Blood Bank has updated their “Overseas Travel Criteria for Blood Donation”

During my 108th blood donation, HSA staff flagged my blood for a malaria check, due to my visit to Taman Negara in Malaysia last year.

They had not done so for blood donation no. 107, so I queried and they simply said something about having to be careful about malaria.

Then last week or so, I learnt that HSA had announced recent updates to its Overseas Travel Criteria for Blood donation.

click to read updates

The section on Malarial areas of concern says,

To ensure our blood supply is free of malaria, we test the blood of donors who may have been infected or exposed to malaria when they resided in or travelled to a malaria endemic area.

Click here for the latest list of malaria endemic areas.

First-time donors with a history of malaria will be deferred indefinitely. Persons who have had malaria may still carry a low level of parasites in their body although they have recovered and display no symptoms.

Donors’ blood donations will be tested if they have:

• Visited a malaria endemic area in the last 12 months.
• Lived in a malaria endemic area for more than 6 months continuously.

If your donation is tested positive for malaria, you will be deferred indefinitely.

For donors who return less than 4 months from a malaria endemic area, they will be deferred from blood donation for at least 4 months from the day they left the area. This deferral period enables us to reliably test for malaria in the blood donation as it takes about 4 months for the body to develop antibody after exposure.

However, for Singapore residents who travel frequently and have returned less than 4 months from a malaria endemic area, they may still donate blood. But they are required to return 4 months after their departure from the malaria-endemic area for a malaria test before their blood can be released for transfusion.

It’s not that new to be careful about malaria. When I was actively in and out of odd places in the region, and with my my platelet count too low, I switched to plasmareisis to avoid the possibility that I was a symptomless host of the malaria parasite!

The other advisories are about Chikungunya fever, Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and West Nile Virus. Note that the latter two concern travellers to Europe and North America/Greece.

Black screen instead of pdfs? Safari, Firefox bamboozled by Adobe plugins: just delete!

When attempting to open pdfs in Safari 5.1.7 on OS X 10.6.8 recently, all I saw was a black screen. Housekeeping failed but using Chrome circumvented the problem. So I carried on until I had a breather to delve further.

Recently, an Adobe update (10.1.3) presented itself and I thought hmmm, perhaps that might fix it. After clicking through the update installation, still no joy.

So I googled and it seems that Safari and Adobe aren’t playing nice with each other! Not the first time, and I fact tried makmacapplefan’s solution from 2009, which worked.

All I had to do was delete the Adobe plugins I found in Macintosh HD > Library > Internet Plug-Ins: AdobePDFViewer.plugin and AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin.

So an earlier Adobe update must have messed things up. Problem solved, hoorah! My work efficiency is highest in Safari with all my shortcuts and customisation, so using Chrome was slowing me down.

Many solutions are presented in that Apple Support Communities thread [Safari - PDF Black Screen... Can't view embeded PDFs - help.] and if what I did wasn’t enough to solve your problem of black screens when viewing pdfs, check the other (more complicated) suggestions.

Why keep Adobe Reader? Well, it overcomes some problems I sometimes encounter when viewing pdfs in Preview. So that it won’t trip me up somehow, for good measure, I unchecked the box in Adobe Reader > Preferences > Internet > Display in Read Mode by default.

In the background, I had tried opening a pdf in Firefox 5 (yes, I know, I just updated to 12). I switched back to Firefox and found it complaining about AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin. You see, Firefox identifies culprit Adobe plugins on its blocklist which Mozilla maintains and will prompt you to click to disable the offender immediately. How smart is that?

So Safari isn’t smart enough to warn us, and I feel Adobe was obnoxious by sneaking in a problematic plugin. An Adobe Employee on their forum said in January that “Adobe Reader does not support PDFViewer in Safari on OSX 10.7.x. Hence, please try to open the pdf/fdf in Adobe Reader instead of safari.”

Ha, ha, ha, yeah right.

Calling NUS Biology alumni: Join us to guide for four hours at the Festival of Biodiversity, 26-27 May 2012

With the Festival of Biodiversity just a week away, I decided to see what Raffles Museum Toddycat Volunteer Managers (aka civetgirls) Xu Weiting and Fung Tze Kwan had been up to since they started recruiting volunteers. They had recruited their honours junior Meryl Theng (aka ottergirl) which is wonderful. And they had seen to all the critical things required for the exhibition.

Well, after a fine performance at numerous exhibitions and with their familiarity with GDocs and blogging since their honours years with me, I wasn’t expecting to find gaps to plug. Which is why I have had peace of mind since the end of the semester.

But I remembered how tough it used to be and fiddled with the Guide Recruitment Google Doc. After re-organising it, I realised we had an impressive number of volunteers, but not nearly enough.

This has always been a critical and tough part of the job.

The most important element of a Raffles Museum Toddycats exhibition has always been the volunteers behind these specimens – enthusiastic proponents of biodiversity in Singapore telling stories to engage, fascinate and inspire have always been well received by members of the public.

This year we are hoping to put up our largest exhibition to date to engage as many people as we can. The previous exhibitions we have done would be a dry run for this Festival of Biodiversity, which we hope to be an annual affair with the community.

