More youths doing volunteer work in North West District

SINGAPORE: More youths have stepped up to do volunteer work in Singapore's North West District. Last year, the number more than doubled, from about 470 to some 1,000.

Volunteers' Night was held on Sunday evening to show appreciation to those who have helped.

Members of Parliament from Holland-Bukit Timah GRC were present to show their support.

This year, the district aims to boost the number of volunteers of all ages from the current 2,880 to 4,000.

Programmes to assist the needy and bond residents will be beefed up, with a focus on building a caring and healthy community.

Mayor of North West District Dr Teo Ho Pin said: "We'll be engaging a lot of volunteers, especially from companies and the community to come forward to help our needy families, especially (those living in) rental blocks, so we're expecting about maybe 500, 600, or even 800 volunteers in that area."

The district had 1,250 volunteers across various age groups in 2011, which doubled in the following year.

- CNA/xq

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Russian meteorite: The conspiracy theories

A strange time for a military attack?

(Credit:
CNN; screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

A good hearty conspiracy theory can shine a sharp light on two of humanity's most enduring traits.

One, of course, is humanity's boundless imagination. The other is humanity's essential suspicion of humanity.

So while you might be deeply immersed in Bill Nye's explanation of the Russian meteorite, those with darker sensibilities have filled the Web with their fears and hauntings about the phenomenon.

There are few nations with greater awareness of dark sensibilities than Russia. The fact that there seems to be little evidence of meteorite fragments on the ground has encouraged some Russians to offer their own suspicions.

As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports, nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky hasn't been slow to offer something of a Hot War perspective.

"It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he was quoted as saying.

We know from our recent experience of North Korea that weapons testing is an imprecise science.

But if you were an American in the mood to test a weapon, would Chelyabinsk, Russia, be your very first choice of place for the experiment?

Perhaps Tallahassee; Area 51; and Bialystok, Poland, were all unavailable due to prior commitments. Or perhaps it wasn't the Americans, but, say, the North Koreans, who mistook Chelyabinsk for, say, Chelsea.

Zhirinovsky's rather emotionally manipulative offering was countered by Russia's Emergency Ministry, which dedicated itself to an extensive rebuttal of his belief (and that of others) that this was some sort of military thing. The rebuttal? "Rubbish."

But that wasn't going to put off the local media, was it? Not only do they have papers to sell, they also have theories to expound to a troubled nation and world.

So, as The Atlantic reports, the local Znak newspaper accepted that this was a meteorite but insisted the explosion was caused by military defense blowing it up.

More Technically Incorrect

Yes, of course it has a source in the military. You thought it didn't?

Though I've watched a few movies in which exciting things happen, I don't find it easy to imagine that some sort of terrestrially created missile-laden aircraft could really explode a meteorite in such a manner.

It is easier to imagine, though, that politicians like Zhirinovsky might take the opportunity to foment a little rage.

Indeed, Alex Jones' infamously well-guarded Infowars site offered that Zhirinovsky insisted that America -- in the person of Secretary of State John Kerry -- had tried to give Russia advance notice of its "attack."

The Drudge Report led me to a piece at Foreign Policy that explained that Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, simply hadn't called Kerry back.

Which all suggests that Russia isn't, after all, living in fear of an attack from the U.S. Especially one over Chelyabinsk.

On balance, I prefer to currently believe Nye. He is the science guy, after all. And science guys know scientific events when they see them.

I hope.

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Picture Archive: Making Mount Rushmore, 1935-1941

Photograph from Rapid City Chamber of Commerce/National Geographic

There's no such thing as Presidents' Day.

According to United States federal government code, the holiday is named Washington's Birthday, and has been since it went nationwide in 1885.

But common practice is more inclusive. The holiday expanded to add in other U.S. presidents in the 1960s, and the moniker Presidents' Day became popular in the 1980s and stuck. It may be that George Washington (b. February 22, 1732) andAbraham Lincoln (b. February 12, 1809) still get the lion's share of attention—and appear in all the retail sale ads—on the third Monday in February, but the popular idea is that all 44 presidents get feted.

Mount Rushmore is a lot like that one day a year writ large—and in granite. It's carved 60 feet (18 meters) tall and 185 feet (56 meters) wide, from Washington's right ear to Lincoln's left.

The monument's sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, grew up in Idaho, a first-generation American born to Danish parents. He studied art in France and became good friends with Auguste Rodin. Borglum mostly worked in bronze, but in the early 1910s he was hired to carve the likenesses of Confederate leaders into Stone Mountain in Georgia.

