English

This course introduces issues and policies related to different agricultural sectors in Taiwan through field trips around campus and around Taipei.  The course introduces the departments within the NTU College of Bioresources and Agriculture, as well as affiliated institutions and research centers at other universities. The course also provides an overview of crop production in Taiwan, introducing government entities such as the Ministry of Agriculture and its affiliated sectors and other rural organizations. Course details for each week may need to be flexible based on actual conditions. Active participation in the class is encouraged. Please note that additional time for transportation on field trip days may be needed. 

This course examines study abroad/overseas exchanges, aiming to integrate individual and collective insights for transformative learning. The course draws upon three main student experiences: 1) Pre-Departure (students intending to go on exchange or an equivalent experience) 2) Re-Integration (students returning from exchange or an equivalent experience) and 3) On- Going (incoming exchange students to HKU from overseas). It will first examine the concepts of transformation, experience, and learning, and how they can be integrated from interdisciplinary perspectives (e.g., the metaphor of metamorphosis; the morality of human development; the phenomenology of perception and stereotypes). It will then examine the structures and theories of unfamiliar places, rootedness, mobility, cross-cultural encounters, reciprocity, and service learning in the context of students’ unique identities and experiences. It will conclude with reflections on transformation of the “whole person” as an embodied, transnational process.

This course examines the aerodynamics and thermodynamics of aircraft gas turbines and rockets and provide the tools to design and evaluate the performance of jet engines. It will also present the current environmental impacts of aviation and paths for more sustainable aviation.

This course offers a study of biomaterials from their history in the ancient world to current developments and the latest progress. Topics include: types of biomaterials; biocompatibility; applications and regulations.

Buddhism has been repeatedly highlighted as being a “science of mind” rather than a religion. Puzzled by surprising research results (such as the superposition of quantum states or entanglement), physicists with philosophical questions have turned to Buddhism in search of new models of reality finding striking parallels between a “quantum interconnectedness” and Nāgārjuna’s dependent arising and emptiness. Common ground was also discovered through the constant corrective of repeatable experiments (physics) and first person experience of standardized meditation techniques (Buddhism). Physical and Buddhist models of reality thus share the principle of being valid only until refuted through valid cognition. Neuroscientists also struggle with the problem of correlating the “third-person” data of an experiment to the respective “first-person” experiences, and have also taken an interest in Buddhism. A significant result of the dialogue between Buddhists and neuroscientists are popular applications such as “Healthy Minds,” which largely make use of experiments conducted on meditation practitioners in laboratories. What has eventually been labelled “the Mindful Revolution,” brings meditation beyond traditional Buddhist contexts to benefit people from all walks of life.

This course explores the complex relationship between public administration and democratic governance. It reviews a set of themes in public administration as they relate to democracy. The course also discusses the case of Korea as an example of how public administration and democratic governance are intricately entwined and interdependent.

This course covers various soil and groundwater treatment technologies due to increasing global soil and water pollution. Topics include chemical and ecological risk assessment of contaminated sites; phytomanagement of contaminants; arsenic removal; selection and technology diffusion; technologies and socio-environmental management; post-remediation long-term management; soil and groundwater laws and regulations; and trace element regulation limits in soil. 

This course introduces fundamental concepts for designing and implementing large‐scale distributed systems. The course not only focuses on the design aspects of distributed systems, but also on the fundamental principles to ensure the correctness in a distributed environment. Students apply the concepts via hands on assignments using GO programming language. The course also examines specific concepts of distributed systems e.g. designing distributed file systems (such as in Google File Systems) to accommodate arbitrarily many application‐level users. Finally, it discusses concepts on recovering from faults (both normal and byzantine) in a distributed system.