Singapore

This course covers the essential principles of energy management in the operation and management of facilities. The major topics include quantitative energy analysis, prediction, simulation and relevant codes of practice; demand side management, building energy performance and benchmarking; energy retrofit of existing building and building energy performance contracting; policy and practices in energy management and procurement.

This course examines fundamental issues in parallel computing (i.e., shared-memory algorithms) and distributed computing (i.e., message passing algorithms), and the relationships between the two. It covers various classic problems in parallel/distributed computing, how to design algorithms to solve these problems, and how to prove the correctness of the algorithms. It also looks at various impossibility results in parallel/distributed computing, as well as how to develop impossibility proofs for simple problems. The topics include mutual exclusion, semaphores, consistency, wait-free synchronization, logical time, global state, consistent snapshots, message ordering, consensus, fault-tolerance, transactions, and self-stabilization. This is a pure algorithm/theory module and does not involve explicit programming (to avoid overlapping with CS3211, which focuses on programming). However, the students need to construct proofs based on code, and also potentially write code (on paper) to specify protocols.

This course examines the physiological and biochemical adaptations of animals which permit them to thrive in diverse environments. It focuses on how animals adapt to natural (e.g., oxygen availability, salinity changes, water availability) and anthropogenic (e.g., greenhouse effect, UV radiation and oxidative stresses, xenobiotics) environmental challenges. This course offers clues to what are the fundamental ways in which basic biological structures and functions of living systems are actively modified to allow organisms to exploit the full range of natural environments and to maintain the radically different modes of life seen in nature. Efforts are made to teach how environmental physiology can be applied to biomedicine, agriculture, ecology and environmental conservation.

This course covers the historical evolution and characteristics of ancient Chinese fiction. It covers different genres of the fictional narrative tradition, zhiguai, zhiren, Tang chuanqi short tale, huaben colloquial short story and full-length xiaoshuo. Some knowledge of Chinese language is required.

This course looks at how colors, materials, and finishing (CMF) is applied in the design industry, in particular to consumer products. Students learn how to rationalize the best choice of colors and materials to engage the user. They will be able to objectify how the colors, materials and finishing that strongly link to the context of the design.

This course provides theory and hands-on experience for developing thematic maps. Thematic maps are effective means for delivering spatial information. Depending on the way thematic maps are created, they could have huge impact on the way physical or human environments are perceived and managed. The course focuses on human perception and visualization of map elements, data processing, symbolic encoding and decoding, and how these factors affect the design of thematic maps. Common types of thematic maps are introduced. The course also provides working knowledge of commercial software commonly used for creating maps (e.g., ESRI's ArcGIS).

This course provides both methodological and theoretical guidance for doing critical ethnography in Southeast Asia. The course systematically teaches the fundamentals of practicing ethnography in Southeast Asia and considers philosophical-theoretical, disciplinary and ethical issues underpinning each stage of the ethnographic process. Different forms of ethnographic texts on Southeast Asia (including films) are introduced to teach how to critically evaluate ethnographies. The course includes an ethnographic research project. There will be a compulsory field trip (Sep 22-26) to Pattani, Thailand, during the mid-semester break.

Sex, sexuality, and sexual orientations are cultural forms rather than purely "natural" states. This course examines the variety of social dimensions that shape human sexuality. A range of theoretical perspectives and cross-cultural comparisons are drawn in order to unravel the complexities of sexualities and to see how sexualities are shaped by historical norms, social scripts, political structures, global forces, and commodification. Students read historical materials and anthropological research and become familiar with political economy and social constructionist paradigms.

This course builds on the skills developed in intermediate Vietnamese. Students progress from reading selections from passages to a more sustained and systematic encounter with the nature of language used in novels, newspapers, the Internet, and other forms of popular publications, official public discourse, academic writings, and business Vietnamese. Students learn to comprehend texts from background and subject matter knowledge and from increasing control of language. They also learn to handle conversations involving complication, in the form of connected discourse, and to make choices of diction, as well as manipulate grammatical features reflecting formal and informal registers.