Per Ardua Ad Astra

Not much time, so here are the main points. As usual, more bleaker news of the future.

First up, another H5N1 strain has been discovered in China. A descendant of an earlier strain first found in Fujian, China (hence the name ‘Fujian-like strain’) has been uncovered in the Middle Kingdom and its prevalence in poultry is dramatically increasing. Ironically, the very measures put in place by the Chinese government to stem the H5N1 threat are inducing an artificial selective advantage favouring the new strain. So far, it does not have increased virulence, but all human cases in the past year have been attributed to this strain. The main problem lies in the fact that both antibodies created by avian and human vaccines do not recognise the new strain, so if this is going to mutate into the real McCoy we’re going to be in deep trouble. Based on its predecessors, it’s likely that it will just start a third epidemic wave and thrust H5N1 back into the media spotlight.

On an unrelated note, United Kingdom chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank and an adviser to the British chancellor Gordon Brown has just released a 600 page report predicting the impact of global warming on the world economy. The report notes that previous economic studies has underestimated the future rise in global temperatures, and when adjusting for a more accurate projection it is found that the warming phenomenon could slash global GDP by up to 20%.

Among other things, he predicts

huge disruption to African economies in particular as drought hits food production; up to a billion people losing water supplies as mountain glaciers disappear; hundreds of millions losing their homes and land to sea level rise; and potentially big increases in damage from hurricanes. The economic cost of failing to act could approach $4 trillion by the end of the century, he says (emphasis added).

Is there any way to avoid an economic disaster of a scale never seen since the Depression or the Second World War? Yes and the price is far cheaper than what you may imagine.

Stern calls for a global investment of about 1% per year of global GDP over the next 50 years. He says that should stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at the equivalent of 500-550 parts per million of carbon dioxide, 25% above current levels. This is a level he regards as “high but acceptable”.

It’s not dirt cheap, but it’s still far better than the consequences of doing nothing. Like they say, prevention is better than cure.

However, note that this will not completely mitigate global warming effects.

On the positive side, countries could reduce this loss to 1% by investing in more environmentally friendly technologies, according to the report.

To quote Churchill, we are entering a period of consequence, and there is a price to pay. The question is would we choose to pay more or less?

Ben wrote this over the weekend…

While the intense mugging of books in the past did generate a certain feeling of smartness, it wasn’t a utile smartness. It was merely an intelligence necessary to ace useless exams, and had nothing to do with ways and methods of looking at the world, of seeing past what people try to force you to see, and of persuading and defending your viewpoint against all others.

All I can say is?

Touché.

The statement is not perfect or complete, but nevertheless it’s sufficient for us to stop, reflect and nod your head in agreement.

Indeed, that is why I’m quite happy with USP. They can’t do away with exams entirely (as much as it pains me to say this, exams are indispensable to a certain extent), but at least it’s kept to a minimum.

I don’t mean that Projects and CAs are easy, but at least they provide more intellectual ‘bang’ for the buck. The tougher the assignment, the more you learn out of it. You’ll never get to learn in an exam. Right? Oh, exception goes to learning how to spit out answers faster.

With special thanks to the USP’s University Scholars Seminar, I managed to catch the ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ movie on its premiere at Plaza Singapura Thursday night. For the blur ones, that’s the environmental documentary movie featuring Al Gore on the topic of the cause and effect of global warming (ain’t it surprising that USP gives free tickets to go watch a ‘nerd’ movie? ).

Trailer on Apple.com is available here (I think I’ve posted it before, but no harm in reposting). YouTube video below.

An Inconvenient Truth Trailer

NOTE: Review below contains spoilers from the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Don’t read this post if you still want to enjoy the documentary firsthand.

In summary, the 100 min movie was slightly boring, for different reasons than what you may imagine. The movie was meant for the laypeople to understand the science of global warming and their effects. Since I’m already sold on the issue and is already knowledgeable on the basics of the scientific basis behind global warming I’m essentially going through a recap of what I have read up on global warming over the past 3 years. Some of you may recall the humongous Powerpoint presentation Chester, Krishna and I gave for LAN Moral (nope, I started reading way earlier still). Some of the material in our presentation was also covered in the movie, so you get some idea on what’s being shown in the movie. However, I do recommend that if you truly care about the environment but is still not very clear on what is global warming and how it affects us, watch the movie. Even if you are a humanitarian rather than environmentalist, go and watch it too. Why? Apart from warfare, most major humanitarian disasters are caused by climatic change. You’ll understand a bit more when you watch the movie, but I shall not go into the subject for now.

