This seminar deals with the presence of indigenous peoples in Latin American colonial societies and aims to analyze indigenous responses to conquest and colonization. How did indigenous people see themselves and interact with other groups? What roles did they play in shaping Latin American societies? What spaces were they able to create for themselves? These and similar questions will guide our discussion through the semester. Every week, we will read documents written by the indigenous people themselves, as well as academic studies of their cultures and societies. The course will offer a survey of the main indigenous groups; however, the case studies are by necessity just a selection. The seminar is conceived for students interested in race and ethnic relations and in the mechanisms of colonization and responses to it, as seen through the lenses of Latin America, between the 16th and the 18th centuries.
This course serves as a guide to the field of macromolecular materials chemistry, with a strong focus on the synthesis and design of polymers for tackling outstanding issues in polymer sustainability. The course will cover fundamental topics in polymerization techniques: step growth, conventional chain growth, ionic, controlled radical polymerizations, and ring opening polymerizations. As this course is primarily intended for engineers, great emphasis is placed on common, practical approaches to polymer synthesis and developing structure-property relationships. Fundamental topics will be expanded on using literature examples to demonstrate their applications in polymer sustainability.
Geographic information systems (GIS) are powerful tools for analyzing fundamental geographic questions. GIS involves generating, linking, manipulating, and analyzing different sorts of spatial data; creating outputs commonly visualized as two- and sometimes three- dimensional maps. This course will cover major topics in GIS with applications for the broad field of biology and natural sciences, using QGIS and R. The goal of this course is to teach students a level of GIS proficiency such that they will be self-sufficient in their further learning and use of GIS.
A survey of the various attempts to reconcile the macroscopic directionality of time with the time-reversibility of the fundamental laws of physics. The second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, statistical mechanics, cosmological problems, the problems of memory, the possibility of multiple time direction.
Typically, a course in social theory or political philosophy might be taught with two different emphases—as intellectual history, or as a theoretical tradition. In the first approach canonical texts are examined in relation to their political, social, economic and cultural contexts. In the second approach “classic” texts are systematically compared to one another to show both similarities and differences in their approach, and to place them in some developmental sequence. In either case, the textual corpus tends to focus on the historical experiences of the North Atlantic as both normative and universal.
Instead, this seminar focuses not merely on the placement of social theory in global contexts but rather, has as its explicit focus texts generated by thinkers who seek to theorize the geohistorical complexities of modern worldmaking through social forms and lifeworlds that stand askew to dominant approaches to the study of capitalist modernity. The South is conceived here as a set of relations and not as a place, less as a geographical location than a heuristic tool that might reorient discussion on fundamental questions about equality and difference, politics and personhood as these have taken shape as world historical questions of our time.
The seminar is particularly interested in the interface between subaltern and minority pasts as these confront material contexts of resource extraction and labor exploitation, and the distinctive manner by which embodied difference intersects social inequality. That is, we will think about the relationship between historical identities and their material substrate. Broadly speaking, the seminar will bring into conversation work generated in the Americas, especially African American scholarship that engages questions of slavery and subjectivity, black vitality, and Afropessimism together with approaches addressing problems of anticolonial politics, postcolonial sovereignty, ideas of Islamic universality, and global Marxisms. That is, we seek to direct the energies of social thought toward questions of translation, alterity, and historical comparison. A broad familiarity with colonial histories, anticolonial thought, and/or with canonical texts of social theory would be helpful, but not necessary.
The seminar will focus on key concepts such as anticolonial thought; racial capitalism, primitive accumulation; caste-race comparison; political aesthetics; and left and right populism. Readings for the seminar will include a mix of r
This seminar is devoted to examining the work of writers who address the nature and course of history in their imaginative and non-fiction work. This semester we will be exploring the work of Thomas Mann in the context of the First and Second World Wars. This will include his relation to the German “conservative revolution,” the Weimar political experience, and the United States, where he spent several years in exile. We will pay particular attention to his conceptions of modern history as expressed in his novels.
