Media

Evaporation Revelation

A collaborative study between mechanical engineering and biomedical sciences has found evaporation may have played an important role in the origins of life and could provide a new path of exploration into how living things are formed.

All Systems Go

A smart city data project could help Hong Kong better coordinate its various public and private transport systems, enabling passengers to enjoy maximum use and spend minimum time getting from A to B.

Men Win out in Divorce in China

Professor He Xin’s research shows that a combination of institutional constraints on Chinese judges, traditional values about gender, and income inequality frequently result in divorce decisions that are more favourable to men than women.

China’s Jumpy Take on Tech

For years, the Chinese government treated technology companies with kid gloves, encouraging them to get on with innovating and making money. But in 2020, that changed. Dr Angela Huyue Zhang has been looking into the factors motivating the new hard-line regulation of technology in Mainland China.

The Public Knows Best

Determining the influence of broad government policy over the economy has been an elusive pursuit. But Dr Yang Liu has found a workaround. By combining public approval ratings of the US President and Congress with think tank assessments, he has shown how evaluations of today’s policies correlate with future economic impacts.

Diamonds Are a Tooth’s Best Friend

Nanodiamonds could be key to finding an alternative to the usual antibiotics strategy for battling oral infections.

Something to Chew on

People with asymmetric jaws can have difficulties eating and talking. Research by Dr Mike Leung Yiu-yan in the Faculty of Dentistry confirms they are also at higher risk of jaw pain and shows that there is a solution.

Sweet Deal for Songbirds

Scientists have discovered that songbirds evolved the ability to taste sweetness and believe that this has far-reaching implications for their subsequent evolution and radiation.

Rapid Response

A study has shown that fish species which have evolved more rapidly in the past are equipped with better means to cope with increased ocean acidification across the globe.

Fighting Back against COVID-19

Researchers at HKU have been finding new ways to contain the COVID-19 virus and protect people from infection. Professor Chen Honglin and Professor Chen Zhiwei in the Medical Faculty have developed a novel vaccine strategy using an injection and nasal spray that may offer better protection and prevention against asymptomatic transmission of the virus. And engineers led by Professor Mingxin Huang have developed a new stainless steel that is COVID-resistant and effectively ...

Material Values

Our attitudes to money can influence our behaviour towards others and even impact our mental health, finds Professor Chen Zhansheng of the Department of Psychology.

Money, Markets and the Rise of Modern China

Many factors lay behind China’s slowness to industrialise and gain control of its economy in the 19th and 20th centuries. But a key one was money: there was no unified currency and no capital markets in the country through which the government could raise money. Dr Ghassan Moazzin has been studying the situation, whose consequences reverberate today.

Money and the State

What comes first, money or markets? Historian Dr Oscar Sanchez-Sibony’s investigation of the Soviet Union’s early years provides strong evidence that money comes first and that it is a creation of the state.

Social Relations and Money

Money is a form of exchange between humans. As such, it is used in ways that can be irrational, emotional and changeable. Dr Tom McDonald has been shining an anthropological lens on the nuances of our relationship to money.

Crypto Meets the Real World

Digital currencies promise contradictory things – from giving authorities the power to trace people’s spending to supporting a cyber economy that is free from government oversight. Dr Yang You’s research suggests that eluding the existing world order may be a pipe dream, but there is ample room for the cyber and the real to converge.

Bursting Bubbles The myths, realities and future of money

Money is shrouded in two myths – that it is a creation of markets, not the state, and that people use it in rational ways. HKU scholars have been poking holes in these ideas, focussing on our psychological and social relationships with money and money’s role in the Russian Revolution and the emergence of modern China. At the same time, they are giving consideration to the contradictory promises of digital currency, ...