He was about to be fired from that job for creative differences about the same time that a South Dakota historian named Doane Robinson had an idea. Robinson wanted to have a monument carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota, maybe Western historical figures like Chief Red Cloud and Lewis and Clark, each on their own granite spire. (Plan a road trip in the Black Hills.)

Robinson hired Borglum and gave him carte blanche. Borglum was looking for something with national appeal, so he chose to depict four presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Borglum wanted to represent the first 150 years of the nation's history, choosing four presidents as symbols of their respective time periods. He took a tour of western South Dakota, searching for an ideal canvas.

The sculptor was looking for three things: a surface strong enough to sculpt, a mountain big enough to hold several figures, and a mountain face that received morning sunlight. Mount Rushmore fit the bill and was already part of a national forest, so it was easy to set aside as a national memorial.

Work started in 1927. Calvin Coolidge attended the dedication ceremony. It took 14 years to finish the carving, conducted mostly in summertime because of the area's harsh winters.

There were approximately 30 workers on the mountain at any give time. In total about 400 had worked on it by the time the monument was finished. Though the project involved thousands of pounds of dynamite and perilous climbs, not a single person died during the work.

Borglum himself died of natural causes in 1941, though, just six months before the project was declared "closed as is" by Congress that Halloween. His son Lincoln—named for his father's favorite president—took over.

In the photo above, a worker refines the details of Washington's left nostril.

About 90 percent of the mountain was carved using dynamite, which could get within 3 to 5 inches (8 to 13 centimeters) of the final facial features. For those last few inches, workers used what was known as the honeycomb method: Jackhammer workers pounded a series of three-inch-deep holes followed up by chiselers who knocked off the honeycomb pieces to get the final shape. Then carvers smoothed the "skin's" surface.

—Johnna Rizzo

February 16, 2013

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Gun Ban Would Protect More Than 2,200 Firearms

Congress' latest crack at a new assault weapons ban would protect more than 2,200 specific firearms, including a semi-automatic rifle that is nearly identical to one of the guns used in the bloodiest shootout in FBI history.

One model of that firearm, the Ruger .223 caliber Mini-14, is on the proposed list to be banned, while a different model of the same gun is on a list of exempted firearms in legislation the Senate is considering. The gun that would be protected from the ban has fixed physical features and can't be folded to be more compact. Yet the two firearms are equally deadly.

"What a joke," said former FBI agent John Hanlon, who survived the 1986 shootout in Miami. He was shot in the head, hand, groin and hip with a Ruger Mini-14 that had a folding stock. Two FBI agents died and five others were wounded.

Hanlon recalled lying on the street as brass bullet casings showered on him. He thought the shooter had an automatic weapon.

Both models of the Ruger Mini-14 specified in the proposed bill can take detachable magazines that hold dozens of rounds of ammunition. "I can't imagine what the difference is," Hanlon said.

President Barack Obama has called for restoring a ban on military-style assault weapons and limiting the size of ammunition magazines.

Gun Owners Rally State Capitals Across Country Watch Video

A bill introduced last month by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. would ban 157 specific firearms designed for military and law enforcement use and exempt others made for hunting purposes. It also would ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

Yet there are firearms that would be protected under Feinstein's proposal that can take large capacity magazines like the ones used in mass shootings that enable a gunman to fire dozens of rounds of ammunition without reloading.

Feinstein said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press that the list of more than 2,200 exempted firearms was designed to "make crystal clear" that the bill would not affect hunting and sporting weapons.

The December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 students and educators dead forced Washington to focus on curbing gun violence, a risky political move not tried in decades.

The gun industry, which is fighting any sort of ban, says gun ownership in the U.S. is the highest it's ever been, with more than 100 million firearms owners.

Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden have traveled around the country in an effort to gain support for new laws. Feinstein's proposal is the only sweeping piece of legislation designed to ban assault weapons currently being considered.

But some gun experts say the lists of banned and exempted firearms show a lack of understanding and expertise of guns.

"There's no logic to it," said Greg Danas, president of a Massachusetts-based expert witness business and firearms ballistic laboratory. "What kind of effect is it going to have?"

Feinstein's bill defines an assault weapon as a semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine that has one of several military characteristics that are specified in her legislation. Examples of those characteristics include a pistol grip, which makes a firearm easier to hold, and a forward grip, which makes the firearm easier to stabilize to improve accuracy. The definition is similar to the one in Congress' original ban on assault weapons, which went into effect in 1994 and was widely criticized for outlawing firearms based on cosmetic features.

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False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon.

When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts an attack by sending in white blood cells called T-cells that are tailored to the molecular structure of that invader. Defeating the infection can take several weeks. However, once victorious, some T-cells stick around, turning into memory cells that remember the invader, reducing the time taken to kill it the next time it turns up.

