70% of Science Award Finalists Are Children of Immigrants

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Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Immigrant parents' focus on science and math pays off for their kids, a new report finds. CREDIT: © Jonathan Ross | Dreamstime.com View full size image

Immigration is a boon to American science and math, a new report asserts, noting that 70 percent of the finalists in a recent prestigious science competition are the children of immigrants.

The report by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit research group in Arlington, Va., states that many immigrant parents emphasize hard science and math education for their children, viewing those fields as paths to success.

Statistics supporting that belief: According to a recent Georgetown University study on the value of undergraduate majors, the lifetime median annual income for someone with a bachelor's degree in engineering is $75,000, compared with $29,000 for a counseling or psychology major. [Infographic: Highest-paying College Majors]

That study found that the highest earners are petroleum engineers, with median annual earnings of $120,000.

Only 12 percent of Americans are foreign-born, the NFAP report says. Even so, children of immigrants took 70 percent of the finalist slots in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search Competition, an original-research competition for high school seniors.



Of the 40 finalists, 28 had parents born in other countries: 16 from China, 10 from India, one from South Korea and one from Iran.

"In proportion to their presence in the U.S. population, one would expect only one child of an Indian (or Chinese) immigrant parent every two and a half years to be an Intel Science Search finalist, not 10 in a year," wrote the report's author, NFAP director Stuart Anderson.

Finalists interviewed for the report attributed their interest in research to their parents' attitudes.

"Our parents brought us up with love of science as a value," David Kenneth Tang-Quan, whose parents emigrated from China to California, told Anderson, according to the report.

Still, children of immigrants face barriers outside of the education system. According to the Georgetown report, racial disparities in pay persist even within science fields. Whites with an undergraduate major in engineering out-earn Asians with the same degree by about $8,000 a year. African-American and Hispanic engineering graduates fare worse, making about $60,000 and $56,000 per year, respectively, compared with whites' $80,000.

Asians out-earn whites in the fields of health, law and public policy; psychology and social work; and biology and life sciences.

The fact that children of immigrants excel in science and math should be taken into account when making immigration policy, Anderson wrote: "The results should serve as a warning against new restrictions on legal immigration, both family and employment-based immigration, since such restrictions are likely to prevent many of the next generation of outstanding scientists and researcher from emerging in America."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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Get to know the auditors

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OPTIMISTICALLY CAUTIOUS By ERROL OH

There's a price to pay for taking audit quality for granted.

A LOT is being said about the audit profession these days. After all, why should the auditors be out of the line of sight in the frenzy of finger-pointing in the wake of the global financial crisis?

It's easy to assign blame on hindsight, but nevertheless, when large and seemingly invulnerable businesses have collapsed or have come close to oblivion as a result of large-scale mismanagement and fraud, it's safe to conclude that a lot of regulators and professionals have surely dropped the ball.

They have missed the warning signs and have failed to raise the alarm. There's no doubt that the auditors belong in this group.

In a consultation paper released last October, the European Commission (EC) observes: “While the role played (in the financial crisis) by banks, hedge funds, rating agencies, supervisors or central banks has been questioned and analysed in depth in many instances, limited attention has been given so far to how the audit function could be enhanced in order to contribute to increased financial stability.”

This so-called Green Paper, titled Audit Policy: Lessons from the Crisis, solicited responses to questions that were designed to help the EC figure out how to improve the European audit market. However, many of the issues raised are applicable in most other parts of the world.

Then, in January this year, the New York-based International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) came out with a thought piece called Audit Quality: An IAASB Perspective. This publication too sees a connection between the financial crisis and the auditors.

“The turbulent events of the global financial crisis have highlighted the critical importance of credible, high-quality financial reporting. They have also demonstrated the importance of considering the role of audit quality in the broader context of quality financial reporting.

Achieving quality financial reporting depends on the integrity of each of the links in the financial reporting supply chain,” wrote IAASB chairman Professor Arnold Schilder.

“As one of those links, the external audit plays a major role in supporting the quality of financial reporting around the world, whether in the context of the capital markets, the public sector or the private or non-public sector. It is an important part of the regulatory and supervisory infrastructure, and thus an activity of significant public interest.”



Naturally, the enforcement agencies sometimes have a more severe view on how the auditors have contributed to the crisis. Last December, the New York attorney general sued Ernst & Young, the longtime auditors of Lehman Brothers, whose application for bankruptcy protection in September 2008 is considered one of the triggers of the crisis. The lawsuit alleged that the Ernst & Young helped Lehman Brothers engage in a “massive accounting fraud”.