Chemical and physical aspects of genome structure and organization, genetic information flow from DNA to RNA to Protein. Nucleic acid hybridization and sequence complexity of DNA and RNA. Genome mapping and sequencing methods. The engineering of DNA polymerase for DNA sequencing and polymerase chain reaction. Fluorescent DNA sequencing and high-throughput DNA sequencer development. Construction of gene chip and micro array for gene expression analysis. Technology and biochemical approach for functional genomics analysis. Gene discovery and genetics database search method. The application of genetic database for new therapeutics discovery.
This course presents basic mathematical and statistical concepts that are essential for formal and quantitative analysis in political science research. It prepares students for the graduate-level sequence on formal models and quantitative political methodology offered in the department. The first half of the course will cover basic mathematics, such as calculus and linear algebra. The second half of the course will focus on probability theory and statistics. We will rigorously cover the topics that are directly relevant to formal and quantitative analysis in political science such that students can build both intuitions and technical skills. There is no prerequisite since this course is ordinarily taken by Ph.D. students in their first semester. The course is aimed for both students with little exposure to mathematics and those who have taken some courses but wish to gain a more solid foundation.
NOTE: This course does not satisfy the Political Science Major/Concentration research methods requirement.
Prior knowledge of Python is recommended. Provides a broad understanding of the basic techniques for building intelligent computer systems. Topics include state-space problem representations, problem reduction and and-or graphs, game playing and heuristic search, predicate calculus, and resolution theorem proving, AI systems and languages for knowledge representation, machine learning and concept formation and other topics such as natural language processing may be included as time permits.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4700.
This class has no prerequisites, however those who have taken Intro Darkroom or Intro Digital will find additional linkages. You will have access to Adobe Creative Cloud, Printing, and Camera equipment during the semester. Your final project will be exhibited at the End of Semester Visual Arts Show.
This course will explore the photobook as a central medium of contemporary lens-based practice. Students are exposed to a variety of approaches and viewpoints through historical lectures, class trips, and presentations by guest photographers, curators, critics, editors, graphic designers, etc. Each student will propose, develop, and produce editioned books during this course. Over the last decade, a significant change in the circulation of the photographic image has been the rise of the “photo book” as designed art object. Artists such as Dayanita Singh in India, publishers such as Steidl and Taschen, organizations such as Penumbra and Aperture, and events such as Paris Photo and NY Art Book Fair have all entered this vibrant space. At the same time, novelists such as Teju Cole and photographers such as Gauri Gill produce books that weave text and image in a new way. This course requires reading, research, photography, and book design culminating in an end of semester show.
Computational approaches to the analysis, understanding, and generation of natural language text at scale. Emphasis on machine learning techniques for NLP, including deep learning and large language models. Applications may include information extraction, sentiment analysis, question answering, summarization, machine translation, and conversational AI. Discussion of datasets, benchmarking and evaluation, interpretability, and ethical considerations.
Due to significant overlap in content, only one of COMS 4705 or Barnard COMS 3705BC may be taken for credit.
Lab fee: $50. Theory and use of alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray detectors and associated electronics for counting, energy spectroscopy, and dosimetry; radiation safety; counting statistics and error propagation; mechanisms of radiation emission and interaction. (Topic coverage may be revised.)
While helping students advance their levels of oral and written expression, this course focuses on literature of the modern and medieval periods, with particular emphasis on the development of the modern novella and traditional and new forms of poetry. In addition to literature, students are introduced to a wide variety of genres from political and cultural essays and blogs to newspaper translations of the early 20th century. They will be further exposed to ta´rof in reference to a wide variety of socio-cultural contexts and be expected to use ta´rof in class conversations. Students will be exposed to popular artists and their works and satirical websites for insight into contemporary Iranian culture and politics. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Introduction to how shape and structure are generated in biological materials using engineering approach emphasizing application of fundamental physical concepts to a diverse set of problems. Mechanisms of pattern formation, self-assembly, and self-organization in biological materials, including intracellular structures, cells, tissues, and developing embryos. Structure, mechanical properties, and dynamic behavior of these materials. Discussion of experimental approaches and modeling. Course uses textbook materials as well as collection of research papers.
This course examines the basic methods of data analysis and statistics, through multivariate regression analysis, that political scientists use in quantitative research that attempts to make causal inferences about how the political world works. The same methods apply to other kinds of problems about cause and effect relationships more generally. The course will provide students with extensive experience in analyzing data and in writing (and thus reading) research papers about testable theories and hypotheses.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4710.