Conventional thinking has it that memory cells for a particular microbe only form in response to an infection. "The dogma is that you need to be exposed," says Mark Davis of Stanford University in California, but now he and his colleagues have shown that this is not always the case.

The team took 26 samples from the Stanford Blood Center. All 26 people had been screened for diseases and had never been infected with HIV, herpes simplex virus or cytomegalovirus. Despite this, Davis's team found that all the samples contained T-cells tailored to these viruses, and an average of 50 per cent of these cells were memory cells.

The idea that T-cells don't need to be exposed to the pathogen "is paradigm shifting," says Philip Ashton-Rickardt of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study. "Not only do they have capacity to remember, they seem to have seen a virus when they haven't."

So how are these false memories created? To a T-cell, each virus is "just a collection of peptides", says Davis. And so different microbes could have structures that are similar enough to confuse the T-cells.

To test this idea, the researchers vaccinated two people with an H1N1 strain of influenza and found that this also stimulated the T-cells to react to two bacteria with a similar peptide structure. Exposing the samples from the blood bank to peptide sequences from certain gut and soil bacteria and a species of ocean algae resulted in an immune response to HIV (Immunology, doi.org/kgg).

The finding could explain why vaccinating children against measles seems to improve mortality rates from other diseases. It also raises the possibility of creating a database of cross-reactive microbes to find new vaccination strategies. "We need to start exploring case by case," says Davis.

"You could find innocuous pathogens that are good at vaccinating against nasty ones," says Ashton-Rickardt. The idea of cross-reactivity is as old as immunology, he says. But he is excited about the potential for finding unexpected correlations. "Who could have predicted that HIV was related to an ocean algae?" he says. "No one's going to make that up!"

This article appeared in print under the headline "False memories prime our defences"

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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PM Lee urges couples to have confidence in S'pore's future

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said it is important for couples to have confidence in Singapore's future and ultimately want Singapore to be the best place to settle down and raise children.

He was speaking at the Lunar New Year dinner at his Teck Ghee ward on Saturday evening.

He said: "Here, your children will get good education, will have good opportunities, that here we can build a home together. A home where we feel Singaporean, a home where we can have opportunities, a home where we can help look after one another, and make tomorrow better than today."

The government recently announced a Marriage and Parenthood package that aims to help Singaporeans settle down and raise children.

However, Mr Lee noted that parents are worried about childcare arrangements.

He said: "It's not easy because a lot of couples now, both parents are working and cannot always rely on grandparents to look after their kids because the grandparents may be older, may no longer be in good health, may not have the strength to take care of the grandchildren anymore. So, we need infant care and childcare facilities."

Mr Lee said building more childcare facilities will take time. He also said the centres can be set up quickly, but good teachers take time to train.

He added what is most important is to make it easier for parents to spend time with their children.

Mr Lee said: "So, we have paternity leave, we have shared parental leave, and these are big steps forward. We are also promoting good work-life balance, flexible work arrangements, and I think if we can do that, then that's the best hong bao which parents can give their children - our love and attention. I hope these measures will encourage couples to marry and to have more children."

Mr Lee said he is confident that Singapore can be transformed into a better place and next generation will do its part to improve it.

- CNA/xq

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How Apple got serious about style

Humble beginnings -- an early conceptual modular Apple tablet from 1982.

(Credit:
Harmut Esslinger, Frog Design)

When Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger met Steve Jobs in 1982, it sparked a chain of events that monumentally changed Apple's design philosophy forever. It wasn't just a change in how future products would look -- Esslinger ushered in a change of mindset and a unified design language across products. Esslinger's new book, "Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change," available today in the U.S., delivers some fascinating insights into those crucial early years at Apple.

The dialect that emerged from that period, known as the Snow White design language, influenced dozens of Apple devices starting with the Apple IIc in 1984 and lasting until the Macintosh IIfx in 1990.

Our gallery below starts off with a range of computers that earned Frog Design a hefty annual contract and a role as a leader in Apple's product design process. The two companies didn't just create computers, however; they went beyond and created a mock
tablet, computer phone, flat-screen devices, and more.

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Why the Dog Show Winner Looks Like a Monkey

Standing less than a foot tall and easily cradled in one of trainer Ernesto Lara's arms, Banana Joe made big news for a small dog when he became the first affenpinscher to win the Westminster Kennel Club dog show on Tuesday.

His short stature and flattened face might not make Banana Joe look like a typical winner: The name "affenpinscher" is German for "monkey terrier," and its mug is definitely simian in appearance. Now this lesser known breed is basking in the spotlight, monkey face and all. (Read "How to Build a Dog" in National Geographic magazine.)

