The plight of child soldiers, especially in Africa, has captured world attention through news reports and personal accounts. Last year, Ismael Beah's book, A Long Way Gone, about his experiences in Sierra Leone, was a bestseller. Now a film by Nigerian-born director Newton Aduaka explores the psychological and social face of the problem, by telling the fictional story of one young victim kidnapped into a rebel force. It will screen commercially in New York for two weeks in February, and also play at Los Angeles’s Pan-African Film Festival.
“I felt I had to do a film that not just showed you about war, but that put you in the center of what it was like,” Newton Aduaka says. His second feature film, “Ezra,” opens on a peaceful scene: a small boy walking to school, his older sister already at her desk, gazing out the window occasionally, as if looking for her brother.
Suddenly, the school yard is invaded by fighters dressed in camouflage uniforms. They grab a number of children, including six-year-old Ezra, and march them into the bush to the rebel camp. One little boy will not stop crying, and in one of the film’s most horrifying moments, the rebel commander tells a subordinate to give him the “VIP” treatment. He is shot dead on the spot.
Mr. Aduaka says that incident was not in the screenplay as he first wrote it. “That is something one of the children told me. I felt something was missing. There was no reason to show why these kids stayed on. But when you see that -- of course you fall in line, you don't ask questions any more from that point on,” he said.
The film moves from Ezra's ten years as a boy soldier until 2002, after peace, when he appears before a truth and reconciliation tribunal. It shows how Ezra and the other children are indoctrinated into the cause of killing, and even injected with methamphetamines to energize and disorient them.
“You can fight for four days nonstop,” Ezra tells the tribunal, about the nights when his commander drugged the child soldiers. “You have no fear, you feel nothing. You become the gun. You are the AK-47. Your conscience is not there. You are not human." The presiding investigator asks him, “So you don't remember how many or who you killed?” Ezra answers, “No.”
Ezra also remembers nothing about the night in which his rebel faction attacked his own village, an attack in which his parents were killed and his sister gravely injured. Much of the film is about the human relationships of the child soldiers, despite their brutalization. Ezra's sister is loyal to him despite her knowledge that he was among the attacking rebels. Ezra also falls in love and marries a girl soldier, eventually trying to flee the country with her and his sister.
The cast includes Sierra Leoneans, Ugandans, Rwandans and Malians, as well as European and Americans of African descent. Most had not acted before, and two had actually been child soldiers. The director, who says the story is based on the Sierra Leone conflict, interviewed a number of child soldiers before he wrote his screenplay. They became a major source, he says, “especially three kids that I met that let me into their souls, so to speak. I met a lot of children, but a lot of them would tell me about exterior things, but not about what was going on in the inside."
Aduaka says the film tries to show that colonialism set the stage for the African conflicts in which 15 million have died in the past half-century. He notes that European powers carved Africa into artificial nations and armed all sides of the wars that followed. “I was interested in what brought about this violence,” he says. “Where is it coming from? It is being fed by arms dealers, by people who are mostly westerners. The AK-47 is not made in Africa,” he says. “Ezra” makes the case that healing for individuals and societies can begin only after a truthful accounting is made, and forgiveness sought. But it does not end on a hopeful note, and the director says he is not optimistic for many of the former child soldiers. “I always say that if this happened to a child in the West, they would be in therapy for the rest of their natural lives,” he says. “They will cope, because they have to. But I know what they are carrying with them, they are carrying this thing with them, and they will have to deal with it.”
Monday, May 12, 2008
We're Sorry This Is Late ... We Really Meant To Post It Sooner: Research Into Procrastination Shows Surprising Findings
ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2007) — A University of Calgary professor in the Haskayne School of Business has recently published his magnum opus on the subject of procrastination -- and it's only taken him 10 years.
Joking aside, Dr. Piers Steel is probably the world's foremost expert on the subject of putting off until tomorrow what should be done today. His comprehensive analysis of procrastination research, published in the recent edition of the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin, presents some surprising conclusions on the subject, such as:
- Most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure
- Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination, and
- Procrastination can be explained by a single mathematical equation
"Essentially, procrastinators have less confidence in themselves, less expectancy that they can actually complete a task," Steel says. "Perfectionism is not the culprit. In fact, perfectionists actually procrastinate less, but they worry about it more."