Another Big Four firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), also had to endure the harsh glare of publicity recently in the aftermath of a large corporation's downfall. In this case, the company is India's Satyam Computer Services, whose chairman confessed that the IT service provider's accounts had been falsified.
Last month, the United States' Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) announced a settled disciplinary order against five PricewaterhouseCoopers International firms based in India. Two of those firms were slapped with a US$1.5mil penalty.

This is in addition to a US$6mil penalty imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the five firms. The combined $7.5mil penalty imposed in this matter is the largest that the SEC and PCAOB have assessed against any registered foreign accounting firm.

On May 16, the IAASB issued a consultation paper titled Enhancing the Value of Auditor Reporting: Exploring Options for Change. “The purpose of this international consultation is to determine whether there are common views among key users of audited financial statements and other parties to the financial reporting process about the usefulness of auditor reporting, and to explore possible options to enhance the quality, relevance and value of auditor reporting,” the board explains.

Clearly, now is as good a time as any to have discussions on the importance of the work of auditors. The question is, are Malaysian investors participating in this dialogue? Going by how shareholders are generally passive about the appointment of auditors of listed companies, the answer can only be no.

For that matter, when was the last time we hear minority shareholders openly and vigorously questioning the management and board's choice of auditors? It's standard for an AGM agenda to include the re-appointment of the auditors and the authorisation of the directors to fix the auditors' remuneration. Year in and year out, the shareholders at the AGM will dutifully pass such resolutions on the assumption that the directors and the auditors are doing what they're supposed to be doing when it comes to ensuring audit quality.
The average minority shareholder of a listed company probably doesn't even know which firm audits the company. There's this dangerous perception that all auditors are more or less the same, and that it's not up to the investors to demand for audit quality.

There are several questions that shareholders (and investors, in general) should be asking about the auditors and their selection by the management.

How were the auditors picked, and how did the board satisfy itself that it had found the best firm for the job? Who is the partner of the firm who will oversee the audit and how is he qualified to handle that role? Do the audit fees reflect the extent of work required? Bear in mind that in audit, a bargain is not always a good thing. If the same firm has been the auditors for a long time, is there a need to consider a change? How do the auditors ensure independence?

Yes, these are rather dull and procedural areas, but isn't it better to tackle these questions now than after the breakdown of a company?

Executive editor Errol Oh has said this before and he'll say it again many people don't understand what is it that auditors really do.

Electrons Are Near-Perfect Spheres

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By Wired UK

By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

A 10-year study has revealed that the electron is very spherical indeed.

To be precise, the electron differs from being perfectly round by less than 0.000000000000000000000000001 cm. To put that in context; if an electron was the size of the solar system, it would be out from being perfectly round by less than the width of a human hair.

The Imperial College team behind the research, which was conducted on molecules of ytterbium flouride, used a laser to make measurements of the motion of electrons, and in particular the wobble they exhibit when spinning. They observed no such wobble, implying that the electron is perfectly round at the levels of precision available, reflected in the figure above.



The co-author of the report describing the research, Jony Hudson, said: “We’re really pleased that we’ve been able to improve our knowledge of one of the basic building blocks of matter. It’s been a very difficult measurement to make, but this knowledge will let us improve our theories of fundamental physics. People are often surprised to hear that our theories of physics aren’t ‘finished’, but in truth they get constantly refined and improved by making ever more accurate measurements like this one.”

The next step is to up that precision level even further, using new methods to cool the molecules to extremely low temperatures and control their motion. The results are important in the study of antimatter, and particularly the positron — which should behave identically to the electron but with an opposite electrical charge. If more differences can be found, it could help to explain why far less antimatter has been discovered in the universe than predicted by theory.

Image: Lawrence Rayner/Flickr
Source: Wired.co.uk 

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Emerging giants denounce Europe lock IMF leadership for France's Lagarde

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Emerging giants denounce Europe lock on top job of world’s key lender

PARIS / BEIJING - France's Christine Lagarde announced her candidacy for the presidency of the International Monetary Fund, amid calls from the five major emerging economies for an end to the tradition that a European chairs the IMF.

France's Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announces her candidacy to head the IMF during a press conference in Paris, May 25, 2011.[Photo/Agencies]

The French finance minister announced her intentions on Wednesday, the eve of a G8 summit, after securing the backing of the 27-nation European Union and support from the United States, diplomats said.

