Vice-Chancellor's Report 1978-82

Chinese Literature for use by university and Sixth Form students. The Centre has also held a number of lectures and seminars during the review period, apart from receiving many visitors. (ii) Institute of Science and Technology The three research centres under the Institute of Science and Technology all made significant progress in the four-year period. The Research Centre for Food Protein Production continued to explore the numerous possibilities in the production of algal protein from sewage waste to serve as food for aquaculture and feed for livestock. It was also involved i n carrying forward the existing research on the production of mushrooms from cotton wastes and used tea leaves. Both streams of research are concerned wi th converting wastes through microorganismic activities into food protein as well as easing the problem of waste disposal to minimize environmental pollution. Many publications resulted from these two research projects and researchers associated wi th the Centre presented a number of papers at international conferences. One of the other research centres under the Institute is the Chinese Medicinal Material Research Centre (CMMRC), which has as its adviser Dr. C.Y. Chen. Because of their potential contribution to health science, the many research projects undertaken by the CMMRC were very well supported by financial donations from members of the local community as well as international agencies such as the World Health Organization and multinational companies such as IBM. The support of IBM made it possible for the Centre to embark on a Chinese medicinal materials computerized database project which is an attempt to store information on traditional Chinese drugs into an IBM computer for easy retrieval and cross reference. The mammoth task of compiling and translating the functions, indications and clinical reports on about 1,600 species of commonly used Chinese drugs was nearly complete. Almost every Chinese drug that could be purchased i n the market and all Chinese medicinal herbs wi th published scientific information were included. This unique undertaking links up Chinese clinical experience wi th Western medical and scientific database and is a significant step i n the integration of knowledge on Chinese and Western medicines. The success of this project helped facilitate experiments and research in all related areas. Several experimental projects also made significant progress and will lead to an increasing number of publications and possibly also patents. Further efforts 26