By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

IF you’re tired of reading about the fertilizer fund scam issue, then maybe it’s time to turn the leaf and make your own organic fertilizer in the backyard.

During a walk at the La Mesa Ecopark, I noticed vermiculturist Rogelio Moreno mixing soil with worms, which they called Vermicompost, an organic fertilizer. The worms were digging holes and gliding in the soil. While some people would feel icky about worms, Moreno considers them as “angels of the Earth.”

“Ang kagandahan ng mga bulate, ang kanyang pupu, malaking katulungan sa mga farmers. Binubuhay nito ang lupa. [The worms’ feces are a big help to farmers because it enriches and enlivens the soil.],” says Moreno.

Moreno willingly taught me how to make vermicompost.

First, you should collect biodegradable garbage like dried leaves, fruit and vegetable peelings and animal feces. Then place them in an empty bed or container. Cover the garbage with dried leaves and straw. You can use all kinds of leaves except for mahogany, eucalyptus and nymph leaves, says Moreno.

To avoid the foul smell, add coco dust. Then water the bed everyday. Add the worms on top of the compost. After five days, you will notice that the worms have gone down. Cover it with a net. You will know that you have a fertilizer when the feces are fine. After two months, you can collect the fertilizer.

Moreno says a farmer can earn P 9,000 from one fertilizer bed.

Organic fertilizer will not only make your plants healthy but will make your pockets wealthy.

THE Congressional committees on government reorganization and appropriation approved the creation of a “Climate Change Commission.”

The committees are consolidating several proposals related to the creation of this new commission, including House Bills 400, 1775, 3291, 4051 and 4853.

These proposals were from Representatives Roilo Golez (2nd District, Paranaque City), Orlando Fua (Siquijor), and Carmelo Lazatin (1st District, Pampanga), Rex Gatchalian (1st District, Valenzuela) and Ignacio Arroyo (5th District, Negros Occidental).

The consolidated measure will require local government units (LGU) to implement climate action plans based on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

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Agence France-Presse

PARIS — Men significantly outnumbered women in the “out-of-Africa” migration some 60,000 years ago that eventually populated the rest of the world, according to a new study.

Africa is known to be the cradle of human evolution, and recent studies show that the people inhabiting other continents originate from a relatively small band of Homo sapiens who moved through the Near East, into Europe and beyond some 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.

But until now no one had figured out a way to determine what the sex-ratio of this so-called founding population might have been.

A quartet of researchers led by Alon Keinan at the Harvard Medical School thought that the secret might be locked inside differences in genetic code across distinct geographic regions.

They knew that the percentage of X chromosomes in a given population varies depending on the proportion of men.

The “X” and “Y” chromosomes determine sex — men have one of each, while women have two X chromosomes. The other 22 chromosome pairings in the human genome are all the same.

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Agence France-Presse

PARIS — Volcanic eruptions have periodically cooled the tropics over at least the last 450 years by spewing out particles that girdle the world at high altitude and reflect sunlight, according to a study released Sunday.

The research adds a chunk of regional evidence to earlier work that found major eruptions — such as Krakatoa, Indonesia in 1883 and Huaynaputina, Peru in 1600 — contribute to cooling on a worldwide scale.

A trio of scientists led by Rosanne D’Arrigo of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, looked at ocean temperatures in a belt extending from 30 degrees south across the equator to 30 degrees north.

They compiled temperature records reaching back nearly half a millennium from three sources: ice cores, tree rings and coral reefs.

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By Jennifer Gonzalez
Agence France-Presse

CLEVELAND — Doctors hailed a groundbreaking transplant to replace 80 percent of a woman’s face, saying Wednesday it is a means for the severely disfigured to “face the world” without humiliation.

It was the world’s first near-total facial transplant and the fourth known facial transplant to have been successfully performed to date.

“We need the face to face the world,” said lead surgeon and researcher Maria Siemionow of the Cleveland Clinic.

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