Towing the Line

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was a respected biologist, who divided the earth into six continental bio-realms. The divide between the animal suites on Australasia and Asia, now known as Wallace’s Line, is especially notable with kangaroos, koalas and echidnas to...

Reasons to Feel Less Helpless

Corals and mangroves are like canaries in the climate change coalmine. Research has shown that these ecosystems are already experiencing harm that may get much worse. But recent work by scholars in HKU’s Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS) and their...

Mysteries of the Deep

A great mystery in palaeoclimatology is the timing and magnitude of the second largest meltwater pulse (MWP-1B). A meltwater pulse is an abrupt rise in sea levels caused by a sudden influx of meltwater. The first MWP, known as 1A, is well documented but until now the...

Carbon Sinks Losing Ground

Intact tropical forests that are untouched by human activity absorbed 17 per cent of human-made carbon dioxin emissions in the 1990s, or about 46 billion tonnes. But two decades later that has fallen to six per cent, or 25 billion tonnes. The compromised capacity...

Sink or Swim?

A course on aquaculture was the inspiration for HKU students to design a new kind of raft for cultivating oysters and then launch a start-up company, Soonlution, to develop and market it. Called the Modern Shellfish Home (MSH), it is specifically designed to withstand...