Add your smile to Smile Singapore at Clarke Quay Central

The Smile installation at Clarke Quay Central is in progress.

Clarke Quay Central mall has announced Smile Singapore, an advocacy campaign that aims to promote a happier nation. This initiative is held in conjunction with Singapore's Jubilee celebrations, and is an ideal opportunity for companies to share their moments of joyful living in the little red dot.

"Happiness is contagious and by displaying photos of beaming faces, we hope to remind our fellow Singaporeans that there are thousands of reasons to smile in Singapore," said Caine Teo, head of Ape Works, the Creative Partner of the Smile Singapore Campaign.

Volunteers display some popular
reasons to smile as polled by
Smile Ambassadors and other sources.

The campaign aims to break its own Largest Display of Photos record* by collecting 10,000 smiling faces this year, 5,000 of which will form a giant photo mural. 

From now till 3 May, Smile Ambassadors will be taking photos of smiling faces as well as collecting personal stories of what makes people happy to be in Singapore. Members of the public can pose for the camera at the live photo studio at Clarke Quay Central atrium and receive an instant 4R print keepsake. The photos will subsequently be showcased at the Clarke Quay Central atrium from 4 to 17 May.

A closer look at the work in progress for the photo mural.

Smile Singapore began the live installation of its urban photoscape of smiling portraits yesterday. The smiling portraits are printed by campaign event partner Fuji Xerox Singapore, laminated and pieced together with others to create a giant photoscape to be completed by 3 May 2015. The photoscape will line the first through third floors of Clarke Quay Central.

Upon completion, the photo mural is expected to break the national record of ‘Largest Display of Photos’ in the Singapore Book of Records. Smile Singapore is aiming to collect 10,000 smile portraits until the end of this year.

"This campaign is especially meaningful during Singapore's jubilee year as we, as an organisation and part of a young nation, count our blessings from living in Singapore," said Mavis Seow, Director and COO, Retail Business Group of Far East Organization, which owns Clarke Quay Central.

"We are delighted to be partnering with Clarke Quay Central in this Smile Campaign initiative. CSR is a big part of Fuji Xerox's core values and integrated at the core of everything we do. It is also a reflection of who we are and what we support as a company," said Bert Wong, Chief Executive Officer of Fuji Xerox Singapore, which is also celebrating its 50th year in Singapore in 2015. 

"For every photo submitted to Smile Campaign, we have pledged to donate five dollars to our main beneficiary – Beyond Social Services – to enable and empower children and youth from less privileged families to help them achieve better opportunities in their life."

People at the photo taking booth at Clarke Quay Central.

Interested?

Get down to Clarke Quay Central or upload your picture and stories at the Smile Singapore website.

*The Smile Singapore campaign, a project by Clarke Quay Central, was first conceptualised after a Gallup Poll in 2012 when Singapore was rated as the most emotionless and unhappy nation in the world. A total of 1,909 smiling portraits were collected and laid out in Clarke Quay Central in 2013, breaking the Singapore's Book of Records for the ‘largest display of photos'. The most recent World Happiness Report ranked Singapore 24^th , an improvement from the previous surveys done. 

posted from Bloggeroid

What we now know about ebola

Source: WHO.

Update: As of October 20, two nurses who had cared for the index patient have caught ebola. There are allegations that the hospital was not properly prepared for the case, and they did not have proper equipment while they looked after him.

Update: The news broke on October 11 and 12 that a nurse who had cared for the first (index) case of ebola in the US had caught ebola herself. It is worrying because she had worn the full hazmat gear in caring for the patient, and that she cannot remember committing any breach of security, unlike a nurse in Spain who said she had accidentally touched her face with a gloved hand. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is firm that some breach of 'protocol' did occur; the question is where, or whether ebola is not well-understood enough.

The World Health Organization shared a list of ways in which the ebola virus may be transmitted on 6 October. While it's known that the virus is transmitted among humans through close and direct physical contact with infected bodily fluids, the most infectious are blood, faeces and vomit, the WHO said.

The virus has also been detected in breast milk, urine and semen. In a convalescent (recovering) male, the virus can persist in semen for at least 70 days; one study suggests persistence for more than 90 days. This implies that the virus can remain in semen for a longer period, but it remains unclear whether the virus can be transmitted through this method.

WHO also says that saliva and tears may also carry some risk of infection. However, the studies implicating these additional bodily fluids were extremely limited in sample size and the science is inconclusive. In studies of saliva, the virus was found most frequently in patients at a severe stage of illness. 

The whole live virus has never been isolated from sweat. This implies that sweat from a victim cannot transmit the virus.

The ebola virus can also be transmitted indirectly, by contact with previously contaminated surfaces and objects. The risk of transmission from these surfaces is low and can be reduced even further by appropriate cleaning and disinfection procedures.

Ebola virus disease is not an airborne infection. Airborne spread among humans implies that you can catch the virus from inhaling a suspended cloud of small dried droplets. This mode of transmission has not been observed during extensive studies of the ebola virus over several decades.

Theoretically, bigger droplets from a heavily infected individual, who has respiratory symptoms caused by other conditions or who vomits violently, could transmit the virus – over a short distance – to another nearby person. This could happen when virus-laden droplets are directly propelled, by coughing or sneezing (which does not mean airborne transmission) onto the mucus membranes or skin with cuts or abrasions of another person.

However, observation to date is that the spread of the virus via coughing or sneezing is rare, if it happens at all. Epidemiological data emerging from the outbreak are simply not consistent with the pattern of spread seen with airborne viruses, like those that cause measles and chickenpox, or the airborne bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

WHO is not aware of any studies that actually document this mode of transmission. On the contrary, good quality studies from previous ebola outbreaks show that all cases were infected by direct close contact with symptomatic patients.

There are also fears that the disease could change its mode of transmission. The WHO says scientists are unaware of any virus that has dramatically changed its mode of transmission. Speculation that ebola virus disease might mutate into a form that could easily spread among humans through the air is just that: speculation, unsubstantiated by any evidence.

For example, the H5N1 avian influenza virus, which has caused sporadic human cases since 1997, is now endemic in chickens and ducks in large parts of Asia. That virus has probably circulated through many billions of birds for at least two decades. Its mode of transmission remains basically unchanged.

The WHO is calling for more to be done to implement – on a much larger scale – well-known protective and preventive measures. Abundant evidence has documented their effectiveness, it says.