English

This course offers a study of marine and terrestrial biodiversity in the Mediterranean. In this practical course, students develop and complete a research project based on field sampling techniques. It covers the process of creating a scientific project and explores techniques of sampling in marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

This course examines the key role of economic activities as a driver of climate change and how economic tools can be used to investigate this problem and to design climate policies. In order to deal with the problem of climate change, students have to rethink some key economic concepts such as efficiency, externality, intertemporal decision making under uncertainty, and welfare aggregation, from a new and more applied perspective. Students also become familiar with key tools for climate change and long term energy policy making: integrated assessment models. The general mechanism of these tools are learned through applications like the role of innovation in the energy sector, game theory and the (in)stability of international climate agreements, and how the inclusion of uncertainty affects optimal policies and investment decisions. The course discusses topics including and introduction to the climate change challenge, integrated assessment models, making decisions about the environment (cost benefit and cost effective analysis), who is the social planner? (Inter-temporal and social aggregation issues), modeling technological change and climate mitigation technologies, valuation methods (valuing the market and non-market benefits of avoided climate change), environmental policy making, and international environmental agreements.

As data are accumulating at an incredible rate due to a host of technological advances, electronic data capture has become inexpensive and ubiquitous. Data mining is a rapidly growing field that is concerned with developing techniques to assist managers to make intelligent use of these data. A number of successful applications have been reported in many areas. The field of data mining has evolved from the disciplines of statistics and artificial intelligence. This course examines several methods that have emerged from both fields and proven to be of value in recognizing patterns and making predictions from an application's perspective. We survey applications and provide an opportunity for hands-on experimentation with algorithms for data mining using easy-to- use software and cases.

This course provides an introduction to the politics of Russia. It traces the evolution of Russian politics by offering a wide-range discussion of main events, figures and scholarly interpretations of Russia's past and present. While the initial focus is on the rise and fall of communist ideology and institutions, the course examines in detail the ongoing development of political structures in post-communist Russia and the forces, both domestic and international, that shape the life of Russians today.