02 Tuesday Oct 2018
Posted in Resources, Uncategorized
This post is an open call for 5 student helpers to join the portal operation team. Interested students please send your CV to: hupili@hkbu.edu.hk . Please use title “[Application] Portal General Site Operation Student Helper” also include the following information in email for quick reference:
Name; sID; year of study; concentration (a.k.a “J”, if available); prior experience to WordPress (if available); expected length of commitment.
24 Monday Sep 2018
Posted in Announcements, Colloquium, Event, Open Lecture, Uncategorized
Senior Program Officer, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Assistant Professor, English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore
Head, Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University
Research Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, Hong Kong Baptist University
Professor, Department of Music, Hong Kong Baptist University
Lecturer, Department of Journalism, Hong Kong Baptist University
12 Saturday May 2018
Posted in Article, news story
Tags
LegcoHK, Legislation, PCA, Python, Vote
本屆立法會波瀾起伏，6名議員先後被取消資格（俗稱「DQ」）。時值2018年3月補選之際，我們進行該項研究，通過本屆投票記錄的數據，爲公衆還原各議員的「政治肖像」。從這份數據驅動的光譜與投票熱力圖，我們可以看出，議員們究竟是言行一致，還是逢場作戲。在公衆熱烈討論「投票率新低」和「田忌賽馬失敗」之餘，我們也要知道，誰當選固然重要，當選後做什麼也許更加值得關注，會議的提案與投票記錄詳細地反應了議員的行爲。
從第五屆立法會開始，電子投票記錄以XML結構化數據的形式公佈於網站上，供公衆下載。我們通過爬蟲蒐集第六屆立法會議員從2016年11月10日至2018年3月29日做出的電子投票記錄，共27426票紀錄，對於每個議案，議員可能產生五種不同的表決結果——贊成、反對、棄權、缺席或出席（即出席會議，但未投下「贊成」、「反對」或「棄權」中的任何一票；立法會小百科 ）。將不同的表決結果數值化後，使用主成分分析法（Principal Component Analysis，以下簡稱為 PCA），計算2萬票紀錄反映出的最大分歧，即主維度（Principal Axis），記為 PA1。同時我們計算每位議員的投票紀錄在 PA1 上的投影值，即主成分（Principal Component），記爲 PC1。PC1 體現議員之間的相對關係，兩位議員得到的分值越接近，則說明他們的投票傾向也越接近。
按照 PC1 分值由小到大排序，就得到一條數據驅動的「政治光譜」（如下圖所示）。在這條「光譜」中間，是從不投票的梁君彥。越靠近梁君彥的人，投票風格就越溫和。越遠離梁君彥的人，投票風格就越激進。而梁君彥的兩邊，按照議員所屬派別塗色，恰恰是建制和泛民兩派人馬，與常識相符。
第六屆立法會（2016-2018）投票傾向光譜（按建制、泛民分類）
（已等比例縮放到第5屆立法會光譜的同等區間）
從相對距離上來看，泛民陣營整體離梁君彥更近，而建制則離得較遠。圖像顯示，建制派整體而言在投票中表現得比泛民更加激進。即建制派的建制立場，要強過泛民的民主立場。
光譜的兩端，分別是鄭松泰和盧偉國，這說明兩人的投票風格差異最大，相比其他議員，他們二者的投票風格最為激進。且根據統計，在投票記錄中，兩人投票意見不相同的提案數（371個）是兩人意見相同提案數量（37個）的十倍之多。
10 Thursday May 2018
Posted in news story
The Middle Eastern nation Syria has been in a state of civil war since last seven years with different groups trying to seize control of the country. The country has become an international battleground where various states and their proxy networks have been continuously clashing with each other. The war has taken the lives of more than 465,000 people so far and displaced more than 12 million, of which 6 million refugees have been dispersed around the world.
A media documentation — the Syrian Archive Dataset is an open source platform that collects, curates, verifies, and preserves visual documentation of human rights violations in Syria. It maintains an extensive video database of all known allegations in which civilians have been reported killed or injured since 2014. Till April 20, 2018, this database includes 4,384 videos which were documented by journalists, citizen reporters and activists.
A recorded death list — the Violations Documentation Center in Syria is one of the largest human rights organisations established in 2011 with staff members and contacts in all governorates and most cities inside Syria.
The complex nature of the war in Syria limits access to open database. And therefore, the data extracted could miss some important information; however, we will be analyzing the situation in Syria with precision by filling some of the gaps with the help of other dataset.
On the morning of April 14, 2018, the US, Britain and France bombarded three government sites in Syria allegedly targeting the chemical weapons facilities. Is it true that Syria has been continuously suffering from its internal turbulence which needs to be intervened by foreign players?
We drew a general picture of the Syria attacks based on the dataset of 329 which were recorded from January 1, 2017 to April 20, 2018.