Other predictors of procrastination include: task aversiveness, impulsiveness, distractibility, and how much a person is motivated to achieve. Not all delays can be considered procrastination; the key is that a person must believe it would be better to start working on given tasks immediately, but still not start.
It's estimated that about 15-20 per cent of the general population are procrastinators. And the costs of procrastinating can add up well beyond poor work performance, especially for those who delay filing their taxes or planning their retirement.
Steel says motivational failures such as difficulty in sticking to diets and exercise regimes -- frequently the focus of New Year's resolutions -- are related to procrastination because impulsiveness is often at the root of the failure. "Temptations that are close at hand are difficult to resist. Addicts often relapse after returning from treatment facilities because drugs and alcohol become easily available and daily habits reassert themselves. Or we load up on bread in the restaurant before the meal is served. Or we check our email 10 times an hour instead of completing a project."
The good news is that willpower has an unusual capacity. "The old saying is true: 'Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're probably right'," Steel says. "And as you get better at self control, your expectancy about whether you can resist goes up and thus improves your ability to resist."
Steel has also come up with the E=mc2 of procrastination, a formula he's dubbed Temporal Motivational Theory, which takes into account factors such as the expectancy a person has of succeeding with a given task (E), the value of completing the task (V), the desirability of the task (Utility), its immediacy or availability (Γ) and the person's sensitivity to delay (D).
It looks like this and uses the Greek letter Γ (capital gamma): Utility = E x V / ΓD
It's still unclear why some people may be more prone to developing procrastination behaviour, but some evidence suggests it may be genetic. Steel concludes: "Continued research into procrastination should not be delayed, especially because its prevalence seems to be growing."
The title of the paper is "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure." The American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin is arguably the top academic journal for the social sciences. Steel's research on the subject is referred to as a meta-analysis, in which he distills and synthesizes the evidence on procrastination from 691 other research sources.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070110090851.htm
Sunday, May 4, 2008
American Drug Company Pfizer Fights Nigerian Lawsuits
Below is the true transcript of VOA clip #7 that I'm going to interpret on 5/7's class.
In 1996, a meningitis epidemic hit the Nigerian state of Kano. Researchers from the American company, Pfizer, treated 100 Nigerian children with the experimental drug, Trovan. Now the Nigerian government and the Kano state government are suing Pfizer over the drug trial. They say it caused the deaths of 11 children and seriously disabled others.
"What Pfizer did here is despicable and reprehensible and what they did here was to take advantage of young children and use them for an unauthorized and unapproved medical experiment."
Peter Safirstein of the law firm Milberg Weiss, is representing 30 Nigerian families in a lawsuit filed in New York. He says Pfizer did not inform the children that they were taking part in a medical experiment and that there were other alternative medications available at the time.
Pfizer has filed its own lawsuit, charging that the report on which the Nigerian government based its claims against the company is illegal and inaccurate. And the company says on its Web site that any deaths during the clinical trial were the direct result of the illness and not the treatment provided to patients. Pfizer vice president Dr. Jack Watters also released this video statement. "This trial was conducted with the full approval of the Nigerian government, with the consent of the parents, the guardians of the children, and in consistency with the laws of Nigeria.
Whatever the outcome of the lawsuits, the Pfizer case illustrates the difficulty in protecting human subjects as more and more drug trials are conducted around the world. International standards such as the Declaration of Helsinki govern the ethics of drug trials. But some health experts say these regulations are weak and have no enforcement mechanism.
Dr. Peter Lurie, who is deputy head of health research at the advocacy group, Public Citizen, in Washington. "It will always be tempting for any for-profit corporation to go to that place where regulation is the weakest, to that place where human subjects' protections are the worst, really going to the place with the lowest ethical standards, a kind of race to the ethical bottom. That temptation will always be there until such time as we have strong international standards. We don't have them now." Dr. Lurie argues that many citizens of developing countries with poor health infrastructures are desperate for medical treatment and vulnerable to exploitation. "To the extent that they are motivated by desperation and needing to get treatment, to the extent that they believe that they will benefit from being in the trial even though that may not be the case, those are bad reasons for people to be in trials."
Alan Goldhammer is a regulatory official for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a lobbying group in Washington. He says drug trials in developing countries are critical to researching treatments for diseases such as bacterial meningitis, which is rare in the United States. "Our companies are developing new pharmaceuticals for a worldwide market. They are also trying to make every effort to address diseases that are common in developing countries and certainly many new antibiotics that are being developed will have good therapeutic use in those countries."
