This course aims at providing students a sound foundation in mathematics that is required for future courses in quantitative methods and economics, as well as for some business subjects. The course also discusses how to apply quantitative techniques in dealing with some business and economic problems. By exposing the students to various business and economic applications through a wide range of mathematical procedures, the students not only will get familiar with numerous business procedures that require the use of mathematics, but will also
be able to use mathematics to solve some basic business problems.

The goal of this course is to develop students’ quantitative reasoning skills through the enhancement of their mathematical and statistical literacy. The content of this course includes managing your money, logic, probability and statistics and basics of mathematical modelling. Real-life applications will be emphasized.

The goal of this course is to develop students’ quantitative reasoning skills through the enhancement of their mathematical and statistical literacy. The content of this course includes financial mathematics, logic, statistics, and linear programming and optimization. Application examples for health sciences will be emphasized.

This course aims at providing a solid foundation of one variable calculus for science and technology students. The topics include basic reasoning skills, limit and continuity, derivative and its applications, integral and its applications.

The emergence of Internet has changed society significantly. One of the main reasons for the tremendous changes is the popularity of Internet services offered to Internet users who make use of them in both business and personal life. This course will, therefore, introduce some popular and important Internet services to students and describe how they improve the operational efficiency in business and society. In addition, there is discussion of Internet security and privacy issues.

This course is to introduce the basic concepts of logic, apply the knowledge in the context of daily applications and reasoning and to enhance student’s generic analytical ability in the area of business operations and strategy. The course will make use of various business scenarios to provide the students with training in thinking methods, different ways in solving the same problem, not just only the knowledge of the techniques of logic. Topics include concepts of logic and reasoning, logic puzzles, propositional logic, syllogistic logic and predicate logic.

This course introduces important topics related to health in daily-life including the effect of environment, nutrition, and genetics on health, healthy aging, and mental and physical well-being. Biotechnology innovations and lifestyle modifications that can impact human health will be introduced. The course will be taught from a biological, biomedical, and biotechnological perspective. Students will participate in regular fun educational activities related to health sciences that illustrate and enforce the concepts learned in class.

The aim of this course is to introduce and explore the impact of multimedia technology in different aspects of modern society. The contents include visual communications, digital content in website, digital effects, moving image, new media possibilities and experience. The course is also designed to provide the fundamentals and practices for popular technologies and application software for 2D and 3D composition in our daily lives, such as Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk 3DS Max, etc. Lastly the course explores the creativity in interactive and tangible media, and possible research areas in multimedia.

Throughout this course, students can better understand the unity and diversity of life interacting with the surrounding environments. Such major topics as population ecology, community interactions, ecosystems/biogeochemical cycles, biosphere and human impact on biosphere, and animal and social behavior will be covered. Students will also learn the unifying concepts in biology, the cellular basis and the ongoing flow of life, plant and animal systems and their control, and ecology and behavior; and so that students will be able to explore physical and biogeochemical processes and appreciate the importance of the quality of environment.

The aim of this course is to enhance students’ mathematical literacy and interest. It emphasizes the relevance and practicality of mathematics in modern society. Through the study of different applications, students will see how mathematics comes into our daily life. The mathematical techniques involved are taught via hands-on applications. The topics discussed may vary from year to year.

In this course, we aim to explain the fundamental concepts including gravity, Einstein’s relativity, cosmology, etc. Topics including the solar system, the climate of the earth, the life cycle of stars, gravitational lensing, cosmic microwave background radiation will also be discussed. No prior knowledge of astronomy is necessary.

This course will describe a series of interesting stories about the birth, evolution, and important discovery of chemistry. Students will learn fundamental chemistry knowledge from interesting chemistry stories, discovery of chemistry mysteries, and through in-class fancy chemistry demonstrations. The course will also bring students to the frontier of modern chemistry researches which are closely related to our daily life.