The man who used to be the next President of the United States gave a clear-cut yet simple explanation of how global warming occurs (YouTube video clip below shows part of the presentation), how the effects are manifesting in the world today and why we are not seriously tackling the problem although we are technologically capable of dealing with it.

An Inconvenient Truth - Global Warming Cartoon

He goes around showing compelling comparison pictures of climate change in progress. In no particular order, it goes around showing entire glaciers vanishing; the deaths of pine trees across hundreds of thousands of acres; rate of species extinction 1,000 times above normal; heat waves in Europe and South Asia; record hurricane, typhoon and tornado formations in 2005; ice core samples from the poles showing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere today is the highest in the past 600,000 years and so on. Hopefully, you’ll get scared.As for me, I have gotten too desensitised to the whole thing already. Good luck.

Of course, to drive the point in further there’s no substitute for modelling of coastal flooding predicted from the melting of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland. The human mind is sensitive only to perceptible changes, and since global warming in its current progress will not be immediately obvious the only way to increase awareness is to extrapolate into the future. If you’re skeptical of the projections, I’ll tell you that what is being shown in the movie are nothing like the worse case scenarios predicted. What is being shown is probably flooding when sea levels are raised by ‘only’ 20 feet, when predictions range to a maximum of >130 feet (out of a maximum of 250 feet). And yet, when faced with even modest projections, critics make accusations of scaremongering.

That’s all the time I have to spare on this post. If you want more information, watch the movie or go to www.climatecrisis.net.

In the meantime, here’s something else for laughs.

A Terrifying Message from Al Gore

There’s simply no substitute for the annual Petronas advertisements isn’t it?

For those abroad, enjoy the video. You people should be thankful. Back in those preYouTube days, you won’t get to see them at all if you’re out of M’sia. Now we can all get the message that blood is still thicker than water no matter what from anywhere in the world.

P.S.: Thanks for providing the link on your blog Sam.

As if I couldn’t be dumber/sillier/stupider or more careless/foolish/imbecile/moronic/nincompoop/nitwited. I lost my transponder, again. Add emphasis to the word AGAIN please.

Time to go through the process of getting a new transponder, yet again. This time, I better get TWO transponders, so I won’t get locked out of my own room the next time it happens.

Sigh…

Posted on Alson’s MSN personal message. I shall not spoil the fun. Just watch it.

For the whacky environmentalist cum ultra diehard LOTR fan, here’s your chance to finally make that dream Elven adobe in the trees. From PopSci.com, "architects Mitchell Joachim and Javier Arbona, along with environmental engineer Lara Greden, have designed a house that will grow from a few seedlings into a two-story, water-recycling, energy-efficient abode". This statement and the video below isn’t as LOTRish as you might imagine, but all it takes is some imagination…

…and just when you think that politicians are dull and unimaginative, you obviously haven’t heard of what U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum did. Nope, that’s a name of a Congressman, not a medical facility for long-term illness. The latter is spelt sanatorium/sanitorium/sanitarium. In an attempt to ensure that even schoolkids know what the Global War On Terrorism (also known as GWOT in politi-speak) is all about, he used LOTR as an analogy. That’s odd, I remembered that Iran is in the middle of Iraq and Afghanistan, not America and the UK. Did somebody rearranged the world while I was away? PopSci Blog covered it here (you should really read the comments section while you’re at it btw) and for a more detailed read of what he said, go here.

This is for those who are interested in humanitarian organisations. It’s FYI for those interested.

This was an event I attended at Shangri-La Orchard recently (the details are in the pictures above). SIIA is the Singaporean Institute of International Affairs. It is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in ‘61 dedicated to the research, analysis and discussion of regional and international issues.  It is Singapore’s oldest think tank and is also a founding member of the ASEAN-Institutes for Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) network. How I got involved with them is a long story. In short, I’m just a participant in some of their public events. This time, both the SIIA and USP emailed me and I decided to book a seat (like all public events, RVSP is required and it’s a full house event). Simple as that.

BTW, photos suck because I was chicken enough not to go running around to get better close-ups. That’s because at the event I was practically outdressed. I went there in formal wear (my standard shirt, slacks and shoes), but most of them were in ties and coat too! A running joke among my friends here when I related my experience to them after I got back is that even the waiters are better dressed than I am (come to think of it, it’s quite true). Most of the attendees are (I’m guessing) lawyers, members and affiliates of humanitarian organisations and obviously, foreigners (Westerners included). Of course, it’s covered by the media too.