Goldhammer says another reason American companies conduct trials in developing countries is to try to cut the time and cost required for drug development. "It's running now about 800 million dollars to develop a new drug and it's anywhere from 12 to 14 years and clearly for patients who need new therapies this is too long and too costly. So we're looking at a variety of ways to try to shorten the time period and reduce the cost."
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is head of clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, the primary U.S. medical research agency. He says the vast majority of drug research does not exploit human subjects. But he says researchers should provide what he calls "fair benefits" to the participants in a drug trial. "Is the community in which you're doing a trial getting other health benefits? Are there economic benefits? Is this are you preparing the community to be able to do a lot more research and maybe engage in the research enterprise? Are you training people?"
As for Pfizer's 1996 trial of Trovan in Kano, the Nigerian government says the drug company did not behave ethically. It is seeking compensation for the children and families of those involved.
In 1996, a meningitis epidemic hit the Nigerian state of Kano. Researchers from the American company, Pfizer, treated 100 Nigerian children with the experimental drug, Trovan. Now the Nigerian government and the Kano state government are suing Pfizer over the drug trial. They say it caused the deaths of 11 children and seriously disabled others.
"What Pfizer did here is despicable and reprehensible and what they did here was to take advantage of young children and use them for an unauthorized and unapproved medical experiment."
Peter Safirstein of the law firm Milberg Weiss, is representing 30 Nigerian families in a lawsuit filed in New York. He says Pfizer did not inform the children that they were taking part in a medical experiment and that there were other alternative medications available at the time.
Pfizer has filed its own lawsuit, charging that the report on which the Nigerian government based its claims against the company is illegal and inaccurate. And the company says on its Web site that any deaths during the clinical trial were the direct result of the illness and not the treatment provided to patients. Pfizer vice president Dr. Jack Watters also released this video statement. "This trial was conducted with the full approval of the Nigerian government, with the consent of the parents, the guardians of the children, and in consistency with the laws of Nigeria.
Whatever the outcome of the lawsuits, the Pfizer case illustrates the difficulty in protecting human subjects as more and more drug trials are conducted around the world. International standards such as the Declaration of Helsinki govern the ethics of drug trials. But some health experts say these regulations are weak and have no enforcement mechanism.
Dr. Peter Lurie, who is deputy head of health research at the advocacy group, Public Citizen, in Washington. "It will always be tempting for any for-profit corporation to go to that place where regulation is the weakest, to that place where human subjects' protections are the worst, really going to the place with the lowest ethical standards, a kind of race to the ethical bottom. That temptation will always be there until such time as we have strong international standards. We don't have them now." Dr. Lurie argues that many citizens of developing countries with poor health infrastructures are desperate for medical treatment and vulnerable to exploitation. "To the extent that they are motivated by desperation and needing to get treatment, to the extent that they believe that they will benefit from being in the trial even though that may not be the case, those are bad reasons for people to be in trials."
Alan Goldhammer is a regulatory official for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a lobbying group in Washington. He says drug trials in developing countries are critical to researching treatments for diseases such as bacterial meningitis, which is rare in the United States. "Our companies are developing new pharmaceuticals for a worldwide market. They are also trying to make every effort to address diseases that are common in developing countries and certainly many new antibiotics that are being developed will have good therapeutic use in those countries."
Goldhammer says another reason American companies conduct trials in developing countries is to try to cut the time and cost required for drug development. "It's running now about 800 million dollars to develop a new drug and it's anywhere from 12 to 14 years and clearly for patients who need new therapies this is too long and too costly. So we're looking at a variety of ways to try to shorten the time period and reduce the cost."
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is head of clinical bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, the primary U.S. medical research agency. He says the vast majority of drug research does not exploit human subjects. But he says researchers should provide what he calls "fair benefits" to the participants in a drug trial. "Is the community in which you're doing a trial getting other health benefits? Are there economic benefits? Is this are you preparing the community to be able to do a lot more research and maybe engage in the research enterprise? Are you training people?"
As for Pfizer's 1996 trial of Trovan in Kano, the Nigerian government says the drug company did not behave ethically. It is seeking compensation for the children and families of those involved.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Perceptions: Go Ahead, Put the Water Bottle Down
Perceptions: Go Ahead, Put the Water Bottle Down
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Drinking a lot of water is supposed to be healthy, but there is apparently little scientific support for the belief. A review of clinical studies has found no evidence that drinking eight glasses of water a day, the usual recommendation, is beneficial to a healthy person.
