Hidden Lives - the Movie

As I announced over a year ago, I have a website featuring the protists (protozoans and algae) that one can find in freshwater (ponds, reservoirs, drains...) in Singapore. The pages are illustrated with pictures (photomicrographs) and videos, and are organized as a guidebook (inspired by the Singapore Science Centre nature guidebooks that I grew up with).

With my collection of videos, though, I wanted to put them together into a documentary-style film, and I finally found time to do it this summer.



Hidden Lives (SD) from brandon seah on Vimeo.

This was made with iMovie '08, with music sourced from ccMixter. Feel free to share, with credits! Read more about the motivation here.

How to foster good science in Singapore?

The institute in Germany where I'm studying was recently subject to an external review. Our staff and students got to mingle with the reviewers at a dinner in-house one evening, and while waiting in line at the buffet I started talking to someone who turned out to be a senior official in our research organization and also a practicing biologist.

I mentioned that I was from Singapore, and there was a look of recognition in his face. He asked me "ah, A-Star?" Like many others around the world who work in science, he knew about Singapore's big investment in research and technology, and of course also knew about Philip Yeo ("a very smart man"). But he also felt that the Singapore model had a few serious shortcomings, and after our conversation I thought it would be useful to share some of these observations, especially because they are held by someone who is himself a senior scientist and is responsible for administering a large scientific organization.

Singapore has been very successful at setting up the physical infrastructure for research, mobilizing plenty of money and political will to build new institutes and stock them with equipment and supplies. In terms of talent, which is the perennial Singaporean question, we've gone for a top-down approach: recruiting the "big names" in various fields, giving them very good salaries (the few scientists in the US whom I've talked about this before have all mentioned the attractive remuneration) and more importantly the funding to continue their projects in Singapore.

The official said that he didn't think this was the best way to build up a scientific community. What about the students? As he put it, if you're a senior scientist wanting to set up a lab in another institution, the first question you're going to ask is whether you're going to have good students (who of course do all the actual lab work). Unfortunately, Singapore seems to do a very good job of exporting its best students. They're sent overseas on fully-funded, prestigious scholarships to foreign institutions. In the case of A-Star's PhD scholarships, the recipients only make their way back to Singapore after about a decade of study abroad, and maybe even longer if they do a post-doctoral fellowship or two to gain additional experience. While they are overseas, they're not just learning but actively contributing to science. I think that most graduate students would agree that graduate school is not about learning at the feet of your professors, but is instead about finding one's own way in science, while being guided to independence. As a research student, you are actively making science while learning it.

My own experiences appear to bear this out. When I was studying in the US, it was (and is) common for undergrads to do active scientific research, usually mentored by graduate students or post-docs; this was something that was actively encouraged. When asked about undergraduate research opportunities, many professors would comment on how fortunate they themselves were to be in an institution where bright and motivated young people would come and ask to work with them. The professors are undoubtedly good at what they do, but they need good students to keep the research going at a high level, and they recognize this fact.

I explained to him that such scholarships are not limited to the sciences, but are also the most culturally prestigious means for recruitment to careers in public service. At that point I saw the general relevance of what he had said to this entire system of talent recruitment. It's not just about the money that's being spent on having these students shipped abroad and tutored far away from home. Prestige matters too. If the best students do not stay in the country, then it is difficult to develop local institutions to higher levels. Worse still, we are not building confidence in our own institutions.

The foregoing isn't meant to say that the research and graduate students in Singapore are not up to par. Several of my friends are doing science in Singapore, and they certainly have motivation and ability. The matter is whether, for the amount of resources we have poured into the project, we can build up a human infrastructure to match the physical infrastructure.

It's not about how many citations or high-impact papers we can garner. It's about whether we can build a self-sustaining research community that will renew itself by training new scientists. Instead of importing "big names" (the top-down model), let's find a better way to nurture the talent we already have (the bottom-up model).

