University of Edinburgh

This course provides an introduction to the Social Study of Science and Technology. This is an area in which Edinburgh has longstanding strengths and which the course draws upon. The course examines some of the different ways of analyzing and understanding technology in society. It explores both the consequences of technical innovation for society and the ways technology is itself shaped by cultural, economic, political, and organizational factors. Students learn about a range of analytic perspectives on Technology in Society - drawing upon history, economics, and the sociologies of work, gender, and science & technology themselves. Students explore these issues in various settings - at work and in everyday life and in developing as well as developed countries. In the second part of the course, students apply these perspectives to particular technologies or issues, working together in student-centered learning. 

Students study works by post Spanish Civil War writers. The novels chosen are written in radically different styles, ranging from social realism and naturalism to post-modernity or extreme experimentalism, and treat an array of themes, the conflict between the individual and society, the struggle against social norms and sexual morality, the deployment of fiction as a means of shaping both personal and national identity, and the alienating effects of modern society. Via these novels a variety of issues are considered, such as the changing role of the novel over the 20th century, the way novelists create an individual "voice" in dialogue with their predecessors, the function of the reader in the interpretative process, and the socio-political environment and sexual politics of reading and writing fiction.

In this course, students cover contemporary safety and environmental concerns as they impinge on the practicing engineer, the legal and regulatory background to engineering activity, to ensure safe operation of hazardous processes, and the procedures to be followed in seeking a license from the environmental protection agencies for the operation of processes involving prescribed substances. Generation, propagation, and the fate of pollutants discharged to the air, to water, and to the ground are discussed along with means of mitigating emissions by elimination, substitution, and pre-discharge treatment are considered. Methods of identifying process hazards are introduced leading to risk assessment and consequence analysis using hand calculation methods are presented to allow risk assessment and its application to the process industries to be appreciated.

Since the formation of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, no era has witnessed so much environmental change as the past five hundred years, merely a moment in the history of our planet. Industrialization, capitalism, and the insatiable need for more and more "things" has unleashed uncontrollable destructive forces. This course focuses on a number of key developments to consider two related questions. First, how have humans altered the Earth's systems - climate, atmosphere, ecosystems, oceans, and landscape? Second, what are the implications of these changes for human society and the relationship between humans and the other species that inhabit this planet? The coverage begins in the late 15th century with the Columbian Exchange of diseases, crops, ideas, animals, and people between the Old World and the New World in 1492. It then investigates a number of critical issues relating to land use and the production of food, the exploitative relationships between humans and other species and the impact of industrial capitalism, urbanization and the use of fossil fuels as the main source of energy. The final section of the course focuses on the post-1945 world, exploring consumer capitalism, the development of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and concludes with an assessment of the current climate crisis.

Looking at art sociologically involves questioning conventional understandings of "art" and "the artist." Who has the authority to decide what counts as art, and what social conditions allow for the idea of the "artist" to emerge? The sociology of the arts also entails investigating cultural institutions. How do organizations (such as academies, conservatories, companies, galleries and festivals) become established, and how do they shape artistic innovation? To see the arts from a sociological perspective means examining the relation between the arts and society. How is artistic activity affected or redefined by macro social processes (such as globalization), and what role can the arts play in micro-level processes that foster social cohesion, identity formation, and active citizenship? Through an exploration of theoretical perspectives and empirical studies, this course considers the role of art in the social, and the role of the social in art.

Topics include 1. Structural and Molecular Biology: The structures of biomacromolecules (DNA, RNA and proteins), structure determination (NMR, X-ray crystallography and CryoEM), post translational modification of proteins, synthetic gene design, recombinant protein expression, mutagenesis, unnatural amino-acids, methods of purification and characterization including electrophoretic methods and mass spectrometry. 2. In Silico Methods: Sequence analysis, databases, structure prediction and molecular dynamics. Some of the material in this section are delivered as a workshop to foster the development of in silico skills. 3. Biophysical Techniques: The application of spectroscopic and analytical techniques to measure the physical properties of biomolecular systems, including kinetics, coupled assays, biothermodynamic methods (SPR, ITC), fluorescence, vibrational spectroscopy and imaging techniques. 4. Enzymes and Biosynthesis: This section focuses on enzymes, systems and their applications, beginning with an overview of the structures and functions of the different classes of enzyme. Case studies are used to illustrate the application of techniques covered in earlier sections to the study of complex biological systems and processes. Topics covered include specialized catalytic centers, analysis of biosynthetic gene clusters, protein engineering, directed evolution and highlights of recent natural product biosynthesis.

Musical instruments are central to all forms of music. This course introduces the study of instruments, introducing methods and methodologies that can be used to inform ongoing studies across the music curriculum. Through considering instruments from around the world as socially and musically located craft objects that are tools for music making, a decolonized approach is central to the ethos behind this course. The course touches on the history of instruments; the history of studying instruments; how instruments are made, preserved and used; the meanings that instruments gain through association; and the materials available to makers in different contexts. The course is grounded in the University's Musical Instrument Collection.

When can we legitimately go to war? When we are attacked? In order to intervene in the domestic affairs of another country on the grounds that this best serves our national interest? Once we are at war, can we do anything that is necessary to win, or are there moral restrictions on what we can do? For example, can we use nuclear weapons? Can we tortured suspected terrorists? Can we target civilians, in the hope to undermine their government? The course addresses those issues, from a normative, philosophical perspective.

Database management systems are at the core of computer applications that need to store, manipulate, and query data. This course takes a deep dive into how modern database systems function internally, from studying their high-level design to understanding the underlying data structures and algorithms used for efficient data processing. The course covers a range of data management techniques from both commercial systems and cutting-edge research literature, enabling students to apply these techniques to other fields of computer science. This is the undergraduate version of INFR11199

 

This course teaches students the tools required to develop, simulate, and explore economic models using a computer. It may also be of relevance to economics students who wish to develop coding skills.