Deadline: Monday, May 14.

Please submit your essay as a pdf file attached to an email to S.W.Grosskinsky@warwick.ac.uk. Note that late submissions lead to a deduction of 3/100 marks per working day, as required by central university rules. If you cannot make the deadline for health-related issues, please inform the module leader in advance as early as possible. You may be required to produce a medical certificate to avoid a late penalty.

Scope. The essay should be between 15-20 pages long and critically discuss research or review papers (of a total length of about 50 pages) and their connection to at least one aspect of the course material. The presentation should follow the style of a paper, with an intro that puts the material presented into context (including citations of other relevant work), a main part on results where you should make an informed and justified selection (may be informed by connection with course material), and a short conclusion/summary. Please write in clear and correct English with logical arguments that can be followed without further reading by your colleagues, or provide explicit references for omitted material. A consistent notation throughout the essay is very important, and may have to be adapted from the original material. If you present figures, make sure that they have axis labels and a self contained caption explaining the figure, if taken from a different source provide a reference.

Topics. All topics should be arranged and confirmed with the module leader during term 2.

Hints. As a first step, please try to obtain the published journal papers you work with from the journal homepage, since they are sometimes different from the arXiv version. On the journal page of the article (which you can usually find by hacking the paper title into google), the Warwick Library Proxy button should provide access to the pdf file.