Newsletter No. 41

No.41 April 1993 CUHK Newsletter A Supe r compu t er Installed on Campus Hong Kong's first supercomputer was installed on the CUHK campus last month. The HK$12 million machine is composed of more than 8,000 processing elements and can process 13 billion instructions in one second. A problem can be broken down into many parallel tasks to be executed on the machine simultaneously, so that a job that normally takes 8,000 steps to complete can now be done in a single step. The introduction of this supercomputer signifies a major step in our drive to become a centre of high-technology research and development,' said the vice-chancellor, Prof. Charles K. Kao, at a ceremony to mark the installation of the machine on 23rd March. Officiating at the ceremony were also Mr. Bruce Dahl, General Manager of Digital Equipment Hong Kong Ltd., which supplied the machine at a generous discount price of HK$4.5 million, and Prof. David Todd, chairman of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, which provided a subsidy of $2.5 million for the equipment. The University itself invested $1.2 million in the project, and the shortfall was made up by contributions from other tertiary institutions in Hong Kong, who will share the use of the powerful computer. With the new supercomputer, the University's research capability will be greatly enhanced. An intelligent Chinese information processing project, which aims at producing computing software as powerful as current English language versions, will be the first to make use of the machine. Other projects include massively parallel computation, computational electromagnetics, simulation and design of very- large-scale integrated circuits, and three-dimensional image processing. CUHK Wins I n t er var s i ty Debate 'Commerce, not politics, will bring the greatest benefits to the people of Hong Kong' - this was the topic of the 22nd Intervarsity Debating Contest held on 20lh March at the Sir Run Run Shaw Hall on CUHK campus. Arguing against the motion, the CUHK debating team (English) beat the HKU team by a margin of 3:1 and captured the champion trophy. Miss Karen Chan on the CUHK team was also selected best speaker in the contest. The intervarsity debating contest was first instituted in 1972 to promote interaction, communication and cooperation between students of the two universities, and to enhance interest in debating activities. To maintain the impromptu nature of the debate and to encourage quick and creative thinking, the subject of the debate is disclosed to the contestants one hour before the debate. The language used in the contest alternates between Cantonese and English each year. This year the debate was conducted in English. Hong Kong 's Fi rst I n t e r na t i onal Con f erence on I n t ens i ve Care Is there life after brain death? When should doctors withdraw artificial life-supporting equipment? How should traumas in accidents such as the Lan Kwai Fong tragedy be best handled? These were but some of the topics dealt with in Critical Care '93, Hong Kong's first-ever international conference on intensive care, which took place from 12th to 15th March at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. As the seventh congress of the Western Pacific Association of Critical Care Medicine (WPACCM), the biennial event was co-hosted by the University and the Hong Kong Critical Care Society (HKCCS) to improve the quality of intensive care in the region. It was also one of the University's 30th anniversary celebration functions. The event brought together 400 intensive care specialists, anaesthetists, surgeons, physicians, nurses, allied health professionals and administrators from all over the world, who exchanged their views and expertise in a series of symposiums and workshops. Prof. Teih E. Oh, chairman of the University's Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care and president of both WPACCM and HKCCS, said that intensive care for the critically ill was high-tech care, which required specially- trained doctors and nurses, and modern technology. He also pointed out that as standards of living continued to improve, 3