HKSQ Official Bearers Meeting was held for
future direction and completion of financial issue for 2019/2020 on 30 April
2020. Moreover, we planned to perform
Online HKSQ Exco Meeting in coming months using Zoom. HKSQ Official Bearers included Chairman,
Vice-chairman, Hon. Secretary and Hon. Treasurer. We only four people complied
HK Government restriction regulation for gathering under corona-virus spreading
period.
Tonight, we used Zoom for HKSQ Exco Trial Meeting
and it was successfully for 10 members attended the meeting. We would like to
perform our next exco meeting online using Zoom.
I attended the
online forum named “Interdisciplinary and Innovative Exploration” arranged by
Office of the Provost, City University of Hong Kong on 29th April
2020. Prof. Jian Lu (呂堅) is the keynote and he introduced his
study and research life as well as how to explore innovatively through
interaction among interdisciplinary fields.
Prof. Lu used
360 degree monitor to perform this forum. (There are 359 online participants I
checked before the end of forum!)
In the
beginning, he quoted leader of China and USA that both have already focused on
Innovation.
Then he
mentioned Mr. Qian Xuesen(錢學森) view on natural science come from foundation science, technology
science and engineering. He used Mr.
Qian’s question to start the forum that is “Why our universities haven’t cultivated
outstanding talent?”
After then
Prof. Lu introduced his view on “Original Innovation”. There are three level
below:
Level 1: New
idea and realization; (0 to 1)
Level 2: New
method and enhancement based on level 1; (1 to 10)
Level 3: Found
the technology realization solution based on level 1 & 2. (10 to 100)
We do better
on Level 2 but not in Level 1 and 3.
Prof. Lu
replied to Mr. Qian Xuesen’s
question that the key elements of self-innovation are Uniqueness (唯一性), Destructive (顛覆性) and Optimization
(最佳性).
And then
Prof. Lu stated USA manufacturing plan on 5 key elements and they were Design,
Material, Mass 3D Printing, Craftsmanship and Value Chain.
Finally, Prof.
Lu introduced his research team’s different recent research topics.
He proposed
that Theorist / Modeling Expert and Experimentalist should be cooperated and
communicated.
At the end, he
quoted Ferry Porsche statement “In the beginning, I looked around and could not
quite find the car I dreamed of. So I
decided to build it myself.” to explain the revolution innovation needs
insight, curiosity, confidence and consistence, opportunity and luck. He said basic knowledge could be
come from university but you also need lifelong study from different
sources.
During Q&A,
Prof. Lu mentioned the future development of CityU would include Matter (Hard
Matter and Soft Matter) and Brain research.Some post-doc students asked how to select the research topics.He replied that he would ask his student “What
do you want to do after graduate?”If
student would like to do research, he would select some fundamental
research.If student would like to go
into industry or startup, he would select some researches topic related to
industry.
We were honor to be invited
by Mr. Peter Suen (Pharmacist & Owner, ACP ActiveCareGroup (明心医疗集团)) to visit
ActiveCareGroup Surgery Face Mask Production Line in Fo Tan on 25th April
2020.
We took a group photo in front of the
face mask production line in Clean room.
(Left: I, Ms. Minda Chiang, Ms. Wendy Mui and Mr. Peter Suen)
We visited the production
line and gave opinions on Clean Room UAT (User Acceptance Testing). Engineer
behind me was performing Installed Filter System Leakage Test.
They also performed Airflow
Test to measure airflow velocity and uniformity.
The production line had
just setup and starting to tune the equipment.
The filter layer used melt-blown
non-woven fabric was most expensive material now!
After that we had lunch in
ACP office. Then Minda and I took a photo with Mr. Peter Suen with hisRoyal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) Leadership in
Pharmacy Award 2013. He is the first
Chinese to give this award!
The moment of getting the
award
Mr. Peter Suen was member
of RPS for 36 years!
On 7th Mar 2020,
Mr. Peter Suen invited us and Dr. Liu family to have dinner in Club One. Since
we discussed too happen, we forgot to take a photo for memory.
In 2018, I led a student
for his FYP to study the automatic medical dispensing machine. Today, the prototype had built!
