As the year comes to a close, it now appears that Typhoon Sendong (international name Washi) is the deadliest storm of 2011. It affected more than 27,000 families in around 190 barangays, in 24 municipalities and cities in the 13 provinces of Region VI, Region VII, Region IX, Region X, Region XI, CARAGA and the ARMM. Retrieval operations are still going on and thousands of families remain in evacuation centers as their houses were destroyed and swept away by flash floods. With nearly a thousand dead and still more missing, many are asking how ready the Philippines is as a country to increased hazards such as typhoons and other climate change effects.

Yesterday marked the birth anniversary of Andres Boni-facio, Filipino nationalist, revolutionary and Supremo of the Katipunan. His anniversary yesterday was marked by protests actions in the metropolis by workers and peasants due to the ever increasing costs of living nowadays. Pressed by current economic concerns, people made the celebration of his birth also a time to reflect on the value of heroism in our time.

WE mark today one year since our top beloved botanist Leonard Co and his companions, forest guard Sofronio Cortez and farmer guide Julius Borromeo, were shot dead by members of the 19th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in Kananga, Leyte province.

PRESS STATEMENT
October 30, 2011

Environmental advocates commemorate All Souls Day with the call for Justice for Leonard Co, Julius Borromeo and Sofronio Cortez!

Letterto the Editor
October 30, 2011

It has been a year since Leonard Co, Julius Borromeo and Sofronio Cortez were blatantly killed by elements of the Philippine Army. Up until now, not a single warrant of arrest or inquest has happened. It is very heartbreaking for those who loved and valued Leonard Co. This culture of impunity which has been haunting our country claimed the life of a national treasure. Leonard was a renowned taxonomist. He dedicated his life to science in service of our nation. Instead of giving him proper awards and citations, he got bullets from whom we call “defenders of peace”.

I missed turning in the column last week as I was attending an optics conference in San Jose in California. Scientists and researchers around the world presented their latest results in their respective fields and exchanged information with each other. Not many would immediately recognize San Jose but most would be familiar with the newer term for the area– Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the world.

FROM the middle of this week until Friday, various mobi-lizations and community programs will be held in most of the country’s state colleges and universities (SUC/SCU) to protest the dwindling budget allocation to our public tertiary system. It is alarming since in a span of only 12 years, state subsidy has shrunk from around 87.7 percent to only 65.6 percent of the budget of these institutions. It is also worrying since President Benigno Aquino 3rd himself, in his budget message this year, said that his government is “gradually reducing the subsidy to SUCs to push them toward becoming self-sufficient and financially independent, given their ability to raise their income and to utilize it for their programs and projects.”

WIKILEAKS has recently released publicly the entire cache of diplomatic cables that they had in their possession. The move stemmed from allegations by WikiLeaks that accused the UK newspaper The Guardian of divulging passwords that enabled access to encrypted files that contained the cables. The passwords were published within a passage in a book by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. The Guardian denies the allegations saying that although they did in fact publish a password, they did not give out details of the location of the files (to which the password is to be used) and that they +gwere told that it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.+h

PUBLIC opinion, in theory, is the sum of all the views, attitudes and beliefs of a community on a particular topic. How society views an issue is important in politics, elections and in other spheres such as culture, fashion and the arts. Typically, through interaction and communication, a consensus is built on a particular issue (usually through a substantial number of individuals holding the same beliefs), which in turn exerts influence, directly or indirectly, on others.

(Dr. Tapang’s colleague Kim Gargar contributed today’s column.)

MANY scientists have realized that the distinction between biology and physics is artificial; that if we are to completely understand living things, we must first accept that each of them are composed of matter wherein various forms of transformation of energy and matter occur within and with their surroundings. While “mainstream” physicists keep themselves busy either with elucidating how fundamental particles work or with finding ways to manipulate inanimate condensed-matter for the development of new materials, an increasing number of their colleagues are helping biologists answer diverse biological questions piece by piece, and for various goals.