(American Association for the Advancement of Science) A one-hour exercise designed to increase feelings of social belonging administered during the first year of college appears to significantly improve the lives and careers of black students up to 11 years later, psychologists report.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam today visited Tai Mo Shan Country Park to inspect its management services amid the COVID-19 epidemic.

She was accompanied by Secretary for the Environment KS Wong and Director of Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Dr Leung Siu-fai.

Mrs Lam visited personnel working at the park’s visitor centre and Twisk Country Park Management Centre of Tai Lam Country Park.

She observed how they enhanced campsites and associated facilities, improved hiking trails with natural materials, provided more lookout points for people to enjoy the scenery and strengthened services at visitor centres.

Mrs Lam learnt about the department’s anti-epidemic measures and management work, including running temperature checks on all park visitors.

Noting that the number of visitors in various country parks increased by 25% in February, Mrs Lam praised staff for their commitment to strengthening anti-epidemic work to safeguard public health.

The department enhanced its promotions and public education on anti-epidemic measures and protecting the environment through various means including social media and the networks of partner organisations.

Mrs Lam also visited a refreshment kiosk to learn about its business.

The department has provided rent concessions to all kiosks in country parks and will extend such relief measures until September this year to help shop operators during these difficult times. 

Mrs Lam said she appreciated the kiosk’s efforts to protect the environment and reduce waste and disposable plastics, which encourages people to adopt a greener lifestyle.

She also appealed to the public to exercise social distancing while enjoying the countryside amid the epidemic.

The Government today announced that the Environment Bureau has disbursed about $6.5 million in subsidies to 809 private municipal solid waste collectors by cheque.

Under the Government's latest round of anti-epidemic measures, the bureau launched the Subsidy Scheme for the Refuse Transfer Station Account Holders for Transporting Municipal Solid Waste to provide a one-off relief subsidy of $8,000 to each eligible private municipal solid waste collector.

To provide financial support to the industry as soon as possible, the Environmental Protection Department, following funding approval by the Legislative Council Finance Committee, expedited the subsidy disbursement arrangement by waiving the application procedures.

The cheques have been issued and posted to all eligible private collectors.

Eligible collectors are refuse transfer station account holders who transported municipal solid waste to refuse transfer stations or landfills in the first quarter of the year.

The subsidy will assist them in increasing resources to enhance workers' personal protective equipment and strengthen the disinfection of refuse transport vehicles to curb the risk of virus transmission and maintain environmental hygiene.

Vladimir Dragović and Irina Goryuchkina
Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 57 (2020), 293-299.
Abstract, references and article information

Araceli Bonifant and John Milnor
Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 57 (2020), 171-267.
Abstract, references and article information

A 53-year-old building on Fa Yuen Street near Prince Edward, like most of the buildings in Yau Tsim Mong District, was in poor condition two years ago. Walls, both inside and out, were worn down, staircases were broken, and with electrical installation panels exposed on the outside. 

But with the help of various subsidy schemes launched by the Government and Urban Renewal Authority, older buildings are being given a new lease of life. The schemes include Operation Building Bright 2.0 (OBB 2.0), the Fire Safety Improvement Works Subsidy Scheme (FSWS) and the Lift Modernisation Subsidy Scheme (LIMSS).
 

Helping hand

Octogenarian owner-occupiers Leung Ting-lam and Chu Lai-chun have lived in this building on Fa Yuen Street for more than two decades. They welcome the improvements, which include a new metal gate and lift.

“Modernising the lift was done so quickly. It only took a few months and that was the most satisfying part,” said Mr Leung. Ms Chu agreed that the lift no longer breaks down so regularly.

It cost $800,000 just to modernise the lift. Add to that the other repair and maintenance works, and the total cost exceeded $3 million. Those who own a flat had to shoulder tens of thousands of dollars in the 10-storey building containing 19 units.

For seniors on a fixed income, it is not easy to cover the full cost of repair works. With the government subsidies, they no longer have to worry about the financial burden of upgrading their buildings on their own.