Living Hell
In the war-torn country, Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Hama and Daraa are the cities documented by both the databases as the locations where most of the violations took place, despite some slight differences on the rankings of these locations.
In the war-torn country, Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, Hama and Daraa are the cities documented by both the databases as the locations where most of the violations took place, despite some slight differences on the rankings of these locations.
The media coverage of the locations where most violent incidents happened are highly identical to the locations recorded in the actual death list.
To be specific, the Syrian Archive, which demonstrates media coverage, witnessed most violations in Aleppo (1,920), followed by Idlib (219), Hama (103), Damascus (97) and Homs (39).
The Violations Documentation Centre of Syria, which records the actual registered death list, also presented Aleppo (7,990) as the most violation prone city in Syria, Damascus (6,372) stood tall at second, Idlib (4,434) and Deir Ezzor (2,904), a city which was absent in the media coverage database.
In terms of geographic distribution of the violent incidents in Syria, Aleppo and Idlib are the two cities ranking among the tops in both the documentations and have been the most disputed regions taken up by either rebels or jihadists, thus these are the locations where the Syrian regime and its allies have been concentrating their firepower.
30 Monday Apr 2018
Posted in Article, news story
In the past 70 years, Airplane has been an important tool for people to travel long distances. According to IATA annual report In 2016, the major aviation accident rate was 0.39, which was equivalent to only one major accident happen in every 2.56 million flights. This seemingly safe number is built on countless blood and sweat. Step down and turn back a little bit, let’s count the successes and failures in the flying history.
Form the picture, we can see the total accidents trend from low to high before the 1970s. After that, there are some small peaks around 1990 and 2010. But the overall trend after 1990 is gradually going down.
At the beginning of 20 centuries, 1903, Wright brothers invented plane. In 1909, French hold a big flight competition, which threatened the England and other European countries. Even there were many problems with the current planes, the military can’t wait for using it in war. The first time of airplanes’ appearing thus was in Italo-Turkish War. The power of airplane attracted other countries’ military, which leads a huge development in the military aviation industry. From 1914, the first world wartime, airplane mainly used for investigating, transporting, and some peripheral things. At the time of world war II, which is around 1940. Airplanes had widely used in battle. At the same time, World civil aviation organization (IATA) established in Havana, the capital of Cuba in 1945. In 1978, Cater, the president of the USA, signed meaningful a law in the history of American aviation legislation, which is <the airline deregulation act>. The establishment and merger of companies in the US domestic aviation industry, route selection, fare establishment, and even loss-making operations, are basically out of government control and intervention. The number of airplanes grows up fast with the high possibility of air crash occurred. The other reason we consider is that airplane technologies that at that time had weakness and need to improve. With the technologies completed, the amount of air crash will decrease. These situations are obvious after 2000.
30 Monday Apr 2018
Posted in Article
Tags
提交法案，製定法律是立法會的重要職能。法案在刊登憲報後，須經過首讀、二讀、三讀才能成為法律。立法會通過一項法案所需的時間，關乎法案的複雜程度與爭議性。將法案的通過日期與刊登憲報日期相减，可得到該法案的審議時長。
從第二届立法會開始至今（2000-2017年），立法會每年平均處理法案數量為40件，其中通過的法案數量為37件，每件通過的法案平均審議時長為256天。
上圖顯示，2000至2017年，每年通過的法案平均審議時長呈現四年一次的週期性波動，分別於2004、2008、2012與2016年達到最低值，即在這幾個年份，法案的平均審議速度加快，而這四個年份恰是立法會的換屆年。
諮詢立法會秘書處後得知，若某法案在當届立法會任期完結時未處理完畢，即失效，不得拖至下一届立法會。若欲繼續審議該法案，需重新刊登憲報，進行三讀程式。換屆年的法案通過效率有所提高，難道立法會議員們也在趕deadline嗎？
20 Friday Apr 2018
Tags
第六屆立法會(2016-2020)由70名議員組成，其中35名經地方選區直接選舉產生，其餘35名由功能界別選舉產生。
三十五名議員由5個以地方分界劃定的選區(即地方選區)選舉產生。五個地方選區分別為香港島、九龍西、九龍東、新界西及新界東。每個地方選區根據區內人口數目設有5至9個議席。
三十五名議員由29個功能界別選舉產生，每個界別分別代表香港一個重要的經濟、社會或專業界別。除了勞工界及區議會(第二)功能界別獲分別分配3個及5個議席外，其餘27個功能界別各獲分配一個議席。
立法會主席由立法會議員互選產生，在立法會擔當主持會議、行政及禮儀的角色，並確保立法會會議能順利進行。
立法會在會期內通常逢星期三上午11時在立法會綜合大樓會議廳舉行會議，履行其監察政府工作及制定法律此兩項職能。在立法會會議上所處理的主要事項包括：質詢、聲明、法案、具立法效力的議案及不具立法效力的議案。
“法案”是新法例的建議或對現有法例的修訂建議。政府及議員可提交法案，以提出制定新法例或修訂現行法例的建議，供立法會審議。法案須在立法會完成三讀程序，才可成為 法律。法案提交立法會後，議員會辯論及表決法案。
立法會事務大多透過“議案”方式處理。議案分為兩類:具立法效力的議案及不具立法效力的議案。
官員及議員可動議具立法效力的議案，供立法會審議。例如:官員可動議制定或修訂附屬法例的議案，以徵求立法會的批准。
議員可於立法會會議動議辯論不具立法效力的議案，在議案辯論中，議員有機會表達對公共利益事宜的意見，或籲請政府採取某些行動。官員可出席辯論，回應議員的意見。
18 Wednesday Apr 2018
Tags
data science, data.gov.hk, hackathon, open data, open source, pandas, Python, sprint
Loads of imagination about programming has been running helter-skelter in my mind before I step into the spacious and well-polished Spectrum studio on the 11th floor of an office building at Sheung Wan in this bright Saturday morning. As someone who has been concentrating only on courses about liberal arts since senior school, I always consider coding as something far away from my daily life.