Why the Flat Face?

People like dogs whose faces kind of look like people, with a squished-in nose and forward-facing eyes: Pekinese, bullmastiffs, and affenpinschers, to name a few. "It's mimicking the way humans appear," said Jeffrey Schoenebeck, a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health who has analyzed the development of shortened canine snouts. Several centuries ago, breeders probably sought out parents with a flat face. (Genetics note: Gene BMP3 likely contributes to a flat face in toy breeds.)

And so Banana Joe's mug reflects centuries of genetic manipulation. There's no advantage for the dog, Schoenebeck notes, except that humans would crave it more as a companion. (Related: Gallery of Dog Pictures.)

What About That Tongue?

Banana Joe sticks out his little pink tongue a lot. Maybe more than your run-of-the-mill canine. The reason may be the flat face. "There's probably less room in their mouth" for the tongue, said Schoenebeck. "It's hanging out."

Why so Small?

"The Affenpinscher comes from a terrier background," explained NIH senior staff scientist Heidi Parker, and like all terriers, it was bred to chase. The early affenpinschers' specialty was hunting down rats and other vermin for its owners. Breeding for a small size came later, as ladies started bringing affenpinschers into the home as lap dogs-and to keep away vermin that might otherwise hide in corners or under long skirts. Today's affenpinschers are in the 6-to-13 pound (3-to-6 kilogram) range.

But the dog's size hasn't given it an inferiority complex. "Most of these little guys do not realize they're as small as they are," Parker says. Toy dogs have been known to chase birds and other animals that rival them in size.

What Comes After Westminster?

Dog lovers may crave an affenpinscher. And that could cause problems if breeders try to produce more pups.

"You'll see some breeds go through sudden explosions, where they'll go from small numbers to really large numbers," says Parker. "Usually that means an increase in genetic diseases." There aren't a lot of potential parents for a purebred litter, so the odds of inbreeding, and its related diseases, go up.

And What About Banana Joe?

Now that he's made us aware of his breed, Banana Joe will retire from competition and live with his Dutch owner, free to fulfill his heritage as a lap dog.

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Budget Cut Warnings Harsher Than Reality?

Get ready for two weeks of intensifying warnings about how crucial, popular government services are about to wither — including many threats that could eventually come true.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans made no progress last week in heading off $85 billion in budget-wide cuts that automatically start taking effect March 1. Lacking a bipartisan deal to avoid them and hoping to heap blame and pressure on GOP lawmakers, the administration is offering vivid details about the cuts' consequences: trimmed defense contracts, less secure U.S. embassies, furloughed air traffic controllers.

Past administrations have seldom hesitated to spotlight how budget standoffs would wilt programs the public values.

When a budget fight between President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans led to two government shutdowns, in 1995 and 1996, some threats came true, like padlocked national parks.

Others did not.

Clinton warned that Medicare recipients might lose medical treatment, feeding programs for the low-income elderly could end and treatment at veterans hospitals could be curtailed. All continued, thanks to contractors working for IOUs, local governments and charities stepping in and the budget impasse ending before serious damage occurred.

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Imag

This time, at stake is not a federal shutdown but a so-called sequester. Between March 1 and Sept. 30 — the remainder of the government's budget year — it would mean reductions of 13 percent for defense programs and 9 percent for other programs, according to the White House budget office.

The cuts, plus nearly $1 trillion more over the coming decade, were concocted two years ago. Administration and congressional bargainers purposely made them so painful that everyone would be forced to reach a grand deficit-cutting compromise to avoid them.

Hasn't happened.

A look at the sequester and the chilling impact the administration says it would have, based on letters and testimony to Congress:

—A key reminder: Social Security, Medicare and veterans' benefits, Medicaid and a host of other benefit programs are exempted. The cuts take effect over a seven-month period; they don't all crash ashore on March 1. And if a bipartisan deal to ease them is ever reached, lawmakers could restore some or all of the money retroactively.

—On the other hand: Left in effect, these cuts are real even though their program-by-program impact is unclear. The law limits the administration's flexibility to protect favored initiatives, but the White House has told agencies to avoid cuts presenting "risks to life, safety or health" and to minimize harm to crucial services.

—Defense: Troops at war would be protected, but there'd be fewer Air Force flying hours, less training for some Army units and cuts in naval forces. A $3 billion cut in the military's Tricare health care system could diminish elective care for military families and retirees. And, in a warning to the private defense industry, the Pentagon said it would be "restructuring contracts to reduce their scope and cost."