---

Some other comments:

I myself am a participant in the (I hope, temporary) brain-drain, although I'm not on a state-funded scholarship. As I want to return home to work in Singapore in the future, I feel that I have to keep an eye on how science and research are developing there. I've also decided not to name the official that I talked to because I don't want it to seem like these are the official views of our organization, neither did I think at the time to ask him for his permission to share them publicly.

Also, the model for scientific training that I've described -- senior scientists leading labs training graduate students who also generate the scientific results and publications -- is causing serious problems in other developed countries, especially the US. Supply of newly-minted PhDs seriously outstrips demand, in terms of the number of new faculty positions opening up for them in academia. This is a well-recognized problem (see the careers pages of many recent issues of Nature and Science), and according to this perspective article in Science, the seeds for the current situation were sown in the 1940s with the recommendations of Vannevar Bush that led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation in the US. That's another unpleasant outcome that we have to avoid.

"Moving Planet" event in Singapore, 24-25 Sep

Keen on cycling? "Moving Planet" is a "world-wide rally to demand solutions to the climate crisis". The campaign is coming to Singapore, where organizers aim to encourage cycling to reduce the use of fossil fuels. It's on this weekend in Singapore (24th and 25th September), from 10 am to 10 pm at Youth Park in Orchard, and includes music performances and film screenings. The event is organized by local NGOs ECO Singapore and Xpose.

Swifts in the city

I live on the 18th floor and have a great view of the Eastern half of Singapore. It's also a great opportunity for bird-watching. What I can see from my window are not pigeons and crows, but those fascinating birds the swifts. Here's a video of one twirling in circles at the same height as my building.


Swifts circling outside my window from brandon seah on Vimeo.

The main problems with swift-watching are apparent from the video: they fly very fast and they're up very high. Living on the top floor solves the second problem but not the first, though sometimes I can get a fleeting close-up glimpse when they return to perch or nest in the roof above me.

When trying to look up more information about them, I found an entry on Ria Tan's website on Sungei Buloh flora and fauna. Swifts belong to a family of birds called the Apodidae, and the common swifts are in the genus Apus, which means "no feet". Swifts actually do have feet, but they're small and used mostly for perching rather than walking.

Here's some interesting facts I learned:

• They live most of their life "on the wing" - eating, drinking, mating, and even sleeping
• Their name is apt: they're among the fastest fliers in the world, achieving up to 110 km/h
• Flying insects make up most of their diet
• Swifts are common, although the edible-nest swifts are threatened by indiscriminate nest-harvesting
• They're well-adapted to live in anthropogenic environments

Swifts can be confused with swallows, because both have the crescent-shaped wing profile characteristic of fast fliers. The two groups of birds are actually not very closely related. Swifts generally forage at higher altitudes than swallows, fly with a rapid flicking motion, and have shorter tails that are not notched at the ends.

Lately the LTA has been doing some works close to my home for the upcoming Downtown Line of the MRT. Part of Bedok Town Park close to the road has been flattened: the trees cut down and the ground dug into. Quite a number of swifts (among other birds) were circling over that area, fairly close to the ground, and I think they might have been hunting down the insects and other critters churned up by the works.

Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium - 24 Sep 2011

The Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium will be held on 24 September 2011 at the National University of Singapore. This is the third year that this event, jointly organized by NUS and NParks, is taking place. Three of our Biorefugia bloggers will be there either as speakers or moderators!

I remember attending the very first symposium way back in 2003 - I got to miss a day of classes in school, too. As a neophyte, it was my first introduction both to the wide array of research and activism that was going on in the Singapore environmental scene, and to the people who were involved. I even got a free copy of the Chek Jawa guidebook, which had just been launched, and which now occupies a proud position on my bookshelf.

There are three sessions on the three major habitat types: terrestrial, freshwater, and marine, which should satisfy most tastes. The speakers are a good mix of established names and younger people. If that's not enough to entice you, early birds get free coffee!

Remember to register by the 18th ($10 regular, $5 student). The deadline for poster submissions is also on the same day.

Protists in Singapore - New Website!

Last month I featured photos of some protozoans that I found in a pond on the NUS campus (part 1, part 2). Even though it's somewhere right in the middle of the city, there's plenty of wild life to see if you're lucky enough to have a microscope to see it with.

