As the holiday season approaches, we hope to use a unique way to celebrate the incredible research achievements of HKUST in 2024 - turning our collective outputs into a festive Christmas tree!

The Semester is Ending! In the midst of all the end-of-semester work, we sometimes need to relax with a good read or interesting video. Or, we like to imagine or even plan our relaxation and fun for after we've sat our last exam in December, or handed in the last section of grades (if we're a teacher or TA). Science & Science Fiction – Fuel for the Imagination For centuries, science and science fiction have been linked: inspiring happy dreams, terrifying nightmares, or thought experiments in between. Both explore and extrapolate from past and present into the future. Both fuel our imaginations. To make it easier for HKUST people to “fuel up” from now until the end of January 2025, library staff have made a Science & Science Fiction Collection Highlights. It has books and videos on interesting scientific topics and classic and recent science fiction, in both English and Chinese. The physical display of some of the print books and DVDs is near the Service Desk on the G/F. If the title you want isn’t on the table, ask staff for it at the Service Desk.

Struggling to convey your research topic or results to your family and friends who are not in your research field?

When you use study carrels in the Library, you might have experienced this situation: you leave the seat but use your belongings to keep it occupied; when you return, someone else take your seat, and you see a notice to claim your stuff at the G/F Service Counter. How did that happen? Yes, library staff takes regular actions to reduce "seat hogging". We conduct "in-depth patrol" to clear study carrels and make them available for library users. How does "in-depth patrol" work? When we see a carrel occupied by unattended belongings, we leave a paper slip noting the time. After 30 minutes, if the belongings are still there, we would put them on the side so that the seat is available for another user. Valuables will be sent to G/F Service Counter for keeping your belongings secured. In this Fall term, we did such patrol between 26 September and 1 November; and we cleared a total of 316 carrels, averaging 12.6 carrels per day. That is a 43% increase from last year!

You might have heard the Italian name Ricci – perhaps Ricci Hall, one of the oldest residential halls at HKU. But do you know who Matteo Ricci was? The man who made this Italian name famous in China. Who was Matteo Ricci? Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was one of the first Jesuit missionaries who tried to spread Christianity in China. He was born in Macerata, a small town in central Italy with a population of just under thirteen thousand. At the age of 20, Ricci was admitted to the Roman College, a Jesuit university renowned for its expertise in natural philosophy. Hmm, what exactly was natural philosophy? Mathematics, astronomy, music, geography, and more technical disciplines like mechanics and architecture. For example, how to craft a globe?