—Health: The National Institutes of Health would lose $1.6 billion, trimming cancer research and drying up funds for hundreds of other research projects. Health departments would give 424,000 fewer tests for the AIDS virus. More than 373,000 people may not receive mental health services.

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Brecht's Galileo is a play for our times

Tiffany O'Callaghan, Opinion editor

Ian McDiarmid as Galileo (left) and James Tucker as the Bursar (Image: Ellie Kurtz)

It has been more than 400 years since Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope toward the night sky and observed the movement of the moons around Jupiter, providing proof that all things do not revolve around the Earth - and drawing the ire of the Catholic church.

And it has been nearly 80 years since playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote the first version of A Life of Galileo while living in Denmark after fleeing Germany when Hitler took power.

Yet the latest retelling of this famous tale by the Royal Shakespeare Company underscores the emphatically contemporary nature of the struggle between static world views and dynamic knowledge.

This is reinforced by using the familiar, modern clothing of tweedy dishevelment among Galileo and his colleagues and pupils, and sets featuring the lab-staple whiteboard and a large blue backdrop that resembles a wall of solar panels.

But of course this is not simply an old story with modern accoutrements and gimmicky staging. Portrayed by Ian McDiarmid, Galileo’s compulsive curiosity, his sheer joy when his pupil grasps a new concept for the first time, and his bewildered frustration when adversaries refuse to observe the evidence literally in front of them feel both timely and timeless. “All I ask is for them to believe their eyes!” exclaims poor Galileo.

In a moment when 46 per cent of US citizens believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and four US states are weighing up bills that would challenge the teaching of evolution, the tension remains strong between theologies that carve out a creation story for humans and the evidence that we are the serendipitous result of millions of years of evolution.

There are strong reminders of these tensions in the play, for example, when a cleric bullies Galileo to keep his heliocentric ideas to himself, crystallising the church’s terror at the implications of his ideas: “Is no one watching us?" asks the cleric. "Has no one imagined a part for us to play other than this one?”

Galileo is cowed into compromise. His new ideas may be used to help seafarers better navigate by the stars, but not to upend the understanding of the order of things. They may answer practical questions, but not existential ones. “We may research, but we may not draw conclusions.”

He accepts the new conditions in word only. His experiments continue, and when given the slimmest opening his feverish curiosity breaks out into the light of day. When he learns that his friend and science enthusiast Cardinal Barberini may ascend to the papacy, he lauds the arrival of an era of reason. Too soon, of course.

In the second act, we meet the new pope in his undergarments. As he debates the use of torture and threats to force Galileo to renounce the Copernican ideas laid out in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Barberini dons layer upon layer of vestments. Crimson robes, a glittering great cape, and finally the mitre: when he is cloaked in the power of his office, Barberini assents to the threat of torture.

The scene parallels the opening scene of the play, in which Galileo, also in only his undergarments, is bathing and getting ready for the day. The contrast is evident: in the flesh, they are both ageing men. But their power to spread ideas is proportional to the grandeur of their garments. When Galileo is threatened and ultimately abjures his earlier assertions, he returns beaten and bare-legged in a crumpled white gown.

The legacy of Galileo’s recantation is left open. Brecht rewrote aspects of the play following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, when he was living in the US. “Overnight the biography of the founder of the new system of physics read differently,” he wrote in an introduction to the new version. “The infernal effect of the great bomb placed the conflict between Galileo and the authorities of his day in a new sharper light.”

Brecht never saw the stage production of his later version in New York, as he left the country after being questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

By the end of the play, Galileo is wary of science shaped by interests more nefarious than the quest for truth. He sees a danger in scientists being reduced to little more than “inventing pygmies” for sale to the highest bidder, their ideas open to be used for cruel ends. Galileo’s public recantation and private pursuit of truth and Brecht’s ambivalence about the responsibility of scientists to shape the use of their research for the benefit of humankind are not necessarily two sides of the same coin, it seems.

But it isn’t clear that in publicly defying the church Galileo would have reshaped the way that scientific knowledge is applied. And in real life, as in the play, in sneaking his final, influential publication Discourse and Mathematical Demonstrations About Two New Sciences out under the noses of the church which held him under house arrest for the final years of his life, Galileo seems vindicated in his decision to live to think another day.

As New Yorker critic Adam Gopnik recently put it, “the best reason we have to believe in the moons of Jupiter is that no one has to be prepared to die for them in order for them to be real”.

It may be an excruciatingly slow process, but the truth has a way of emerging into the light eventually. It was just two decades ago - and 350 years after Galileo’s death - that the Catholic church finally admitted that it had been wrong to condemn him.

A Life of Galileo is on at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, until 30 March.

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