Those images and plenty more are now on a new website that I've put together, Protists in Singapore, hosted at Wordpress. My aim is to highlight these under-appreciated organisms, which most nature enthusiasts have overlooked.

The guide itself is organized by the different groups of protists that one might commonly encounter. Navigate using the menu bar underneath the banner at the top of the page.

In addition to the named groups of protists, there are two other pages: Interactions, which highlights examples of interactions between different organisms, and By-catch, which features organisms other than protists, such bacteria and animals, that can also be observed in the same habitats.

A typical page will have both photographs and videos (hosted at Vimeo), as well as a short description.

Write in at the Contact page to let me know whether you found it useful!

Save the Dolphins concert on 28 Aug 2011

Blogger Alex Au, best known for his political blogging, has also highlighted the work of the animal welfare group Acres on his blog Yawning Bread.

He describes their success in alerting the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), Singapore's regulatory authority for the wildlife products trade, to the sale of tiger parts and products in over 50 shops around the island.

Acres is now working to gather more support in its campaign, The World's Saddest Dolphins, to release the dolphins that have been captured for Resorts World Sentosa. 27 bottlenose dolphins were captured from the wild around the Solomon Islands, of which two have since died, which I previously blogged about here. Acres states that:

"Their world has already shrunk to a square sea pen, devoid of variety, bereft of sea life. They can’t hunt anymore. They beg and jump for handouts of dead fish, which arrive in buckets. There’s nowhere for them to roam, except back and forth. And nothing to do except turn round and round and go slowly mad."

These sentiments echo that of the Nobel-prize-winning student of animal behavior, Konrad Lorenz, who wrote in his book King Solomon's Ring:

"Now which are the animals really to be pitied in captivity? ... In the first place, those clever and highly developed beings whose lively mentality and urge for activity can find no outlet behind the bars of the cage. 

... 

"[O]f all the animals that suffer under the inefficient methods of many zoological gardens, by far the most unfortunate are those mentally alert creatures of whom we have spoken above. These, however, rarely awaken the pity of the zoo visitor, least of all when such an originally highly intelligent animal has deteriorated, under the influence of close confinement, into a crazy idiot, a very caricature of its former self."

Acres in collaboration with Young NTUC is hosting a free concert at Hong Lim Park in support of its Saddest Dolphins campaign, from 4:30 to 7:30 pm on the 28th of August (Sunday). Find out more on its Facebook event page

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Semakau landfill "no dump"

Pulau Semakau has drawn international attention as the world's only landfill with a waiting list for visitors, as well as for its environmental credentials:

"... Semakau Landfill is the only active landfill that receives incinerated and industrial waste while supporting a thriving ecosystem, which includes more than 700 types of plants and animals and several endangered species."

Read more at the New York Times. The article also highlights some criticisms of the landfill, including the risk that waste might leak through to the sea, and the pollution caused by incinerators.

Ray the Rotifer!

While gazing through the microscope at yet more pond water, I was surprised to see this swim past my field of view (click for larger versions)....

It is evidently some kind of rotifer (according to Maxine Mowe) with part of its cuticle expanded into lateral 'wings'. The animal is able to open and close these wings, and even flap them somewhat.

Do you think that there's some resemblance to the chaps below?

The resemblance may be misleading, though. The rotifer is about a quarter of a millimeter across, whereas these skates and rays can measure about a meter or more. The way that water behaves at microscopic scales is very different from the macroscopic scale that we (and these fishes) live in. For zooplankton, the dominant property of water is its viscosity, as opposed to its inertia. Where a manta ray would coast along for several meters after a flap of its mighty wings, this winged rotifer would instead come to an immediate halt. So what are those wings for, on the tiny rotifer? Looks like it's something for an enterprising student to find out.

Work on Bukit Timah Eco-Link begins

Two years ago, Cheng Puay blogged about the announcement of an ecological 'bridge' to be built across the Bukit Timah Expressway (BKE) to connect Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the Central Catchment area. Construction of the BKE 25 years ago had caused the two forested areas to be separated from each other, preventing animals from moving freely and making them run the risk of becoming roadkill.

