Focus

Varsha gave all fellow students a piece of advice. 'There are definitely ups and downs in your days at university, but life is just like that, isn't it? So instead of focusing on the negatives and cocooning yourself from the world, why not make the best of everything and strut your university days with mirth and exuberance?'

The Department of Psychiatry of CU Medicine, in collaboration with the Department of Psychology at the University of Hong Kong, conducted the world's first randomized controlled trial of adjunctive bright light therapy for 'night owls' with depression.

The CUHK Medical Centre (CUHKMC), a non-profit, private teaching hospital aimed at providing the public with a wide range of quality, reliable and transparent healthcare services, is now open.

One hundred and thirty-eight students have been named CUHK's Outstanding Students of the Year for their achievements in five categories, namely innovation and invention, sports, arts, social service and special achievement. Five of them have been named 'The Most Outstanding Star', including Michael Chan Wai-man, Amanda Li Chiu-ming and Kessay Chan Kwan-ming.

CUHK has rolled out the virtual reality (VR) mental health therapy programme Yes I Can in Asia in collaboration with AXA Hong Kong and Oxford VR. The pilot phase, which took place in early 2020,

At the age of six, Warren Buffett earned his first pocket money by selling chewing gum. His sharp financial skills and investment acumen made him who he is today. His eye for returns may be exceptional, but financial literacy can be trained.

A research team from the Faculty of Medicine has recently introduced using nasal strip to obtain nasal epithelial lining fluid to detect SARS-CoV-2. The research team found that the accuracy of nasal strip test is comparable to standard tests and even out-performed saliva specimens, especially in paediatric subjects.

Prof. Wong Kam-fai, Associate Dean (External Affairs) of the Faculty of Engineering and director of the Centre for Innovation and Technology, has been named a Fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics in the class of 2020, in recognition of his significant contributions to social media processing, particularly in Chinese information retrieval, opinion mining, microblog processing and rumour detection.

Prof. Raymond Yeung Wai-ho, Choh-Ming Li Professor of Information Engineering and co-director of the Institute of Network Coding, has received the IEEE 2021 Richard W. Hamming Medal for his fundamental contributions to information theory and pioneering network coding and its applications. It is the first time the award, one of the highest honours in electrical and electronics engineering, has been won by an Asian researcher since its establishment in 1988.

Rachel Leung, a fresh medical graduate, has been selected as one of the Rhodes Scholars who will receive fully-funded postgraduate education at the University of Oxford. Rachel is the second student from the Faculty of Medicine to have been awarded this prestigious scholarship.

I was given this copy of Tales of Hulan River by Prof. Lo Wai-luen
It is a 1975 edition published by a small Hong Kong publisher and may not be as valuable as a 1940s mainland Chinese edition, but it is full of annotations handwritten by Professor Lo when she prepared for class. Take the well-known snippet of 'Fire Clouds' for example.

Whenever I hang out with my friends these days, one of the most common topics we talk about is undoubtedly our careers—besides how we are faring in our current job, the conversation often travels back to our younger days, wondering where we would have been if we took a different path.

Prof. Lu Yi-Chun from the Faculty of Engineering has recently been selected as one of the top 10 scientists in the Falling Walls Science Breakthroughs of the Year Award in the category of Engineering and Technology.

A study conducted by The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care of the Faculty of Medicine showed that physical settings of an environment play a vital role in the propagation of COVID-19 in society.

In September 2019, Professor Tang was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts at CUHK after an extensive international search. He took the position because, as he put it, 'I think I had reached a point in my academic career where a new challenge was exciting. Being in Hong Kong and close to China was very attractive to me, too.'

'Photoacoustic spectroscopy is intriguing—light can produce sounds which tell us the nature of things. Everything has a unique spectroscopic fingerprint.'

In the EMBA ranking 2020 released on 26 October by Financial Times, CUHK's EMBA programme has significantly moved up nine places to the 15th in the world and remains to be the top independent English-instructed programme in the Greater China region. This global ranking features the world's top 100 programmes.

Hi, the name on my birth certificate is MAGNETOM Prisma 3 Tesla (T) MRI Scanner. I became a member of the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Centre (GCNC) MRI Core Facility earlier this year.

