Press Release - 8 CIHE Research Projects were funded under Faculty Development Scheme of the Research Grants Council 2022-10-10

Caritas Institute of Higher Education has achieved encouraging results in the 2022/23 academic year under the "Competitive Research Grant Scheme for the Local Self-financing Degree Sector" of the Research Grants Council. Under the Faculty Development Scheme (FDS), 8 research projects have been funded with a total approved grant of about $7.47 million.

Indoor air quality is a common concern during the COVID19 outbreak. The "Chaotized Plasma for actively combating airborne COVID19" project, led by Research Professor Andrew LEUNG Yee-tak of the School of Computing and Information Science, is addressing these concerns.

During the SARS period in 2003, Professor LEUNG, together with Professor David HUI Shu-cheong, the current government Expert Advisory Panel member and Professor of Respiratory Medicine at CUHK, developed a machine to combine Chaotropic Elements and bleach to produce disinfecting gas, and found helpful for hospitals to take care of SARS patients. Most elderly homes in Hong Kong are now equipped with air filters, but during the pandemic, since the filters could not be disinfected and could not be replaced as often as they should have been, resulting in elderlies being infected or even death.

Professor LEUNG plans to use the "plasma" disinfection technology same as Boeing airplanes, installing plasma generators to air duct in air conditioners. Since the process of disinfection using plasma alone takes at least 30 minutes, and the air ducts are moist, the mold could not be killed. Therefore, Professor LEUNG has developed a hybrid technology that combines dispersed ions and " Chaosors ", which can significantly reduce the disinfection time to 0.1 seconds. The project has been tested in a number of nursing homes, schools and hospitals, and has also been tested and applied in cars, lifts and homes.

Another funded project, entitled " To retire or to work: Factors determining the decision of middle income earners in their old age ", led by Professor WONG Yu-cheung, Associate Dean of the Felizberta Lo Padilla Tong School of Social Sciences, was conducted to examine the reasons why middle-income elders continue to work even though they are at retirement age.

Professor WONG pointed out that elderly at retirement age in Hong Kong mainly rely on their MPF and private savings from investment to meet their daily living expenses, and need to apply for Old Age Living Allowance (OALA) when they have financial difficulties. However, for middle-income seniors, most of them could not be benefit from OALA due to the application threshold. As it is very difficult to maintain the same standard of living for 20 to 30 years of retirement life, they have to stay in the labor force. However, the employment rate of the elderly aged 65-69 in Hong Kong is still low, probably due to factors such as health conditions, caring responsibilities and perceived age discrimination practices.

Professor WONG's recent research project is targeted at elderly people aged 65-69 who were employed when they were aged 60-64 with a monthly income between $20,000 and $33,000, in order to understand the main factors affecting their employment and to make recommendations on current social policies, so that the elderly can make a decision between work and retirement under more favorable conditions in the future.

Apart from the two projects mentioned above, three other projects from the School of Computing and Information Science are also funded, including "Deep Learning Based Face Super-Resolution: for Small and Incomplete Small Images" led by Research Professor SIU Wan-chi, aims to improve the resolution of images through super-resolution techniques; "Chinese Calligraphic Animation Generation via Deep Stroke Segmentation and Contour-based Recognition" led by Assistant Professor Dr LIU Xueting, aims to develop a new automatic calligraphic animation generation system that can reduce the time of creating new calligraphic animations, and be used in robot writing; and "Robust Graph-based Clustering Algorithm" led by Dr LIU Hui, on data analysis.

The other two projects from the School of Health Sciences include "Health literacy (HL) in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD): A sequential mixed method explanatory design study" led by Professor SMITH Graeme Drummond, and "Elucidating the novel role of hypothalamic GLP-1 receptor system in mechanism of nausea and emesis in Suncus murinus" led by Associate Professor Dr Stella CHAN Sze-wa. Data obtained could enable a more improved management of diabetes and obesity and may lead to the discovery of new target for anti-emetic development and improve the quality of life of cancer patient receiving chemotherapy.

A project led by Professor CHAN Koon-hung from Rita Tong Liu School of Business and Hospitality Management on "Could a Tax Credit Rating System create a Spillover Effect to reduce the Tax Avoidance of Peer Firms?" was also approved. The main objective of the project is to illustrate how tax avoidance can be reduced with the coordination and incentive-based scheme implemented by the Chinese tax authorities. The results have significant implications for tax authorities, corporate management, investors, auditors, and relevant public policy makers.

As the epidemic continues, CIHE is also doing its part to support the community. During the 5th wave of the outbreak, the School of Health Sciences set up a hotline centre in early March to assist the Hospital Authority in operating the hotline to support confirmed cases pending admission to isolation facility". 70 nursing final year students participated and were supervised by teachers on site.

The School of Health Sciences, in collaboration with the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council and with the sponsorship of the Rotary Club of City Northwest Hong Kong, has launched the "COVID-19 Rehabilitation Programme on Elderly", in which Physiotherapy teachers and students have designed a set of home exercises, hoping that the elderly recovering from the epidemic can gradually regain their physical and cardiopulmonary. A press conference on the results was held at the end of April.

Communityhealth@CIHE, in collaboration with the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Hong Kong, organized an event on 27 Aug 2022, entitled "Health Check and Consultation Day" with the theme "post-COVID symptoms", aiming to raise public awareness on post-COVID symptoms ("Long COVID").