Search Constraints
Number of results to display per page
Search Results
-
Video
PAIR distinguished lecture series: an overview of high performance computing and future requirements
In this talk, we examine how high performance computing has changed over the last ten years and look toward the future in terms of trends. These changes have had and will continue to impact our numerical scientific software significantly. A new generation of software libraries and algorithms are needed for the effective and reliable use of (wide area) dynamic, distributed, and parallel environments. Some of the software and algorithm challenges have already been encountered, such as the management of communication and memory hierarchies through a combination of compile-time and run-time techniques, but the increased scale of computation, depth of memory hierarchies, range of latencies, and increased run-time environment variability will make these problems much harder.
Event date: 6/12/2023
Speaker: Prof. Jack Dongarra
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Subjects:
- Computing
- Keywords:
- High performance computing
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
More than one hundred years ago, Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity (GR). One year later, Karl Schwarzschild solved the GR equations for a non-rotating, spherical mass distribution; if this mass is sufficiently compact, even light cannot escape from within the so-called event horizon, and there is a mass singularity at the center. The theoretical concept of a 'black hole' was born, and was refined in the next decades by work of Penrose, Wheeler, Kerr, Hawking and many others. First indirect evidence for the existence of such black holes in our Universe came from observations of compact X-ray binaries and distant luminous quasars. I will discuss the forty-year journey, which my colleagues and I have been undertaking to study the mass distribution in the Center of our Milky Way from ever more precise, long-term studies of the motions of gas and stars as test particles of the space time. These studies show the existence of a four million solar mass object, which must be a single massive black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt.
Event date: 09/02/2023
Speaker: Prof. Reinhard GENZEL
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Subjects:
- Cosmology and Astronomy and Physics
- Keywords:
- Astrophysics Astronomy Deep space -- Milky Way Nobel Prize winners General relativity (Physics) Black holes (Astronomy)
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
Professor Yigong Shi will reflect on the challenges in global higher education, based on his 37 years of learning, scientific research, and teaching experience in academia. He will present Westlake University's educational reforms in university operations, governance, talent recruitment, student development, research and academic evaluation, and interdisciplinary studies, which altogether provide new opportunities for future-oriented higher education.
Event date: 06/12/2022
Speaker: Prof. Yigong Shi
Moderator: Prof. Qingyan Chen (Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Keywords:
- Educational change China Education Higher
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
In this lecture, Prof. Sifakis will discuss the relevance of existing criteria for comparing human and machine intelligence and show some notable analogies and differences between scientific knowledge and that produced by neural networks. Emphasising that autonomy is an important step towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), he will present a characterisation of autonomous systems, and showing key differences with mental systems equipped with common sense knowledge and reasoning, and advocate challenging work directions, including the development of a new foundation for systems engineering and scientific knowledge, and the joint exploration of physical and mental phenomena that embody human intelligence.
Event date: 3/3/2023
Speaker: Prof. Joseph Sifakis
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Subjects:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Keywords:
- Artificial intelligence
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
Neuroemergentism, (NM) is a novel framework which has sought to consider language development as involving the organization and reorganization of cognition and its underlying neural substrate. Work to support this framework comes from studies of language and cognitive development. In this talk, I will focus on two separate levels, the sensorimotor plasticity needed to adjust to new input and the cognitive flexibility needed to select between these competing sources of information. This talk will discuss both these levels with regard to the neurocognitive adaptations seen in bilinguals. This will include structural brain differences in monolinguals and bilinguals that vary in the age of second language acquisition. In the second part, of the talk work that has focused on the cognitive flexibility will be presented. This will focus on the adaptations of the basal ganglia and frontostriatal tracts as a gating mechanism crucial for selecting the correct motor response. This includes newer work which links genes associated with dopamine to cognitive and language flexibility in bilinguals. The ways in which sensorimotor plasticity and cognitive flexibility represent accurate but incomplete conceptualizations of the competitive processes involved in language and cognitive processing will be discussed. The talk will conclude with potential future directions using an NM framework.
