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Nature & Environment
Explore our shared home and get to know the species you're sharing it with.
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Nature & Environment
Energy in buildings
Themes covered in this free course, Energy in buildings, include reducing heating demand in buildings, heating systems and fuel emissions, and reducing electricity use by appliances. The course looks at the importance of energy in buildings in the UK, investigate heat loss and how to prevent it, ways of increasing building efficiency, decreasing CO2 emissions of different fuels and the use of efficient appliances.
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Nature & Environment
Introducing the environment: Ecology and ecosystems
What is ecology and why is it important to our understanding of the world around us? This free course, Introducing the environment: Ecology and ecosystems, looks at how we can study ecosystems to explore the effect that humans are having on the environment.
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Nature & Environment
Evolution through natural selection
In this free course, Evolution through natural selection, we describe the theory of evolution by natural selection as proposed by Charles Darwin in his book, first published in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. We will look at natural selection as Darwin did, taking inheritance for granted, but ignoring the mechanisms underlying it.
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Nature & Environment
Microbes – friend or foe?
Microbes often get a bad name. Whilst some of them do cause disease, others play vital roles in recycling nutrients in the soil to enable plants to grow, and in breaking down human waste. Without microbes, we would have no beer, no yoghurt, no coffee. That's quite impressive for something too small to see. This free course, Microbes friend or foe? sheds some light on them.
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Nature & Environment
In your garden: Birds and nesting boxes
Vicky Johnson explores why birds need nesting boxes and how you can create one to help the birds in your garden.
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Nature & Environment
What’s it like being a geologist?
Watch an interview with geologist Charlie King, as she discusses technology advances, the highlight of her degree course and how more women are getting into geology.
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