Saturday, July 30, 2011
Walang natira
Brain drain continues under Noynoy Aquino administration; No industrialization plan to provide jobs for S&T workers
Press Statement
July 24, 2011
On the eve of his second State of the Nation Address (SONA), progressive scientists led by AGHAM reminded President Benigno Aquino III that the massive brain drain phenomenon continues under his administration.
Even under the new administration, many science and technology (S&T) professionals still find it hard to secure employment suitable to their skills and expertise. The Department of Science and technology (DOST) was able to produce around 1,437 scholar graduates at the end of the 2009-2010 school year, but we have yet to hear of any remarkable development stating where they have all ended up. It's highly unlikely that many of them have been able to secure jobs in the scientific research arena given that the industry is very small and almost non-existent in the Philippines. For the last decade, the number of emigrating science workers has ballooned to around two and a half times compared to the figure 11 years ago.
There remains widespread discontent and frustration in the local science and research community over the dismal state of our country's science research and development. A year after he assumed the Presidency, Aquino has no plan to develop the economy and establish national industries. His economic platform remains much like that of his predecessors: export-oriented, and heavily reliant on imports.
The Philippines remains an exporter of cheap raw materials but imports expensive finished products. The effect of such economic policy is the slow if at all existent development of domestic industries. We can cite the absence of domestic production of even the simplest everyday goods. In the meantime, the government continues to adhere to a program of mass export of our highly talented human resources which should be tapped instead for domestic needs.
Last July, the DOST announced that it wants to make internet and communications technology as an enabling tool to help expand and sustain the burgeoning business process outsourcing industry. DOST Secretary Mario G. Montejo has said that the DOST has the mandate and the knowledge resources to raise the number of business process
outsourcing (BPO) workforce "in a significant way."
This emphasis of the government’s S&T agency on the BPO industry has only shown the current mindset of the government with regard to science and technology. Instead of strengthening local production of tools and machineries for agriculture and other equally important aspects of the economy, the Aquino government merely continues the
tradition of previous administrations by toeing the line of foreign big business and international lending institutions: do away with ambitions of building strong domestic industries and just serve foreign monopolies with cheap English-speaking workforce.
The science and technology community in the Philippines calls on President Aquino to implement comprehensive reforms involving national industrialization. It should prioritize a genuine and thorough-going agrarian reform program to ensure food security and self-sufficiency. By distributing and developing the country's agricultural lands for domestic food production, the foundations of national industrial development can be more firmly built. Furthermore, it should provide the necessary support and infrastructure to harness the capacity of world class local scientists to address local problems and contribute to domestic industrialization.
We call on all well-meaning scientists, engineers, and other S&T professionals to join in AGHAM's advocacies, including putting pressure on the current administration to put in place an industrial environment where we can practice our technical knowledge and skills
to help propel our country away from pre-industrial and agrarian state that it is in.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/8735/ph-no-place-for-st-workers
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/9255/brain-drain-continues-under-pnoy...
Reference:
Giovanni Tapang, PhD - National Chairperson, AGHAM
Contact details:
0927 5736714
Link
Friday, July 29, 2011
Physics, Biology, and our growing understanding of society
PROMETHEUS BOUND, The Manila Times
Physics, Biology, and our growing understanding of society
By Kim Gargar
(Dr. Tapang’s colleague Kim Gargar contributed today’s column.)
MANY scientists have realized that the distinction between biology and physics is artificial; that if we are to completely understand living things, we must first accept that each of them are composed of matter wherein various forms of transformation of energy and matter occur within and with their surroundings. While “mainstream” physicists keep themselves busy either with elucidating how fundamental particles work or with finding ways to manipulate inanimate condensed-matter for the development of new materials, an increasing number of their colleagues are helping biologists answer diverse biological questions piece by piece, and for various goals.
The current trend in explaining biological phenomena is to rely on a type of reasoning attributed to Charles Darwin. As stated in the book by Russian Marxist philosopher Viktor Grigoryevich Afanasyev Dialectical Materialism, Darwin “proved that the complex, higher organisms had been formed from the simple, lower ones through the action of the laws of natural selection inherent in nature itself. He also showed that man was a product of nature, a result of the prolonged evolution of living matter.” Add to this the fact that such evolution of matter is ever continuing and actually gave rise to human societies. This is traditionally not touched upon in biology.
Physicists have already unified matter and energy, as embodied in simple form by the famous equation E=mc2. “The theory has been worked on for so long that remaining problems are very subtle and deeply embedded,” said biophysicist Ned Wingreen.
The physics of atoms and of molecules have also been at a certain level of unification as shown by tools currently used by theoretical chemists and condensed-matter physicists, again with many subtleties still left to be uncovered. Darwin and other evolutionary biologists’ successful attempts at explaining in a similarly unifying manner the diversity of biological species has led biology to a level almost at par with how less-evolved forms of matter being studied in physics and chemistry are described. But even more questions on details continue to keep biologists busy.
