A. G. Kukush and O. O. Chernova
Theor. Probability and Math. Statist. 99 (2020), 125-135.
Abstract, references and article information

C. De Filippis and G. Mingione
St. Petersburg Math. J. 31 (2020), 455-477.
Abstract, references and article information

Maciej Bocheński and Aleksy Tralle
Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 148 (2020), 2743-2744.
Abstract, references and article information

Weimin Chen
Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 148 (2020), 2707-2716.
Abstract, references and article information

Xiaodong Cao, Bennett Chow and Yongjia Zhang
Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 148 (2020), 2595-2600.
Abstract, references and article information

Igor E. Shparlinski
Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 148 (2020), 2371-2377.
Abstract, references and article information

The Leisure & Cultural Services Department will present Nobody but a princess..., a multimedia production featuring Nordic singers, dancers from the Hong Kong Ballet and overseas acrobats from November 8 to 10.

A story of a modern princess who discovers her identity and true love through her fantastic journey of wonders, the performance will be staged in a custom-made giant dome, complete with a state-of-the-art kinetic light display and pyrotechnics.

It will be held at 6pm, 7pm and 8.30pm from November 8 to 10 at the Cultural Centre Piazza.

The show will be conducted in English and include a strobe light effect. Admission is free.

Click here for details.

The Wetland Park is holding its annual Bird Watching Festival, with "Incredible Bird Parents" as this year’s theme.

Running until April 20, the event shows how versatile and sophisticated birds are in providing parental care for their offspring.

For the first time, five unique Lego brick wetland animal models are displayed as another festival attraction.

They include the saltwater crocodile Pui Pui, a kingfisher, paddy frog, fiddler crab and the common tiger, as well as Lego brick wall art.

Co-created by the Wetland Park and Lego Certified Professional Andy Hung, the Lego series aims to inspire kids to build a better future for nature.

Other edutainment comprises bird watching tours, thematic bird interpretation sessions, bird photography workshops, public lectures and a kids reading club.

Click here for details.

Required reading for any academic is Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain.” In the first few pages an older, tenured professor is “forced to retire.” Why? There were two students who never were present when he called roll. Even after roll … Continue reading →

The confidence level of Hong Kong’s exporters has fallen to its lowest-ever level in the face of a triple challenge – the COVID-19 outbreak, softening global demand and lingering trade tension between the United States and Mainland...

Start-up Express, a development programme launched by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) in 2018, is returning for its third edition to help local start-ups build connections, explore markets, seek partners and enhance...

Brenna Cholerton
Nov 1, 2016; 29:210-219
From Research to Practice

Betsy B. Dokken
Jul 1, 2008; 21:160-165
From Research to Practice/Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip today visited the Inland Revenue Department and the Labour Department to inspect the resumption of public services.

The Government had earlier announced that public services will be resumed under a phased approach.

Counter services of most government departments have returned to normal.

Mr Nip first visited the Inland Revenue Department in Revenue Tower and was briefed on counter services at the Central Enquiry Counter, the Business Registration Office and the Stamp Office.

He learnt that the department has implemented various infection control and crowd management measures, such as a ticketing system, to safeguard the health of colleagues and the public.

Later Mr Nip visited the Hong Kong East Job Centre and a recruitment centre for the catering and retail industries and was briefed on the resumption of normal services at the Labour Department's job and recruitment centres.

He said: “While maintaining a high degree of vigilance and adopting all necessary precautionary measures, the Government gradually resumed public services today in a smooth and orderly manner.

“Various infection control measures have been put in place at government buildings and offices. These include checking the body temperature of persons at entrances, providing alcohol-based hand sanitiser and enhancing the cleaning of public facilities.

“The Government will closely monitor the situation to determine when to embark on full resumption of normal business.”

The 2020 honours and awards selection and appointment of Justices of the Peace (JPs) exercise will be postponed, as well as the announcement of the list of honours and awards and JP appointments, the Government announced today.

It decided to defer the exercise to accord top priority to the ongoing anti-epidemic work and implementation of measures to retain employment, support businesses and ease people's livelihood in the face of challenges arising from the COVID-19 epidemic.

The Honours List and JP appointments will be announced on October 1 instead of July 1 as in previous years, the Government added.

The Immigration Department announced today that the operation of all nine Smart Identity Card Replacement Centres will be fully resumed on May 11 in light of the more stabilised epidemic situation.

