English

This course introduces key themes relating to global business history. It considers how business and enterprise have contributed to the making of the modern world. It looks at key economic actors, agents and institutions of historical change, their forms of organization, their strategies and culture, their relations with state and society, and at how economic practices have been shaped by culture. Some of the themes covered include: the business firm; the nineteenth century revolution in production, distribution, transport, and communication; the rise of retailing; integration of mass production and distribution; managerial capitalism; multinationals; state -business relationships; and culture and capitalism.

This course provides an introduction to political and economic geography. The course advances two key arguments, namely that politics and the economy are (1) tightly intertwined and (2) innately geographical phenomenon. It explores how politics, the economy, and the environment are constituted through different sets of actors and their interrelationships. It mobilizes core geographical concepts, notably place, space, scale and territory, along with notions of power and resistance, to offer a distinctive perspective on processes of uneven development in the contemporary world.

The course outlines media history with an accent on the 17th, 18th, and the first half of the 19th century. The broad themes are the formation of a mediated public sphere and the emergence of media markets in relation to the growing industrial capitalism. The course takes a closer look at oral and written news media, the freedom of speech and censorship, the postal system, and the popular culture of chapbooks.

This course provides an introduction to the analysis of income and wealth distribution, its relation to macroeconomic performance and technical change, and how different policies are linked to distributional outcomes. The first part of the course presents statistical tools for measuring inequalities and, based on these tools, examines the historical trajectory of income and wealth distribution in developed and developing economies. It also discusses how income and wealth inequalities intersect with other socioeconomic factors such as gender and race, and how distribution is affected by the globalization of economic activity and migration. The second part of the course surveys the Classical, the Keynesian, and the Neoclassical approaches to distribution, economic growth, and technical change, and how these approaches provide different explanations for the increasing inequalities and the stagnation of output and productivity growth of the last decades.

This course explores the structure-function relationship of biological macromolecules like proteins, DNA, RNA, and viruses.  The course explains biological mechanisms learned from other courses such as biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology in atomic detail. 

Structural biology is essential for understanding biology at the molecular level. Furthermore, it is a critical technique for rational drug design. This course also covers recent advances in structural biology. 

The course covers the following topics:

• Basics of Protein Structure
• The Folding, Folds and Functions of Proteins
• Basics of Membrane Proteins
• Basics of Nucleic Acid Structure
• Basics of Lipids and Membrane Structure
• Basics of Carbohydrates
• Enzymes
• Genome Structure, DNA Replication and Recombination
• Transcription
• Protein Synthesis – Translation
• Protein Folding and Degradation
• Transmembrane Transport
• Cell Motility and Transport, Signal Transduction
• Structural Aspects of Cell-Cell interactions
• The Immune System, Virus Structure and Function
• Bioinformatics tools in Structural Biology 

Recommended Prerequisite: Biochemistry I 

This course discusses the psychological foundations of human behavior and their economic implications. It presents the empirical regularities that have inspired the development of behavioral economics, analyzes the key theoretical models that have been brought forward, and discusses a number of applications where insights from behavioral economics have contributed to a better understanding of individual behavior and market outcomes. Topics include fairness and social preferences; reference-dependent preferences and loss aversion; present-biased preferences and limited self control; limited cognitive resources and attention; and behavioral economics, market interactions, and economic policy. Course prerequisites include a thorough knowledge of microeconomic theory (especially game theory and contract theory), microeconometrics, and econometrics.

The course deals with the connection between Man and Nature from the viewpoint of Moral Philosophy. It discusses the main proponents of and theories within Environmental Ethics and describes the roots of differing views of Nature, as well as different ethical orientations, i.e. anthropocentric, ecocentric, and biocentric positions. The course also deals with the integration of environmental and developmental issues, and with the connection between environmentalism and democracy. Amongst central issues discussed are the following: Can Ethics provide guidance in the solution of environmental problems? What type of beings are worthy of moral considerability? Can natural phenomena possess intrinsic value? Do animals have rights? Is there any fundamental difference in men's and women's relations to Nature? What is the ethical basis of sustainable development?

This course examines core skills in the manipulation, statistical analysis, and communication of data. Using examples from the biological, earth, and environmental sciences and using the R programming language, students will examine the role of statistics in addressing scientific questions with different goals, including determining causes, describing variation, and predicting outcomes. 

The course introduces engineers and technologists to some of the techniques of foresight and scenario planning, including some of the many reasons why those techniques can fail. It is to give a rounded and nuanced view of the business environment into which technologies are introduced and some of the associated governance issues. This advanced course covers complex topics which are not suited to students with no prior knowledge of subjects related to the field.

 

The course introduces students to Geographical Information Systems (GIS) using both the current industry standard software, and the increasing number of web-based geographical tools. The course provides a theoretical background that enables students to look critically at the subject while providing them with practical skills in using these tools. Students gain direct experience of a range of data collection, data capture, database, analytical, and visualization techniques.