But today, Chico Xu, Ivy Wang and I, as student reporters, are going to take a glance into this sophisticated business which we once thought was irrelevant to the lives of us and the lives of many, but which actually is, and to a large extent.
The event we are attending is called the Global Pandas Documentation Sprint, a worldwide event held simultaneously in more than 300 countries on March 10, 2018, aiming at improving this Python library’s documentation with clearer explanations and better examples, and trying to leave, at the end of the day, with the library enhanced “in a perfect state,” as put by its official website.
The Global Pandas Documentation Sprint was held simultaneously in more than 300 countries around the world.
15 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in news story, Tutorial
Tags
Summary: China Blockbuster War Movies become more and more popular in the global. The national movie frequently takes on the responsibility of representing the national identity to its citizens or even the world. How does China Blockbuster War Movies Capture China’s Nationalism? What is the opinion of the public? We used Douban as the source to extract data from the film reviews of two movies (“Operation Red Sea” and “Wolf Warrior” ) on the Douban, a popular art consumption and rating website, to figure out the thought of people behind the screen and the future development of Blockbuster War Movies in China. With the help of Python, we made a Wordcloud picture of the frequent words included in the 1,000 pieces of films reviews for each movie. We found that China’s new breed of patriotic hero on the big screen reflects the rise of a superpower and China’s War Movies is shaping the image of China.
Last month, movie tickets sales in mainland China hit 10.1 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), a box office world record for monthly sales in a single market. No film stood out more than “Operation Red Sea.”, which had grossed almost 2.5 billion yuan in just 13 days by the end of February.
“Operation Red Sea” is based on the Chinese navy’s March 2015 evacuation of Yemen. Set amid militant unrest in a fictional Middle Eastern country, it tells the stories of a ship’s crew and an assault team as they rescue Chinese citizens and foreign refugees, resolving a potential nuclear crisis along the way.
Similarly, last summer’s blockbuster “Wolf Warrior 2,” ($854 million), tells the stories of a loose-cannon Chinese soldier in an unnamed African country. “Operation Red Sea” tones down the patriotism of last year’s smash hit film ‘Wolf Warrior 2’, playing up gore over glorifying war.
How does China Blockbuster War Movies Capture China’s Nationalism? What are the opinion of the public in China and the globe? Can these films be a step towards making Chinese action films more palatable overseas? We will make some Analysis based on the data.
15 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in news story, Tutorial
Summary：In this article, we collected the data of the air quality in Beijing over the past 5 years.We assumed that the significant changes or improvements in air quality were related to China’s two top Annual Sessions – the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC).Besides, there were several news and current affairs affected the air quality in Beijing. We will also take a closer look at its air quality at that time to see if there are significant pollutants reductions during those periods.
Four years ago, the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, said at the National People’s Congress and many more Chinese citizens watching live on state television, “We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declare war against poverty”.
Since then, cities have cut concentrations of fine particles in the air by 32 percent on average. Just a few months before the premier’s speech, the country has released a national air quality action plan to require all urban areas to reduce concentrations of fine particulate matter pollution by at least 10 percent. As the capital city, Beijing was required to reduce pollution by 25 percent, of which the city set aside a massive $120 billion yuan to achieve this target.
All the statics in this project comes from Online China’s Air Quality , which is a public platform monitoring and analyzing China’s air quality covering statistics from 367 cities with AQI, PM2.5, PM10, S02, N02, O3, CO, temperature, humidity, wind scale, wind direction, satellite cloud picture and so on.
In this project, we mainly focus on Beijing’s air quality including AQI, air pollution category, and main pollutants such as PM2.5 during December 2013 to March 2018.
The Data & News Society 