Today the Straits Times reported that work on the Eco-Link@BKE has finally begun, at a projected cost of $17 million, to be completed around December 2013. It will certainly be an exciting experiment to see whether man-made forest corridors of this sort can be effective at allowing migration and genetic exchange between two forest fragments.

Incidentally, the previous blog post is the most often-visited post on this blog. Those who have read that article may hence be glad to have this update.

In other news, the ST today also reported on a growing poaching problem in forested areas around Singapore, including wild boar traps which have inadvertently maimed stray dogs. Nature aficionados who habitually walk through the undergrowth should watch out!

Singapore Protozoans Part 2 - A Murky Pond

After looking at today's sample (from a small pond in the botany garden at NUS) under the microscope I think I might hesitate to stick my hands into warm murky pond water again. It's absolutely crawling with bacteria, and to illustrate what I mean by crawling I've even got a video:

Bacteria moving from brandon seah on Vimeo.

On the bright side, that means there's plenty of protists grazing on all these bacteria, including lots of small bacterivorous ciliates, and gliding euglenids (photo below). I really think that they look like twisted potato chips, don't you too? Diatom and dinoflagellates were common, but I saw more empty tests and frustules than living cells.

"Potato chip" euglenids with flagellum that points in the direction of motion.

One of the highlights was a big amoeba which had really awesome cytoplasmic streaming and which moved by blebbing outwards in a way which is easier to show than to describe in words.

Large Amoeba from brandon seah on Vimeo.

See the full set of photographs on Flickr. [Update 6/9/11 - I've moved all the photos to my new protist website and the Flickr album is no longer available.]

Singapore Protozoans Part 1

Heliozoan from Kranji Reservoir. Each unit on the graticule scale is 2.5 microns.

Microscope, murky water, a camera, and free time.

Lately I've been volunteering at Darren Yeo's new freshwater biology lab, but Maxine, the graduate student whose project I'm supposed to help with, has been busy with the Honours fieldtrip to Pulau Tioman and with getting sick (get well soon!) In the meantime, I've found that her plankton net samples from Kranji Reservoir are teeming with interesting and picturesque protozoa!

Today I captured some shots of microscopic aquatic life to share online, and you can browse the full set on Flickr [update 6/9/11 - I've moved all the media to my new protist website and the album is no longer available]. The picture above shows an organism called a heliozoan. The long radiating arms, called axopods, appear to be beaded with dew drops, which are actually organelles involved in prey capture called extrusomes. The spherical cell body itself is covered in a layer of spicules, which seem like a fuzzy layer of hair, but reveal finely ornamented detail under electron microscopy.

These pictures were taken in a fairly primitive way: by balancing a camera in front of the eyepiece of the microscope. The microscope was set up for brightfield illumination, but I closed down the condenser aperture to improve contrast, in the absence of any better option. Still, there's enough detail to recognize lots of protozoans and to tell a good story.

When I've got a decent bunch of these pictures and descriptions, I'd like to eventually put up a photographic guide to common protozoans in Singapore. That might help to address some of the 'macrobe' bias in the natural history scene here, by showing the beauty hidden in the very small.

As a bonus here's a video of ciliates squirming in the carcass of a dead planktonic crustacean. The bright droplets are oil globules, which the ciliates are feeding on (ingested oil globules are also visible within their cytoplasm). Outside the animal carcass you can see another ciliate which has been left out of the feeding frenzy, and is trying to find its way in....

Squirming ciliates from brandon seah on Vimeo.

Dolphins for Sentosa Resort Moved to Philippines?

The proposed Marine Life Park run by Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) has come under fire for its planned dolphin show ever since word about it got out to the public. The dolphins were captured from the wild in the Solomon Islands and shipped first to the Philippines then to Langkawi, where they have been held for training.

