Engineering is progressing to ever smaller scales, enabling new technologies, materials, devices, and applications. This course will provide an introduction to nano-scale tribology and the critical role it plays in the developing areas of nanoscience and nanotechnology. We will discuss how contact, adhesion, friction, lubrication, and wear at interfaces originate, using an integrated approach that combines concepts of mechanics, materials science, chemistry, and physics. We will cover a range of concepts and applications, drawing connections to both established and new approaches. We will discuss the limits of continuum mechanics and present newly developed theories and experiments tailored to describe micro- and nano-scale phenomena. We will emphasize specific applications throughout the course. Reading of scientific literature, critical peer discussion, individual and team problem assignments, and a peer-reviewed literature research project will be assigned as part of the course.

In the sixteenth century, the notion of nature as fecund spawned not only images of lushness but also analogies to the artist's mind as a fertile place. The idea of "natural law" was also appealed to as a presumably primal condition, one that established how the earth's resources were to be distributed among its people. Yet the taste for artistic objects in gold, silver, wax, and wood--materials that could be worked into shapes attesting to the owner's dominium over land--led to harvesting processes which met the awareness that nature's resources could run low or even run out. Untappable nature was a functional metaphor, but scarcity was a reality. As a collective effort to write the other side of the story of Renaissance abundance, this seminar will proceed by addressing the question of how the history of art might be told as a description of materials and their potential for the expenditure of natural and human resources. We will address this question by focusing on primary texts, theoretical interventions, and a selection of objects, images, and early books from collections near at hand.

This course is designed to introduce students to an emerging field, one that explores the connections between nature and human health. A growing body of literature suggests that exposure to natural settings supports human health in a variety of ways. The healing powers of nature appear to be demonstrable scientifically, with research studies spanning various aspects of social, mental, and physical health. The course also invites students to consider the ways in which humans can contribute to the healing of ecosystems. Contemplative practices (e.g., meditation, journaling) will be woven throughout. The course will be linked to the Nature Rx@Penn Program, with opportunities for active and experiential learning.

The United States is "nature's nation." Blessed with an enormous, resource-rich geographically diverse and sparsely settled territory, Americans have long seen "nature" as central to their identity, prosperity, politics and power, and have transformed their natural environment accordingly. But what does it mean to be "nature's nation? This course describes and explores how American "nature" has changed over time. How and why has American nature changed over the last four centuries? What have Americans believed about the nation's nature, what have they known about the environment, how did they know it and how have they acted on beliefs and knowledge? What didn't or don't they know? How have political institutions, economic arrangements, social groups and cultural values shaped attitudes and policies? How have natural actors (such landscape features, weather events, plants, animals, microorganisms) played roles in national history? In addition to exploring the history of American nature, we will look for the nature in American history. Where is "nature" in some of the key events of American history that may not, on the surface, appear to be "environmental?"

Over fifty percent of the worlds population now lives in cities. Neoliberlism-the ideology and accompanying policies and practices that champion the shifting of political decision making from the public sector to the private sector - has been widely recognized as having shown dramatic growth worldwide since the 1970s. It has also been widely regarded as a product of globalization. This course traces the history of neo-liberalism in global context with particular attention to neoliberalism's relationship to cities, and exam the role that urban growth has played in spurring neoliberal policies and practices. It asks how policy makers, voters, and private interest worldwide have responded to the growth of urban poverty and slums, challenges within urban public education, unequal resource distribution, environmental pressures experienced within urban sanitation and waste disposal systems, and increased demands for municipal services like water, electricity, and transport infrastructures, and examined the rise of public-private partnerships, gated communities, initiatives to privatized education and municipal services, and efforts to relocate slum-dwellers and beautify cities as explicit strategies for attracting "global capital". The course also asks how the recent rise of neoliberal policies and practices differs from earlier market-driven and private sector led forms of political governance. The British and Dutch East India Companies are two famous examples of joint stock companies that assumed administrative and political roles over their colonies. How did the rise of these colonial relationships differ from current neoliberal shifts. Readings will draw heavily from ethnographic and urban studies, scholarship on South Asia, as well as Latin America, South Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, exploring what each of these specific contexts has to teach us more generally about the relationship between urbanization, global capitalism, public and private sectors, and political processes and decision making.

