Do you know which main gases are contained in the composition of air? Under climate change and global warming, carbon dioxide ...

Monthly weather summary in Hong Kong

The "Online Video Course on Weather Observation" will explain concisely the basic weather observation methods and techniques, such...

Every summer, rainstorms occur in Hong Kong occasionally, leading to loss of property or even casualties.

(Dartmouth College) Expanded Dartmouth awards program gives prizes for 'spec fic' playwriting on what it means to be human in a computerized world.

(Anglia Ruskin University) A new study has found an association between low average levels of vitamin D and high numbers of COVID-19 cases and mortality rates across 20 European countries.

(Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health) Researchers found that 92 percent of employers who responded to a survey on climate change and public health reported need for public health professionals with training in climate change will very likely increase in the next 5 to 10 years. While graduates of public health programs who focus on climate change are in demand in the current job market, these positions appear to be just a small proportion of the total number of jobs available in public health.

(University of Queensland) Logging of native forests increases the risk and severity of fire and likely had a profound effect on the recent, catastrophic Australian bushfires, according to new research.In the wake of the country's worst forest fires in recorded history, University of Queensland researchers have been part of an international collaboration, investigating Australia's historical and contemporary land-use.

(San Diego State University) Incorporating the oceans into climate policy is essential, scientists say in a new paper.

(University of Córdoba) The University of Cordoba participated in the first shaping of a hydrological model on a basin scale as a global model to advance in world hydrological predictions.

(Paul Scherrer Institute) Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have collaborated with British economists to study how energy consumption by Swiss industry develops depending on energy pricing. To this end, they examined in particular the prices and consumption of both electricity and natural gas over the past decades. One result: For the most part, price increases have only long-term effects on energy consumption.

(University of Barcelona) The yellow-legged gull has a high ability to adapt to human activities and benefit from these as a food resource during all year. This is stated in a scientific article published in the journal Ecology and Evolution whose first author is the researcher Francisco Ramírez, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

(DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Using ORNL's now-decommissioned Titan supercomputer, a team of researchers estimated the combined consequences of many different extreme climate events at the county level, a unique approach that provided unprecedented regional and national climate projections that identified the areas most likely to face climate-related challenges.

(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.

(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.

(NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) A randomized, controlled clinical trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of a treatment regimen of the investigational antiviral remdesivir plus the anti-inflammatory drug baricitinib for COVID-19 has begun. The trial is now enrolling hospitalized adults with COVID-19 in the United States. The trial is expected to open at approximately 100 US and international sites. Investigators currently anticipate enrolling more than 1,000 participants. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is sponsoring the trial.

(Moscow Research and Practical Clinical Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine Technologies) Researchers of the Moscow Diagnostics and Telemedicine Center collected a dataset that includes more than a thousand sets of chest CT scans of patients with imaging finding of COVID-19. As of today, it is the largest completely anonymized database of CT studies, which has no analogues in Russia or in the world. It is available for download and can be used for developing services based on artificial intelligence technologies.

(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.

(New Jersey Institute of Technology) A team of NJIT physicists has developed a novel test swab that can be 3D printed using inexpensive, widely available materials and speedily assembled in a range of fabrication settings. To augment the nation's testing capabilities, the inventors are making the swab's design publicly available, free of licensing fees, during the COVID-19 emergency.

(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.

(American Marketing Association) Nonprofits may better meet their missions by learning to effectively employ the entirety of the marketing mix to attract individuals to available donation opportunities.

(American Marketing Association) The positive outcomes of customer reacquisition more than offset the costs. Successful reacquisition management, though, requires a failure-tolerant company culture and guidelines.

(Queensland University of Technology) It started life as the concept drawing for a mobile 'status update' tool only geeks could love. Now we cannot imagine a world without Twitter, its hashtags, and the worldwide movements it has helped create. A new book tracks its journey.

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

(George Mason University) The team's work supports evidence-based decision making, informed by models, to rethink and facilitate hospital operations during the pandemic.

(Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan) Now, as hospitals across the country start to return to doing non-emergency operations that keep their beds full and their books balanced, they need to think carefully about what resources each of those procedures will need as the pandemic continues. A new guide could help them prioritize and plan. Created by poring over seven years' worth of data from 17 common operations in dozens of hospitals, it's available for free for any hospital to use.

(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.

(University of Massachusetts Amherst) As physicians and families know too well, though Alzheimer's disease has been intensely studied for decades, too much is still not known about molecular processes in the brain that cause it. Now researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say new insights from analytic theory and molecular simulation techniques offer a better understanding of amyloid fibril growth and brain pathology.

(Rutgers University) A Rutgers engineer has created a mathematical model that accurately estimates the death toll linked to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and could be used around the world.

(The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo) Understanding the principles of cancer evolution is important in designing a therapeutic strategy. A research group at The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo (IMSUT) announced a new simulation model that describes various modes of cancer evolution in a unified manner.

(U.S. Army Research Laboratory) A US Army-funded project is identifying how officials at different levels of government can work together to encourage protective behaviors to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

(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.

(Rice University) Rice University researchers have discovered a hidden symmetry in the chemical kinetic equations scientists have long used to model and study many of the chemical processes essential for life.

(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.

(Northwestern University) Northwestern University researchers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up the search for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. The AI-powered tool makes it possible to prioritize resources for the most promising studies -- and ignore research that is unlikely to yield benefits.

(DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Software vulnerabilities are more likely to be discussed on social media before they're revealed on a government reporting site, a practice that could pose a national security threat, according to computer scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

(Carnegie Mellon University) A new study sought to determine how the impact of recommender systems (also called recommenders) is affected by factors such as product type, attributes, and other sources of information about products on retailers' websites. The study found that recommenders increased the number of consumer views of product pages as well as the number of products consumers consider, but that the increase was moderated by product attributes and review ratings.

(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.

(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.