Popular services

The lift modernisation work under the LIMSS is assisted by the Electrical & Mechanical Services Department. The department’s Assistant Director Raymond Poon said the subsidy can cover up to 60% of the total cost of the works - plus a consultation fee - with a cap of $500,000 per lift for eligible buildings.

For elderly owner-occupiers, they can receive the full cost of relevant works capped at $50,000 per domestic unit.

Up until August 1, the department received around 1,171 applications for the scheme involving nearly 5,000 lifts in the first round of applications. This far exceeded the quota of 1,400 lifts set for the round, a response Mr Poon described as overwhelming.

Apart from the LIMSS, owner-occupiers can also apply for OBB 2.0 and other schemes to cover maintenance costs.

In one 58-year-old Hung Hom building, residents had to spend more than $800,000 to paint the common areas, replace above-ground drainage pipework and other structural upgrades.

The building’s owners’ corporation has applied for several funding schemes to get some financial relief, including OBB 2.0. Under this scheme, elderly recipients can receive the full cost of the work, subject to a cap of $50,000. Other owner-occupiers can receive 80%, capped at $40,000.

As of August, the owners or owners’ corporations of 479 Category One buildings were prepared to carry out the prescribed inspection and repair works for the common areas of their buildings under OBB 2.0. They can do so on a voluntary basis to comply with the Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme (MBIS) statutory notices.

These buildings are in 13 districts. Among them, Yau Tsim Mong has the largest number of applications, followed by Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po.

More help ahead

In the future, another $3 billion will be injected into OBB 2.0. This means a total of $6 billion will be used to benefit 5,000 buildings.

Development Bureau Principal Assistant Secretary Jasmine Choi said they have received feedback from the community which hopes the operation will eventually allow younger buildings to join the rehabilitation schemes.

Upon review, buildings between 40 and 49 years old with an outstanding MBIS statutory notice not yet complied with will be accepted in the next round of applications.

Apart from these younger structures, OBB 2.0 will also accept buildings aged 50 and older, even if they do not have an outstanding notice.

SAS Visual Analytics can be configured to send a notification to specific users when report objects contain data that meets certain criteria. This SAS note contains frequently asked questions about setting up alerts.

Problems might occur when using SAS Enterprise Guide with dual monitors. For example, it might appear there is a performance problem with the query builder or other task, or it might appear that code or a task is hung, or

(Princeton University, Engineering School) New findings about critical cellular structures have upended common assumptions about their formation and composition and provided new insight how molecular machines are built in living cells.

(Impact Journals LLC) Oncotarget Volume 11, Issue 12 reported that the p16 tumor suppressor is coded by CDKN2A and plays an important role during carcinogenesis and tumor progression in numerous tumor entities.

(University of Helsinki) Mutations in white blood cells can contribute to abnormal immune profile after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

(University of Houston) A University of Houston biomedical researcher is developing a new device to treat babies with blood disorders, because current technology is designed for adults. The ability to perform lifesaving leukapheresis safely and effectively in these most vulnerable pediatric patients will significantly increase their access to highly effective cell-based therapies.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government welcomes the promulgation of the Meteorological Development Plan ...

(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau) University of Illinois classics professor Clara Bosak-Schroeder writes about how the ancient Greeks thought about natural resources and how it is relevant to responding to climate change today.

(Bentham Science Publishers) Using a nationally representative sample, the researchers explored racial/ethnic variation in the link between educational attainment and heart disease among American adults.

(Taylor & Francis Group) Over 80% of people surveyed in a study do not plan to conceive during the COVID-19 crisis, perhaps putting to rest suggestions that the lockdown could lead to rise in birth numbers.

(University of Iowa Health Care) A $3.7 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been awarded to the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA to study ways to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection among frontline health care workers in hospital emergency departments.

(Keck School of Medicine of USC) A new USC study suggests that temporarily suppressing the body's immune system during the early stages of COVID-19 could help a patient avoid severe symptoms. That's because the research shows that an interaction between the body's two main lines of defense may be causing the immune system to go into overdrive in some patients.

(University of Colorado at Boulder) What can researchers do when their mathematical models of the spread of infectious diseases don't match real-world data? One research team is working on a solution.