Oh, this is Dr. Jakob Kellenberger (Jacob pronounced as Ya-kob), the current President, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He’s a former Swiss diplomat of roughly 30 years experience. Here’s a picture of him. Again, I apologise for the lousy picture. Mr. Simon Tay, President, SIIA is also an Associate Professor from the NUS Faculty of Law.

As you can gather from the title, it relates mostly to the operational and institutional challenges ICRC faced when operating globally, with a focus on SEA and to a lesser extent, Africa. Because I don’t have much time to elaborate on a 2 hour talk, I’ll give it to you in point form. Please note that because this are personal notes of the speech and not an official transcript, please treat this as a secondary source and not a primary one, if you should decide to use it for research purposes. Furthermore, in the event of doing so, please countercheck to see if the notes tally with official ICRC policy statements. Remember that I am not perfect, and in the process of paraphrasing I may have altered the meaning of some statements.

Operational Challenges

• ICRC can only intervene effectively when international humanitarian laws (IHL) apply. It is currently working to improve state-level respect for IHL.
• Ongoing security problems in Afghanistan.
• Darfur - presence of 1 armed group in 2003 to 11 today complicates ICRC efforts.
• Myanmar prevents ICRC access to its detainees. Note: ICRC only visits detainees if it has unrestricted, unsupervised and unrecorded access to detainees to ensure fairness. Without it, ICRC will not conduct its visits and will not accept compromises to avoid ‘double standards’.
• Getting wounded people to medical access in remote areas or areas with damaged infrastructure.
• Draw attention to state obligations when there is IHL violations
• To the question of ‘Is war on terrorism an armed conflict?’, the answer is that IHL applies to Iraq and Afghanistan because it is a state to state armed conflict, but this definition does not apply to domestic terrorism, because it is a nonstate to state struggle.
• Drawing attention to the fact that state investment in human rights is a long term security investment.
• A large proportion of armed conflicts are internal events (i.e. civil war).

Institutional Challenges

• Positioning and Identity of ICRC (to ensure that its credibility and identity still represents independent, neutral humanitarian action. He said, "To be credible, you have to deliver.").
• Coordination in humanitarian field
• Lack of structuring in the humanitarian landscape (what this two points mean is probably because humanitarian agencies overlap in mandate and operations, there is insufficient coordination between relief agencies and efforts are not structured properly for maximum effect. I might suggest that they learn from and coordinate with the military here, as Katrina and the Aceh tsunami demonstrated that the US armed forces responded with the best efficiency logistics-wise, far better than FEMA in New Orleans for example)
• Competition among organisations (financial maybe?)
• Financial info: 80%-90% funding by US & EU of which US, UK are the largest contributors. Countries donating CHF >10 million (CHF=Swiss Francs) are forming a donor group support (not sure if it’s exclusive to ICRC or it also helps other humanitarian groups)

Ingredients for credibility

• Action speak louder than words
• Be crystal clear on capacity (how much can be put on the ground when the need arises)
• Do not rely solely on situational assessments from other humanitarian groups, but ICRC actions are based on own reading of the current situation. I think this is an important point. The Pentagon did this during Katrina. They gathered assessments and reports on the situation from the start, and made preparations of the logistics, manpower and supplies needed for deployment. Therefore, when the time came, all that was needed for the US military to get involved was the green light from the Executive branch and for the orders to get out. FEMA just got bogged down by bureaucracy and mismanagement. Consequently, this is a point made in justifying the need of an active army. They know best on what to do during crises and have all the right tools and resources to do it.

Other info

• ICRC was active in Aceh mostly during the emergency phase (in the days and weeks of the aftermath). They had a head start because a small team was already there monitoring the civil war.
• 50% of African conflicts will revert to conflict after truce is declared in <5 yrs.
• In failed/weak states, rehabilitation of medical facilities is a major focus before handover to government/humanitarian organisations/development agencies.
• Humanitarian action is direct, maenwhile humanitarian assistance relates to rehabilitation efforts and protection of detainees.
• Generally, humanitarian efforts are short-term while development is long-term
• Half of ICRC operations are in Islamic countries.
• Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan administered Kashmir (earthquake related I think), Somalia are where the largest ICRC operations are located.
• For looting of humanitarian aid (in the context of Somalia) the ICRC halted supply when it became evident that the aid convoy and shipments may be compromised.
• When asked for recommendations on what Singaporeans could do to help out, he misunderstood it to mean it in the context of government aid. He suggested that more financial support from the government would be good. He also noted and thanked Singapore’s aid from the logistical perspective during the Aceh crisis.