"It is an immense challenge which I approach with humility and in the hope of achieving the broadest possible consensus," Lagarde told a news briefing

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French citizen, resigned last week after being charged with attempted rape.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa on Tuesday criticized EU officials for suggesting that the next IMF head should be a European, a convention that dates back to the founding of the global lender at the end of World War II.

However, the countries, known as the BRICS, failed to unite behind a common alternative candidate.

Related readings:  France's Lagarde announces candidacy for IMF chief  Troubled IMF needs changes  PBOC adviser: US clout impedes reform of IMF    Tests link DNA to ex-IMF chief

In the first joint statement issued by their directors at the IMF in Washington, the BRICS said that the choice of who heads the IMF should be based on competence, not nationality. They called for "abandoning the obsolete, unwritten convention that requires that the head of the IMF be from Europe".

The statement was made one day after nominations for the job opened.

"The recent financial crisis which erupted in developed countries underscored the urgency of reforming international financial institutions so as to reflect the growing role of developing countries in the world economy," said the statement.

Chinese experts said the statement should be taken seriously.

"If developed countries don't respect the opinion of the BRICS, Lagarde is very likely to fail to win enough votes," said economist Guo Tianyong, director of the Research Center of the Chinese Banking Industry at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

BRICS account for about 11 percent of the voting rights, and Lagarde needs 85 percent of the votes to get the position.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at a news conference in Addis Ababa on Wednesday at the close of the India-Africa trade summit that emerging countries should take a united stand on this issue.

"The reform of the global institutions, and that includes the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank), has been high on the agenda of developing countries for a long time," AFP quoted him as saying.

"But we have also to recognize that international relations beyond a point are power relations and that those who wield power do not wish to yield ground very easily," he said.

Public statements made recently by high-ranking European officials contradict public announcements made in 2007, at the time of the selection of Strauss-Kahn.

Jean-Claude Junker, president of the Eurogroup (finance ministers of the eurozone), then declared that "the next managing director will certainly not be a European" and that "in the Eurogroup and among EU finance ministers, everyone is aware that Strauss-Kahn will probably be the last European to become director of the IMF in the foreseeable future".
He Weiwen, an expert at a research institute affiliated to the Ministry of Commerce, said whether the convention will end depends on the US, which holds 17.75 percent of IMF shares and 16.8 percent of the voting rights.

"It's still very difficult for emerging economies to challenge the tradition" because the US is very likely to favor a European candidate as it will get reciprocal support from Europe for an American to run the World Bank, he

Officials from the BRICS emphasized that the new managing director should be selected after broad consultations with the membership, and said that adequate representation of emerging markets and developing members in the IMF management is critical for its legitimacy and effectiveness.

Developing countries have spent years attempting to reform the key global economic institution, as emerging economies became the major drivers of world economic development.

China last week said that the new IMF leader should be chosen on "merit, transparency and fairness".

Li Daokui, an adviser to the Chinese central bank's monetary policy committee, said earlier that the chances of a European taking the position are slim, but supporting a Chinese candidate is not the best choice for the country.

"I think a talent from a neutral and small country would accord more with the interests of the world, including China, because big countries such as India and Brazil have too many national interests," he said.

Agencies-China Daily
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Jetting into the Malay psyche!

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COMMENT By BARADAN KUPPUSAMY

The DAP, which has seen little success in drawing Malays into its party, is banking on the newly-launched Roketkini.com, a news portal in Bahasa Malaysia, to change the mind of the community.

THE DAP has always claimed to be a multi-racial party but has always struggled to win over Malays in any large numbers to its Malaysian Malaysia banner.

In the 1980s, it had a prominent Malay in the late Ahmad Nor, the Cuepacs president who was a firm believer in the party's struggles.

In recent times, the DAP has recruited the prominent Tunku Abdul Aziz, a co-founder of the Malaysian chapter of Transparency International, as its vice-chairman.

The party had hoped that more Malays would follow him.

His recruitment five months after the March 8, 2008 general election was hailed as the way to go for the multi-racial but Chinese-dominated DAP as it seeks to replace the MCA and Gerakan as the main contender for the support of the Chinese.

In peninsular Malaysia, the Tamil support for the DAP has also grown in the wake of the 2008 polls with the rise of Dr P. Ramasamy as the titular head of the Indian wing.



