MANILA, Philippines – Iloilo professor Alexis Belonio is the first Filipino to win the prestigious Rolex Award for inventing a stove that converts rice husks into environmentally friendly cooking gas.

Founded in 1976, the Rolex Award is given to “visionaries” who have undertaken groundbreaking projects.

As an Associate Laureate, Belonio received $50,000 and a steel and gold Rolex chronometer at the awarding ceremony.

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Agence France-Presse

SYDNEY — A sharp slowdown in coral growth on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef since 1990 is a warning sign that precipitous changes in the world’s oceans may be imminent, scientists said Friday.

Strong evidence points to the cause being a combination of warmer seas and higher acidity from increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers reported.

“The data suggest that this severe and sudden decline in calcification is unprecedented in at least 400 years,” said Glenn De’ath, principal author of a paper published Friday in the international journal Science.

The research shows that corals on the reef have slowed their growth by more than 14 percent since the “tipping point” year of 1990 and on current trends the corals would stop growing altogether by 2050.

“It is cause for extreme concern that such changes are already evident, with the relatively modest climate changes observed to date, in the world’s best protected and managed coral reef ecosystem,” said co-author Janice Lough.

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By Agence France-Presse

CHICAGO — Scientists have discovered a more efficient way of building a synthetic genome that could one day enable them to create artificial life, according to a study released Wednesday.

The method is already being used to help develop next generation biofuels and biochemicals in the labs of controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter.

Venter has hailed artificial life forms as a potential remedy to illness and global warming, but the prospect is highly controversial and arouses heated debate over its potential ramifications and the ethics of engineering artificial life.

Artificially engineered life is one of the Holy Grails of science, but also stirs deep fears as foreseen in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World” in which natural human reproduction is eschewed in favor of babies grown in laboratories.

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By Agence France-Presse

MEXICO CITY — Mexican scientists have turned the country’s national tipple tequila into diamonds, and are seeking applications for their discovery, with the crystals too small to be used in jewelry.

The tequila diamonds could be used to “detect radiation, coat cutting tools or, above all, as a substitute for silicon in the computer chips of the future,” Miguel Apatiga, one of three researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico who made the discovery this summer, told AFP Tuesday.

The scientists found that the heated vapor from tequila blanco, when deposited on a stainless steel base, can form diamond films.

They began experimenting some 13 years ago with synthetic diamonds — made by a technological process, as opposed to natural diamonds, produced by geological process — from gases like methane.

Later they produced diamonds from liquids, and then noticed that the ideal compound of 40 percent ethanol and 60 percent water was similar to the proportion used in tequila.

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By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) is expecting to bring home seven more scientists before the end of the year in line with its Balik Scientist Program (BSP), said Ma. Lourdes Orijola, director of BSP of the DOST.

Orijola said that there are currently 36 scientists who are completing their term as BSPs.

One of them is Dr. Leah Tolosa, associate professor of the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of the Maryland Baltimore County, who began her term as BSP awardee on October 6, 2008.

As a BSP awardee, Tolosa has been conducting seminars, lecture series and workshops at the University of San Carlos and the University of Santo Tomas on various topics, including fluorescence spectroscopy and ethanol in “kamote” (sweet potato).

Tolosa revealed that the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology has developed low-cost optical sensors, devices used to measure levels of compounds such as carbon dioxide and oxygen.

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