This course will examine some of the problems inherent in Western historical writing on non-European cultures, as well as broad questions of what itmeans to write history across cultures. The course will touch on therelationship between knowledge and power, given that much of the knowledge we will be considering was produced at a time of the expansion of Western power over the rest of the world. By comparing some of the others which European historians constructed in the different non-western societies they depicted, and the ways other societies dealt with alterity and self, we may be able to derive a better sense of how the Western sense of self was constructed. Group(s): C Field(s): ME
Intensive study of a particular topic in Moral Psychology.
Fitting and understanding linear regression and generalized linear models, simulation, causal inference, and the basics of design of quantitative studies. Computation in R. Textbook: Regression and Other Stories by Gelman, Hill, and Vehtari.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4720.
This bridge seminar investigates the history of science through the study of artworks and monuments and the materials and techniques of their manufacture. Because the course’s method hinges on the marriage of theory and practice, in addition to discussions in the seminar room, several sessions will take the form of workshops with artisans and conservators (e.g. stonemasons, illuminators, gardeners), or “laboratory meetings” where students will conduct their own hands-on experiments with materials as part of Professor Pamela Smith’s
Making and Knowing
Project. Topics to be explored include but are not limited to: metallurgy and cosmogeny, paint pigments and pharmacology, microarchitecture and agriculture, masonry and geology, manuscripts and husbandry, and gynecology and Mariology. Discussion and lab experiments enhanced thanks to the service and experience of Naomi Rosenkranz, Associate Director, The Center for Science and Society, The Making and Knowing Project.
In this course, we will discuss the logic of experimentation, its strengths and weaknesses compared to other methodologies, and the ways in which experimentation has been — and could be — used to investigate social phenomena. Students will learn how to interpret, design, and execute experiments. Special attention will be devoted to field experiments, or randomized trials conducted in real-world settings.
Prerequisites: Students should have taken at least one or two semesters of statistics. Some understanding of probability, hypothesis testing, and regression are assumed. Familiarity with statistical software such as R is helpful. We will be working with data in class throughout the term. The examples used in the textbook and lectures are written in R, and R tutorials will be taught in special sessions early in the term.
Within the Global North social-science mainstream, Latin America (like other parts of the Global South) has often been conceptualized as a region of analytical interest due to its complex
internal
dynamics (relating, for example, to recurring authoritarian rule, democratization, transitional justice, “modernization” and economic development, and social mobilization). Yet until recently, these have infrequently been conceptualized as
global
processes in which Latin America plays a substantive role. To be sure, various
external
forces—namely, colonialism, imperialism, interventionism, and their legacies—are of course widely understood to have shaped Latin American in myriad ways. However, the notions that Latin America exercises agency (or at least matters) in world affairs, is more than a generally passive recipient of global flows, and is meaningfully connected to other regions (including through migratory, political, economic, and cultural linkages), have only recently begun to resonate within the Northern academy.
In contrast to the “methodological nationalism” (or “regionalism”) that has long characterized outside analysis of Latin America, this course foregrounds the region’s global embeddedness and world-making potential—as a protagonist in the generation, adaptation, and diffusion of diverse border-crossing flows, frameworks, and imaginaries. These include: global discourses concerning modernity, postmodernity, liberalism, and postcolonialism; global understandings of race, class, gender, and the intersections between them; global policy frameworks related to human rights, democracy, and economic development; historical and contemporary globalizing relations with distant parts of the world, including the Middle East and Asia; and global alternatives to a world order based on exclusion, extractivism, and environmental degradation.
Throughout, we will highlight the agency of state and non-state actors throughout “Latin America”—itself a homogenizing, Eurocentric label imposed from the outside—as constitutive forces in creating the world that we all inhabit, contributing to the problems that confront us, and helping to generate solutions. To do so, we will engage with a series of texts and materials produced by diversely situated interdisciplinary scholars, writers, artists, and political figures—many of them based in Latin America, an
Povides a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of immunology and engineering, focusing on how these fields come together to drive innovations in biotechnology. Students will gain an understanding of the immune system and its components, along with emerging technologies in immunoengineering, such as vaccine design, immunotherapies, and advanced drug delivery systems. In addition to covering principles of modern molecular and cellular biology, the course emphasizes the practical application of engineering skills to analyze the immune system and create new therapeutic tools. Designed to prepare students for multidisciplinary collaboration, the course equips future engineers with the knowledge and skills needed to develop cutting-edge solutions in immunotherapy and beyond.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4724.