The department earlier suspended the replacement of Hong Kong identity cards at the centres to avoid the increased risk of spreading COVID-19.

To arrange for people affected by the service suspension to replace their identity cards in an orderly manner, the Secretary for Security has made an amendment order to revise the replacement period for people born in 1957 to 1963 and 1970 to 1976 and the arrangement for members of the sixth term of District Councils.

Click here for the arrangements.

If the replacement of identity cards needs to be suspended again in the future to cope with a sudden turn of the epidemic situation, the amendment order also provides that if all the centres are not in service for a period of 21 working days or more from May 11 to July 27 for public health reasons, the specified period for the above people will be further extended or amended.

The amendment order will be tabled at the Legislative Council on May 13 for negative vetting.

To reduce crowd gatherings, applicants who have not made appointments previously should do so via the Internet, the department’s mobile application or the 24-hour hotline at 2121 1234.

The department also appealed to applicants to pre-fill the application form when making appointments through the Internet or mobile application.

For details click here or call 2824 6111.

Emily Riehl, Johns Hopkins University, received the university's $250,000 President's Frontier Award, whose purpose is to nurture individuals at Johns Hopkins University who are breaking new ground and poised to become leaders in their field. Riehl studies category theory and says that "I just thought the proofs were the most beautiful of any of the other areas I've encountered. ... It was sort of love at first sight and I am lucky to be able to do what I love." The award is considered a "$250,000 investment in doing more of what she loves."

Also see and hear this coverage: "Johns Hopkins Mathematician from B-N [Bloomington-Normal, IL] Breaks Barriers and Wins Research Grant, by Jolie Sherman, WGLT, February 27, 2020.

The 2020 Mathematical Art Exhibition Awards were made at the Joint Mathematics Meetings last week "for aesthetically pleasing works that combine mathematics and art." The chosen works were selected from the exhibition of juried works in various media by over 90 mathematicians and artists from around the world.

"Suspended Helical Stair," by Mark Donohue (California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA), was awarded Best textile, sculpture, or other medium. "A unique cable system to suspend a stair was developed in collaboration with a leading structural engineer. The suspended cables form a double helicoid nested within an ascending spiral hyperboloid to create the necessary points of support for the gravity loads and lateral bracing for the seismic loads. Each concrete stair tread was designed as an independent element that is strung together with the stairs above and below it to form a single spiral stair when the steel cables that run through them are post tensioned. The entire stair tread and suspension cable system can be understood as a play of ruled surfaces with each part related to the other through their shared geometric lineage." The work is string and plywood,45 x 23 x 23 cm, 2018.

2018

"A Unit Domino," by Douglas McKenna (Mathemaesthetics, Inc., Boulder, CO), was awarded Best photograph, painting, or print. "This piece is based upon an artist-discovered "half-domino" space-filling curve. The drawing comprises some half-million connected line segments, arranged in two perfectly recursive levels of double-spiral pairs, slowly changing color, in a single, over-one-mile-long self-avoiding path from lower left to lower right (the lower right square that sticks out is an integral part of its self-negative structure). The limiting curve covers a self-similar gasket tile with an infinitely long, almost-everywhere linear border. With an upside-down copy of itself, two such gaskets of unit area exactly cover a 1x2 domino, without overlap. The artist's app/eBook "Hilbert Curves" for iPad/iPhone explains how he discovered these beautiful constructions." The work is a glicée print,106 x 66 cm, 2015.

"Computational Wings," by David Bachman (Pitzer College, Claremont, CA), received Honorable Mention. "The body of this dragonfly is taken from a photograph, while the wings were computationally generated. A variety of algorithms were used to create them. First, a set of points were randomly populated across each wing and moved by a circle packing algorithm, where the radius of each circle was inversely proportional to the distance from the body. Next, those points were used to create a Voronoi diagram. Main veins were located by a shortest walk algorithm through the edges of this diagram, and those veins were given a variable thickness according to the distance travelled as you traverse them outward from the body." The work is laser etched acrylic, 23 x 35 x 3 cm, 2019.

(Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of the images.)

The Mathematical Art Exhibition Award "for aesthetically pleasing works that combine mathematics and art" was established in 2008 through an endowment provided to the American Mathematical Society by an anonymous donor who wishes to acknowledge those whose works demonstrate the beauty and elegance of mathematics expressed in a visual art form. The awards are $400 for Best photograph, painting, or print; $400 for Best textile, sculpture, or other medium; and $200 for Honorable Mention. The Mathematical Art Exhibition of juried works in various media is held at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and Mathematical Association of America (MAA). a gallery of works in the 2020 exhibition will be on AMS Mathematical Imagery.

