Tag: May 13, 2010

FOR THE nth time of being issued with a tardy slip in class, my default reason aside from waking up late is traffic jam.

Sandwiched at the middle of the busy street of Dapitan during rush hour, I chanced upon another queer political stratagem of local government officials to establish “name recall” this coming elections—jingle-sounding caravans.

Yet there are those lucky enough who don’t need cheesy gimmicks to garner votes from the electorates. Movie stars, singing sensations, hijos and hijas of veteran politicians and ex-actors, and yes, sports superstars who found their new battle in the political ring.

“BEING original is overrated, but being you isn’t.” – Raul Echivarre.

That was one quote that caught my attention when reading this month’s issue of Digital Photographer Philippines magazine. This issue, which centered on travel photography, seemed rather fitting and timely to me because it arrived days before I had an unforgettable photo shoot experience where I practiced what I had learned on how to be a travel photographer.

When our college magazine editor-in-chief told us that we would be having a “cultural immersion” in Brgy. Batad in Ifugao, I didn’t hesitate in joining, having seen some awe-inspiring photos of the place on the Internet. After all, in Ifugao lies one of the famous eighth wonders of the world.

THE U.S. Library of Congress will take your Tweets now. The social networking site Twitter has allowed the largest library in the world to archive all “Tweets”—online status updates not exceeding 140 characters—that were published on its site ever since 2006. More than 50 million Tweets are published everyday, so the total number of posts for the four years the site has been online must be staggering.

SOME COLLEGES are offering fewer humanities subjects, a move that does not sit well with the head of the University’s humanities department.

“It (dropping Humanities subjects) is like destroying the foundational knowledge that [UST] students ought to have,” Joyce Arriola, chairperson of the UST department of humanities, said in an interview. “After all, UST is a ‘classical’ university.”

Humanities covers Theology, Communication, Media, Journalism, Arts (Fine Arts, Architecture, Music, Dance, and Film), History, and Social Sciences.

“For contemporary concepts, it’s fine to have fewer offerings of Humanities subjects, but not for UST, which ought to retain the conventional way of teaching,” Arriola said.

THE FACULTY of Arts and Letters (Artlets) and the College of Tourism and Hospitality Management remained the highest producers of honor students in the University, even as other colleges have lowered the number of honor graduates as a percentage of the total.

The Faculty of Civil Law produced just one cum laude, which the dean said was due to the difficulty of the course.

In Artlets, a slight increase in honor graduates was attributed by its dean to “good students” lured by the faculty. Artlets saw a rise in the number of honor graduates this school year, and was still the top producer of cum laudes for the third consecutive year, data from the registrar’s office showed.

THOMASIANS continued to turn ideas into innovations in this year’s best scientific theses which presented new discoveries in both technology and health sciences.

Here are some of the few studies recognized inside and outside the University.

Faculty of Engineering: The robot game system

Electronic engineering students Patrick Jonathan Cadeliña, Joseph Vincent Cano, Phoenix John Casanova, Ralph Justine de los Angeles and George Oliver Lopega developed a gaming system similar to the Micro Robot World Soccer Tournament, a soccer game played by robots created by Jong-Hwan Kim of South Korea.

THE FACULTY of Medicine and Surgery will be receiving recognition from an international pain research and development organization for its contributions to the field and for being the first institution in Southeast Asia to offer a pain medicine course.

Medicine’s post graduate course in pain medicine will be given an award in excellence in pain research and management by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the world’s largest organization focused specifically on pain research and management.

This will only be the third time IASP will be giving the award, which recognizes institutions and persons who have made exceptional contributions to pain research and development, since the organization’s inception in 2005.

FOR FISHERMEN, an algal bloom is considered a “pond scum,” a parasite to their source of livelihood. However, for scientists like Rey Donne Papa, algal growth may help solve the country’s energy problems.

During field work, Papa of the Research Center for the Natural Sciences and his thesis students accidentally found Botryococcus braunii Kützing (B. braunii), more commonly known as green algae, in Paoay, Ilocos Norte.

The novel discovery was documented in a study titled “Blooms of the Colonial Green Algae, Botryococcus braunii Kützing, in Paoay Lake, Luzon Island, Philippines.”

BEAT the summer heat with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Clinical dietitians from the UST Hospital’s dietary department have encouraged students to eat fruits and vegetables rich in fiber that cleanse our body system of toxins and waste. Fiber-rich foods lessen a person’s chance of acquiring cardiovascular diseases and colon disorders—they are mainly called alkaline foods.

Alkaline foods are known to lessen the risks of acquiring cancer because of their fiber and mineral content like potassium, sodium, and phosphorus, which help regulate normal body function.

ADAPTING novels to the big screen has been a common practice for filmmakers and screenwriters, dating as far back as the early 1900s where timeless classics such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist already had their film counterparts.

But in time, these page-to-reel transitions have become a dime-a-dozen, with some filmmakers chopping off even the most necessary parts in the novel just to make a fitting adaptation.

This summer, works of authors Alice Sebold and Dennis Lehane are granted the big screen glory, but do their respective films deliver?

The Lovely Bones: style over substance