This course serves as a modern, applied introduction to machine learning. Students will learn how to evaluate machine learning models and learn specific methods in supervised and unsupervised learning, including regression, ensembles, and neural networks. Other frontier topics with social science relevance will be presented. Topics will be of interest to researchers who are interested in prediction, causal inference, text analysis, and more. Students may use Python, R, or any coding
language that requires only free software. Lectures and lecture notes will only include Python. Students should have prior experience with regression models, be comfortable with matrix algebra notation, and have experience with basic coding (R or Python, ideally).
Learning goals:
• Understand common machine learning models and be able to implement them.
• Gain familiarity with the use of machine learning models in modern social science research.
• Be able to identify research settings where different models might be appropriate.
• Be able to read and interpret technical research papers, extracting the key methodological
choices, assumptions, and results.
Discussion section for POLS GU4728
Covering a period from the late 19th century to the present, this class explores how ideas and practices in science and technology have historically entered popular imagination, social organization and political contestation, as they become mediated by various media forms and technologies such as photography, cinema, novels, television, video, internet platforms and data algorithms. In particular, we focus on how science and technology have shaped our understandings of the human body, and impacted on the various bodily experiences, from perception, cognition, to emotion and connection with others in the environment. This class helps students read media artefacts in a historically grounded and conceptually generative way, understanding media artefacts as historically conditioned, yet offering us resources for envisioning the future.
Introductory course in computer vision. Topics include image formation and optics, image sensing, binary images, image processing and filtering, edge extraction and boundary detection, region growing and segmentation, pattern classification methods, brightness and reflectance, shape from shading and photometric stereo, texture, binocular stereo, optical flow and motion, 2D and 3D object representation, object recognition, vision systems and applications.
Prerequisites: POLS W4730 or the instructors permission. Advanced topics in game theory will cover the study of repeated games, games of incomplete information and principal-agent models with applications in the fields of voting, bargaining, lobbying and violent conflict. Results from the study of social choice theory, mechanism design and auction theory will also be treated. The course will concentrate on mathematical techniques for constructing and solving games. Students will be required to develop a topic relating political science and game theory and to write a formal research paper.
Introduction to fundamental problems and algorithms in robotics. Topics include configuration spaces, motion and sensor models, search and sampling-based planning, state estimation, localization and mapping, perception, and learning.
Introductory acoustics, basics of waves and discrete mechanical systems. The mechanics of hearing - how sound is transmitted through the external and middle ear to the inner ear, and the mechanical processing of sound within the inner ear.
Methods for deploying signal and data processing algorithms on contemporary general purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) and heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Using programming languages such as OpenCL and CUDA for computational speedup in audio, image and video processing and computational data analysis. Significant design project.
This course will introduce modern probabilistic machine learning methods using applications in data analysis tasks from functional genomics, where massively-parallel sequencing is used to measure the state of cells: e.g. what genes are being expressed, what regions of DNA (“chromatin”) are active (“open”) or bound by specific proteins.
The purpose of this course is to give students the chance to write an original research paper applying the methodology of lab experiments to political science questions. Experiments have become a standard tool in testing and refining theories, but designing and interpreting economic experiments requires care and practice.
Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), Internet of Things (IoT), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Embedded and mobile platforms. Embedded programming. Sensors, actuators, and interfaces. Wireless networking, web services, and databases. Edge and cloud computing. Large language models (LLMs) for AIoT. Time-series data visualization and analytics. Group projects to build end-to-end AIoT systems and applications.
Basic statistical principles and algorithmic paradigms of supervised machine learning.
