Tag: Michael Carlo C. Rodolfo

A FASTER and more efficient technology has arrived in the Philippines.

The development of nanotechnology in the country is welcome, but compassion for other people and care for the environment should be given importance, a professor said in a conference about the ethical viewpoints of nanotechnology held at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex Auditorium.

“There should be responsibility and accountability in the developing nanotechnology,”said Marciana Agnes Ponsaran, a philosophy professor from the College of Science, in the “Ika-14 na Panayam Pang-agham” held last Aug. 20.

A FORMER Budget secretary thinks President Aquino was bluffing when he said last Aug. 23 that he would abolish the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), popularly known as “pork barrel.”

It was an insincere attempt to resolve the issue, said UP economist Benjamin Diokno, former secretary of the Department of Budget and Management under the administration of President Joseph Estrada who’s now Manila mayor.

The President drew flak over his Aug. 23 announcement, which was interpreted as not abolishing PDAF per se but instead introducing a “modified” system of pork barrel.

PDAF has become a bribe from the president for lawmakers to be lenient in their constitutional duty to scrutinize carefully the national budget, Diokno said.

THE GOVERNMENT wants the University to serve as a catch basin to mitigate the perennial flooding problem in this part of the city.

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) is proposing to dig out a “retarding tank” under the University’s open grounds to serve as storage for water during heavy rains, to be pumped out to waterways after a downpour.

“It will serve as a catchment basin,” said Reynaldo Tagudando, DPWH National Capital Region director. “The flood water will be retained in the tank instead of being in the surface.”

The proposed retarding tank will be similar to the one built at Bonifacio Global City in Taguig, he added.

Underground carpark

THE SEARCH for justice is still not over.

After 12 years, two of four persons implicated in the brutal murder of Mark Welson Chua, an Engineering student and Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (ROTC) cadet, remain at large.

The whereabouts of former cadet officers Paul Joseph Tan and Michael Von Rainard Manangbao of the UST Golden Corps are still unknown.

Mangabao is believed to be hiding in Malaysia while Tan had fled to the United States according to Charmaine Chua, Mark’s sister, in a previous interview with the Varsitarian.

Meanwhile, others, namely former cadet officers Arnulfo Aparri and Eduardo Tabrilla, are already serving their sentence.

WILL K to 12 boost Filipino graduates’ marketability?

President Aquino signed last May 15 the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013, the law mandatory to the K to 12 program, extending basic education to 12 years.

Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) Commissioner Cynthia Bautista said the new law will somehow “level” Filipino students with students in other countries. Filipino students usually fall short in terms of competency due to lack of education, she said.

“Filipinos will get jobs in Asia but they will be vulnerable to sub-optimal conditions because they lack two years,” said Bautista.

The additional two years will allow Filipino graduates to continue their studies abroad, she added.

PROMOTING sports and exercise science in the country by reiterating the basics, together with the current advances and modern innovations in the field, was the goal of the Philippine Association for Sports and Exercise Sciences (PHASES) in its conference last May 23 to 25 held at the Medicine Auditorium.

The event, organized in collaboration with UST College of Rehabilitation Sciences (CRS), gathered at least a hundred Physical Education teachers, coaches, students, practitioners and researchers from all over the country with the aim to present modern advances, demonstrate new skill and publicize research findings in the field.

Poets and writers sang anthems to peace when they gathered last May 14 to read literary works as their way of supporting the current peace talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The event, Macondo: Poetry & Peace from QC to Colombia, was held in Quezon City.

Poet and critic Gemino Abad said the activity was organized by the World Poetry Movement.

Khavn de la Cruz, festival director of .MOV Fest, said that he got the name Macondo after the fictional town in Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

He explained that the role of poets in the face of conflicts and crises is to keep an “absurdist hope.”

A “SMART” cane that optimizes rehabilitation, nanoparticles that detect harmful compounds in food and a crucial discovery that could lead to the reclassification of four plant species—these are some of the best theses produced for academic year 2012-2013.

And did you know that playing boxing on Wii is indeed a good exercise? That’s the finding of a group of Rehabilitation Science students, who joined those from the College of Science and the Faculty of Engineering in conducting some of the most interesting researches on campus.

A group of biology students discovered the real generic identities of Canthium—an endemic species of flowering plant that comes in the form of shrubs and small trees—that should be bound for reclassification.