Last October, two (out of seven) were reported to have died from a bacterial infection. In the last month, they have been moved again. According to Today Online:

An employee who wanted to be known as Ahmed, told MediaCorp that the dolphins were put into a container last month and sent to Langkawi's international airport, from where they shipped to the Philippines.

RWS has defended its decision to have a dolphin display by saying that it complied with CITES regulations on the trafficking of endangered species, and that the display would be "educating the public on marine life and environmental issues."

In reply, a member of the public claims that having "dolphins and whales in captivity is not about education or conservation, it is about one thing - profit,"and that the best place to learn from them is in their natural habitat.

Now that nature documentaries have become so advanced both in technical terms and in narrative sophistication, I think that one would learn more from watching a good film about the life and behavior of dolphins, filmed in the wild with wild animals, than from paying to see a handful of caged animals performing tricks. I'm not saying that zoos don't have value; what I have in mind are rare animals whose beauty and fascination lie as much in their behavior and interactions with their natural environment as with their physical appearance. Dolphins certainly fall in this category.

Singapore Mangroves "Smelly, Dirty"?

Ron Yeo, who writes the nature blog The Tide Chaser, has written a paean to Singapore's under-appreciated mangrove swamps for The Online Citizen.

The mangrove habitat is a staple for school field trips and biodiversity classes, but being 'in the choir' (the one that is being preached to, in the idiom), I and maybe many of this blog's readers tend to forget that:

Dark, smelly, dirty, muddy, scary, mosquito infested, illegal immigrant infested… Ask the usual Singaporeans what they think of our mangroves, and these are some of the common responses. In fact, I even had a friend telling me that he did not like going to mangroves because he was afraid of snakes dropping down from the trees.

Yeo suggests that we should get people to break from these preconceived notions and actually go to see it for themselves. But let's be honest, mangroves do smell funky, and even if you do manage to get your city slicker friends or family to take a trip down to see what all the fuss is about, they might still complain about the heat and remember mostly the mosquitoes, especially if your stories aren't captivating enough or the otters are a no-show. Singaporeans can be a hard lot to please, right?

So I might add to what Yeo's suggests: if you care about nature in Singapore and spend time in our parks and forests, bring a camera and with just a little bit of luck you'll have some pretty pictures of flowers or animals to share online. Then you can answer the question "Singapore forests got anything to see, meh?", and show that appreciating nature is as much about how closely you look, as where you go. In this digitally-driven age, seeing it first on the computer screen might just be the 'hook' to bring people outdoors to see with their own eyes.

Singapore research changing gears

Singapore is aiming high, and backing this up with serious cash, if the preponderance of ads from A-Star, Singapore's main science research agency, in top science journals like Nature and Science are anything to go by. Going by various metrics, Singapore is rapidly becoming one of the best cities in the world for science. What it has been particularly good at is picking up high-profile researchers to set up labs and to head local institutes, among them the Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, who was also made an Honorary Citizen in 2003.

According to a recent editorial in Nature, however, the unusually generous terms on which science has been funded here may soon change:

"Rumours of purse-tightening measures have grown over the past year, but researchers in the city-state were still stunned by the news in September that almost one-third of the total research budget will be abruptly shifted to competitive 'industrial alignment funds'. Access to that funding will now depend on researchers' abilities to show that their work has industrial applications. The policy will affect all research but is aimed particularly at the biomedical sciences, which are senior figures feel are not pulling their weight."

It's clearly not the case that the money is drying up; in fact, A-Star claims to be planning to spend more on R&D. Instead, the new structure is intended to stimulate competition and, understandably for the pragmatist, economy-driven policy worldview that Singapore's government favors, show that the investment is bringing in results.

What's interesting to read are the comments to that editorial. Criticisms and general grievances include: policy changes implemented without warning, bureaucracy that is difficult to navigate, only a few big projects being funded at the expense of early-career researchers or small-scale projects, and review process that is opaque. On the other hand, other commentators point out that: basic research funding is actually being increased, what's being changed are the rules for translational research, which has always been about the bottom line, and also that the situation for researchers in Singapore is still very good compared to most developed countries, e.g. with the upcoming funding cuts to universities in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

Singapore Index on Cities' Biodiversity endorsed in Nagoya

The Straits Times reports that the Singapore Index on Cities' Biodiversity (CBI) has been endorsed at a meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya. This index is a 'scorecard' for cities, rating them on the basis of several criteria which account for the extent of their remaining native biodiversity, ecosystem services, education and recreational value, and governance/management of biodiversity. Singapore's National Parks Board (NParks) played a key role in formulating this index for the CBD.

