The American Revolution entailed some remarkable transformations--converting British colonists into American revolutionaries, and a cluster of colonies into a confederation of states with a common cause--but it was far more complex and enduring than the fighting of a war. As John Adams put it, "The Revolution was in the Minds of the people... before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington"--and it continued long past America's victory at Yorktown. This course will examine the Revolution from this broad perspective, tracing the participants' shifting sense of themselves as British subjects, colonial settlers, revolutionaries, and Americans.

This month’s public lecture at the Perimeter Institute features Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan talking about ‘The Dark Side of the Universe’. By this, she means Dark Matter and Dark Energy. 

There is much controversy and anecdotal information about popular diets and dietary supplements, but all too often little scientific or controlled clinical data. We examine the science behind normal mechanisms of weight control, and how weight loss diets are constructed and work. The aim of the course is to acquire the knowledge to critically appraise a weight control diet or dietary supplement and choose the best plan for success, both in the short-term and the long run. Students taking the actual class will, in addition to learning the lecture material presented here, complete in-class assignments where they choose a popular diet or supplement, research the scientific literature on this diet/supplement, and present a critical appraisal of its validity and efficacy.

The purpose of this course is to familiarize and engage the student in the steps and dynamics of policy making processes that address nutrition problems and issues. An underlying tenant is that, where ever nutrition problems exist, policy and program options may be enacted to address the problem directly (e.g. food subsidies to the poor) and/or indirectly (e.g. income generation or job creation). For the purpose of this course nutrition and food policy is viewed as a specific set of decisions with related actions, established by a government and often supported by special legislation, which address a nutrition or food problem or set of problems. We realize that the lack of an explicit government policy may represent an implicit "hands off" policy; however, in this course we want to focus on explicit government policies.Effective policies include actions that enable policy goals to be achieved, and therefore should include a means of translating policy decisions into effective programs. Policies that have not been realized through program implementation represent failures and should stimulate interest in understanding why the policies have remained barren. Good programs are the best measure of good policies, and we therefore include programs in our broad definition of policy.