How many drug pills and tablets do you take in your lifetime? What’s the role of drugs in human society and today’s health care system? What separate drugs from food and toxins? How long does it take to find a new drug and why some drugs are so expensive? If you have ever had one of these questions, then consider taking this GE course. The course aims to enhance understanding and appreciation of the important and multifaceted roles that drugs play in our daily life. No previous background in pharmaceutical or life sciences is required.

With the huge rise in diet-related illnesses such as obesity, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and in food safety emergencies, this course aims to provide students with knowledge of the dynamic fields of human nutrition and food safety. It includes an overview of nutrition and human health, and various topics ranging from explanations of the fundamental nutrients (e.g. carbohydrate, lipid, protein and minerals) to the numerous risks to our food and water supplies (e.g. bacterial contamination, agricultural pesticides, food additives, allergens, and industrial chemicals). It will also introduce students to the serious effects of diet-related diseases/disorders and provide them with the knowledge required to make good food choices. This GE course will be of great interest to all learners because the contents are relevant to daily life.

This course is designed to expose students to the relevant principles in sports science as related to health and fitness, and to discuss how students can apply the relevant sports science principles in one’s daily life for making sustainable healthy life style choices to improve one’s health and fitness. From the perspectives of sports science, topics relevant for health and fitness, such as health promotion, concepts and principles of exercise, self-evaluation and exercise prescription for health-related physical fitness, effective weight management and nutritional issues, building up healthy social relationships through fitness exercise and practice, sports injury prevention, first aid, etc., will be covered. The course emphasizes the relevance and application of the sports science principles for improving one’s physical and mental health.

In this course, students will be introduced to basic concepts and principles of human biology and health, and recent technological advances in biomedical science. This class aims to highlight on how biology affects human daily life, from simply understanding human bodies to nutrition, treatment of diseases such as cancer and infection, and the personalized medicine. This course will not only broaden the scope of students’ understanding of the world from life science perspectives, but also increase overall awareness of the fact that life science has profound effects in everyday life.

How is stress linked to heart disease? Will the immune system change because of psychological stress? Can a sugar pill cure back pain? Do married people live longer? What influences healthy eating? What helps people to cope with illness? Are there ethnic variations in health? How can we change people’s health behaviors to improve their health? This course tries to answer these questions, and provides an overview of Health Psychology — a young and exiting field of study that examines the bi-directional relationship between people’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and their physical health.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been practiced in China and other Asian nations for more than 2,000 years and has gained increasing attention and popularity all around the world including Europe and North America. The main objectives of this course are 1) to provide a historical overview of the discoveries our ancestors made from natural products; 2) to discuss how modern technologies are used for mining the treasure and uncovering the healing power of Chinese medicine; 3) to introduce the cultures developed along with the therapeutic philosophy in Chinese medicine. Students will learn the basic principles of TCM, and acquire up-to-date information on the medicinal use and scientific research of TCM.

Whereas it is well accepted in biology that human bodies are products of natural selection, it is still controversial in the mainstream social sciences to link human behavior to evolution. This course takes an evolutionary approach to explore the ultimate question of why, but not just how, human beings and their social institutions behave and operate in the ways in which they do. The exploration is both macro and micro. The macro exploration starts with a distal look at the origins and evolution of our species that are delineated by the stories of the bones and genes. The macro examination also includes the evolution of different brain structures shared by all animals and of the neocortex very much monopolized by human beings. Another very much human unique evolution to be discussed is that of language. The ability to speak leads to the explosive development of human cultures that, as shown in another macro analysis of the course, have both facilitated and counteracted genetic evolution. Also discussed at the macro level, is the evolution of different mating systems practiced by other animals and how human mating systems shape and are being shaped by our social economic systems. In addition to these macro and historical analyses, this course also provides micro insight into individual human behaviors. These include how the human mind works and why it works in these ways, how and why human beings negotiate social contracts with conspecies, and how and why related individuals love and hate in resolving family conflict of interest. These micro discussions continue to focus on the ultimate question of why, but not just how, human beings and their social institutions behave and operate in the ways in which they do.