Find out more about the Mathematical Art Exhibition Award and see past recipients.

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The American Mathematical Society is dedicated to advancing research and connecting the diverse global mathematical community through our publications, meetings and conferences, MathSciNet, professional services, advocacy, and awareness programs.

VOLUME 294 (2019) PAGES 2555–2568Due to publisher error, “150 l/mm” was changed to “150 liters/mm” in the second paragraph of the “Vibrational spectroscopy of samples” section under “Experimental Procedures.” The correct phrase should be “150 l/mm.”

(Arizona State University) Gary Moore, assistant professor in ASU's School of Molecular Sciences and the Biodesign Institute's Center for Applied Structural Discovery has just been named one of 14 young faculty nationwide to be honored with a 2020 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

With the northeast monsoon over southern China being generally weaker than normal for most of the time in March, the month was much warmer than usual, the Hong Kong Observatory said today.

The monthly mean temperature was 21.3 degrees Celsius, 2.2 degrees above normal and the mean minimum temperature was 19.7 degrees Celsius, 2.5 degrees above average. Both were the joint second highest on record for March.

The monthly mean maximum temperature was 23.8 degrees Celsius, 2.4 degrees above normal and the fifth highest on record for the month.

The month was also drier than usual with a total rainfall of 41.3mm, about half of the normal figure.

The accumulated rainfall recorded in the first three months of the year was 135.9mm, about 16% below average.

With the northeast monsoon over southern China being stronger than normal in April, the month was slightly cooler than usual, the Hong Kong Observatory said today.

The monthly mean temperature was 22 degrees Celsius, 0.6 degrees below normal.

The mean minimum temperature was 20 degrees Celsius, 0.8 degrees below average, while the monthly mean maximum temperature was 25.1 degrees Celsius, 0.1 degrees above normal.

The month was also drier than usual with a total rainfall of 77.8mm, about 55% below the normal figure.

The accumulated rainfall recorded in the first four months of the year was 213.7mm, about 36% below average.

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

The Airport Authority expanded the scope of its food waste recycling programme in 2011 to cover Hong Kong International Airport business partners, including restaurants and lounges operating in terminal buildings, as well as airline catering companies, hotels and cargo terminals.

In 2017-18, over 2,000 tonnes of food waste from 17 airport business partners were collected for recycling.

Rainie Ho, the supervisor of one participating restaurant, said staff make every effort to collect food waste on a constant basis.

“We have three bins of recycled food waste, including eggs, toast, bread, chicken, meat, pork bones, tea and coffee every day.”

Ms Ho gave kudos to the Airport Authority for making the process simple.

“The Airport Authority provides us with garbage bags every month. We explain to our staff that the red bags are for food waste, while the black ones are for general rubbish. This makes it easier for them to remember and handle.”

Airport Authority Assistant General Manager (Sustainability) Mike Kilburn is the facilitator of the food waste recycling programme. He hoped to encourage more business partners to join by making the scheme as trouble-free as possible.

“This is an example of an easy, useful and free programme because the contractor comes to collect from each company and the contractor provides a clean rubbish bin for the food waste, they take the food waste away, they wash the bin and then they bring it back clean.

“And it is useful because the food waste is not just sent to the landfill, but it is turned into fish meal so it goes back into the food chain because the fish meal is fed to the fish and the people can eat the fish, so it is a very complete system.”

Surplus food collection

In addition to food waste recycling, the authority promotes the Food Rescue Programme in co-operation with a local non-governmental organisation called Food Angel.

In 2013, the authority helped Food Angel to purchase a refrigerated truck and covered the cost of collecting surplus food from business partners on the airport island.

By 2014, a central storage room was set up in the terminal building to collect even more surplus food from catering outlets.

By proving it can reduce its environmental impact by working closely with the entire airport community, the authority was recognised at the 2018 Hong Kong Awards for Environmental Excellence where it won the Gold Award for the Public & Community Services Sector.

Future prep

In 2018, the authority launched a voluntary municipal solid waste charging pilot scheme to achieve waste reduction.

It has assisted more than 200 tenants with measuring their waste generation and calculating what it would cost to dump it in the future.