Event date: 15/03/2024
Speaker: Prof. Arturo E. HERNANDEZ (University of Houston)
Hosted by: Faculty of Humanities
- Subjects:
- Language and Languages
- Keywords:
- Language acquisition Code switching (Linguistics) Psycholinguistics Bilingualism
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
In this CIHK webinar, we will discuss the material conditions of and historical background to the use of Classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic in writing-mediated brush conversation between literati of Sinitic engaged in cross-border communication within Sinographic East Asia or the Sinographic cosmopolis, which corresponds with today’s China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan (including Okinawa, formerly the Ryukyu Kingdom) and Vietnam. Compared with speech as a modality of communication, real-time writing-mediated interaction between talking humans, synchronously face-to-face, seems uncommon. In any society, speaking is premised on one condition: the interlocutors must have at least one shared spoken language at their disposal, but even then, there are circumstances under which speaking is either physically not feasible or socially inappropriate. Could writing function as an alternative modality of communication when speaking is not an option due to the absence of a shared spoken language, as in cross-border communication settings? Whereas real-time writing-mediated face-to-face interaction is rare where a regional lingua franca was known to exist (e.g., Latin and Arabic), there is ample historical evidence of literati of Classical Chinese or Literary Sinitic from different parts of Sinographic East Asia conducting ‘silent conversation’, synchronously and interactively in writing mode using brush, ink, and paper. Such a pattern of writing-assisted interaction is still practiced and observable in pen-assisted conversation – pen-talk – between Chinese and Japanese speakers today, thanks to the pragma-linguistic affordance of morphographic, non-phonographic sinograms (i.e., Chinese characters and Japanese kanji). We will outline the historical spread of Classical Chinese or Sinitic texts from the ‘center’ to the ‘peripheries’, and the historical background to the acquisition of literacy in Sinitic by the people there. Their shared knowledge of Sinitic helps explain why, for well over a thousand years until the 1900s, literati from these places were able to speak their mind by engaging in ‘Sinitic brush-talk’ 漢文筆談 in cross-border communication.
Event date: 13/5/2022
Speaker: Prof. David C. S. Li
Hosted by: Confucius Institute of Hong Kong, Department of Chinese Culture
- Subjects:
- Language and Languages and Chinese Language
- Keywords:
- History China Written communication Chinese characters Chinese language -- Written Chinese East Asia
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
The relationship between language experience and cognitive control (e.g., working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility) could be very well illustrated by the cognitively demanding language experience of interpreting training. A series of our empirical studies with interpreting students (see DONG 2023 for a review), together with studies with professional interpreters in the literature, suggest that interpreting training may first enhance students’ working memory (WM) updating ability and then WM spans, with probable some decline of WM updating ability between the shift from the two WM abilities. Similar patterns may appear in other cognitive control functions, such as cognitive flexibility (first with switching cost reduced and then with mixing cost reduced) and multi-tasking coordination. These results could be explained by the task features of interpreting (including task schemas and their cognitive loads) (see DONG & LI 2020), suggesting a close and dynamic relationship between language experience and cognitive control.
Event date: 4/12/2023
Speaker: Prof. Yanping Dong (Zhejiang University)
Hosted by: Faculty of Humanities
- Subjects:
- Translating and Interpreting and Language and Languages
- Keywords:
- Cognition Language languages Translating interpreting
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
I will discuss how co-speech (i.e., speech-accompanying) gestures relate to language and conceptualisation underlying language. I will focus on “representational gestures”, which can depict motion, action, and shape or can indicate locations. I will provide evidence for the following two points. Various aspects of language shape co-speech gestures. Conversely, the way we produce co-speech gestures can shape language. I will discuss these issues in relation to manner and path in motion event descriptions, clause-linkage types in complex event descriptions, and metaphor. I will conclude that gesture and language are parts of a "conceptualisation engine”, which takes advantage of unique strengths of spatio-motoric representation and linguistic representation.
Event date: 26/02/2024
Speaker: Prof. Sotaro Kita (University of Warwick)
Hosted by: Faculty of Humanities
- Subjects:
- Language and Languages
- Keywords:
- Nonverbal communication Language languages Gesture
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
We have witnessed a rapid expansion of the global Chinese medicines market in recent years. Herb-based products are becoming an integral part of health management not only in the East, but also in the Western world. Notwithstanding the booming of herbal markets, there are challenging issues and concerns from the medical/healthcare professionals, the nutritional/pharmaceutical communities, regulatory agencies, as well as the general public. In this presentation, a closer look will be taken at the scientific challenges of the quality, safety, and effectiveness of herbal products. While some of these difficulties are unlikely to be overcome within a short period of time, there are wide-open opportunities for international collaborative research to help meet the demands for high-quality Chinese medicine products.
Event date: 01/12/2023
Speaker: Prof. CHE Chun-Tao
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research
- Subjects:
- Medicine
- Keywords:
- China Drugs -- Quality control Herbs -- Therapeutic use Medicine Chinese Materia medica
- Resource Type:
- Video
-
Video
Focusing on tensions and links between national formation and international outlooks, this talk shows how classical world visions persist as China’s modernizers and revolutionaries adopted and revised the Western nation-state and cosmopolitanism. The concepts of tianxia (all under heaven) and datong (great harmony) have been updated into outlooks of global harmony that value unity, equality, and reciprocity as strategies of overcoming interstate conflict, national divides, and social fragmentation. The talk will delve into two debates: the embrace of the West vs. aspirations for a common world, and the difference between liberal cosmopolitanism and socialist internationalism.
Event date: 16/9/2022
Speaker: Prof. Ban Wang
Hosted by: Confucius Institute of Hong Kong, Department of Chinese Culture
- Subjects:
- Chinese Studies
- Keywords:
- Diplomatic relations World politics China Civilization
- Resource Type:
- Video