His elevation as Deputy Chief Minister of Penang, a first for Indians, was greeted with awe by the community that thus far had to be content with MIC president Datuk S. Samy Vellu as the sole minister in the Barisan Nasional government.

In Perak after 2008, another Indian was elevated to state assembly Speaker but Tronoh assemblyman V. Sivakumar's tenure of service was cut short by the defections of three state assemblymen two from PKR and one from DAP in February 2009 and the fall of the Pakatan Rakyat government. (That Speaker post was taken over by another Indian from Barisan, also for the first time in history).

However, after trying for about three years, Tunku Abdul Aziz announced last week that he had failed to recruit Malays to the DAP and that his presence in the party had not helped to win over the Malay grassroots in any appreciable number.

It was an honest admission that the party had failed to recruit Malays despite trying very hard.

The primary reason is that the DAP is seen by the Malays as a Chinese party, fighting for Chinese rights in a country dominated by Malays and is therefore to be avoided.

While Malays do want to interact with the DAP, they would rather do so as distinct members of the PKR or PAS and not as individuals or as members of the DAP.

Post-2008, the DAP's experience with Malays has changed dramatically with many opportunities opening up to understand Malay problems closely.

No longer is the DAP shunned or avoided by the Malays as a Chinese party.

In the Tenang by-election, the over- zealous DAP turned PAS candidate Normala Sudirman into a “Chinese empress” all decked out in traditional Chinese clothes so the Chinese voters there could accept her.

Umno must make up its mind on DAP's 'racism'

But the rapport with the Malays from these encounters is just not enough for the party which has grand visions of leading the democratic movement in the country.

The recent Sarawak elections showed that the DAP is a clear winner among the Pakatan Rakyat parties.

It also pointed to DAP being able to win over the urban masses of all races, not just in Sarawak but also in the peninsula and most likely in Sabah as well.

The Sarawak victory, however, showed its weaknesses as well it is an urban force and its failure to have a say over the vast rural reaches, which it surrendered to PKR, has come back to haunt it.

That is why party adviser Lim Kit Siang proposed a merger with SNAP to get at SNAP's rural connections although the party lost nearly all of its deposits in the Sarawak polls.

Still, the question remains: Why won't the Malays join the DAP? Is not the DAP also fighting for the same things that the Malays want?”

These questions have forced the DAP into a brand new strategy to win over the community.

By forming Roketkini.com, helmed by editor Wan Hamidi Hamid, it hopes to reach out to the Malay grassroots. Its aim is to reach out to them by providing views that are distinct from PKR or PAS.

How well it does and how many Malays it can wean from Umno are all questions that only time will tell.


Related post:

For sure public advocacy is here to stay, jetting the Malay psyche!

China’s Super Rich Get All the Headlines

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 Ray Kwong

I think we can all agree that China has a lot of newly minted millionaires and billionaires, and that along with the only slightly less privileged they’ve made a significant impact on the global luxury market.
Without a doubt, they make great copy—expressing their collective capitalist thoughts by buying up expensive cars, yachts, private jets and even helicopters.

 

                All photos by M. Scott Brauer

But what about the common people on the street? What’s the average Zhou Blow thinking and what does he have to say?

Enter We Chinese, a photo project that doesn’t profess to be much more than that, but still provides a fascinating quick read on what Chinese people think about China and the part they see themselves playing in their homeland’s future. A few random excerpts:

• “I am a builder of China’s future, just like a component of an airplane, and with me China will soar even farther in the future,” said Cen Qi, 24, a student. “China includes Taiwan, where Chinese people reside, and it is the abbreviation of the People’s Republic of China.”
• “China is just the name of a country,” said Bo Wei Jun, 36, an engineer. “Occasionally the people bring up suggestions, but nobody listens.”
• [China means] “hope, power and culture,” said Ya Ming, 47, a reporter. [My role] is “to make a bigger contribution to world peace.”
• “A ‘voiceless’ person has no way of offering society even the smallest contribution,” said Rui Ling Yan, 21, a student. “China is my ancestral country mother. It’s what I hold most dear.”

Scott Brauer, a photojournalist and former China resident, started the We Chinese project as a way to respond to friends’, family’s, and strangers’ questions about the global direction of China and their stereotypes of the people.

“The project aims to give faces and voices to a small section of the Chinese people caught in the center of historic shifts in the country’s socioeconomic circumstances,” said Brauer.

