By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — Electronic device purchases in the Philippines are increasing despite the dire economic situation. People are buying more computers, mobile phones and electric appliances, as prices are going down and performance improving. However, few are aware of the dangers of electronic waste.

According to environmental group Greenpeace, electronic waste or e-waste produces among the highest concentrations of heavy metals like mercury, cadmium, nickel, lithium and beryllium.

The e-waste problem is also compounded by the growth of the information technology industry.

The European Union (EU) has already foreseen the impact of the IT industry on the production of e-waste. The EU has signed into law the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive” that requires manufacturers, private firms and individuals to properly dispose obsolete electronic equipment.

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By Agence France-Presse

PARIS–The age-old fantasy of rendering objects invisible took a sharp step toward reality Sunday when scientists said they had created a material that can bend visible light in three dimensions.

For now the vanishing act takes place on a nanoscale, measured in billionths of a meter.

But there is no fundamental reason why the same principles cannot be scaled up one day to make invisibility cloaks big enough to hide a person, a tank or even a tanker, the scientists say.

The groundbreaking experiments, led by Xiang Zhang at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, were reported simultaneously in the British journal Nature and the US-based journal Science.
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By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines – Can you imagine how many feathers are accumulated when chickens you eventually feast on are slaughtered?

While watching the slaughter of chickens, Filipino scientist Menandro Acda was likely thinking of this when he realized the potential use of chicken feathers that are often considered waste in the poultry industry.

Chicken feathers are often incinerated. But the burning can cause environmental problems, according to Acda

“Millions of kilos of waste feathers are generated each year by commercial poultry processing plants resulting in serious solid waste problem,” added Acda who is a professor from the University of the Philippines Los Banos.

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