Political Appointments System in Hong Kong of HK$220,000 per month (US$28,000) is more than the salary of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and also more than Alan Greenspan earned as the chairman of the US Federal Reserve. A political assistant would earn more than what Tony Snow earned (US$ 14,000 per month) as the former White House Press Secretary. Political observer Michael Chugani said there was no "single credible reason why these novice politicians are being paid more than heads of state of some countries." Lau Ngai-keung was sceptical that political appointments would help to foster local political talent, noting that such appointees may earn
Stanford University centers and institutes for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Photon Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering (PULSE), Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES), and W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory (HEPL). The Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) is an independent research center at Stanford University. Founded in 1983 by philosophers, computer scientists, linguists, and psychologists from Stanford, SRI International, and Xerox PARC, it strives to study all forms of information and improve how humans and computers acquire and process it. CSLI was initially funded by a US$15 million grant from the System Development Foundation (SDF) for the Situated Language