University College Dublin

This course considers how geological agents have shaped the pattern of human evolution, the development of agricultural and early industrial civilizations, and impact on the general health of these and today's societies. The lectures are supplemented by a comprehensive on-line learning resource. The first part investigates how environmental conditions (e.g. fluctuating climatic conditions, natural resource availability, geohazards, and catastrophic natural events) influenced the evolution, migration, and settlement patterns of hominid and early-modern human populations in the recent geological past. The second part of the course examines how, over the past ten thousand years, geology has influenced the development of agriculture, cities, and an increasingly sophisticated use of metals, water, and other earth resources up to the Industrial Revolution. The increasing effect of humans on the environment over time is explored, including examples of civilizations ended by their own environmental impact; the collapse of civilizations as the result of external geological forces is also considered. The third part of the course focuses on how geological and related environmental factors continue to exert strong effects on the health and wellbeing of billions of people in the 21st century. Medical geology, an emerging discipline in environmental and human health, is introduced. Case studies are used to illustrate the beneficial and harmful effects of metals, metalloids, and mineral dust on human health and their links with geological environments.

This course opens with an exploration of Irish culture and society in a new millennium. What is it about Ireland that is unique? And what is it, instead, that is part of a shared human experience that transcends borders, whether political or geographic? The course examines how millennia of history have shaped life on the island from the arrival of the first humans, through the Irish experience within the British Empire, and on to a partitioned island which is organized into two states: Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The course also assesses how Ireland has been shaped by emigration, by Famine, and by media, among other forces. Woven through the course is an appraisal of continuity and change in political, social, economic, and cultural dimensions of Irish history.

This course provides a firm understanding of physical concepts and processes, and students apply concepts learnt to recent advances in our understanding of science in general. Under the headings of physiology, diagnosis and therapy, and on scales from the cell through macro-organisms to the environment, students learn ways in which biological and medical phenomena may be better understood from a physics viewpoint.