Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days has been on the reading list of almost every high school student. The 1857 book is still in print and very much with appeal. But very few know that Hughes wrote a sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), sending the eponymous schoolboy to university. This September, many more Toms, Johnnys and Mei-lings have arrived on CUHK campus to start their college education. Our main feature article shows you some of these fresh faces and tells you how they have been initiated to life on campus.

To the layman, nucleolar stress and spinocerebellar ataxia are arcane phrases safely tucked away in medical tomes. But progressive deterioration of the part of brain which controls movement and bodily coordination is actually wreaking havoc on the lives of some 300 people in Hong Kong these days. Prof. Edwin Chan will make it plain for the reader what possibly causes this incurable disease and what hope his research can offer.

A pop quiz that favours old-timers: Which is the oldest building among the University Science Centre, Sir Run Run Shaw Hall and Pi Ch’iu Building? The answer can be found in ‘Then vs Now’.

Lastly, it would be so much better if you could hear the recorded singing of Miss Louise Kwong, a music graduate. But until the Newsletter has gone multi-media, readers should do well in settling for what the budding soprano spake.