Numerous claims have been made about water — that it prevents headaches, removes dangerous “poisons,” improves the function of various organs and is associated with reduced risk for various diseases. But none of these is supported by scientific evidence. The authors were not even able to find a study leading to the “eight glasses a day” rule, whose origin remains unknown.
The researchers, in the June issue of The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, say some studies have found evidence that drinking extra water helps the kidneys clear sodium, and long-term sodium retention might increase the risk of hypertension, but no clinical significance for the phenomenon has been established. Water also helps clear urea, but urea is not a toxin.
There is “intriguing” evidence that water might help decrease appetite and control weight gain, write the authors, who say this might be worth more research.
“Under normal circumstances,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a co-author and a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, “drinking extra water is unnecessary. I want to relieve people of the burden of schlepping water bottles around all day long.”
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Drinking a lot of water is supposed to be healthy, but there is apparently little scientific support for the belief. A review of clinical studies has found no evidence that drinking eight glasses of water a day, the usual recommendation, is beneficial to a healthy person.
Numerous claims have been made about water — that it prevents headaches, removes dangerous “poisons,” improves the function of various organs and is associated with reduced risk for various diseases. But none of these is supported by scientific evidence. The authors were not even able to find a study leading to the “eight glasses a day” rule, whose origin remains unknown.
The researchers, in the June issue of The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, say some studies have found evidence that drinking extra water helps the kidneys clear sodium, and long-term sodium retention might increase the risk of hypertension, but no clinical significance for the phenomenon has been established. Water also helps clear urea, but urea is not a toxin.
There is “intriguing” evidence that water might help decrease appetite and control weight gain, write the authors, who say this might be worth more research.
“Under normal circumstances,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a co-author and a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, “drinking extra water is unnecessary. I want to relieve people of the burden of schlepping water bottles around all day long.”
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
口譯=應召 ?
These two articles are assigned by Prof. Chen and will be discussed on April 30 class, everyone should take a look in advance.
http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/michelle-corner/article?mid=10960&prev=10961&next=10945
http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/jw!8DuYMCWVERChr8mEU6kjGA--/article?mid=10961
http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/michelle-corner/article?mid=10960&prev=10961&next=10945
http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/jw!8DuYMCWVERChr8mEU6kjGA--/article?mid=10961
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Illuminating Africa
By Hilary Whiteman
CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Twenty-seven year old Thobile is raising five children on her own. The youngest is five months, the oldest eleven.
live in Nkomazi, an impoverished municipality in South Africa.
By day, Thobile uses a wood fire for cooking and bathing. By night, she leaves a candle burning as a nightlight for the children.
"She wants them to be able to see if they wake up, and she wants to be able to see them if she wakes up," explains Kristine Pearson, the CEO of Freeplay Foundation.
Thobile is one of the families Freeplay Foundation hopes to help with a new program to distribute wind-up and solar lights, or the Lifelight in Africa.
"These developments are about improving people's lives," Pearson says.
"You can massage statistics any way that make it look good. I want to know how it makes your life better, tell me now. If you don't have to worry about burning your house down now... " she says, trailing off.
African Lifeline
The Freeplay Foundation is best known for its bright blue plastic Lifeline radios, which are being distributed around Africa by the thousand.
There are 10,000 in Kenya and 10,000 in Tanzania. Another 10,000 have gone into Malawi in the past year alone and there are more in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
Sudan is also being populated by the wind-up, solar-powered device.
"There's been a significant number, an unbelievable number, of radios that have gone in and are going into southern Sudan," Pearson says.
She doesn't want to reveal exactly how many are in the war-torn country, explaining the situation is "sensitive."
The U.S. diplomat who was driving the distribution of radios within the country, John Grenville, was killed by an unknown gunman on New Year's Day 2008.
A bright idea
During the course of the Foundation's work in rural Africa, the need for a new, safe source of light became obvious.
Once the charity had identified the need, its commercial partner, Freeplay Energy, went about designing the product. Click here for more about Freeplay Energy and its founder Rory Stear
The light's now being trialed with mosquito netting on the border area between South Africa and Swaziland.
"There's such a push for mosquito netting to prevent the spread of malaria around Africa," Pearson says.
