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In your daily communications with colleagues, friends, family members, or even strangers, do you ever find it challenging to interpret their unspoken thoughts? For cognitive scientists, there are observable clues that can help decode people’s minds and behaviors—clues that even the individuals themselves may be unaware of. Professor Janet HSIAO, a new Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Science under the prestigious “30 for 30” talent acquisition campaign, is one such scientist uncovering the keys to “reading” minds.“Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary discipline that blends expertise from diverse academic areas, such as artificial intelligence (AI), neuroscience, psychology and linguistics, allowing us to decode people’s minds from various perspectives,” she explained with passion. A computer scientist’s journey into psychology

辰龍新春將至，為弘揚中國傳統文化，香港科技大學（科大）今日邀請近20位知名中國書法家，齊聚校園的逸夫演藝中心潑墨揮毫，與百多名科大師生一同提前賀新歲。是次「金龍迎春快閃活動」由科大、中央廣播電視總台原創品牌「總台文創」與中國書法大廈聯合舉辦，屬香港篇的重要節目之一。 策劃並促成是次活動在科大校園舉行的科大副校長（大學拓展）汪揚教授致開幕辭時表示：「不同文化的交流和傳播，推動了世界文化的發展。香港作為中西文化的交融地，科大有責任推動傳統文化的傳承和創新，透過不同形式的活動與課程，讓學生親身體會人文藝術的魅力。」 書法會友墨沁人心，書法家現場題字為活動揭幕。活動中，學生們不僅欣賞到書法家們精湛的書法技藝，還與書法家進行了面對面的交流請教筆法技巧、探討藝術創作的靈感來源，共同感受書法藝術世界的美。 此次活動的舉辦地逸夫演藝中心，是科大展現人文與創意發展、藝術文化的地標。一直以來，科大都十分重視學生在人文藝術領域的發展，鼓勵學生修讀與藝術相關的課程、積極參與各類藝術活動，旨在提升學生的藝術修養之餘，亦有望促進藝術與科技的互補作用。

Prof. YAN Lianke received the 2021 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature for his “lifelong contributions to world letters”.

Do you know cheongsam was originally worn by men? Prof. LIU Tik-Sang takes you on a tour of the cheongsam evolution and the vanishing traditional festivals.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 is a global public health challenge. To prevent the escalation of its transmission, China locked down one-third of its cities and strictly restricted personal mobility and economic activities. Using timely and comprehensive air quality data in China, we show that these counter-COVID-19 measures led to a remarkable improvement in air quality. Within weeks, the Air Quality Index and PM2.5 concentrations were brought down by 25%. The effects are larger in colder, richer, and more industrialized cities. We estimate that such improvement would avert 24,000 to 36,000 premature deaths from air pollution on a monthly basis.

Students attending the classes of Prof. Julian GROVES of the Division of Social Science understand that switching off and putting away their electronic devices is mandatory—even the use of laptops or tablets for note-taking are discouraged—because Prof. Groves reckons that while the internet can be an important resource for educators, “mobile devices can be a terrible distraction to classroom learning”. The students might not like it at first, but they rarely complain about it because they are offered “something equally compelling in return” which involves many interactive activities such as surveys, quizzes, simulations, and discussions to keep them engaged.

In today’s workplace where many employers favor technical know-how over emotional aptitude, soft skills seem to be less desirable but for Professor Kellee TSAI, Dean of HKUST’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS), creativity is deemed to be an essential skill for the future of work. The world is moving toward automation at speed, today’s cutting edge technology and patents may become obsolete within years, while skills like critical thinking and creativity on the other hand, do not. At a time when AI and other forms of advanced machine learning are gaining prominence, it would be unwise for humans to only focus on mastering abilities that can be easily outsourced to computers, warns Prof. Tsai.

It is common to hear non-arts undergraduate students complain about being forced to take humanities classes that have nothing to do with their area of study or career aspirations. But Dr. Daisy DU Yan, Associate Professor from Division of Humanities, thinks otherwise. Scientists and engineers should study arts and humanities to better understand what their inventions mean to society and humanity.  It is Dr. Du’s mission to involve more and more students in her classes and help them become critical and creative thinkers with a sense of empathy. “Humanities has soft power. Sometimes it can have an even bigger influence on people than scientific inventions,” she adds, bringing examples from history, from Shakespeare to LU Xun, an impactful Chinese writer who started out studying medicine, but later became a writer as he believed in the greater power of words than medicine on people.