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Japan's part-natural, part-human disaster is an extraordinary event. As well as dealing with the consequences of an earthquake and tsunami, rescuers are having to evacuate thousands of people from the danger zone around Fukushima. In addition, the country is blighted by blackouts from the shutting of 10 or more nuclear plants. It is a textbook case of how technology can increase our vulnerability through unintended side-effects.

Yet there had been early warnings from scientists. In 2006, Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi resigned from a Japanese nuclear power advisory panel, saying the policy of building in earthquake zones could lead to catastrophe, and that design standards for proofing them against damage were too lax. Further back, the seminal study of accidents in complex technologies was Professor Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents, published in 1984

Things can go wrong with design, equipment, procedures, operators, supplies and the environment. Occasionally two or more will have problems simultaneously; in a complex technology such as a nuclear plant, the potential for this is ever-present.

Mr Smedley was such a private man that none of those friends had known in advance that he had planned his own assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where he drank poison and died on Dec 10 last year. A few days after Mr Smedley's death, his close friends found individually-written letters from him in their post, telling each one how much they had meant to him.

They were in for a greater surprise when they were joined at his memorial service by Sir Terry, the author and campaigner, and the BBC crew that had filmed Mr Smedley's final moments. Unknown to all but his closest family, Mr Smedley invited Sir Terry to accompany him and his wife Christine, 60, to the clinic in Switzerland. Moments before he died, said Sir Terry: "I shook hands with Peter and he said to me 'Have a good life', and he added 'I know I have'." When a clinic worker asked him if he was ready to drink the poison that would end his life, Mr Smedley said: "Yes" and added: "I'd like to thank you all." After Mr Smedley died, said Sir Terry: "I was spinning not because anything bad had happened but something was saying', A man is dead... that's a bad thing,' but somehow the second part of the clause chimes in with, 'but he had an incurable disease that was dragging him down, so he's decided of his own free will to leave before he was dragged'. So it's not a bad thing."

Conducted by the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI) at Nanyang Technological University, the "National Information Literacy Survey for Singapore Schools 2010" involved more than 3,000 secondary school students. The findings showed that the overall score across all info-literacy competencies stood at 38.7 per cent - some way off the ideal score of at least 50 per cent. While the study found that the participants appeared most adept in defining a project task and knowing where to seek information, their lack of aptitude to cite the sources of information used were of particular concern.

The participants were also found to be lacking in the abilities to compare information with other sources and to form critical assessments from the information.

Comparing the participants' backgrounds, the findings showed that the information literacy score for each participant increases with their parents' educational qualifications and their affluence levels.

LONDON - Scientific advances including techniques allowing patients to grow new joints inside their own bodies will allow the elderly to remain active well beyond their 100th birthdays, researchers claim. British scientists are working on a system which should allow the elderly to buy body parts "off the shelf" and even regenerate their own damaged joints and hearts. Their ultimate aim is to fix up the body with customised replacement parts grown to order. They have already carried out human trials on heart valves which are still working four years after they were transplanted. At the University of Leeds, Britain's biggest bioengineering unit and the world leader in artificial joint replacement research is coordinating a project that aims to give people 50 active years after the age of 50."It is the rise of the bionic pensioner," said Professor Christina Doyle, whose company is working with the university to develop the new technologies. "The idea is when something wears out, your surgeon can buy a replacement off the shelf or, more accurately, in a bag."The university is spending £50 million ($114 million) over the next five years on the new project. The main thrust of the research centres on a method of tissue and medical engineering which the university is at the forefront of developing. Led by the immunologist Professor Eileen Ingham, they are pioneering a technique of stripping the living cells from donor human and animal parts, leaving just the collagen or elastin "scaffold" of the tissue. These "biological shells", which could be for knee, ankle or hip ligaments, as well as blood vessels and heart valves, are then transplanted into the patient whose own body then invades them replacing the removed cells with their own. The technique, which could be available within five years, effectively removes the need for anti-rejection drugs. It is similar to the recently developed system of using stem cells to regrow organs outside the body, but costs about a tenth of the price.

the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer, published by research firm StrategyOne, which surveyed 5,075 "informed publics" in 23 countries on their trust in business, government, institutions and individuals. One of the questions asked of respondents was: "If you heard information about a company from one of these people, how credible would that information be?". Of the eight groups of individuals - academic/expert, technical expert in company, financial/industry analyst, CEO, non-governmental organisation representative, government official, person like myself, and regular employee - academic/expert came out tops with a score of 70 per cent, followed by technical expert at 64 per cent.

the film on the global financial crisis Inside Job, which won the 2011 Academy Award for best documentary. One of the documentary's themes is the role a number of renowned academics, particularly academic economists, played in the global crisis. It highlighted potentially serious conflicts of interests related to significant compensation derived by these academics serving on boards of financial services firms and advising such firms.

Often, these academics also played key roles in shaping government policies relating to deregulation - most appear allergic to regulation of the financial services industry. The documentary argued that these academics from Ivy League universities had basically become advocates for financial services firms, which blinded them to firms' excesses. It noted that few academic economists saw the financial crisis coming, and suggested this might be because they were too busy making money from the industry.

digital "curators" choose and present things related to a specific topic and context. They "curate", as opposed to "aggregate", which implies plain collecting with little or no value add. Viewed in this context, Google search does the latter, not the former. So, who curates? The Huffington Post, or HuffPo, is one high-profile example and, it appears, a highly-valued one too, going by AOL numbers-crunchers who forked out US$315 million (S$396.9 million) to acquire it. Accolades have also come in for Arianna Huffington's team of contributors and more than 3,000 bloggers - from politicians to celebrities to think-tankers. The website was named second among the 25 best blogs of 2009 by Time magazine, and most powerful blog in the world by The Observer.

By sifting, sorting and presenting news and views - yes, "curating" - HuffPo makes itself useful in an age of too much information and too many opinions. (Strictly speaking, HuffPo is both a creator and curator.) If what HuffPo is doing seems deja vu, it is hardly surprising. Remember the good old "curated" news of the pre-Internet days when newspapers decided what news was published and what we read? Then, the Editor was the Curator with the capital "C".

But with the arrival of the Internet and the uploading of news and views by organisations and netizens, the bits and bytes have turned into a tsunami. Aggregators like Google search threw us some life buoys, using text and popularity to filter the content. But with millions of new articles and videos added to the Internet daily, the "right" content has become that proverbial needle in the haystack. Hence the need for curation.

the media and pundits stepped on the "fear creation accelerator" focussing on the possibility of disastrous outcomes while ignoring possible solutions and options.

Nobody can say for sure how this crisis is headed. As of today, the risk of a total meltdown has been reduced. However, if one was listening to some segments of the media earlier this week, disaster was the only possible outcome. Fear and panic itself would have caused a disaster Imagine the mess created by millions fleeing Tokyo in a haphazard manner - the sick, old and invalid left behind, food & water distribution disrupted - would have led to more deaths much worse than the worst case meltdown that would have led to reactors being entombed. It also shows us the importance of leadership we can trust - the Japanese Minister Yukio Edano held 5 press conference every day[Link] to update the nation on the dynamic situation (compare that with the initial handling of SARS outbreak).

I hope the Japanese succeed in getting the nuclear reactors under control. Extraordinary crisis requires extraordinary leadership, extraordinary sacrifice and extraordinary courage. In the confusion and fear, it is hard for people not to panic and flee but most of the Japanese in Tokyo stayed calm despite all sorts of scares. If another group of people are put through a crisis, the response may be completely different