Prerequisites:
Multivariable calculus (e.g. MATH1201 or MATH1205 or APMA2000), linear algebra (e.g. COMS3251 or MATH2010 or MATH2015), probability (e.g. STAT1201 or STAT4001 or IEOR3658 or MATH2015), discrete math (COMS3203), and general mathematical maturity. Programming and algorithm analysis (e.g. COMS 3134). COMS 3770 is recommended for students who wish to refresh their math background.
Theoretical study of algorithms for machine learning and high-dimensional data analysis. Topics include high-dimensional probability, theory of generalization and statistical learning, online learning and optimization, spectral analysis
Foundational concepts, methods, applications, and recent advances in neural network algorithms.
Digital filtering in time and frequency domain, including properties of discrete-time signals and systems, sampling theory, transform analysis, system structures, IIR and FIR filter design techniques, the discrete Fourier transform, fast Fourier transforms.
This course constitutes the first half of a year-long advanced reading course in Classical Sanskrit. In 2021-2022, the focus of Advanced Sanskrit will be the genres of literary theory (alaṅkāraśāstra) and belles-lettres (kāvya). Lending equal attention to literary theory and literary practice, this course will introduce students to iconic works of Sanskrit literature along with the interpretive frameworks whereby they were analyzed, relished, and appraised. Literary excerpts may be drawn from an array of subgenres, including courtly epic (mahākāvya), epic drama (nāṭaka), literary prose (gadya), and individual verses (muktaka). Rigorous analysis of primary texts will be supplemented by occasional discussions about what implications the disciplined reading of kāvya may hold for practices such as translation, comparative literature, and transdisciplinarity. Prerequisites: Intermediate Sanskrit II or instructor’s permission.
Engineering fundamentals and experimental methods of human factors design and evaluation for spacecraft and aircraft which incorporate human-in-the-loop control. Develop understanding of human factors specific to spacecraft and aircraft design with human-in-the-loop control. Design of human factors experiments utilizing task analysis and user testing with quantitative evaluation metrics to develop a sate and high-performing operational space system. Human-centered design, functional allocation and automation, human sensory performance in the space environment, task analysis, human factors experimental methods and statistics, space vehicle displays and controls, situation awareness, workload, usability, manual piloting and handling qualities, human error analysis and prevention, and anthropometrics. Includes team design project.
The course focuses on the nexus between energy and security as it reveals in the policies and interaction of leading energy producers and consumers. Topics include: Hydrocarbons and search for stability and security in the Persian Gulf, Caspian basin, Eurasia, Africa and Latin America; Russia as a global energy player; Analysis of the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on energy markets, global security, and the future of the energy transition; Role of natural gas in the world energy balance and European energy security; Transformation of the global energy governance structure; Role and evolution of the OPEC; Introduction into energy economics; Dynamics and fundamentals of the global energy markets; IOCs vs NOCs; Resource nationalism, cartels, sanctions and embargoes; Asia's growing energy needs and its geo-economic and strategic implications; Nuclear energy and challenges to non-proliferation regime; Alternative and renewable sources of energy; Climate change as one of the central challenges of the 21st century; Analysis of the policies, technologies, financial systems and markets needed to achieve climate goals. Climate change and attempts of environmental regulation; Decarbonization trends, international carbon regimes and search for optimal models of sustainable development. Special focus on implications of the shale revolution and technological innovations on U.S. energy security.
An introduction to modern digital system design. Advanced topics in digital logic: controller synthesis (Mealy and Moore machines); adders and multipliers; structured logic blocks (PLDs, PALs, ROMs); iterative circuits. Modern design methodology: register transfer level modelling (RTL); algorithmic state machines (ASMs); introduction to hardware description languages (VHDL or Verilog); system-level modelling and simulation; design examples.
Focuses on advanced topics in computer architecture, illustrated by case studies from classic and modern processors. Fundamentals of quantitative analysis. Pipelining. Memory hierarchy design. Instruction-level and thread-level parallelism. Data-level parallelism and graphics processing units. Multiprocessors. Cache coherence. Interconnection networks. Multi-core processors and systems-on-chip. Platform architectures for embedded, mobile, and cloud computing.
