By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

DR. Baldomero Olivera, a Filipino award-winning scientist who has discovered new drugs for pain, Alzheimer’s and epilepsy in the Philippine wildlife, is set to visit the country next month.

Technology Business Incubator and the Brain Gain Network have invited Dr. Olivera to an innovation forum in Filipinas Heritage Library on July 6 to speak on his discoveries of new sources of painkillers, including deadly sea snails, among others.

Olivera was recently awarded by the Harvard Foundation as Scientist of the Year following his three decades of work in developing drugs from the animal wildlife, according to a copy of his brief profile.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THE WORLD Bank on Tuesday approved a total of $57 million for the Philippine government’s National Program Support for Environmental and Natural Resources Management (NPSENRMP), as mandated for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

NPSENRMP focuses on assisting the DENR in pursuing its activities to conserve and protect the country’s environmental and natural resources.

The grant is divided by the WB, which provided $50 million while the remaining $7 million came from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an organization of international governments that funds projects dedicated to conserving and protecting the environment.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

A FILIPINO project called the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation, Inc (AIDFI) won second prize in the 2007 Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, an international contest instituted in the United Kingdom that identifies projects related to efficient energy management at small community levels.

AIDFI’s innovative “ram pump” technology won it the Ashden Awards second prize worth 10,000 British pounds (P928,000) for the Education and Welfare category.

Ram pumps are devices that draw ground water up to certain heights without the need for external power sources such as diesel pumps or manual pumping. Instead, ram pumps use the kinetic energy of falling water to draw up more water.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THE WORLD Wildlife Fund Philippines and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources are working together to save the country’s vast coral reefs against the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci), which feeds on living coral.

Just recently, over 5, 212 crown-of-thorn starfishes were caught off the vicinity of Apo Reef in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro, which has been devastated by the predatory animals.

Crown-of-thorns are found throughout the Indo-Pacific region and these could grow to 80 centimeters in diameter. These large creatures are so named for their stingy thorns that coat their bodies. When fully grown, a group of crown-of-thorns can decimate in just a few weeks several square meters of coral, which need years to grow. Just one adult crown-of-thorn can consume six square meters of coral in a year.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THE PHILIPPINES’ garbage disposal problem is the main focus of a thesis created by a Filipino scientist who studied in Australia.

Dr. Aylen Ramos, one of the recent members of the Department of Science and Technology’s Balik Scientist program, is offering to the Philippine government and local government units a software called “Computer-Aided Tool for Sighting Sanitary Landfills” or CATSSAL, which she developed as a thesis for her postgraduate degree in environmental engineering from the Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.

In an interview with INQUIRER.net, Ramos, who is currently the laboratory manager in the chemistry department of the New Jersey City University in the US, said that the software she developed aims to assist government planners in locating landfills most applicable for the environment and any nearby communities.

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