P.S.: I apologise for not forwarding this event to the Law and Medical students in NUS, if they had not done so. It’s more for you guys anyway.

Information overload is getting to me, in a way similar to this poor driver.

So, to destress, let’s watch something simpler, more basic and more understandable.

Now, back to the depressing world of dioxins and their insidious effects, especially 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin(TCDD) on humans and figuring out how literary critic J. M. Murry and feminist Kate Millet seemed to have read two different versions of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (they read the same book).

The beauty of nature is so enthralling, that no amount of words will ever do justice in describing it.

Brought to my attention by Pei Xin, I also present to you this amazing video Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell. Produced by XVIVO, a scientific animation company in collaboration with Harvard University for use in Harvard’s BioVisions computer-based learning program for undergraduates. The description on studiodaily.com reads : The animation illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli.

I hear the "What, another boring science video/lecture/presentation? Yucks!" Just wait until you see the video.

I highly recommend you to go here to view the video, or you can watch the Google Video provided below for expediency.

Unsurprisingly, it got very encouraging feedback from the Harvard students. Unfortunately, this is only a 3 minute excerpt of the full length 8 minute video. I must get the video for my Fundamentals of Biochemistry module next semester!!! And I want the music too!

For some explanation of that you’re seeing, I’ll try my darned best to provide one. If I’m inaccurate in my description, I apologise since I only have my rusty A-Level Biology to rely on.

It starts off with the usual white blood cell (seems to be a macrophage, but I’m not sure) trawling along the sides of a blood capillary with the red blood cells rushing by (here, blood plasma and its constituents are removed for graphical clarity).

Then it shows a closer look at a pseudopodia of the lymphocyte and the endothelial cell, with molecular strands interlocking (adhesion protein binding with its ligand?).

Next is a typical view of a plasma membrane and a demonstration of its fluid mosaic structure before zooming out away into the cell. Along the way, proteins bind together and a signal is sent down to the nucleus, passing through the microfilaments forming the cytoskeleton along the way (actin?) and you can also see links breaking due to enzymes (cofilin) binding to it. Don’t know if they self aggregate without enzymes to help them along. Next up is the green microtubule subunits self assembling, then dissembling into larger subunits (intermediate filaments?).

After that is probably the most dramatic view of a lipid globule being steadily pulled along a microtubule by a kinesin towards the negative end of the microtubule. Yes, the globular heads of kinesin actually walk the walk! However, I’m not sure if it’s a straight line motion along the microtubule or if it goes in a spiral upwards. In another frame you get to see the nucleus, smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER) on the lower right and two mitochondrions at either side. And yes, you’ll most likely spot the microtubule organising centres (MTOC) from the very start.

The video goes on with mRNAs emerging from nuclear pores and then forming a loop in the cytoplasm where the 5′ cap joins up with the Poly(A) tail. Consequently, the large and small ribosomal subunits attach to the mRNA and translation occurs.

Moving on, it apparently shows the 5′ cap detached from the mRNA and being bound by another (unknown) molecule in an intricate dance across the intracellular medium with the mitochondrion hovering behind.

After that is just translation occurring on the surface of the SER, transport vesicles budding off from the SER, beginning its journey to the Golgi apparatus with the dynein walking away. I think a simplification also occurs here because microtubules are also supposed to play a role in transport of vesicles but are not shown here.

Next, the Golgi apparatus pulsating. Enough said.

Then, what looks like a transport vesicle on its way to the cellular membrane and merging with it. A group of membrane protein joins up and a ‘platform’ forms under it by some molecules in the membrane (cholesterol?). Then the strands (glycocalyx?) on the proteins extend through some sort of cage and connect with the strands protruding from the endothelial cells.

In the end, the white blood cell rolls to a gap in the endothelium, flattening in the process and squeezing through the blood capillary into tissue.

P.S. This webpage talks about how the animation came about. Plus, this will be an interesting tidbit. From this press release, “Furthermore, preliminary evaluation shows that using animations as a part of their study resource enhances performance on questions requiring data interpretation followed by hypothesis building in the cellular context by almost 30%,” says Dr. Lue. Damm straight!