'The ability to communicate—the power to send and receive meaningful information—is certainly a unique aspect of mankind,' said Prof. Rosanna Chan of the Department of Information Engineering. 'Sadly, some people are born with an inability to speak or to express themselves with ease.'

Prof. Dennis Lo (left) and Prof. Jiang Peiyong from the Faculty of Medicine have been named the 'Top 20 Translational Researchers of 2019' by Nature Biotechnology on the strength of their patents track record. Professor Lo and Professor Jiang are the only scientists from an Asian institution on the list.

A research team led by Prof. Yang Seng from the Department of Physics and Dr. Xia Kangwei from the University of Stuttgard has developed an 'Universal Ink' which, when combined with single-step laser direct writing technology, can produce high performance electronic chips with simpler procedure and lower costs.

The University took the lead to develop and manage a virtual student exchange programme within the Association of Pacific Rim Universities consisting of 56 leading institutions. The first pilot semester kicked off in August.

As one of the biometric authentication methods, voiceprint recognition is not something that is unheard of in this day and age; to truly master the technology, however, is quite another story.

Prof. Tony Mok, chairman of the Department of Clinical Oncology and Li Shu Fan Medical Foundation Professor of Clinical Oncology of the Faculty of Medicine, has been named a Giant of Cancer Care 2020 by OncLive®, a leading multimedia cancer resource in the US, in recognition of his clinical research on oncogene driven lung cancer and the application of immunotherapy...

Led by Prof. Yang Hongfeng of the Earth System Science Programme, a research team conducted comprehensive study of the 2019 earthquake sequence in Weiyuan Shale Gas Field in the southern Sichuan Basin of China. It was found that on 25 February 2019, the earthquake occurred at around 1 km below the surface, an extremely shallow depth where earthquakes do not generally happen.

To earthlings and commoners like us, the dining table for the royalty is a smorgasbord of precious foodstuffs and exquisite flavours. To the legal historian, however, what's on the plate and how a regal meal is served provide insights into how the government is structured and run.

The University Grants Committee (UGC) has given Dr. Carmen Wong, Assistant Dean (Education) of the Faculty of Medicine, the 2020 UGC Teaching Award (General Faculty Members) in recognition of her contribution and achievements in medical education and interdisciplinary/multi-sectoral educational collaborations.

The CUHK Entrepreneur Day 2020, hosted by the CUHK Alumni Torch Fund, was held on 25 and 26 September. Now in its sixth year, the event took place in the cloud for the first time with over 1,600 registrants. It is hoped that the event has encouraged start-ups to look for opportunities through innovation in these changing times.

On 10 September, the Breakthrough Prize announced its latest crop of laureates. One of the 'Oscars' in life sciences goes to Prof. Dennis Lo of the Faculty of Medicine at CUHK for his significantly advancing the knowledge of fetal DNA and developing prenatal testing of Down syndrome and a variety of genetic diseases.

For untold ages, the universe has inspired in human feelings of awe, wonder and sublimity. With the ever-perplexing black holes, the most massive merger was detected earlier by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration of which CUHK is a part, and its European counterpart Virgo.

A joint study revealed that our nervous system is able to adjust ways of running according to our age, health conditions and prior workouts. Runners would be able to step up their game and devise training that has our muscles give their best.

As members of a society, we see medical practitioners as those who were born with a calling. While one may admire or even envy the perks, be it a handsome paycheck or the prestige, that a doctor can enjoy, it is nearly impossible for us to fathom the hardships that the profession entails.

With the pandemic raging, older people with dementia are facing an unprecedented threat. As data from different places reveals, the elderly and dementia patients are much more likely to die when infected.

The weather in Hong Kong has gotten hotter in recent years. This July, the city saw a Very Hot Weather Warning that was in force for a record-breaking 20 hours and an all-time high of 21 days with a lowest temperature of 28 degrees Celsius or above (i.e., hot nights).

Fossil fuels like coal and petroleum have been responsible for pollutions of all sorts. A research team led by Prof. Michael Chan of the School of Life Sciences developed a handy way to extract enzymes from bacteria, which will enable enzymatic production of biofuel and help popularize the latter as a clean, effective substitute for its fossil forebears.