This course will focus on the Indo-Islamic literary traditions in South Asia, and particularly in what is now India and Pakistan, focusing on Urdu literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course will emphasize the rhetorical and performative history of poetic forms in the subcontinent (including the forms of the
Ghazal
and
Nauha
, among others) and will consider how classical poetic tropes continue to inform contemporary mass culture in India and Pakistan—particularly in the song lyrics of Hindi/Bollywood cinema. The course will also consider more contemporary prose genres of Urdu-language writing (in English translation), including the literature of the Partition and the works of contemporary authors such as Naiyer Masud and Saima Iram.
Through a comparative study of texts in different genres and at different moments in history, students will consider questions such as: What aspects of contemporary literary culture in India and Pakistan can be traced to early establishment of Islamic culture in the region? How have the poetic conventions of Indo-Islamic poetry continued to resonate? How did the interaction of Hindu and Muslim literary, musical, visual, and religious cultures in the Mughal era help to generate the rich profusion of literature and music and cultural tolerance in this period?
Most of our readings in this course will Urdu literature in English translation. We will also, however, read some secondary sources in order to help us better understand the primary sources.
A recent American newspaper headline announced that China has become “the most materialistic country the world.” Globally circulating narratives often interpret Chinese consumers’ demand for commodities as an attempt to fill a void left by the absence of the Maoist state, traditional religious life, and Western-style democracy. But things aren’t as simple as they appear. This course explores the intertwined questions of “Chinese” desire and the desire for China. Avoiding reductionist understandings of desire as either a universal natural human attribute or a particular Chinese cultural trait, we will track the production and management of desire within a complex global field. Drawing on ethnographies, films, short stories, and psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, this course will explore the shifting figure of desire across the Maoist and post-Maoist eras by examining how academics, government officials, intellectuals, and artists have represented Chinese needs, wants and fantasies. From state leaders’ attempts to improve the “quality” of the country’s population to citizens’ dreams of home ownership, from sexualized desire to hunger for food, drugs and other commodities, we will attend to the continuities and disjunctures of recent Chinese history by tracking how desire in China has been conceptualized and refracted through local and global encounters.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Within economics, the standard model of behavior is that of a perfectly rational, self interested utility maximizer with unlimited cognitive resources. In many cases, this provides a good approximation to the types of behavior that economists are interested in. However, over the past 30 years, experimental and behavioral economists have documented ways in which the standard model is not just wrong, but is wrong in ways that are important for economic outcomes. Understanding these behaviors, and their implications, is one of the most exciting areas of current economic inquiry. The aim of this course is to provide a grounding in the main areas of study within behavioral economics, including temptation and self control, fairness and reciprocity, reference dependence, bounded rationality and choice under risk and uncertainty. For each area we will study three things: 1. The evidence that indicates that the standard economic model is missing some important behavior 2. The models that have been developed to capture these behaviors 3. Applications of these models to (for example) finance, labor and development economics As well as the standard lectures, homework assignments, exams and so on, you will be asked to participate in economic experiments, the data from which will be used to illustrate some of the principals in the course. There will also be a certain small degree of classroom ‘flipping’, with a portion of many lectures given over to group problem solving. Finally, an integral part of the course will be a research proposal that you must complete by the end of the course, outlining a novel piece of research that you would be interested in doing.