Another participating restaurant manager Alfred Lau explained that the pilot scheme helps restaurants gear up for the polluter-pays principle.

“A mock monthly invoice was issued to us, showing the quantity of waste disposed and the estimated disposal charge. Now we understand that by reducing our waste, we will pay less in the end.”

Mr Lau believes the pilot scheme encourages eateries to alter their disposal behaviour by recycling as much food waste as possible.

“Our disposed waste amount fell sharply once we learnt useful ways to recycle. Our restaurant is located in the restricted area of the airport where drinks are not allowed to be brought inside. So many passengers buy bottled drinks and create a large amount of plastic waste. Just by recycling plastic bottles, our waste decreased significantly.”

The authority said it is proud to be the driving force behind waste reduction.

“We make it easy for them because we do all the organisation, we make it useful because they can help them to prepare, and it is free for them to join the programme. This is very important for us because as the Airport Authority, our job is to create a concept that other people can follow and if you address those three criteria, you make it very hard for them to say no to you. We take away their reasons to say no, so it is easy for them to join our scheme,” said Mr Kilburn.

The Hong Kong Awards for Environmental Excellence is led by the Environmental Campaign Committee alongside the Environmental Protection Department and in conjunction with nine organisations. The objective is to reduce Hong Kong’s environmental impact by promoting environmental management.

The Airport Authority’s current target is to reduce, recycle and recover 50% of all its waste by 2021.

(JAMA Network) This essay discusses similarities between a doctor's experiences with diagnoses of cancer and COVID-19.

(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.

(Carnegie Mellon University) A new study developed a model of regulation in which the probability of a stricter standard being enacted increased with the proportion of firms in an industry that could meet the standard. The study found that regulations that consider the proportion of firms that can meet the new standard can motivate the development of a new green technology more effectively than regulations that do not consider this factor.

(St. Jude Children's Research Hospital) Funding will help expand collaboration across engineering and physical sciences to expand tools for studying pediatric diseases.

(Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science) Sharon Di, assistant professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her work in the nascent field of autonomous vehicles and shared mobility transportation, areas rapidly being transformed by emerging communications and sensing technologies.

(Uppsala University) Artificial intelligence (AI) may be an aid to interpreting ECG results, helping healthcare staff to diagnose diseases that affect the heart. Researchers at Uppsala University and heart specialists in Brazil have developed an AI that automatically diagnoses atrial fibrillation and five other common ECG abnormalities just as well as a cardiologist. The study has been published in Nature Communications.

(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.

(Northumbria University ) Researchers from Northumbria University have been awarded £1.2m to help advance our understanding of the Sun and its impact on the planets within our solar system.

(University of Warwick) Warm winter spells have increased in frequency and duration two- to three times over since 1878, according to scientists led by the University of Warwick.

(Bentham Science Publishers) Two authors representing environmental geomorphology and historical archaeology collaborated in an investigation that aimed to examine the material culture still evident in urban burial sites with dated, upstanding headstone memorials.

The streets of Chicago may be largely empty as residents hunker down from coronavirus but some of the city's most deprived neighborhoods are still echoing to the sound of deadly gunfire and raucous partying. While significant falls in crime have been one of the few positive side effects of lockdowns in much of the United States and elsewhere, they have barely made a dent in the homicide rate in Chicago, a city that has long recorded the most murders in the country. Chicago police say 56 murders were committed in April despite statewide stay-at-home orders -- only a fraction lower than the 61 for the same month in 2019 -- while last weekend, the first of the new month, four people were killed and 46 others shot and wounded.

Now Swain, 40, spends her evenings having dinner with her girls, age 5 and 8, and studying for her real-estate license, which she hopes will provide more long-term stability for her family after the coronavirus crisis upended her livelihood. "I can't be put in a position like this again," said Swain, a bartender for 20 years. American women are taking an outsized hit from the early wave of unemployment caused by the pandemic, due to the nature of the jobs that were lost in the business shutdowns to control the spread of the coronavirus.