"But if you have mosquito netting you cannot have a candle around it because it'll go up in flames, so it becomes quite dangerous with traditional light sources."
If the trials prove successful, the Lifelight will go into production.The plan then is to empower local people to create their own industry.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/03/31/freeplay.foundation/index.html
CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Twenty-seven year old Thobile is raising five children on her own. The youngest is five months, the oldest eleven.
live in Nkomazi, an impoverished municipality in South Africa.
By day, Thobile uses a wood fire for cooking and bathing. By night, she leaves a candle burning as a nightlight for the children.
"She wants them to be able to see if they wake up, and she wants to be able to see them if she wakes up," explains Kristine Pearson, the CEO of Freeplay Foundation.
Thobile is one of the families Freeplay Foundation hopes to help with a new program to distribute wind-up and solar lights, or the Lifelight in Africa.
"These developments are about improving people's lives," Pearson says.
"You can massage statistics any way that make it look good. I want to know how it makes your life better, tell me now. If you don't have to worry about burning your house down now... " she says, trailing off.
African Lifeline
The Freeplay Foundation is best known for its bright blue plastic Lifeline radios, which are being distributed around Africa by the thousand.
There are 10,000 in Kenya and 10,000 in Tanzania. Another 10,000 have gone into Malawi in the past year alone and there are more in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa.
Sudan is also being populated by the wind-up, solar-powered device.
"There's been a significant number, an unbelievable number, of radios that have gone in and are going into southern Sudan," Pearson says.
She doesn't want to reveal exactly how many are in the war-torn country, explaining the situation is "sensitive."
The U.S. diplomat who was driving the distribution of radios within the country, John Grenville, was killed by an unknown gunman on New Year's Day 2008.
A bright idea
During the course of the Foundation's work in rural Africa, the need for a new, safe source of light became obvious.
Once the charity had identified the need, its commercial partner, Freeplay Energy, went about designing the product. Click here for more about Freeplay Energy and its founder Rory Stear
The light's now being trialed with mosquito netting on the border area between South Africa and Swaziland.
"There's such a push for mosquito netting to prevent the spread of malaria around Africa," Pearson says.
"But if you have mosquito netting you cannot have a candle around it because it'll go up in flames, so it becomes quite dangerous with traditional light sources."
If the trials prove successful, the Lifelight will go into production.The plan then is to empower local people to create their own industry.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/03/31/freeplay.foundation/index.html
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Facebook enhances privacy settings Facebook
Facebook said last week that it is giving users more control over who gets to see personal information posted in profiles at the hot social-networking Web site. Privacy updates made available by last Wednesday include letting Facebook users categorize friends into lists, with access to profile information determined by which list someone is on. Prior to the change, any friend granted access to a Facebook profile could see anything posted there. People were left to choose between denying certain friends access to their profiles and censoring Web site postings.
Facebook's more than 68 million active users will also be able to give "friends of friends" automatic access to their profile pages. The privacy enhancements come as the previously English only Facebook rolls out French, German and Spanish language versions to win more users outside US borders and works to regain the trust of members irked by its "Beacon" advertising platform.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized online in December to members for "mistakes" made implementing the ad platform and gave them a way to switch it off. Facebook changed its Beacon advertising platform to an opt-in system to soothe members outraged by what they saw as an assault on their privacy.
Beacon lets "partners" track Facebook members' visits to their Web sites and relay messages letting users' friends in the social networking community know what they bought in a tactic referred to as "trusted referral" advertising. Originally members were fodder for the ad platform if they did not exert the effort to "opt-out."
(Taipei Times, Tuesday, March 25, 2008,Page 14 )
Facebook's more than 68 million active users will also be able to give "friends of friends" automatic access to their profile pages. The privacy enhancements come as the previously English only Facebook rolls out French, German and Spanish language versions to win more users outside US borders and works to regain the trust of members irked by its "Beacon" advertising platform.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologized online in December to members for "mistakes" made implementing the ad platform and gave them a way to switch it off. Facebook changed its Beacon advertising platform to an opt-in system to soothe members outraged by what they saw as an assault on their privacy.
Beacon lets "partners" track Facebook members' visits to their Web sites and relay messages letting users' friends in the social networking community know what they bought in a tactic referred to as "trusted referral" advertising. Originally members were fodder for the ad platform if they did not exert the effort to "opt-out."
(Taipei Times, Tuesday, March 25, 2008,Page 14 )
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