While you can’t draw any conclusions about the entire population—the final project has just 100 portraits and short interviews—the sentiments are revealing. Brauer says: “the responses range from prosaic to poetic, from rote to inspired, and from unemotional to patriotic. The people photographed expressed a sincere love of country and optimism about the country’s future development and peaceful position in the world.”

We Chinese is definitely worth a look-see.

For a more in-depth look at China, as told by leading participants in or observers of China’s transformation over the past three decades, go to Asia Society’s China Boom website which I wrote about previously here.

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Honouring Malaysian legacy of service to the nation

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Researching and writing Legacy of Honour was an inspiring journey for Zainah Anwar. – AHMAD IZZRAFIQ ALIAS / The Star

CERITALAH By KARIM RASLAN

The Malay community owes three generations of the illustrious Johor-based aristocratic Onn family a great debt of honour. They were leaders far, far ahead of the times.

HISTORY matters. We need to understand the forces that shaped our past in order to craft our future. Self-knowledge is critical. Ignorance will mean we end up repeating the mistakes of the past.

Zainah Anwar’s well-written and intimate personal history of three  generations of the illustrious Johor-based aristocratic Onn family — Legacy of Honour — is an important book for all Malays and all Malaysians.

As a Johorean herself whose father Cikgu Anwar served with Datuk Onn Jaafar, Zainah has woven together Malaysian contemporary history, economics, culture and politics.

Moreover, the book’s appearance is timely. We are living in an era when honour, principle and public service are often ignored and/or ridiculed.

With Legacy of Honour we are reminded of excellence, with three remarkable leaders — two Johor Mentris Besar, Datuk Jaafar Mohamed and Onn Jaafar, and one Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn.

Indeed, the men — all from the same family — were to shape public policy and governance for well over a century, from the 1850s right through to the early 1980s.

They were open-minded men: curious and equipped with bold ideas.

At the same time they had the courage of their convictions. In the case of Umno’s titanic founder, Onn Jaafar, this sense of principle was to lead to his premature departure from the party and his isolation in later years.

Nonetheless, they were also intensely driven men.

Once again, Onn Jaafar stands out. For example, he would always talk about wanting to “betulkan orang Melayu” (correct the Malays) by modernising and improving Malay living standards and conditions.



Jaafar Mohamed was born in 1838. Coming from a long line of palace advisers, he started his career as a clerk at his uncle’s office, who was a Minister to Temenggong Ibrahim and later went onto become Dato Bentara (State Secretary) at the age of 25.

In 1885, he was appointed the first Mentri Besar of modern Johor, a post he held until his death in 1919.
Jaafar was responsible for the creation of modern Johor.

Working alongside Sultan Abu Bakar, he was to build Johor from the ground up until it became the strongest and most prestigious of the Malay states.

He was an exacting but fair man who recognised the importance of the rule of law. As such he set out the “kangcu” system of land usage and taxation for Chinese settlers.

Both he and Sultan Abu Bakar achieved their ends without losing their highly cherished independence to the British. Educated in both English and Malay from an early age, Jaafar was unafraid of new ideas as long as they delivered results — prosperity, stability and sovereignty for his beloved state.

However, he also prized his Malay cultural roots very highly and in his spectacular residence, Bukit Senyum in Johor Baru, he created a distinguished environment where the cherished collection of Malay literature such as syairs, hikayats and novels were to be found.

And the children were all expected to learn how to perform ghazals — the Middle-Eastern inspired poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain.

At the same time, his many children and especially his daughters — flouting conservative sentiment — went to English language schools.

With Jaafar’s death, the family were to lose their beloved Bukit Senyum residence.

The family’s difficult relations with Sultan Ibrahim meant that Onn Jaafar moved to Singapore where he emerged as a fervent critic of royal injustice and misadministration.

Onn Jaafar was to become an indefatigable journalist and editor. His trenchant criticisms of Malay backwardness and failure were read across the peninsula, earning him enormous respect among the ordinary people.

This in turn laid the groundwork for his greatest task — the unification of a divided Malay community in the face of the British initiative, the Malayan Union, and the formation of Umno.

Onn Jaafar had an immense capacity for work. His energy was unequalled.

This level of diligence was apparent in the late Tun Hussein Onn, who was known for his unflinching dedication to detail — underlining the salient points in every report he read.

The Malay community owes all three men a great debt of honour. Suffice to say they were leaders far, far ahead of the times.

Indeed, Malaysia is in dire need of more leaders in a similar mould, men who have the confidence and polish to reach across race, class and religious boundaries.