(Queensland University of Technology) Your house number could be the key to the safe relaxation of COVID-19-related restrictions if governments follow a new exit strategy proposal published today in the British Medical Journal. Co-authored by QUT statistician Professor Adrian Barnett, the paper proposes the use of an 'odds-and-evens' approach to allowing people to head back to work and enjoy other activities after weeks of lockdown.

(Simon Fraser University) SFU professor Caroline Colijn’s research and data modelling to map the spread of COVID-19 in British Columbia has helped her procure funding from Genome B.C., a non-profit research organization that leads genomics innovation on Canada’s West Coast.

(Goethe University Frankfurt) According to modern particle physics, matter produced when neutron stars merge is so dense that it could exist in a state of dissolved elementary particles. This state of matter, called quark-gluon plasma, might produce a specific signature in gravitational waves. Physicists at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies have now calculated this process using supercomputers.

(University of British Columbia) Mars had a global magnetic field much earlier -- and much later -- than previously known. Analysis of new satellite data found clear evidence of a magnetic field coming from a lava flow that formed less than 3.7 billion years ago, half a billion years after many people thought the Martian dynamo had ceased. The researchers also detected low-intensity magnetic fields over the Borealis Basin, believed to be one of the oldest features on Mars.

(Kudos Innovations Ltd) Kudos helps researchers maximize reach and visibility of research by opening up Kudos Pro. The platform helps showcase work to a range of target audiences, supporting researchers in fields where conferences have been cancelled -- and those with COVID-19-relevant work that needs rapid communication. Over 2,000 researchers have already signed up.

(University of California - Irvine) Cyanobacteria living in rocks in Chile's Atacama Desert extract water from the minerals they colonize and, in doing so, change the phase of the material from gypsum to anhydrite. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Johns Hopkins University gained verification of this process through experiments, and the work points to possible strategies for humans to stay hydrated in harsh environments.

(DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) A new study, led by researchers at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, suggests new paths for catching the signals of dark matter particles that have their energy absorbed by atomic nuclei.

(King's College London) A study of female astronauts has assessed the risk of blood clots associated with spaceflight.The study, published in Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, in collaboration with King's College London, the Centre for Space Medicine Baylor College of Medicine, NASA Johnson Space Centre and the International Space University, examines the potential risk factors for developing a blood clot (venous thromboembolism) in space.

(Yale University) The 2020 Gruber Cosmology Prize recognizes Lars Hernquist, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and Volker Springel, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, for their defining contributions to cosmological simulations, a method that tests existing theories of, and inspires new investigations into, the formation of structures at every scale from stars to galaxies to the universe itself.

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA has selected a new pathfinding CubeSat mission to gather data not collected since the agency flew the Dynamics Explorer in the early 1980s.

(University of Sydney) In a study published today in Current Biology, researchers from University of Sydney have identified the single gene that determines how Cape honey bees reproduce without ever having sex. One gene, GB45239 on chromosome 11, is responsible for virgin births.

(University of California - Davis) In the tropical atmosphere, cold air rises due to an overlooked effect -- the lightness of water vapor. This effect helps to stabilize tropical climates, and the impacts of a warming climate would be much worse without it.

(University of Johannesburg) Fly ash generated by coal-fired power stations is a global environmental headache, creating groundwater and air pollution from vast landfills and ash dams. The waste product can be repurposed into geopolymer concrete, such as precast heat-cured structural elements for buildings. However, a critical durability problem has been low resistance to extreme alkali attack. UJ researchers found that high temperature heat-treatment at 200 degrees Celsius can halve this harmful mechanism in fly ash geopolymer concretes.

(University of Michigan) The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted just how reliant the United States and other countries are on Chinese manufacturing, with widespread shortages of protective medical gear produced there.

(Tokyo University of Science) Plastic waste often ends up in river bodies and oceans, posing a serious threat to the marine ecosystem. To prevent the accumulation of plastic debris, we must find out where plastic emission is prevalent. To this end, scientists in Japan have come up with a new method to track plastic emissions from inland areas to sea. This method is useful to identify the 'hotspots' of plastic emission and can even help to implement appropriate measures to avoid plastic pollution.