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Category Archive 'News'
03.10.08

Experts: Pterosaurs couldn’t soar

- Biology, Dinosaurs, Fossils, News, Paleontology, Uncategorized -

By Agence France-Presse

PARIS — A Japanese researcher has put paleo-biologists in a flap by suggesting pterosaurs — the winged lizards beloved of toymakers and dino movies — were unable to fly, New Scientist says.

Katsufumi Sato of the University of Tokyo carried out an unusual study on the Crozet Islands, in the southern Indian Ocean, to test flying ability among large sea birds.

He attached accelerometers the size of AA batteries to the wings of 28 birds from five large species, including the wandering albatross, the world’s biggest flying bird.

Albatrosses fly by riding shifting winds, thanks to wings spanning 3.5 metres (11.4 feet) whose shape can be varied to exploit each draft.

When there is no wind, or if the wind blows at a constant speed, the bird can only stay aloft by flapping its wings, otherwise it is forced down by gravity and air resistance.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

02.10.08

Solons petition Austrian incinerator loan

- Environment, News -

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

QUEZON CITY, Philippines – House Representative Edcel Lagman of Albay and Akbayan Representative Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel launched a petition to cancel the P503.65 million loan for 26 medical waste incinerators used by government-run hospitals.

The petition aims to cancel the payment of the remaining P100 million for the medical waste incinerator project, which started in 1996.

The loan from the Austrian government, through Bank Austria, is expected to be paid by September 2014.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

29.09.08

Website targets commercialization of DOST technologies

- Innovation, Inventions, News, Research, Science (general) -

By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Science and Technology last week activated an online portal designed to promote commercially viable technologies from Filipino scientists and researches.

The One-Stop-Information Shop of Technologies in the Philippines is an online database of over 280 technologies, inventions, and process improvements that can be used by small-to-medium scale businesses, manufacturing operators and other industries.

The OSIST project cost P20 million and was funded through the e-Government fund of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology.

It is currently operated through the Philippine Council for Industry and Energy Research and Deveopment (PCIERD).

In an interview, PCIERD Head of Technology Assessment Utilization and Transfer Albert Marino said the OSIST hopes to bring entrepreneurs to develop certain inventions and technologies to improve their own business, as well as generate business for the technology developers and inventors.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

15.09.08

Einstein provides vital clue for Filipino inventor

- Alternative Fuels, Energy, Innovation, Inventions, News -

MAURICE Malanes of the Philippine Daily Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau talks to Victor Ayco, a Filipino chemical engineer and inventor, who is not worried about the current oil crisis.

In fact, he sees this as an opportunity to explore alternative sources of fuel with the help of science. Malanes finds out that Ayco has found vital clues to creating a gas-saving product, thanks to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Excerpt:

A scientist and inventor, Ayco sees the crisis as an opportunity for the country to tap the inexhaustible potentials that science can offer in finding alternatives to fossil fuel.

“Many seem to anticipate a bleak future because of the prospect that one day the world’s fossil fuel deposits will finally run dry,” says Ayco, 70. “But fossil fuel is not the only source of energy that can run engines of cars and other machines. There are other inexhaustible alternatives [to fossil fuel].”

He based his radical optimism on what he regards as a vital clue from one of the geniuses of the 20th century — Albert Einstein. That clue is the theory of relativity, or E=mc², where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of light.

The Mandaluyong-based chemical engineer says Einstein’s theory helped him perfect his gas-saving product, which he demonstrated recently before Baguio City motorists.

Essentially, Einstein’s relativity theory, says Ayco, states that “from matter we can produce energy.”

His invention called “aero-nitro power injector” took 15 years of research and experiment. Patented on Dec. 11, 1985, the device has been marketed only recently through Energy Philippines Inc., a private firm, which Ayco co-owns with other partners.

The inventor says his device “converts ordinary nitrogen (a noncombustible substance) in the atmosphere into combustible nitro-gas, and serves as gasoline and diesel additive in gaseous form for efficient engine combustion.”

With efficient engine combustion, a vehicle can run more kilometers with less fuel and emits almost zero toxic pollutants.

03.09.08

Calapan ‘possessions’ case of ‘mass hysteria’ — DepEd

- Education, Medicine, News, Students -

By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — Mass hysteria caused the unusual behavior of a number of students at the Pedro V. Panaligan Memorial National High School (PMNHS) in Calapan City, report from a medical team deployed by the Department of Education obtained by INQUIRER.net said.

The team — composed of psychiatrist Dr. Ma. Arlene Briones, psychologist Jennilyn Ebio from the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH), and Dr. Minda Meimban, medical officer IV of DepEd Health and Nutrition Center — conducted psychosocial intervention sessions or PSIs of faculty members and the supposedly possessed students on August 27, 2008.

Based on the PSI sessions, the team reported that before the students experienced the so-called “initial attacks,” most of them had family-related problems, such as parents separating and deaths in the family.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

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