Health care is taking on a new role in our society - with a refocusing from episodic care for those who are ill or symptomatic to providing life-long care geared towards maintaining wellness. These changes are evident across numerous areas of design, from wearable technologies that track and analyze, to large scale building initiatives that aim to create healthier environments and improve lives through strategic planning initiatives. A concrete, physical representation of this paradigm shift can be found within the hospital building itself and in the new manner in which hospitals are looking to serve their patients and care for their clinicians. Simultaneously both public and private spaces, hospitals are complex systems in which sickness, health, hospitality, technology, emergency, and community share space and compete for resource. In order to frame our present day understanding of the role of architecture (and design) in fostering health for individuals and within communities, this seminar will begin with an exploration of the historical and contemporary perspectives on the role of the architect and built environment on health. (Parallels between design and our ever-changing understanding of the biological, social, and environmental causes of sickness and disease will also be explored.) During this conversation, students will read articles and study recently constructed projects in order to examine the ways in which the architects approached these topics through built form. Following from this foundation, students will craft arguments for a new approach to the individual, the community, health, and architecture through a written response and architecturally designed scenario that argues for their perspective on how architecture can and should shape the health of those who inhabit it. Throughout the course, students will engage in weekly readings (and discussions) of critical texts exploring ideas around the role and impact of architecture on health. Various content experts will be included in the course to provide additional insights into key areas of theory and practice in order to lend additional perspectives and ground the conversation.

The course is an introduction to nutritional anthropology, an area of anthropology concerned with human nutrition and food systems in social, cultural and historical contexts. On the one hand, nutritional anthropologists study the significance of the food quest in terms of survival and health. On the other hand, they also know that people eat food for a variety of reasons that may have little, if anything, to do with nutrition, health, or survival. While the availability of food is dependent upon the physical environment, food production systems, and economic resources, food choice and the strategies human groups employ to gain access to and distribute food are deeply embedded in specific cultural patterns, social relationships, and political and economic systems. Thus, nutritional anthropology represents the interface between anthropology and the nutritional sciences, and as such, can provide powerful insights into the interactions of social and biological factors in the context of the nutritional health of individuals and populations. Because food and nutrition are quintessential biocultural issues, the course takes a biocultural approach drawing on perspectives from biological, socio-cultural and political-economic anthropology. Course content will include: a discussion of approaches to nutritional anthropology; basics of human nutrition; food systems, food behaviors and ideas; methods of dietary and nutritional assessment; and a series of case studies addressing causes and consequences to nutritional problems across the world.

By 2050 can the world sustain a population of over 9 billion people in the face of climate change, limited water and other natural resources, pollution, urbanization, political and income inequality, conflict, changing diets and patterns of disease? An interdisciplinary group of faculty will explore this complex q uestion through six broad trends that affect global food sustainability and environmental health; 1) nutritional needs; 2) changing patterns of communicable and non-communicable diseases of humans and all types of animals; 3) natural resource inventory and management; 4) production technologies (intensive/extensive systems); 5) societal changes impacting production and food demand; 6) food distribution systems and access to food. The course is open to graduate and undergraduate students and will involve student participation and research.

One Health is the concept that human, animal, and environmental health are inextricably linked. It provides a framework to inspire interdisciplinary problem solving to complex health problems. Climate change threatens to alter many aspects of the earth and in doing so will harm the health of human, animals, and the environment in a variety of ways. In this course we will first explore how climate change will affect One Health from disruption of agricultural systems, impacts of extreme weather events, the spread of zoonotic diseases, to the direct impacts of living on a warmer planet. We will then investigate the leading approaches to solve these impacts and learn how public health professionals, veterinarians, scientists, architects, physicians, engineers, and others are working to mitigate the negative health outcomes. Finally, students will be asked to contemplate what they can do in their own fields to address the impact of the climate crisis using a One Health framework. This course takes place during the first half of the semester, with one synchronous, in-person class per week and weekly asynchronous lectures and assignments, starting January 9, 2025.

This seminar course will introduce students to One Health approaches that address critical local, regional and global health problems. Students will work in interdisciplinary teams to review case studies and analyze past and current literature where One Health approaches have been applied. The course is specifically designed to foster the development of skills that allow students to think and communicate across professional disciplines. It will also help students develop transdisciplinary connections that might serve them in their professional futures. Students will be assigned a transdisciplinary team. Grading will be based on team-led presentations and analysis of literature, participation in discussion, and a final capstone project (One Health in Practice Plan) in the form of both a paper and presentation.