XII.
RESEARCH.
Research carried out in the University of Hong Kong during the year has included the study of the therapeutic use of radioactive cobalt. This study has been made in connexion with a telecurie apparatus which it is proposed to install in the Queen Mary Hospital, which would thus be amongst the first hospitals in Asia to use large quantities of this isotope for the telecurie treatment of cancer. the same time considerable progress has been made on research in connexion with the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma, one of the commonest forms of cancer in Hong Kong.
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The field covered by the University is extensive; it includes investigations into certain plant products of South-East Asia reputed to have medicinal or other value, the preparation of an official memoir of the geology of Hong Kong and the New Territories, research into the mode of production and the significance of the Korotkoff sounds, and the carrying out of specific studies on leprosy, tuberculosis and diseases of the liver.
In the economic field, a study of the prospects of industrialization in Eastern Asia has been in preparation for the Institute of Pacific Relations.
At the Royal Observatory, which is well suited geographically to undertake observations of tropical meteorology and geophysics, equipment is on order for the restoration of the seismological station which existed before the war, and studies of atmospheric pollution, rainfall intensity and evaporation are also planned. During the past year a paper entitled "A Statistical Survey of Hong Kong Rainfall" by L. Starbuck was published, and several other investiga- tions, mainly on problems connected with weather forecasting, have been completed or are in progress. A paper on "Hong Kong Typhoons" by G. S. P. Heywood was published in December.
For further details of research and research literature in Hong Kong the reader is directed to previous issues of the Colony's Annual Report.
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