The objective of this course is to give students the most up-to-date information on the biological, personal, and societal relevance of sleep. Personal relevance is emphasized by the fact that the single best predictor of daytime performance is the quality of the previous night's sleep. The brain actively generates sleep, and the first section of the course is an overview of the neurobiological basis of sleep control. The course provides cellular-level understanding of how sleep deprivation, jet lag, and substances such as alcohol, ,caffeine, and nicotine alter sleep and wakefulness. The second section of the course covers sleep-dependent changes in physiology and sleep disorders medicine. Particular emphasis will be placed on disorders of excessive sleepiness, insomnia, and sleep-dependent changes in autonomic control. Chronic sleep deprivation impairs immune function and may promote obesity. Deaths due to all causes are most frequent between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m., and this second section of the class highlights the relevance of sleep for preventive medicine. The societal relevance of sleep will be considered in the final section of the class. In an increasingly complex and technologically oriented society, operator-error by one individual can have a disastrous negative impact on public health and safety. Fatigue-related performance decrements are known to have contributed as causal factors to nuclear power plant failures, transportation disasters, and medical errors.

This is the second course of the Medical Terminology specialization. It builds on the basic concepts of medical terminology with the introduction of new roots, terms, and abbreviations specific to the endocrine system (hormones). The body's transportation and defense systems (cardiovascular, blood, and lymphatic) will also be covered as well as the respiratory system (lungs).

Fake news or good science? In a world where we have access to unlimited information, it is hard to sift through the echo chamber of opinions fueled by emotions and personal biases, rather than scientific evidence. Science Literacy will teach you about the process of science, how to think critically, how to differentiate science from pseudoscience, how indigenous wisdom can inform science, how to understand and design a scientific study, and how to critically evaluate scientific communication in the media. Every module will build your new skill-base with real life examples, and at the end of each module you will have to apply these skills to scientific questions, talking points and controversies in the world. Warning: this course requires an open mind and the ability to self-reflect. In Science Literacy, you’ll hear from special guests: Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and star of Netflix’s “A User's Guide to Cheating Death” on pseudoscience Dr. Torah Kachur, Scientist and CBC journalist on science communication (and miscommunication!) Christian Nelson, Citizen Scientist and creator of Edmonton Weather Nerdery, on experimental design Metis Elder Elmer Ghostkeeper and Cree Elder Kokum Rose Wabasca, on the holistic nature of Indigenous wisdom and how it can work with the scientific process Associate Professor in Psychology, Dr. David Rast on uncertainty and decision making

This course is about how the brain creates our sense of spatial location from a variety of sensory and motor sources, and how this spatial sense in turn shapes our cognitive abilities. Knowing where things are is effortless. But “under the hood,” your brain must figure out even the simplest of details about the world around you and your position in it. Recognizing your mother, finding your phone, going to the grocery store, playing the banjo – these require careful sleuthing and coordination across different sensory and motor domains. This course traces the brain’s detective work to create this sense of space and argues that the brain’s spatial focus permeates our cognitive abilities, affecting the way we think and remember. The material in this course is based on a book I've written for a general audience. The book is called "Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are", and is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or directly from Harvard University Press. The course material overlaps with classes on perception or systems neuroscience, and can be taken either before or after such classes. Dr. Jennifer M. Groh, Ph.D. Professor Psychology & Neuroscience; Neurobiology Duke University www.duke.edu/~jmgroh Jennifer M. Groh is interested in how the brain process spatial information in different sensory systems, and how the brain's spatial codes influence other aspects of cognition. She is the author of a recent book entitled "Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are" (Harvard University Press, fall 2014). Much of her research concerns differences in how the visual and auditory systems encode location, and how vision influences hearing. Her laboratory has demonstrated that neurons in auditory brain regions are sometimes responsive not just to what we hear but also to what direction we are looking and what visual stimuli we can see. These surprising findings challenge the prevailing assumption that the brain’s sensory pathways remain separate and distinct from each other at early stages, and suggest a mechanism for such multi-sensory interactions as lip-reading and ventriloquism (the capture of perceived sound location by a plausible nearby visual stimulus). Dr. Groh has been a professor at Duke University since 2006. She received her undergraduate degree in biology from Princeton University in 1988 before studying neuroscience at the University of Michigan (Master’s, 1990), the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D., 1993), and Stanford University (postdoctoral, 1994-1997). Dr. Groh has been teaching undergraduate classes on the neural basis of perception and memory for over fifteen years. She is presently a faculty member at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences at Duke University. She also holds appointments in the Departments of Neurobiology and Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke. Dr. Groh’s research has been supported by a variety of sources including the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the John Merck Scholars Program, the EJLB Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitehall Foundation, and the National Organization for Hearing Research.

