University of Edinburgh

This course provides an introduction to how economists analyze behavior in financial markets. It provides an understanding of the role of financial markets, the behavior of asset prices, and the economic causes and consequences of financial market imperfections. This is achieved through application of economic theory and examination of empirical evidence. Topics covered include the present value model and excess volatility; the term structure of interest rates; arbitrage conditions in foreign exchange markets; and consumption, portfolio choice, and the equity premium. The course is taught through a program of lectures and tutorials. Learning-by-doing, through problem solving and discussion of exercise sets, is an important ingredient of the course. A background in mathematics is recommended. Students with a weak math background need to be prepared to work at developing their math skills.

This course studies the principles and practices of secure programming. Secure programming means writing programs in a safe fashion, to avoid vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. It also means using security features provided by libraries, such as authentication and encryption, appropriately and effectively. A range of programming platforms is considered, ranging from low-level (e.g. Android OS), through web programming (e.g., JavaScript and Python) to high-level large-scale languages (e.g., Java). New and emerging language-based security mechanisms are examined, including ways of specifying and enforcing security policies statically and dynamically (e.g., to enforce access controls or information flow policies).

The course explores the global history of three themes - goods, peoples, and ideas. Students interrogate the new forms of power which sought to reshape global connections in the period from c. 1450 and explore the ways in which polities and societies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America engaged with and resisted the rise of European power and produced alternative imagined geographies, leading to the creation both of new connections and new forms of disconnection. The course also provides an opportunity to reflect critically on the writing of global history and to consider how to best make sense of the intersections of the local and the global in this period.

This course addresses the central problems facing us in the 21st century, which concern access to water, food, energy, shelter, as well as justice, in the context of a destabilizing climate and degradation of environmental resources. The course debates principles, concepts, contexts, issues and applications of sustainable development from the perspective of different disciplines, and helps students situate themselves in these debates as well as reflect on their own stance.

The course introduces methods, topics, and historiography of modern environmental history. Students approach the history of the modern world by focusing on material, ecological, and global histories. Through exploring 9 "things," (mosquitos, cement, wheat, cattle, cod, guano, barbed wire, uranium, computers) students discuss the complex interactions between communities and commodities that frequently shape global connections, remaking both space and time. These "mini-biographies" of different plants, animals and minerals, allow students to consider how humans have relied on nature to construct the economies and infrastructures of the modern era.

Databases encompass many areas of computer science, from formal logic to programming languages, from operating systems to algorithms and data structures. This course covers in detail the main language for relational databases, SQL. It also cover the theoretical query languages on which SQL's core is based, namely relational algebra and relational calculus. Other important topics covered during the course include normal forms, transaction processing, concurrency control, incomplete data and rudiments of query optimization. Topics include the relational model and rudiments of SQL; query languages: relational algebra and calculus; multisets, grouping and aggregation; database design: constraints and normal forms; advanced SQL: nested queries, triggers, null values, transaction management: concurrent schedules, conflict-serializability, locking; database access from applications: using SQL in a host programming language; and basics of indexing, query evaluation and optimization.