BY now, you’ve probably read a lot of news about the swine flu spreading around the world at an alarming rate. At this point, it is best to know what it is to help us prepare. We’ve collated some news and information we think would be useful

Information culled by Reuters:

Q&A: How serious is swine flu?

Excerpt:

WHAT KIND OF FLU IS IT AND HOW IS IT SPREADING?

The virus is influenza A virus, carrying the designation H1N1, but it contains DNA from avian, swine and human H1N1 viruses. It appears to have evolved the ability to pass easily from one person to another, unlike most swine H1N1 viruses which only very occasionally infect people and usually only infect one person and then stop there.

Flu viruses are all passed on by sneezing, coughing or when people pick up the virus on their hands. This one likely originated in pigs, but the Mexican government and the World Health Organization have ruled out any risk of infection from eating pork.

HOW SERIOUS IS IT?

The Geneva-based WHO has declared the flu a “public health emergency of international concern” and raised the threat level for a pandemic, a global epidemic of new disease. H1N1 swine flu poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu re-emerged in 2003, killing 257 out of 421 infected in 15 countries.

It is not clear yet whether this virus could actually become a pandemic.

Poynter Institute has also tracked a growing pool of information from the Internet. In fact, the Internet is now abuzz with swine flu talk in Twitter and blogs.

Here’s another interesting step-by-step way to track news and information about the Swine Flu on the Internet from Mashable.

The Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) is planning to hold an annual robotics competition among the country’s science high schools.

The competition would allow science high school students to show their prowess in creating a robot, in the same manner as “Larry Labuyo,” the robot created by a group of students from the Philippine Science High School in Quezon City, which joined the prestigious FIRST Robotics competition in Hawaii and Atlanta, Georgia in the US.

The competition is set to be officially announced sometime in June or July, in time for the upcoming National Science and Technology Week (NSTW).

SEI Director Ester Ogena said the robotics competition is aimed at encouraging young science high school students to pursue technical courses related to the creation of robotics, particularly in the areas of software programming, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering.

Ogena said the Philppine robotics team recently sent abroad with “Larry Labuyo” are examples of young people working together to build a complex machine. “Obviously, our intention is to develop communities among our students.”

Ogena said the SEI is stil finalizing the guidelines for the competition. She said that the development kit for each school participating in the competition would have to be composed of parts mostly purchasable from local shops.

“We’re still working on what the development kit would have. They won’t have to be expensive but they have to be workable,” Ogena said.

MANILA, Philippines—A non-government organization (NGO) is calling on government to recognize the “real and present danger” posed by climate change to coastal communities on Earth Day which is being celebrated today.

The Tambuyog Development Center, an NGO that assists coastal municipalities in drafting local Fisheries Code and Coastal Resource Management Plans, is calling the attention of various government agencies to fast track responses to climate change challenges.

Tambuyog specified the assistance of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Department of Interior and Local Government.

During its Earth Day event, Dinna Umengan, lead campaigner of the group, said Tambuyog was primarily concerned with the impact of climate change on coastal and marine natural resources that have a direct bearing on the food security and livelihood of millions of people in coastal communities.

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By Dennis Posadas

Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared officially that six greenhouse gases namely carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, are a threat to public health and welfare.

Based on scientific evidence, particularly that summarized in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007, these greenhouse gases produce global warming which is responsible for stronger storms, changes in weather patterns, higher sea levels that inundate formerly habitable coastal areas, and other effects.

This declaration by the EPA will hopefully be a precursor to how the United States will act in the Copenhagen summit this year. Copenhagen is where the world’s leaders will gather this year to find a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol which the Bush administration refused to ratify.

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By Dennis Posadas

WITH the rise of institutions like the UP Ayala Technohub (a Silicon Valley-like enclave at the UP Diliman campus) and Filipinos like Dado Banatao (hardware/semiconductors) and Winston Damarillo (open source software), one would think that we are on our way to developing a local Silicon Valley-type environment like Beijing’s Zhongguancun district or India’s Bangalore. It is nice to talk and dream about these things, especially since we have a lot of technopreneurs in ICT, in telecoms, in software, hardware and other technologies. But as Kevin Costner said in the movie Field of Dreams, “if you build it they will come.” By it, we mean an ecosystem for innovation.

First we need a source of innovation. Typically, it can come from universities like UP, government R&D labs, private corporations that have research arms, or even individuals. The problem sometimes with innovation that comes from corporations that do research, as in the case of Route 128 in Boston, Massachusetts in the 60’s and 70’s, is that oftentimes these are confidential research. No wonder, it is research done for the advancement of the business, and not some altruistic “blue sky” research.

On the other hand, universities oftentimes engage in extremely theoretical research, because their aim is primarily knowledge creation. “Publish or perish” is the credo often heard in the academe, and to do research with business overtones has traditionally been viewed as a sellout to the establishment. So here you have two extremes, pulling scientists and engineers towards the two ends of the spectrum. Another source of innovation are the government R&D institutions like the DoST ASTI, which has developed the Bayanihan Linux operating system for example.

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