The Silk Road Webinar Series 2020 named “Post
Pandemic Development: Hong Kong and the World – Session One” was organized by Silk
Road Economic Development Research Center and Hong Kong Energy, Mining and
Commodities Association on 24th Apr 2020. Dr. Thomas M.H. Chan (Director, One Belt One
Road Research Institute, Chu Hai College of Higher Education) was the speaker.
In
the beginning, Dr. Thomas Chan briefed the international economy under coronavirus
spreading period. The world is not equal
and nations and economies have dissimilar resources and capabilities to deal
with the coronavirus crisis and its induced economic crisis. In the
interconnected world, international relation take the form of zero-sum game.
The bio-crisis could trigger off many more
crises, and have far reaching implications and consequences, causing a greater
differentiation of nations in the post-crisis reconnected world. Then Dr. Thomas Chan briefed the initial attack on currencies of nations
in early 2020.
Finally, Dr. Thomas Chan discussed Hong Kong
situation. Since China is overcoming the
Coronavirus pandemic, Hong Kong will have better position comparatively.
However, it depends on Hong Kong’s connectivity that could be recovered or not
after the pandemic, as well as, new Cold War between the US and China.
Reference:
One Belt One Road Research Institute, Chu Hai - https://www.chuhai.edu.hk/introduction
Silk Road Economic Development Research Center -
http://www.silkroadresearch.org/
Extenics Channel is a new YouTube Channel
for promoting Extenics and issued on 12th Feb 2020. It separated
into three video list for Cantonese, English and Mandarin.Class video will be uploaded at least once
per week. Each video contains one article of my book to promote the Extenics
and Extension Innovation Method.
可拓頻道 Extenics
Channel (English)
Class 11 – Unlimited Extension
Introduction to the second step of 4-steps
Extension Innovation Method - Extension
Live webinar
named “HKUST 2.0 - Updates on our New Campus in Guangzhou” was performed on 23rd
April 2020 at 9:15am. The webinar aimed
to introduce HKUST Guangzhou Campus. In the beginning, the HKUST President
Prof. Wei SHYY gave introductory speech.
Then Prof. Lionel
Ming-shuan Ni (Provost of HKUST) introduced the background of HKUST Clear Water
Bay Campus. He briefed the faculty and student
composition in which are international from 88 countries.
And then different professors introduced the following schools in
sequence:
i)School of Engineering
ii)School of Science
iii)School of Business & Management
iv)School of Humanities & Social Science
Interdisciplinary Programs office (IPO) is also briefed and its concept
would extend to Guangzhou campus.
HKUST 2.0 that Clear Water Bay Campus is foundation and Guangzhou Campus is cross-disciplinary
that have four hubs as follows.
i)Function Hub
²Hard Science
(e.g. Material, Microelectronics)
²Natural
Science (e.g. Ocean, Atmosphere and Energy)
ii)Information Hub
²Soft Science
(e.g. Informationi
iii)System Hub build from Function Hub and Information
Hub
iv)Society Hub demonstrated the impact from three hubs
to society.
Why it calls “Hub” but not “School”?
They want to break the boundary.
All HKUST (GZ) students including both MPhil and PhD are required to
take one of the following two project-based courses:
-Cross-disciplinary Research Methods
-Cross-disciplinary Design Thinking
The Function Hub is showed as below.
Prof. Fugee Tsung is Acting Dean of Information Hub and he is also HKSQ
exco member, Fellow of ASQ and Academician of IAQ.
The Information Hub is demonstrated as follows.
The System Hub is presented in following diagram.
The last hub is Society Hub.
Entrepreneurship is belongs to this hub.
In research side, Clear Water Bay Campus would like to strengthen research
foundation in traditional disciplines and co-supervision is optional. On the other hand, Guangzhou Campus is to encourage students to
pursue cross-disciplinary research and co-supervision from different
disciplines.
HKUST target
to recruit around 400 faculty in Guangzhou Campus in coming 5 years through
open global search.
Finally, HKUST
(GZ) Research facility and living lab network opportunities were introduced.
