Winter 2024

This class will first discuss the importance of ESG reporting. For example, investors can use the ESG reporting to make better investment decisions. Next, the class will introduce relevant ESG reporting standards and practices in Hong Kong and use two Hong Kong firms’ ESG reports as examples. Finally, the class will discuss current reporting frameworks and future trends to provide students with more information about how to better prepare for a ESG related career path.

As a result of the adoption of advanced technologies, the construction industry has undergone a significant transformation. Among these advancements, Extended Reality (XR), comprising Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), offers unprecedented opportunities for visualisation, collaboration, and innovation. This workshop will explore how XR technologies are revolutionising future architecture and engineering. Engaging and immersive activities enable students to experience XR in action and envision the possibilities for a digitally enhanced world.

Hong Kong government has set an ambitious goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050, and a critical strategy in its overall planning is to increase the deployment of renewable solar energy. In this talk, the speaker will discuss how we can rely on technological innovation to tackle this grand challenge; particularly, we have identified a new generation of printable, flexible, transparent, and colour-tunable solar cells as the most prominent photovoltaic technology to promote solar energy deployment in Hong Kong. Such a new generation solar cell technology can be integrated as tinted solar windows, façades, or curtains with buildings to generate significantly more solar electricity in an urban city, which usually has limited lands and rooftops for installing conventional silicon solar panels.

香港政府制定了至 2050 年實現碳中和的宏偉目標，其總體規劃的關鍵策略是增加可再生太陽能的運用。在是次演講中，講者將討論我們如何依靠技術創新來應對這一巨大挑戰，並介紹一種嶄新的太陽能電池，其具備可印刷、柔性、透明和顏色可調的特性。這種新一代太陽能電池技術可結合用於建築物的窗戶、外牆或窗簾，在城市中產生更多的太陽能電力，解決城市通常只有有限的土地和屋頂空間來安裝傳統的晶硅太陽能電池板的問題，促進香港太陽能發電的應用。

This article places a hunting screen, now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, in the longue durée of intricate intra-Asian visual entanglements to elaborate on a “pathos formula” that migrated across vast stretches of time and space. It proposes that a wide array of Chinese and Japanese paintings, screens, and porcelain objects produced between 1550 and 1750 followed established formulas of picturing foreign tropes that stereotypically viewed the non-Han and non-Japanese peoples as “barbarians”. Historically, the northern nomadic peoples were depicted as powerful yet savage horse riders skilled in hunting and equestrian sports. To illuminate the afterlives of this shared East Asian visual legacy, key discussions include imitations of Southern Song paintings on hunting and the tragic fate of Wenji (a Chinese woman who returned to the Han empire after being captive for twelve years in the steppe), the Japanese Tartar screens, the gold-painted hunt screens produced in Macau for the galleon trade, and the carved lacquer screens manufactured along China’s southeast coast. Behind the pan-East Asian resurgence of this “pathos formula”, as this article suggests, three territorial and geopolitical shifts emerged as stimuli: Japan’s pursuit of overseas conquest, the rise of the Jurchens (and later, the Manchus), and the arrival of the maritime centuries in which the Europeans were predominantly engaged. The article concludes that the Amsterdam hunting screen was much more than a faithful representation of any specific event or collective, and followed a stereotypical view of the “Red-haired Barbarians” (Dutch traders) who approached China by sea as nomads.

本文將一件現藏於阿姆斯特丹荷蘭國家博物館 (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) 的狩獵屏風放置於錯綜複雜的東亞視覺交流中，探討一種跨越漫長時空的「情驗程序」(pathos formula)。文章提出，在1550年至1750年間所大量製作的中國和日本繪畫、屏風和瓷器都遵循了既定的外夷形象，即將非漢族和非日本民族刻板地視為「蠻夷」。在歷史上，北方的遊牧民族常被認為是精通狩獵和騎術的強大而馬背蠻夷。為討論這一東亞共享的視覺遺產的再生，本文重點討論了南宋繪畫中狩獵和文姬—一位被擄十二年後從草原回到中原的女子—題材的版本、日本韃靼屏風、澳門外銷美洲的金彩屏風，以及中國東南沿海生產的款彩屏風。作者認為，此種表現蠻夷的「情驗程式」在東亞屏風上復興的背後，主要受到了三個地緣政治轉變的刺激，即日本的海外擴張、女真以及後裔載東北亞的崛起，以及歐洲人所開啟的大航海時代的到來。以此作結，阿姆斯特丹所藏的狩獵屏風並不是任何具體事件或集體的記錄，而是沿襲了將渡海而來的「紅毛夷」(即荷蘭商人)視作騎馬民族的刻板印象。

Since 2014, Aquatic Animal Virtopsy Lab from CityUHK has been applying a cutting-edge technique named “virtopsy” on local Cetacean Stranding Investigation. This technique was later extended to the research on sea turtle since 2019. This technique enhances better understanding and gives insights into health conditions and life history of the stranded aquatic animals, and their injuries and deaths caused by human interactions. The collected data enable assessment of aquatic animals' health and provide an important reference to the development of a unique centralised database and long-term strategies for conservation of aquatic animals. Such a complete ecosystem indicator may eventually support the conservation and policy decision for all oceans, leading to an “One Ocean-One Health” paradigm.

The old saying, “Failure is the mother of success”, holds true in the realm of data science, particularly when it comes to solving tasks through the learning process — whether it be statistical learning, machine learning, or deep learning. More accurately, it is errors that become the catalyst for success in the learning process. In this lecture, we will explore the different types of errors that exist in learning tasks, such as breast cancer diagnosis, COVID-19 positive case detection and credit card default prediction. We will discuss whether these errors carry the same level of importance and how modern data science algorithms learn from these errors to make effective decisions.