Course Description

Another class that I took while abroad.

Course Description
This course provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of legislative politics in the European Parliament (EP) and its role in EU policy-making. At a theoretical level, the topics cover major approaches to the study of legislative behaviour, organisation and decision making borrowed primarily from the literature on the US Congress. At an empirical level, the examined readings evaluate the implications of legislators’ electoral, policy and career goals for their legislative behaviour; the role of EP organisation (political parties, committees and rules); the consequences of gate-keeping, agenda setting and veto power as well as bicameralism for decision-making in the EU; and the parliamentary oversight of the EU executive. At a normative level, it is assessed whether and how the Parliament helps solving the democratic deficit problem of the Union.

IAS 190 - Global Research Methods

Course Description
Introduction to research and writing in International Area Studies. It covers quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches to IAS research. Students learn to use international studies research databases and the websites of international organization. Drawing on the content areas from the four IAS concentrations, students construct a research design for a topic of their choice.

This class was a special topics class. My specific course was called, "African Development." Throughout the course we learned about the troubles in the poorest regions in Africa, and the class culminated with a 20-page research paper on a topic of our choice (related to African development).

General Course Description
This is an interdisciplinary seminar designed to give students an understanding of the modern cultural attitudes, ethical values, and sociopolitical norms of major civilizations in a given geographical area and their relationship to one another. May be repeated for credit with a change in course topic. Required for the B.A. degree in International Area Studies.

Students will be introduced to a variety of disciplines and techniques necessary to effectively study the environment. Furthermore, students will learn about the major problems that environmental science examines and how scientists go about addressing these problems. Student will sample local stream, marsh, lake, and forest ecosystems to reinforce the power of the multi-disciplinary approach, and to broaden the student’s minds on why it is so important to excel at their course work. We will examine the physical, chemical, and biological elements within these ecosystems. Some of the field experiences will include learning how to assess physical properties, such as soil composition and hydrology, techniques for measuring land cover and shading, collecting water to assess water quality (e.g.., temperature and dissolved oxygen, conductivity, total phosphorus), sampling algae, invertebrates, fish and salamanders, and methods for surveying and monitoring marshes.  

The course is an independent research on the topic of DNS and its attack. How DNS operates and the types of information stored in the log files on the DNS server are studied. The course also covers DNS attacks and its identification process, as well as how DNS setup on a large-scale network operator, and whether a collection of DNS servers would need to partition log files. (Winter 2015, Instructor: Steven Weber, Final grade: A, Credits earned: 3)

Develops a practical, conceptual understanding of statistical data analysis, the logic of hypothesis testing, and statistical inference. Requires students to identify researchable topics, critically review evidence from prior studies, and prepare proposals for gathering appropriate evidence. 

History of the Internet; introduction to packet switching, circuit switching and virtual circuit switching; statistical multiplexing; protocol layering; metrics of network performance including bandwidth, delay and loss; medium access protocols and Ethernet; routing algorithms; end-to-end issues; flow and congestion control; an overview of application layer protocols.

When a woman undergoes breast cancer screening, she first must get a mammogram and an ultrasound of her breasts. If the results from these tests are inconclusive, which is often the case for women with dense or scarred breast tissue, she then is told to get an MRI. MRIs are expensive tests that insurance companies do not want to pay for unless absolutely necessary. Other radiographic imaging tests are not viable alternatives to MRI because increased exposure to radiation is not desirable in patients who may have cancer. Ideally, the initial steps of breast cancer screening should be improved so that a woman can be definitively told that she does not have breast cancer at the time of her screening or that she absolutely needs an MRI scan.

The ultimate goal of this research project is the fusion of mammogram and ultrasound imaging data to improve the screening process and detection rate for breast cancer. While both imaging modalities provide images of breast tissue, they differ in several ways. In mammography, the breast is compressed perpendicularly to the torso between two plates. Low energy X-rays pass through the breast and are recorded on a film plate, resulting in a 2-dimensional image. Breast ultrasounds are recorded with the breast compressed into the torso by a single screen. The ultrasound data is stored as a 3-dimensional stack of 2-dimensional images. Each modality also records different information about the tissue. By combining the data from both imaging types, a better information about the breast tissue can be obtained without the need for any extra tests.
 
Mammogram and ultrasound images have already been taken of a breast phantom. An algorithm is being implemented to generate a 2D projection of a 3D ultrasound volume. Once this is complete, optimization techniques will be used to map the projected ultrasound images to the mammogram images. This will take into account the different types of deformations in each of the imaging modalities. As mentioned above, the resulting registered images will provide more information about the tissue than either of the imaging modalities could provide separately.

Students explore the grant writing process, from the development of an idea and researching appropriate contributors, to writing a fully realized grant proposal, complete with budget. Course topics also include surveying the political and social climate before developing an idea, assessing an organization's capabilities to handle a project, and performing through literature reviews. This is a writing intensive course.

BIO 497: Research (0.5-12.0 Credits)
Provides guided research in biology, molecular biology, microbiology, cell or human physiology, genetics, biochemistry, or biotechnology.

ENVS 497: Research (0.5-12.0 Credits)
Provides guided research in ecology, earth science and environmental science.

Research Contract:
I will be participating in research in Dr. Sean O’Donnell laboratory. Below is a description of my research project and the methods that I will perform in the Department of Biology:
I will contribute to ongoing studies on ant and termite species. We will continue analyzing neurobiology and brain architecture in relation to the social behavior of these insects. Lab procedures will include specimen dissection, resin polymer embedding, microtome sectioning, slide staining, and microscopic photographing. After preparing the brain samples, specific lobes will be quantified and analyzed.

Over the course of these studies, I will participate in weekly laboratory meetings where I will have an opportunity to present my findings and discuss results with other members of the research team. These results will be maintained in my laboratory notebook as an official record to justify my involvement in manuscripts, presentations, and written reports on my work.

I anticipate spending an average of 3 hours in the laboratory each week for 1 credit. As Dr. O’Donnell and I have discussed, my studies take first priority so my laboratory time will decrease during mid-term and final examinations times. I will inform the laboratory staff of these times in advance.

Covers electron microscopy techniques, scanning transmission and Auger analysis, x-ray diffraction, x-ray wavelength dispersive and energy dispersive analysis, thermal analysis, statistics and error analysis, and design of experiments.