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South Korea has committed to help the Philippines in disaster preparedness with a $3M grant that will be used to set up modern early warning and monitoring systems to be deployed in flood ravaged Metro Manila and adjacent municipalities.

The disaster preparedness technology package will include seven automatic weather stations, five water level gauging stations with video monitors for rainfall and flood forecasting system, 20 warning posts with emergency radio communication systems, and voice/fax/data communication systems along the Marikina river.  The package is facilitated through the Korea International Coordinating Agency, which also tucked in patrol and maintenance vehicles in the project.

KOICA and the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration, an attached agency of the Department of Science and Technology, has recently completed the first phase of a community based early warning and monitoring system project in the province of Aurora, Jalaur river basin in Iloilo, and the Agus-Lake Lanao watershed in Lanao del Sur.

PAGASA Director Prisco Nilo said Aurora benefited from the automatic weather station installed during phase I of the EWS project during storm Ondoy’s onslaught where the province had zero casualty.

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The Philippines through the Industrial Technology Development Institute of the Department of Science and Technology will host the 4th International Environmental Technology Verification Forum and International Working Group on ETV Meeting on November 11-13 at the Renaissance Hotel in Makati City. The country is the first ASEAN member to host this annual event.

The event’s theme is “ETV: Accelerating Technology Solutions to Climate Change.” The forum is a venue for sharing experiences on various countries’ implementation of ETV programs and exchange of ideas on how environmental technology performance verification can help address climate change issues. Participants include countries with ongoing ETV programs.

Forum participants are expected to outline key challenges of climate change at the regional level; identify programs and innovative technologies to mitigate and adapt to climate change; highlight the importance of ETV as a tool for accelerating the deployment of environmentally sound technologies; build alliances among participating countries towards mutual acceptance of data and international acceptance of ETV; and develop a plan of action among interested participants for future cooperation.

Topics during the plenary session/general debate include “Importance of Independent Environmental Performance Verification and Reporting”, and “Mechanism to Bridge Technology Transfer and Financial Gaps in Addressing Climate Change”.

Meanwhile, theme-based roundtable discussions will cover “Mitigation Limiting Future Climate Change, Climate Change Adaptation Preparation for a better future, and International Cooperation on Common Issues”.  These sessions will be complemented with the presentation of ETV country case studies.
The IWG-ETV meeting will cap the event.

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Nanotechnology, loosely described as the science of small, “is not about miniaturization; it’s the exploitation of new phenomena” as Ateneo de Manila University’s Dr. Fabian Dayrit explains. 

Nanotechnology enables scientists to look into the molecular or atomic level of matter and its possible uses or applications never previously explored or predicted. Imagine splitting a hair strand vertically into 80,000 pieces- that is the size of a nanometer. At such tiny scale, according to Dayrit, matter has certain properties and functions that can not be found or used in larger dimensions.

With an elbow room of about one to 100 nanometers, scientists can actually design and control things at such a minute size and come up with extraordinary products.

Now nanotechnology has aided the production of lighter tennis rackets with nanotubes, more durable tennis balls with nanoparticles, straight-flying golf balls, water-repelling pants, and nano socks that don’t stink.

There are plenty of nanotechnology products that hardly make conversation pieces. The DVD, for one, stores massive information contained in a film feature – sounds, movements, colors, graphics, etc – in several bumps, each at 320 nanometers wide, still far thinner than a hair strand.

The cellular phone that used to be so humungous has shrunk to just a few millimeters thick. Flash drives, too, used to be fashionable at 256 kilobytes but now can hold 16 gigabytes of data within the same physical size. In just a few seasons, small sized flash drives and mp4 players with terabytes capacity (1,024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte) will be standard accessories.

Thanks to nanotechnology, society now has these conveniences.

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DOST named anti-graft champion. The Department of Science and Technology ranked 5th in the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission’s Top 10 Anti-Graft Champions for the first half of 2009. Other DOST agencies that made it to the list include the Science and Technology Information Institute, Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development, Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, DOST Region 3, and National Research Council of the Philippines (8th place); Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (9th place); and Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (10th place). Receiving the award for STII is its Officer-in-Charge Ma. Isabel Carag-Dario (left) who is concurrently Asst. Secretary of the Office of the Press Secretary, along with Tony Kwok, Hong Kong anti-corruption expert; PAGC Chair Constancia De Guzman, and PAGC Exec. Dir. Cristin Manalang, and Comm. Belinda Salcedo. The anti-graft champions were selected for compliance to the Integrity Development Action Plan, the national anti-graft framework that focuses on corruption prevention, education, deterrence, and strategic partnership. [S&T Media Service]