The Guangzhou Campus
is situated in Qingsheng, Nansha (庆盛站,
南沙区) that connect to Hong Kong West
Kowloon.
The environment of residential areas are very good!
Extenics Channel is a new YouTube Channel
for promoting Extenics and issued on 12th Feb 2020. It separated
into three video list for Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Class video will be uploaded at least once
per week. Each video contains one article of my book to promote the Extenics and
Extension Innovation Method.
可拓頻道 Extenics
Channel (English)
Class 10 – Start from Modeling
Introduction to the first step of 4-steps
Extension Innovation Method - Modeling
Extenics Channel is a new YouTube Channel
for promoting Extenics and issued on 12th Feb 2020. It separated
into three video list for Cantonese, English and Mandarin.Class video will be uploaded at least once
per week. Each video contain one article of my book to promote the Extenics and
Extension Innovation Method.
可拓頻道 Extenics
Channel (English)
Class 9 – Product Innovation
Introduction of three Creative Methods in
Extenics
There are
three effective in infection controls that employed in Hong Kong. They are
frequency handwashing, social distancing (at least 1.5m) and wearing disposable
surgery face mask. I try to propose a new term named Collective Masks
Anti-Epidemic Capability (集體口罩抗疫力) to explain the positive control results from Asia people’s wearing mask
practice through my following studies.
Introduction
In early March
2020, UK proposed “Herd Immunity” that once enough people get Covid-19, it will
stop spreading on its own. However, they
haven’t considered the cost that will be devastating! (Ref. 1) The follow
picture showed how herd immunity can stop a virus but it has an estimated
fatality rate per infection somewhere around 1% (some region and special
situation in hospital is much higher).
It verified not
working now based on the trend of Covid-19 inflected in the world (Upto 2nd
Apr 2020). The only way
to achieve herd immunity is through Covid-19 vaccine!
The nature of size distribution of viral aerosol
and mask filtration effectiveness:
Why most Western
people and experts think wear surgery face masks (not N95) are not effectively
to protect people? For example, US CDC
recommends that healthy persons should not wear masks at all, only the sick
ones. Even though surgical masks, and
improperly worn N95 respirator masks, do not offer perfect protection, the fact
that wearing masks in Asian countries obtains a good result for controlling the
inflection.
William G.
Lindsley, etal. (2012) studied size distribution of cough-generated aerosol particles. The average number of particles expelled per
cough varied widely from patient to patient, ranging from 900 to 302,200 particles/cough while subjects had influenza and
1100 to 308,600 particles/cough after recovery.
When the subjects had influenza, an average
of 63% of each subject's cough aerosol particle volume in the detection
range was in the respirable size fraction (SD 22%), indicating that
these particles could reach the alveolar region of the lungs if inhaled by
another person. Most bio-aerosol size is below 1μm. (Ref. 2)
The below
image shows the size of the coronavirus, relative to other small molecules like
a red blood cell, or the often talked about PM2.5 particle size.
The follow table
showed the different filtration effectiveness of different mask type. Most surgery
face masks brought in market by citizen are ASTM F2100 Level 1 that BFE &
PFE exceeds 95% or EN 14683 Type I that BFE exceeds 95%.
1.BFE (bacterial filtration efficiency) measures how well the mask
filters out bacteria when challenged with a bacteria-containing aerosol. ASTM
specifies testing with a droplet size of
3.0 microns containing Staph. aureus (average size 0.6-0.8 microns). In
order to be called a medical/surgical mask, a minimum 95% filtration rate is
required. Moderate and high protection masks have bacterial filtration rates of
98% to greater than 99%.
2.PFE (particulate filtration efficiency) measures how well a mask filters
sub-micron particles with the expectation that viruses will be filtered in a
similar manner. The higher the percentage, the better the mask efficiency.
Although testing is available using a particle
size from 0.1 to 5.0 microns, ASTM F2100-07 specifies that a particle size
of 0.1 micron be used. When comparing test results it is important to note the
size of the test particles used, as use of a larger particle size will produce
a misleading PFE rating.
