The Research Grants Council (RGC) Chairman Professor Roland Chin remarked that RGC has launched the Hong Kong-Scotland Post Doctoral Research Scheme. Up to ten awards, with five for each side, will be available in 2012/2013. Hong Kong applicants must be PhD graduates from UGC-funded institutions resided in Hong Kong, and employed by UGC-funded institutions. The scheme is a platform for local PhD graduates to acquire substantial experience in teaching and research in Scottish universities. 

The project has generated three major findings. First, the legal profession is a progressive force in building the rule of law and limiting government power. While there are valid criticisms that Chinese legal profession is profit-driven and cares little about issues beyond its narrow professional interests, a sizable group of lawyers in China has demonstrated deep concerns for the rule of law, human rights and political reform. 

It is acknowledged that there are two sources of air pollution in Hong Kong: local and external (Pearl River Delta), in which the latter being the primary source. Hong Kong’s air pollution is a regional issue rather than a local issue. The resolution of this issue is further complicated by the fact that Hong Kong has a distinct legal system from the Mainland, and the legislation governing air pollution control is different between Hong Kong and the Mainland. The HKSAR Government has signed agreements with Guangdong Province on reduction of air pollutants, but these agreements are not enforceable.

This project examines the state channeling of labor protests in China. As a result of the transition to market economy, labor disputes have risen sharply over the last twenty-five years in China. While many such disputes are handled through established legal channels, large scale public protests have become increasingly common, threatening social stability and sustainable economic growth. 

In this information age, data are at the center of most of our daily activities. Imagine you start your day and head off to work. Your car’s movement data are captured via GPS devices and smart phones. When you visit the web and search for a specific product, your query and clicking actions are recorded in a data store known as query log data. When you take a picture using your camera, one or more image data are created. We are truly in the age of the so-called Big Data, where the data flows in even larger volume, wider variety and faster speed. 

Multiview video, recorded video sequences using multiple cameras, has attracted much attention recently since it is capable of representing high quality 3D world scene, and provides new visual enjoyments beyond 2D, such as 3D depth impression and interactive selection of arbitrary viewpoint/direction within a certain range of distances. With these features and the technological advancements in display technology, it would allow many new visual media applications, such as photorealistic rendering of 3D scenes, free-viewpoint television (FTV), 3D television (3DTV) broadcasting, and 3D games, to provide exciting functions for users.

Recent advances in positioning technologies (e.g., GPS, RFID, and cellular systems) have led to a tremendous growth in the demand for location-based services. A large class of these applications (e.g., transportation control systems) requires the long-standing, continuous and real-time tracking of locations of numerous mobile objects (e.g., cellularphone users). One common problem faced by these applications is that location data are inherently uncertain, due to factors such as inaccurate sensing device measurements, limited sensing rates, and network latency. Services that base their decisions on these data must take this error information into account or else risk the degradation of their quality and reliability. Another problem is the requirement that mobile objects constantly report their locations places a heavy burden on both their battery life and the network bandwidth.

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