English

This course examines electrical energy conversion techniques and equipment. It covers magnetic circuits, inductance, sinusoidal excitation, hysteresis and eddy current loss, permanent magnets, electromechanical energy conversion, singly-excited and doubly-excited systems, transformers, single-phase, equivalent circuit parameters, three-phase transformers, autotransformers, DC machines, separate excitation, shunt excitation, series excitation, and compound excitation, efficiency, armature reaction, induction machines, revolving field, equivalent circuit, squirrel cage machines, measurements of the parameters, DC resistance test, no-load test, blocked-rotor test, synchronous machines, field relationships, power-angle relationships, and salient pole machines.

This course provides students an opportunity to practice symbolic logic based on mathematical fundamentals from Boolean functions and logic circuit design including assignments in Prolog language. 

Computers built from logical circuitry are a recent invention. Logic, however, has ancient roots in the attempt to distinguish sound modes of reasoning from faulty ones. It thus deals directly with language and the mind. Mathematical logic asks what an acceptable mathematical proof is, how we can justify reasoning with the infinite, etc. The formalization of mathematics through logic has clarified these questions; given mathematics a firm foundation, and, not by accident, produced a theory of computable functions, even before there were computers.

Many famous results in mathematical logic, however, are ‘negative’: demarcations of the limits of formal methods, examples of non-computability, unprovability, etc. Unsurprisingly, these negative and abstract achievements do not easily translate into practical applications.
Nevertheless, as logic structures both human reasoning and electronic computation, it can be turned into a rather nifty programming language (PROLOG) and there is an active research community applying it to cognitive science, natural languages, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, fun, and more.

The goal of the course is to provide a firm grasp of some key concepts of highly abstract logic and permit them to cross the surprisingly short bridge from this idyllic realm to practical application in [room N307] reality. The logic lectures are intended to provide a theoretical vantage point. The Prolog practice enables students to represent knowledge in a program, read and understand Prolog programs, and use Prolog to solve problems.

This course examines the history, politics and culture of Sydney. Students will explore the city through walking tours and from many vantage points, including its beaches, rivers, parks, subcultures and multicultural communities and will learn more about the past and present of Aboriginal Sydney, Western Sydney and Queer Sydney. Drawing on a vast range of historical and contemporary accounts, the course traces Sydney’s extraordinary urban transformation from a tiny penal outpost to a global city of international renown in only 200 years. 

This course investigates digital trade and related issues, and covers digital trade rules in trade agreements, countries’ digital trade policies, and sharing economy. In addition, it discusses digital platforms such as Google and Netflix and digital divide with its impact on developing countries. 

This course explores China's domestic political and economic reform after Deng Xiaoping (1978 to present).  The course outlines China's political system and its evolution, discussing the social consequences of China's economic liberalization. 

This course provides an interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the impact of globalization on Hong Kong culture. It demonstrates how postcolonial Hong Kong culture can offer new ways to understand the relation between the colonial past and the present world order of global modernity. The course introduces key concepts and theories of globalization by focusing on cultural analyses and critical responses to globalization. Particular emphasis is placed on the creative media, transnational culture industries, and global cultural phenomena relevant to everyday Hong Kong experience. This includes the analysis and critique of Hong Kong's image and role as depicted in the popular press, the Internet, film, literature, theater, the built environment, the visual arts and cultural production and consumption. The global-local cultural dynamics that drive Hong Kong into the future are also explored. Assessment: midterm exam, essay, workshop, tour report, participation, discussion, presentations.

This course examines principles to tell science from pseudo-science, truth from falsehood, logic from rhetoric, sound reasoning from wishful thinking, effective medicine from quackery, and good evidence from lies, fraud and fakery. Topics covered include the fallibility of the senses, the fallibility of memory, the placebo effect, the tricks of the cold reader’s trade, confirmation bias, the Barnum effect, relativism, mind viruses, the basics of logic, formal and informal fallacies, and the scientific evaluation of competing hypotheses.

This course explores the application of economics principles to firms and firms' strategies. In the first part of the course, firms, their internal organization, and their horizontal and vertical boundaries are examined. In the second part, the course looks at firms' interactions competing against or cooperating with each other. This part includes such topics as strategic pricing, entry and exit, collusion, etc. Finally, it studies how to compare industries in terms of their competitiveness, how firms can position themselves within industry, and also take on questions of competitive advantage and its sustainability. 

In this course, students study how Shakespeare’s plays have travelled around the world in stage productions, literary adaptations, and films during the 20th and 21st centuries. Students consider how many of these adaptations combine aesthetic and political concerns and agendas and how they incorporate elements of literary, dramatic, and cinematic traditions from around the world. Students also learn how the stage productions, film, and animated versions, and literary adaptations on the syllabus might be illuminated by current theories of translation, globalization, nationalism, and appropriation. In addition to the films, productions, and rewrites of the plays on the syllabus, students also are asked to read some scholarly articles and/or book chapters on each of the adaptations as well as relevant reviews, interviews, and artist biographies. Students are asked to read or re-read each of the four Shakespeare plays (Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet) that most of the adaptations covered is based on.