Further information: Singapore Index webpage at CBD, NParks website

Singapore Ranked #1 in the World for....

... the wrong reason. Corey Bradshaw (Adelaide), Navjot Sodhi (NUS) and Giam Xingli (Princeton, formerly at NUS) have published a ranking of countries by environmental impact in PLoS ONE. When scaled for resource availability, Singapore comes out tops:

"The proportional index ranked Singapore, Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Bahrain, Malaysia, Philippines and Netherlands as having the highest proportional environmental impact, whereas Brazil, USA, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru had the highest absolute impact (i.e., total resource use, emissions and species threatened)."

(Figure source: PLoS ONE. Upper panel - proportional impact, lower panel - absolute impact.)

They claim that this study is robust, quantifiable, and looks only at the environmental impact, unlike previous rankings and data compilations.

More details from Bradshaw's personal blog, and the original paper.

(Thanks to Hann for heads-up)

Ecological Corridor for Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserve, Singapore

Finally there are plans for an ecolink connecting Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

This conservation corridor will offset the impact of fragmentation caused by the Bukit Timah Expressway which dissected the original continuous forest area into 2. Built over the Bukit Timah Expressway, the Ecolink is hourglass shaped and will be 50m at its narrowest point.

Some readings on conservation corridors

Simberloff, D. & J. Cox, 1987. Consequences and Costs of Conservation Corridors. Conservation Biology, 1(1): 63-71.

Fleury, A. M. & R. D. Brown, 1997. A framework for the design of wildlife conservation corridors with specific application to southwestern Ontario. Landscape and Urban Planning, 37(3-4): 163-186.

Article in The Straits Times 6 Sept 2009 by Grace Chua.

Bridge to link two nature reserves by 2013
By 2013, there will be a new green link between the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Central Catchment Area.

Conservationists had long bemoaned the separation of the two reserves by the Bukit Timah Expressway (BKE) since its construction in 1986.

The road prevented plant and animal species from moving between the two forest tracts.

The new eco-passage will arch over the 50m-wide BKE and be sited at a suitable narrow point between the reserves. Its construction was announced yesterday at the opening of the National Parks Board's Dairy Farm Nature Park.

A tender will be called at the end of this year and construction will start next year.

The bridge, 50m wide at its narrowest point and planted with dense trees resembling a forest habitat, could help populations of animals like the critically-endangered banded leaf monkey to recover.

Four to six years ago, there were thought to be fewer than 20 of the small dark-furred monkeys - a number too small to be sustainable - but now there are about 30 living around the Central Catchment Area.

The eco-link could help them migrate to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve to find other food sources.

A hiking trail at one edge will also enable humans to move between the reserves.

National University of Singapore conservation biologist Navjot Sodhi said of the bridge: 'Every plan to connect habitats is a good plan but how it pans out - only time will tell.'

'I hope NParks will do surveys to see how species are moving between the reserves,' he added.

Also launched yesterday was a national document which outlines Singapore's strategy for protecting its plants, animals and ecosystems.

The eco-link and Dairy Farm Nature Park are key components of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which describes five strategies:

- Safeguarding biodiversity.
- Taking biodiversity into account in policy-making.
- Improving knowledge of the natural environment.
- Raising public awareness of biodiversity.
- Strengthening local and international partnerships.

'It's not just scientists and government. Every individual plays a part in making conservation work in Singapore,' said Dr Lena Chan of NParks' conservation division.

Marine biologist Chou Loke Ming of the National University of Singapore said the plan recognises the importance of biodiversity and sets up a framework to protect it.