At the crossroads of three continents, the Middle East is home to many diverse peoples, with ancient and proud cultures, in varying stages of political and socio-economic development, often in conflict. Following the Arab Spring and subsequent upheaval in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and more, the region is in a state of historic flux. The Sunni-Shia rivalry, especially between Saudi Arabia and Iran, growing Iranian-Israeli conflict, population explosion, poverty and authoritarian control, Russian ascendance and US retrenchment, are the primary regional drivers today. Together, these factors have transformed the Middle Eastern landscape, with great consequence for the national security of the countries of the region and their foreign relations. The primary source of the worlds energy resources, the Middle East remains the locus of the terror-WMD-fundamentalist nexus, which continues to pose a significant threat to both regional and international security. The course surveys the national security challenges facing the regions primary players (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinians and Turkey,) and how the convolutions of recent years have affected them. Unlike many Middle East courses, which focus on US policy in the region, the course concentrates on the regional players perceptions of the threats and opportunities they face and the strategies they have adopted to deal with them. It thus provides an essential vantage point for those interested in gaining a deeper understanding of a region, which stands at the center of many of the foreign policy issues of our era. The course is designed for those with a general interest in the Middle East, especially those interested in national security issues, students of comparative politics and future practitioners, with an interest in real world international relations and national security.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 Standard economic theory seeks to explain human behavior (especially in economic settings, such as markets) in terms of rational choice, which means that the choices that are made can be predicted on the basis of what would best serve some coherent objective, under an objectively correct understanding of the predictable consequences of alternative actions. Observed behavior often seems difficult to reconcile with a strong form of this theory, even if incentives clearly have some influence on behavior; and the course will discuss empirical evidence (both from laboratory experiments and observations in the field) for some well-established anomalies. But beyond simply cataloguing anomalies for the standard theory, the course will consider the extent to which departures from a strong version of rational choice theory can be understood as reflecting cognitive processes that are also evident in other domains such as sensory perception; examples from visual perception will receive particular attention. And in addition to describing what is known about how the underlying mechanisms work (something that is understood in more detail in sensory contexts than in the case of value-based decision making), the course will consider the extent to which such mechanisms --- while suboptimal from a normative standpoint that treats perfect knowledge of one's situation as costless and automatic --- might actually represent efficient uses of the limited information and bounded information-processing resources available to actual people (or other organisms). Thus the course will consider both ways in which the realism of economic analysis may be improved by taking into account cognitive processes, and ways in which understanding of cognitive processes might be advanced by considering the economic problem of efficient use of limited (cognitive) resources.
This course explores key frameworks and issue areas within international political economy. It examines the history and key characteristics of (economic) globalization, the theories of international cooperation, as well as the nature and role of international organizations (such as the World Trade Organization) in fostering trade and international economic cooperation. Furthermore, the course discusses the pros and cons of globalization and its implications on domestic policies of nation-states, with a particular focus on the tensions globalization creates and the lines of cleavages between winners and losers from globalization. Finally, the course reflects on the future of globalization and international trade and the challenges faced by national and supranational policy makers.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS GU4865.
Design and programming of System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms. Topics include: overview of technology and economic trends, methodologies and supporting CAD tools for system-level design, models of computation, the SystemC language, transaction-level modeling, software simulation and virtual platforms, hardware-software partitioning, high-level synthesis, system programming and device drivers, on-chip communication, memory organization, power management and optimization, integration of programmable processor cores and specialized accelerators. Case studies of modern SoC platforms for various classes of applications.
China’s transformation under its last imperial rulers, with special emphasis on economic, legal, political, and cultural change.
Prerequisites: introductory chemistry and earth science coursework. Prerequisites: Introductory Chemistry and Earth Science coursework. Given in alternate years. This class will be an introduction to the field of stable isotope geochemistry and its application to understanding current and past environmental processes. The utility of stable isotopes as tracers will be examined with respect to the disciplines of hydrology, oceanography,paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, landscape evolution, carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle dynamics. We will focus on the stable isotopes of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in water, ice, carbonates and organic compounds and why they fractionate in the environment. The theoretical background for isotope fractionation will be discussed in class. Radiocarbon as a tracer and dating tool will also be reviewed. In addition, the mechanics of how mass spectrometers analyze different isotope ratios will be explored in class and during experiments in the laboratory. Additional key parts of the class will be a review of paper or laboratory report and student-lead reviews of published papers on relevant topics.
Covers image formation, methods of analysis, and representation of digital images. Measures of qualitative performance in the context of clinical imaging. Algorithms fundamental to the construction of medical images via methods of computed tomography, magnetic resonance, and ultrasound. Algorithms and methods for the enhancement and quantification of specific features of clinical importance in each of these modalities.
Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.
Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.
Required for, and can be taken only by, all applied mathematics majors in the junior year. Introductory seminars on problems and techniques in applied mathematics. Typical topics are nonlinear dynamics, scientific computation, economics, operation research, etc.
Required for, and can be taken only by, all applied physics majors and minors in the junior year. Discussion of specific and self-contained problems in areas such as applied electrodynamics, physics of solids, and plasma physics. Topics change yearly.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Topics chosen in consultation between members of the staff and students.
A second-level independent project involving laboratory work, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design. May be repeated for credit. Consult the department for section assignment.