How and where did they eat, pray, and live? How did they understand their beliefs and interact with the cultures around them? What did their Roman, Greek, or Syrian neighbors think about them? Students reflect on different models of cross-fertilization between emerging early Christian identities and the cultures and religious phenomena which characterized the later stages of the life of the Roman Empire.

This course examines how comparisons can be made between languages with respect to their sound systems, lexical-semantic structures, sentence patterns, and pragmatic properties. Through systematic analysis, students gain understanding from research findings in language typology, language universals, and language acquisition. This course focuses on the basic characteristics of English and Chinese, and some salient contrasts between them. The approach is largely descriptive without assuming prior knowledge of theoretical syntax. The course also considers how comparisons between languages may help students associated with problems of translation and language teaching/learning. 

This course examines the constitution and mutual entanglements of selected religions and cultures originating and thriving in varied regional contexts. It focuses on highlighting the symbolic (visual, aural) expressivity of religions via ritual, myth, and rational speculation and its impact on high and popular cultures.

A time series consists of a set of observations on a random variable taken over time. Time series arise naturally in climatology, economics, environment studies, finance and many other disciplines. The observations in a time series are usually correlated; the course establishes a framework to discuss this. This course distinguishes different type of time series, investigates various representations for the processes and studies the relative merits of different forecasting procedures. Students will analyze real time-series data on the computer. Topics: Stationary and the autocorrelation functions; linear stationary models; linear non-stationary models; model identification; estimation and diagnostic checking; seasonal models and forecasting methods for time series.