Recently, Sui
Huang wrote an article named “COVID-19: Why we should all wear masks – There is
new scientific rationale” on 27 Mar 2020. He said that small aerosols are
carried by ventilation or by winds and thus can travel across rooms. The latest
biological findings on SARS-Cov-2 viral entry into human tissue and
sneeze/cough-droplet ballistics suggest that the major transmission mechanism is not via the fine aerosols but large
droplets, and thus, warrant the wearing of surgical masks by everyone. (Ref.
3)
Only droplets
below 10 micrometer diameter can reach the alveolae. The large spray droplets
get stuck in the nose and throat (the naso-pharyngeal space) and in the upper
air ducts of the lung, trachea and large bronchia.
Even with
respect to the small aerosols we must not forget that thepartial
filtering provided by surgical masks is better than nothing.
The the particles leaked through mask and into environment was showed in the
following diagram.
On 31 Mar
2020, Ka Hung Chan and Kwok-Yung Yuen published an article in International
Journal of Epidemiology (Ref. 4). They discussed three key epidemiological
questions as follows:
Question 1: Can infected individuals reduce the risk of
spreading the virus to others by wearing facemasks?
The answer to
this is unambiguous.
Question 2: Can uninfected people reduce the risk of infection
by wearing facemasks?
This is at the
centre of the controversy.
Question 3: Can widespread use of facemasks in a population
can facilitate the control of an epidemic?
The indirect
impact of widespread use of facemasks must not be overlooked. It might increase
the public’s risk awareness and improve their personal hygiene behaviours, many
of which have been proven to be effective in infection control (e.g.
handwashing, social distancing). The widespread use of facemasks may also reduce
other droplet-transmitted infectious diseases, thus alleviating some burden on
a highly-stressed health care system during an epidemic.
Preliminary Conclusion:
After study
those paper and articles, I make a preliminary conclusion that the more people
in a given population are wearing surgery face mask, the lesser probability for
an individual to contact with that infectious agent through breaking. It is because the inflection transmission
link was broken or weaken both from suspended people breathing out and health
people breathing in. The following
diagram is modified by herd immunity based on basic reproduction number (R0)
equal to 4 and then reduce to Rn = 1 (Ref. 5).
I believe most
of citizen wear surgery face mask could reduce the viral aerosol suspended in
public area and indoor area so as to reduce the probability of Covid-19 inflection. Therefore, I proposed a new term named “Collective
Masks Anti-Epidemic Capability (CMAEC)” (集體口罩抗疫力) to describe Hong Kong, mainland China and Asia people practice of
wearing face mask. The further study on the
model of CMAEC is valuable and verified by Asia practical successful cases.
Some Additional Information:
My previous studies information about aerosol. (Ref. 6)
The curve A is experimental deposition velocities of aerosol showed the
average is ~5x10-2cm/s.
If man is 170cm height and his generated aerosol through cough will be
deposited to ground after {(170/0.05)/60}min ~ 57min ~ 1hr! (Turbulence effect has not considered.)
Another study I performed was for indoor viable aerosol and its size distribution.
(Ref. 7)
It was found that indoor airborne microbes most in the range of 1.1 to
2.1μm. So
that the mask of BFE could filter most of indoor airborne microbes >3μm; mask of BFE & PFE could filter all most all indoor airborne
microbes (0.1 to 5μm)
Since aerosol suspends in the air as long as 1hr and indoor airborne
microbes from the range of 1.1 to 7μm and above,
wearing disposable face mask could help to remove at least bacteria level
aerosol.
4)Yuen,
K.Y. & Chan, K.H. (2020). COVID-19 epidemic: disentangling the re-emerging
controversy about medical facemasks from an epidemiological perspective.
International Journal of Epidemiology, Published Online. dyaa044, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyaa044
6)Kim
Hung, Lotto LAI (1997) “Detailed investigations on the inorganic chemical
constituents of atmospheric aerosol and various deposition in Hong Kong” MPhil
Thesis, City University of Hong Kong.
7)Kim
Hung Lotto LAI (2001) “A study of the characteristic of Indoor Air Quality in
the multi-purpose premises” MSc Dissertation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