The plan is available online at www.nparks.gov.sg/nbsap.

Grace Chua

More creationism in schools?

Two articles on creationism in schools have been making their rounds of Singaporean student mailing lists recently.

The first is a report from the Guardian newspaper in the UK that the government agency Naric, which gives information on the standards of 'lesser-known qualifications', has ruled that the International Certificate of Christian Education is equivalent to the A-levels. Seems like a routine piece of news until one reads that:

One of the textbooks tells pupils: "Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie,' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."

And this anecdote is supposed to be an item of proof for the falsehood of evolution.

In Singapore, The Online Citizen, a news and opinion website, has run an article raising concerns about creationist viewpoints being 'sneaked' into secular classrooms, both by teachers and by supplementary books which creationist content.

Unfortunately the biologist quoted in the article gives his opinion under a pseudonym. I'm sure that there are practicing scientists out there who would be willing to state their views plainly under their real names. While I agree with his standpoint (i.e. opposed to creationism and anti-evolutionism), I was disappointed in some places by how it was put across.

Referring to a children's encyclopedia that touts the 'Theory of Creation', he says that it is "Rubbish... Stupid", and that: "For this reason alone, this book would be outlawed in a heartbeat and taken off the shelves in the U.S. and in Europe."

Someone familiar with the diffusion of creationist and anti-evolutionist ideas would recognize that the origin of modern creationism is precisely in the United States, and this is where the public debate on the place of creationism in public schools is the strongest. Furthermore, belittling the opposing camp may feel satisfying and win approval from like-minded peers, it does not help in convincing those who espouse creationist ideas that evolution is 'more than a theory' and is based on solid, rational facts and principles.

Creationism's popularity lies in the feeling of embattlement that many religious people feel when they engage with the secular world. As biologists and educators (at least I imagine that is the audience of this blog) we should take care not to escalate the tension. Our frame of mind should be that of persuasion, regardless of how strongly-held our views are, because it is very hard to convince someone in a hostile mood.

Communicating the Swine influenza A (H1N1) crisis

Informed or misinformed?

With the emergence of Swine influenza A (H1N1), a phenomenal amount of news is available via the internet. There are numerous webpages, blogs (and their rss feeds), facebook walls, notes and pages and these days, tweets as well.

The chatter is welcome instead of silence, but with any communication medium, the undiscerning reader runs the chance of being misinformed almost as easily. This ability of people to be misinformed and pass on incorrect news was discussed last week regarding Twitter. Agencies are doing their best to fight back. e.g. CDC Emergency's latest tweet when I was writing this said, "CDC reminds you that you can NOT get swine flu from eating pork...." and follows with a link to their FAQ.

The chance of being misinformed increases when a reader engages in multi-tasking activities or lays claim to "reading" hundreds of sources - in a crisis I am reluctant to rely on rss-skimming friends for specific facts, but rather, use their pointers as potential sources of information pending investigation before further forwards. And beware that one time you relax your guard - it will be the occasion in which you contribute to the problem of misinformation!


Be a source of reliable information

Avid web-readers can be a resource to friends and family in such trying times by being a source of reliable and updated information. In addition to television news from international and local news sites, I find reading just a few reliable sources on the net thoroughly and reviewing the information for specific lessons helpful - I find it useful in responding with practical applications including communication and myth-busting in daily conversation!

During the SARS outbreak in 2003, I found the face to face conversations with like-minded friends (they happen to helpfully also be biology grads) to be extremely helpful. These conversations were supplemented by email discussions, and all of it helped me in decision making and preparations for a large meeting of about 300 people at the university (Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium). This pattern was employed during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami - the information completely transformed my approach about how to help.

The need to communicate

Will large, global agencies tell it like it is? I was quite surprised by the aggressive updates of the the World Health Organisation (WHO) during the SARS outbreak - I felt information was served up as soon as it was acquired, and this was later expressed as a critical strategy in the WHO Outbreak Communcation Guidelines [pdf], which advocate "Trust, Early warning, Transparency, An understanding of the public, suggesting mitigation measures and an aggressive Communications plan."

