English

This course examines the field of marine biology, including the fascinating diversity of marine life, their function, ecology and inter-relationships. The topics cover: a) The physical and chemical environments (e.g., light, current, atmospheric -ocean interactions, salinity, temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, nutrients) and how these may affect the marine biota; b) Important groups of marine organisms (e.g., phytoplankton, zooplankton, benthos, nekton, marine mammals) and marine food web; c) Major marine habitats and ecosystems (e.g., intertidal, benthic, pelagic, deep sea, coral reefs, mangroves); d) Exploitation of marine biological resources (e.g., fisheries and bioactive compounds); and e) Contemporary issues (e.g. climate change, marine pollution, sustainable use of marine living resources, invasive species). 

This course includes prediction using machine learning; choice of features, including for text, images, time series; model selection (e.g. linear, kernel, neural net); learning as empirical risk minimization; common machine learning techniques (linear regression, logistic regression, SVMs, kernel trick, neural nets, convolutional neural nets, kNN, k-Means); evaluating machine learning methods (cross-validation, bootstrapping, ROC, use of a baseline); and practical experience of applying machine learning methods to real data.  

This course explores the art of Europe in the long 15th century (approximately 1380-1520) with particular attention to religious culture and belief; how gender and the body were understood and expressed; the role of pilgrimage, suffrages and the saints; the differences of artistic expressions between northern Europe (e.g. Flanders) and southern (Italy); the art of crises such as witchcraft, plague and religious reform; and the ways in which naturalism and humanism challenged existing modes of artistic expression. Students also look at whether the view of the period as one steeped in pessimism, the macabre and thoughts of decay, known according to the formulation of Jan Huizinga as the "waning of the Middle Ages" is still useful. The dominant centers to be examined are the cities of Flanders and Italy, but the art of northern France, England, Germany, and elsewhere is also drawn on.

Literature is a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon that takes on many different forms in different periods, regions, and languages. In all of these forms, literature reflects in one way or another the society in which it emerges. This course connects the complex relations between literature and society and teaches how to write and speak about them in an academic way. The characteristics of narrative, interpretation, poetics, and textuality, and place literary texts and analyses in specific historical and cultural contexts are considered. Questions are considered via the analysis of one novel from a number of key theoretical perspectives in literary studies, such as narratology, memory studies, and reader-response theory. 

This course examines the atmosphere, weather and climate. It covers atmospheric processes as the driving forces of weather and climate, weather systems and world climates and their classification. Illustration of weather elements and the related fundamental physical principles, as well as their applications in studying weather and climate, will be emphasized. Major concepts and principles of meteorology and climatology constitute the core of this course. Weather systems and climate will be examined from a global perspective, yet with a regional focus on Hong Kong, mainland China and East Asia.

This course introduces the foundations of intelligent systems, such as probabilistic modeling and inference, statistical machine learning, computer vision, and robotics, to undergraduate students. Topics include Bayesian networks, hidden Markov models, Kalman filters, Markov decision processes, linear regression, linear classification, and nonparametric models. Students will also learn about how these methods are applied to practical applications such as computer vision and robotics. 

This course provides students with an overview of the dynamics of the global financial and international monetary systems. Students develop knowledge of the fundamental concepts needed to understand foreign direct investment, financial flows, international trade and investment deals. As political risk and economic exposure to global events have become more immediate, special attention is given to the 2007-2012 world banking crisis, the role of central banks in the stabilization of national economies, national debts, and the specific economic challenges to which individual countries have been exposed in varying ways. Alternative views and policy measures to help struggling economies overcome the economic and financial crisis like contracting (or expanding) government spending are assessed and critically analyzed.

This course examines conceptual and mathematical models used to understand the spatial distribution of economic activity. It analyzes a variety of policy issues related to cities, such as urban transportation, pollution, housing, poverty, and crime.

This course teaches the foundational concepts of geomorphology in preparation for advanced courses and a final Capstone project. It relies less on traditional rote lecture and more on activities and application of concepts presented in the text and during class time. This course focuses primarily on large-scale geomorphology, and how the large-scale topography students observe on Earth today is both created and broken down through time. Students examine the two primary drivers of geomorphology: tectonics and climate. They consider questions that on their face seem very basic- for example, why is the Earth round? but which have complex, fascinating answers with implications for the whole of the Earth surface.