English

This course provides a fundamental framework for interpreting major petrological processes acting within the silicate portion of planet Earth. The course focuses on solid-state equilibria, liquid-solid phase equilibria, crystallography, and spatial associations. 

This course examines health psychology. Topics covered include health behaviors, coping with health-related stress, social support and health, psychoimmunology, management of chronic illnesses, and patient-practitioner interaction. 

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the greatest English novelists and, since the First World War, has become a national icon. This module provides an opportunity for in-depth study of her six full-length novels. It explores the various ways in which she transformed the genre of the women's domestic novel into a vehicle for social analysis and commentary. Her novels are full of signs which conveyed to her contemporaries opinions about economics, class, religion, and politics. We shall decode those signs and explore their significance.

This course examines the role of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies in the environmental decision-making process and as a means for better environmental management. The major components, processes and attributes to EIA systems will be discussed. It will also introduce different methodologies in planning and managing of an EIA study. Applications of EIA system in the local context will be discussed in detail and illustrated by real-life examples mainly from Hong Kong. 

This course, which is taught on site in historic buildings, introduces students to the history of London and its buildings from the late 17th century to the present day. This is an extremely dynamic period in London's history: nearly the entire city was destroyed and rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, the city then saw huge increases in its population in the 18th century, and massive technological and social change in the 19th. The 20th century brought yet more destruction and rebuilding after the Blitz, alongside political and economic upheaval, all of which led to radical changes in the appearance of London's buildings. This century has seen huge new investment in the City, and the rise of gentrification in the suburbs. Throughout the course, students tell this story by visiting and considering many different types of buildings, from churches, hospitals, and palaces, to railway stations, and housing estates. Students explore questions of architectural style, the implications of social and cultural change for architecture, and urban and architectural history and theory more generally. 

This course examines how ecosystems function and how they provide services for humans: information which is essential for ecologists, conservationists, and land managers. The course considers examples of natural systems being altered by man to demonstrate how ecosystems function and the consequences of anthropogenic change. Disturbance and regulation in ecosystems, atmospheric, and hydrological regulation (including the greenhouse effect and acidification), soil ecology, conservation and management of natural resources, agricultural and grazed ecosystems (including GMOs), urban ecosystems, and aspects of sustainable development are also discussed.

This course explores the making of contemporary Europe diachronically and in a global context through four parts. It considers the plurality of “Europes” that emerged in the postwar period, including the institutional evolution of the European Communities and European Union, their challenges and their achievements. It situates the development of regional cooperation agreements within the global context of World War, decolonization, Cold War, economic crises, globalization, the Soviet collapse, and the turmoil of the early 21st century. It evaluates the the roles that different actors – including multilateral organizations and multinational corporations – played in shaping European governance. It equips students to apply this knowledge to their own analyses of contemporary political debates, through readings, discussions, and a capstone podcast project. 

Many current philosophical discussions, both in practical and theoretical philosophy, center around the explanation of normativity. This course focuses primarily on practical normativity, starting with the crucial concept of a normative reason and then look into a number of different topics, e.g. values and reasons; reasons for attitudes and the wrong kind of reasons; and normative powers and voluntary obligations.

This course provides a rigorous treatment of the core concepts and skills in security investments and portfolio management. The main focus is on the trade-off between risk and return, which will be analyzed in a mean variance framework. Along this line, two main theories of asset pricing will be explained: the Capital Asset Pricing Model and Arbitrage Pricing Theory. The empirical tests of these two theories will also be discussed.

This course explores abstract physical concepts through lectures, experiments, and problem solving with the aid of mathematical tools. Topics include: electric charges and electric forces; the electric field; electric flux and Gauss' law; electrostatic potential energy; capacitance and dielectrics; current and resistance; magnetic fields; sources of magnetic fields; electromagnetic induction; electromagnetic waves; properties of light. Pre-requisites: Physics I; Calculus I and II; Linear Algebra.