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EDUCATION
in Kwangtung studies during 1973. These included a Canton Delta seminar series which attracted scholars from all over the world and led to participation in the Orientalists Congress in Paris. Also included was photographing, for archival purposes, the Cantonese painting collection of the Luis de Camoes Museum in Macau, and acquiring esoteric texts dealing with geomancy and Chinese medicine in Hong Kong. In addition, a new field of enquiry has been developed in co-operation with the Austra- lian National University. The centre is providing the base for a co-operative and inter-disciplinary study of the ecology of Hong Kong with special reference to energy flows and the impact of the environment on the population's cultural adjustment. Publication of the centre's previous research on modernisation, housing, and hawkers has been completed, while several bibliographical projects have been completed and others are in progress.
The centre's research co-operation with the Hong Kong Bar Association has been particularly successful in projects to consider the impact of corporal punishment on habitual relapse into crime and on the reaction of young convicted offenders to the total judicial process. A theoretical study of the causes of inflation in Hong Kong had particular practical impact in 1973, and studies and discussions dealing with the People's Republic of China are also of immediate significance.
In the faculties of arts, and social sciences and law, research studies were pursued in all aspects of the humanities. Work continued on urban and rural development problems, with special reference to Hong Kong conditions. The university is in an unusually fortunate position to pursue comparative East-West studies in psychology, in literature and in modern intellectual history, and these fields were explored in 1973. Research has been undertaken in industrial relations, dangerous drugs legisla- tion, sociological studies of criminal behaviour, Hong Kong's administration and political culture, and the place of Hong Kong in the Commonwealth. In law, research relevant to Hong Kong environments has been conducted to study patterns of homi- cide, relationship of customary and modern law, development of the public adminis- tration of the New Territories, and origins of Hong Kong's landholding system. In social work, research has included family planning, resettlement estate living, com- munity nursing, and the elderly in Wan Chai. Linguistic work on Chinese dialects and enquiry into the philosophy of language has also continued. In addition to the courses leading to the Master's degree in Arts and Social Sciences, a new course leading to the degree of Master of Social Work, which is to replace the Diploma in Social Work course, has been instituted.
In the medical faculty, a large number of research projects were conducted. The study of the growth and development of Hong Kong children continued. Other projects with special significance to Hong Kong included secretion of virus inhibitors in Chinese women, folate metabolism in pregnant Chinese and the folate content of certain common food stuffs, vitamin B12 absorption in Chinese, Chinese drug plants, kidney disease in Hong Kong, and research on acupuncture. New and con- tinuing projects in science, engineering and architecture included high-rise building research, building economics, ecology of marine and fresh-water organisms, investi- gations of agricultural pests, stability of cracking, electronic kymography and studies of local ionospheric, geomagnetic and cosmic ray phenomena.
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