After reviewing the manpower, I realised we still needed zoology guides to take on four-hours slot each (and to stay fresh):

Sat 26 May 2012

• 11.00am – 5 volunteers needed
• 2.30pm – 6 volunteers needed

Sun 27 May 2012

• 8.00am – 3 volunteers needed
• 11.00am – 3 volunteers needed
• 2.30pm – 2 volunteers needed

So I’m calling out to our biology alumni, especially those who took LSM3261 Life Form and Function, to join in the fun and take on a 4-hour slot. Just sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/toddycats-fob2012

During the Festival, Raffles Museum Toddycats will have these stations:

• Animals of the forest
• Animals in freshwater and urban areas
• Animal of the Sea and the threat of marine trash
• Paper craft and RMBR mechandise
• Kid’s station with games

And the list of specimens in preparation are here: http://tinyurl.com/toddycats-fob-specimens. It’s quite the load, and I am lugging the lot down next Friday and hope I will find help!

It’s really wonderful to see this all happening – we have a new generation of Toddycats led by young and enthusiastic leaders who are entering the fray, at a time when this is all the more important. I know they will have as much fun with this as we have had, for over a decade now!

Festival of Biodiversity Singapore, 26-27 May 2012 @ Singapore Botanic Gardens

Festival of Biodiversity 2012 poster.pdf Download this file

Toddycats recruitment status for Festival of Biodiversity, 26-27 May 2012

Douglas Adams (RIP) on “Parrots, the Universe and Everything” (UCSB, 2001)

Cheng Puay just shared this with his advanced biology class and was filled once again with enthusiasm and affection for one of our favourite authors, whose books The Intern needs to read. 

Mon 21 May 2012: 4.00pm @ SBG – “Let’s Talk Bats” by Joann Christine L. (FRIM)

In the middle of a storm

Apparently in May (NEA monthly highlights, 2007),

“Winds are generally light and variable, with increasingly persistent southwesterly winds. The major rain-bearing systems over Singapore are the “Sumatras”. Scattered showers and thunderstorms occur in the late morning and afternoon and slightly hazy conditions are also experienced on some days.”

WunderMap Satellite View with IR4

Reading a Secrets mannual

One reason I think why I still out-google my students is because I’m faster. I have several tabs open and loading in the background, while they are still fondling their mice towards the first URL window.

It has been frustrating to watch so I will integrate tips into their writing guidelines in first and second year. Even simple things like alt-tabs to switch between windows in a PC is news to many.

My relatively efficient use of the Mac is built on a legacy of having read a Mac Secrets manual in the 90′s. You just have to read a manual sometime in your life, just once, and practise. It’s surprising how useful what you learn will be. And its transferable, so you’ll be better on a pc too. For something we use many hours, everyday, it’s worth it.

Over the years, I’ve read a few manuals about the Apple OS. These below were from a decade ago (1999, 2002) and are to be pulped. I’m a stranger to the existing OS’ and it’s time for a read. I’ll probably get reacquainted with Mountain Lion.

Get on your bike and ride!

I’ve been under the weather with deadines laying in ambush in every corner. I’m still being hunted like a yeti and I wanted to ditch my bicycle ride this Sunday for once. A burst spoke fro the last ride seemed to suggest I lay off but help during the class today left me coherent enough to ask for a ride down to Hup Leong, where my GT Avalanche 1.0 was bought for me on 9th September 2002. Gilbert has the bike maintained and I am back home with enough time to plan the route after a few more chores online.

Say Lin, my wild pig student is back from travels and I’d like to check the environs of Sembawang and Selimang beaches, for ICCS and Woodlands Waterfront for a macaque population reportedly active there. Kenneth Pinto is not going to wake up early after a night out with Josephians and Ladybug needs to leave the ride early for work. Kevin is game for any ride, the longer the better. But I better not be out too late as I do have a few deadlines to met on Monday morning.

So I ponder and this is the route I think we might do:

The route at Bikely is approximate as I did not plot in exact details (e.g. PCNs) to get this out faster. Its nice to plot, what we’ll do after Woodlands could vary. We’ll see. For now, though, some sleep! (23:50h)

---

Update – Sun 13 May 2012: 0530h – Just before I slept, at about 1am, I retweeted the NEA weather warning, issued 10pm, which said, “Thundery showers over many areas in the morning”. As if on cue, thunder and lightning filled the air shortly after just as I drifted off. I wasn’t too worried since strong winds can move clouds along.

However, when I woke up at 5.00am this morning, my nose was dripping, @ramblinglib in Yishun and @bubblevicious nearby had tweeted about strong winds rattling windows an hour earlier and there was a pitter-patter in the air.

So I checked weather radar and forecasts:

Rain Locations in Singapore

Rain Areas Animation
indicated there was more from where this came from the west.

Uh-oh, so how large is this rain cloud? So I look at
Weather Radar Information by the Metereological Service Singapore
which provides a regional view:

NEA’s 3-hour Nowcast
is next and with a sinking heart see it predicts rain to 8.00am

Weather Underground’s WunderMap Cloud View
shows that this IS indeed one BIG rain cloud!

On twitter @brainopera and @ramblinglib are all standing by now…doesn’t look like a start anytime soon. I’ll go make coffee.