For the H1N1, I find these same (as in SARS) international and local sources useful:

• WHO Disease Outbreak News


• Center for Disease Control and Prevention: Swine Influenza (Flu): cdc.gov/swineflu/


• CDC has a twitter account, @CDCemergency! Hat tip - Kevin


• Ministry of Health, Singapore: Update on Global Human Swine Influenza - helpfully this URL: moh.gov.sg, brings you right there.

New sites I refer to include:

• Channel News Asia special on the Swine Flu Outbreak - note the useful, simple URL: channelnewsasia.com/swineflu/


• CNN Health: Swine Flu


• BBC: Swine Flu Special Report
• News aggregators (search term = "swine flu"): Google and Yahoo

Besides the very helpful graphics and background pieces, archive stories and supplemental news on social, economic and other aspects, the mainstream media is important for its opinion pieces, especially by experienced medical journalists. And alternative views of seasoned writers help keep a perspective at times, e.g. see Simon Jenkins' "Swine flu? A panic stoked in order to posture and spend." The Guardian, 29 April 2009.

Singapore - see the Ministry of Health's webpage

In Singapore, where the WHO Outbreak Communcation Guidelines meeting was held, the reliable source of updated information about status and core health issues is available at the Ministry of Health. The "Highlights page" now carries the "Update on Global Human Swine Influenza" - there is text and video of the minister's media update which is useful. The site could profit from a dedicated section, a useful rss feeds for this developing situation and perhaps, twitter as nudged by @acroamatic.

Too much information - a summary?

All this reliable information poses another problem - it is A LOT of information. A summary would be helpful but run the risk of sacrificing accuracy. Also with news updates and changes almost every day during such incidents, these would need to be regularly updated.

Well information dissemination is critical to limiting the further spread of infections and a "lack of information and knowledge about a global outbreak ... makes all affected people vulnerable, especially health professionals who need accurate and up-to-date information to care for patients and undertake crucial research."

However "... health information can [now] be rapidly accumulated and disseminated through the internet to the global medical community. .. Just-in-time (JIT) lectures, which target educators, can help to improve the dissemination of information in a health crisis." (Chotania, R. A., R. E. LaPorte, F. Linkov, S. Dodanic, D. Ahmed & K. M Ibrahim, 2003. Just-in-time lectures: SARS. The Lancet, 361 (9373): 1996. [7 June 2003: doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)13586-6])

Their paper recounts this approach during SARS which apparently borrowed a term from a manufacturing concept: just-in-time lectures (JIT) - these were rapidly assembled presentations that informed users could adopt, incorporated the brevity of a slideshow, distributed rapidly electronically, updated frequently and from what I see properly labelled to reflect the specific version.

The Just-in-time Swine influenza lecture

As a result, here it is: "Just-in-Time Lecture: Swine influenza A (H1N1) Outbreak in US & Mexico: Potential for a Pandemic," by Rashid A. Chotani. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). Updated daily. The html and powerpoint versions are available at the Supercourse site at the WHO Collaborating Center, University of Pittsburgh.

Pointing to the latest update

In response to an email query, he said, "Please use, post and circulate as widely as possible. .. I update the presentation everyday (some time twice)."

In light of his statement and the awareness of the potential of rapidly changing information, I abandoned any thought of using a slideshare embed of Version 3 (28 Apr 2009), but simply point back directly to the Supercourse site, for the reader to obtain the most updated version.

The slideshow is simple and clear for clinicians and biology teachers to use directly for briefings. The explanation of terms that are broached before diving in further is critical in clarifying the use of specific terms and the different sections are clearly spelled out.

Likewise in Singapore, despite the web2.0 shortcomings, the MOH webpage page includes a pdf slideshow which teachers and organisation communication teams will find useful for briefing or disseminating to students and staff. THe MOH slideshow reviews details of the local status with a breakdown of cases and types and sort of control measures that are being adopted and enforced.

Teachers like Cheng Puay who are primary communicators, are using such information to educate and prepare students. They are certainly armed with more effective tools these days!