SAVANNAH—Gregory and Travis McMichael have been arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault in connection with the February killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday. According to police, the white father and son, 64 and 34, chased Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, after he ran by Travis McMichael’s home in the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick on Feb. 23. He was unarmed and jogging at the time. “This is a start towards victory,” Thea Brooks, Arbery’s aunt, told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “This only the beginning though, but this is what we were all hoping for.”The McMichaels said they believed Arbery was a burglar responsible for a series of break-ins in their neighborhood and that they pursued him in their pickup truck while armed with a shotgun and a .357 magnum. The GBI alleges the McMichaels confronted Arbery, and that Travis shot him. A local prosecutor previously indicated a third man, William Bryan, took part in the chase and filmed the incident.‘It’s Murder’: This Shooting of an Unarmed Black Man Is Roiling GeorgiaAt least two shots hit the 25-year-old, the Glynn County Coroner’s Office told The Daily Beast last week.Video that Brooks said depicted her nephew’s death elicited a furious reaction nationwide, and residents of the area protested the initial failure to prosecute a case on Tuesday.“It’s murder. It’s heartbreaking to even look at. The whole city has seen it,” Brooks told The Daily Beast after the video was released this week.The Georgia NAACP echoed her words in a Thursday response to the McMichaels’ arrest: “The murderers of Ahmaud Arbery have been arrested.”Gregory McMichael, a former cop and investigator with a local prosecutor’s office, previously told The Daily Beast he “never would have gone after someone for their color.” He also said the “closest version of the truth” about the incident was captured in a letter effectively clearing him and his son that was written by a prosecutor who recused himself from the case, George Barnhill. McMichael also admitted he had no direct evidence that Arbery was a thief. “But he’s the guy who’s there without permission,” he said from behind the closed front door of his son’s home.The owner of an unfinished home just down the street from Travis McMichael's home, Larry English, told The Daily Beast earlier this week that he had surveillance footage that appeared to show Arbery stopping to look at the foundation of his still-under-construction home. While Gregory McMichael claimed to police that Arbery had been caught on surveillance video, it was not immediately clear what video he was referring to. English told The Daily Beast he had no knowledge of the McMichaels seeing his surveillance footage. McMichael’s ties to law enforcement helped fuel a haze of suspicion around the killing from the beginning. Barnhill was one of two area prosecutors who looked into the incident before recusing themselves. A third prosecutor—District Attorney Tom Durden—sought a GBI probe ahead of the arrests this week.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

(École de technologie supérieure) The first ever standard for real-time calculation of pollutant emissions allocated to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) was recently introduced, thanks to the work of the IEEE ICT Emissions Working Group Committe, chaired by Mohamed Cheriet, a Professor in the Systems Engineering Department at École de technologie supérieure. Under the auspices of the IEEE Standards Association, the Working Group Committee is made up of researchers from diverse backgrounds and many different countries.

(Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation) The first class of Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellowship Awardees launched their research in novel directions that may lead to the next breakthroughs in cancer research. Nine brilliant young scientists will apply their quantitative skills to design innovative experiments and interpret massive data sets that may help solve important biological and clinical problems.

As part of the College's move to remote learning, 143 first-year students are taking a series of virtual field courses to investigate biodiversity.

(American Geriatrics Society) The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today conferred one of their newest honors, the Arti Hurria Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in Internal Medicine Focused on the Care of Older Adults, on two experts: Rasheeda Hall, MD, a board-certified nephrologist and assistant professor of medicine at Duke University; and Kah Poh (Melissa) Loh, MBBCh, BAO, a board-certified internist, hematologist, and oncologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

(American Geriatrics Society) The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today announced that two expert researchers--Kavita Dharmarajan, MD, MSc, an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology and the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in N.Y.; and Nazema Siddiqui, MD, MHSc, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.--will receive the 2020 Jeffrey H. Silverstein Memorial Award.

(Kessler Foundation) Andrew Houtenville, Ph.D., research director of the University of New Hampshire's Institute on Disability: 'Unlike the Great Recession and the Great Depression, many workers in the COVID Recession may be 'on temporary layoff' (aka furloughed) and may be recalled, rather than losing their jobs completely. To further investigate this issue, we plan to release a Special nTIDE Report on May 15.'

(American Geriatrics Society) For only the second time in its near 80-year history, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) will award one of its highest honors typically reserved for individuals to West Health, a family of nonprofit organizations dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable older adults to successfully age in place.

(American Geriatrics Society) The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) will this year honor past AGS President Todd Semla, PharmD, MS, AGSF, with the prestigious Nascher/Manning Award, given biannually at the AGS Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS21, to be held next year May 13-15 in Chicago, Ill., following the cancellation of the AGS 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting due to COVID-19).