Thoracic malignancies are major, global health problems. Lung cancer is the most common cancer and cause of cancer death in the world, with more than 1.5 million deaths per year. More Americans will die from lung cancer each year (approximately 159,480) than from colon, breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancer combined (approximately 158,630), the next most common causes of cancer death. Esophageal cancer is the 6th most common cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and the 4th most common cause in developing nations. This course will provide a comprehensive, multidisciplinary introduction to state of the art approaches in the care of patients with thoracic malignancies, including various types of lung cancers and esophageal cancers. Didactic material will cover epidemiology, screening and diagnosis, staging, imaging, radiation therapy, systemic therapy, surgery, psychiatry, and patient support topics. This is an on-demand course with integrated learning units that are focused on specific topics. Each unit contains several video lectures with interactive questions and is followed by a short quiz. Prerequisites: None required although basic medical training in some field related to thoracic oncology would be helpful.

An introduction to data integration and statistical methods used in contemporary Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Systems Pharmacology research. The course covers methods to process raw data from genome-wide mRNA expression studies (microarrays and RNA-seq) including data normalization, differential expression, clustering, enrichment analysis and network construction. The course contains practical tutorials for using tools and setting up pipelines, but it also covers the mathematics behind the methods applied within the tools. The course is mostly appropriate for beginning graduate students and advanced undergraduates majoring in fields such as biology, math, physics, chemistry, computer science, biomedical and electrical engineering. The course should be useful for researchers who encounter large datasets in their own research. The course presents software tools developed by the Ma’ayan Laboratory (http://labs.icahn.mssm.edu/maayanlab/) from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, but also other freely available data analysis and visualization tools. The ultimate aim of the course is to enable participants to utilize the methods presented in this course for analyzing their own data for their own projects. For those participants that do not work in the field, the course introduces the current research challenges faced in the field of computational systems biology.

Are you a living creature? Then, congratulations! You’ve got DNA. But how much do you really know about the microscopic molecules that make you unique? Why is DNA called the “blueprint of life”? What is a “DNA fingerprint”? How do scientists clone DNA? What can DNA teach you about your family history? Are Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) safe? Is it possible to revive dinosaurs by cloning their DNA? DNA Decoded answers these questions and more. If you’re curious about DNA, join Felicia Vulcu and Caitlin Mullarkey, two biochemists from McMaster University, as they explore the structure of DNA, how scientists cracked the genetic code, and what our DNA can tell us about ourselves. Along the way, you’ll learn about the practical techniques that scientists use to analyze our genetic risks, to manipulate DNA, and to develop new treatments for a range of different diseases. Then, step into our virtual lab to perform your own forensic DNA analysis of samples from a crime scene and solve a murder.

Imagine if there were an organ in your body that weighed as much as your brain, that affected your health, your weight, and even your behavior. Wouldn’t you want to know more about it? There is such an organ — the collection of microbes in and on your body, your human microbiome.

Chimpanzees are one of our closest living relatives, yet almost nothing was known about their behavior in the wild until Jane Goodall started her groundbreaking study of the chimpanzees of Gombe, Tanzania in 1960. This study continues today, following the same chimpanzee families that Jane Goodall first encountered over 55 years ago. Guided by three course instructors who have lived and worked with the Gombe chimpanzees, you will learn how Goodall’s early discoveries changed our view of human uniqueness. By completing the course, you will gain a new appreciation of the deep similarities between chimpanzees and humans in intelligence, tool use, hunting, personality and social relationships, as well as some key differences. You will learn how chimpanzees interact with their environment and how their behavior is influenced by ecology, as well as the severe conservation challenges they face today. And you will employ your new knowledge of chimpanzees to construct a persuasive argument for their protection. This course is open to everyone interested in learning more about these fascinating and complex beings. Knowledge of high-school level biology is beneficial but not required. Please keep in mind, however, that the content of this course will cover all aspects of chimpanzee life, including scientific discussion of sexual and aggressive behaviors.

In this anatomy course, part of the Anatomy Specialization, you will be introduced to the central and peripheral nervous systems. You will learn about basic neuroanatomy, sensory pathways, motor pathways and the autonomic nervous system. The course includes illustrated lecture videos and quizzes to help you expand and test your knowledge of the nervous system. By the end of this course, you will have a better understanding of how the entire body influences, and is influenced, by the nervous system.