The difficult task of explaining biology can be approached systematically. The general flow of the evolution of species is from the sea to land. To understand species which evolved inland, there’s the temptation to look at simpler, less evolved marine species for hints. Is it valid to make conclusions about, say, insects based on findings about, say, planktons? Some biologists would say that it depends on the specific question being raised. But can insights be gained into more evolved species by looking at less evolved ones? Many biologists would reply yes. In fact, this has been the trend in many areas of biology: to learn from simpler, so-called “model organisms” to understand phenomena in more complex species. Many medical practices are actually borne out of such trends; human diseases have been studied for the past few decades using lower species of mammals such as primates and rodents.
It seems that there is no other way to approach biological problems than to resort to modeling methodologies. This is where physicists’ training in using models to explain various physical phenomena become handy. Modeling does not necessarily require the mathematization of the problem, although mathematics have an important role in making more precise conclusions. The very fresh field in science called systems biology, for instance, makes use of modeling methods. Organisms are stripped down to the cellular level and their inner workings in order to know how they work.
We are reminded of what the people of China did, as told in the book Silage Choppers and Snake Spirits, in one of their attempts to develop their dairy industry during the 1960s. They bought things from abroad and looked at their parts and how they were built. The Chinese found it more fruitful to develop their own machinery by improving on foreign technology than to start from scratch or to duplicate them.
The more evolved matter is, the more subtle questions there are. If society is considered as the form in the historical development of matter higher than that of organisms, then expect the task of explaining society as a more complicated one. This is a tricky science area where personal biases come into play.
Scientists are part of society — the system they seek to understand. Society itself is not a homogenous mix of individuals; it’s characterized by social classes where members of each class have different natures and interests from those in other classes. Scientists belong to one such social class, the petty bourgeois class if we may use the term; and if they don’t take this fact consciously into their theories of society, then such theories are bound to fail in the long run.
Mr. Kim Gargar, a long time active member of AGHAM, has earned his MS in Physics in UP Diliman and is now finishing his PhD in chronobiology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Physics, Biology, and our growing understanding of society
By Kim Gargar
(Dr. Tapang’s colleague Kim Gargar contributed today’s column.)
MANY scientists have realized that the distinction between biology and physics is artificial; that if we are to completely understand living things, we must first accept that each of them are composed of matter wherein various forms of transformation of energy and matter occur within and with their surroundings. While “mainstream” physicists keep themselves busy either with elucidating how fundamental particles work or with finding ways to manipulate inanimate condensed-matter for the development of new materials, an increasing number of their colleagues are helping biologists answer diverse biological questions piece by piece, and for various goals.
The current trend in explaining biological phenomena is to rely on a type of reasoning attributed to Charles Darwin. As stated in the book by Russian Marxist philosopher Viktor Grigoryevich Afanasyev Dialectical Materialism, Darwin “proved that the complex, higher organisms had been formed from the simple, lower ones through the action of the laws of natural selection inherent in nature itself. He also showed that man was a product of nature, a result of the prolonged evolution of living matter.” Add to this the fact that such evolution of matter is ever continuing and actually gave rise to human societies. This is traditionally not touched upon in biology.
Physicists have already unified matter and energy, as embodied in simple form by the famous equation E=mc2. “The theory has been worked on for so long that remaining problems are very subtle and deeply embedded,” said biophysicist Ned Wingreen.
The physics of atoms and of molecules have also been at a certain level of unification as shown by tools currently used by theoretical chemists and condensed-matter physicists, again with many subtleties still left to be uncovered. Darwin and other evolutionary biologists’ successful attempts at explaining in a similarly unifying manner the diversity of biological species has led biology to a level almost at par with how less-evolved forms of matter being studied in physics and chemistry are described. But even more questions on details continue to keep biologists busy.
The difficult task of explaining biology can be approached systematically. The general flow of the evolution of species is from the sea to land. To understand species which evolved inland, there’s the temptation to look at simpler, less evolved marine species for hints. Is it valid to make conclusions about, say, insects based on findings about, say, planktons? Some biologists would say that it depends on the specific question being raised. But can insights be gained into more evolved species by looking at less evolved ones? Many biologists would reply yes. In fact, this has been the trend in many areas of biology: to learn from simpler, so-called “model organisms” to understand phenomena in more complex species. Many medical practices are actually borne out of such trends; human diseases have been studied for the past few decades using lower species of mammals such as primates and rodents.
It seems that there is no other way to approach biological problems than to resort to modeling methodologies. This is where physicists’ training in using models to explain various physical phenomena become handy. Modeling does not necessarily require the mathematization of the problem, although mathematics have an important role in making more precise conclusions. The very fresh field in science called systems biology, for instance, makes use of modeling methods. Organisms are stripped down to the cellular level and their inner workings in order to know how they work.
We are reminded of what the people of China did, as told in the book Silage Choppers and Snake Spirits, in one of their attempts to develop their dairy industry during the 1960s. They bought things from abroad and looked at their parts and how they were built. The Chinese found it more fruitful to develop their own machinery by improving on foreign technology than to start from scratch or to duplicate them.
The more evolved matter is, the more subtle questions there are. If society is considered as the form in the historical development of matter higher than that of organisms, then expect the task of explaining society as a more complicated one. This is a tricky science area where personal biases come into play.
Scientists are part of society — the system they seek to understand. Society itself is not a homogenous mix of individuals; it’s characterized by social classes where members of each class have different natures and interests from those in other classes. Scientists belong to one such social class, the petty bourgeois class if we may use the term; and if they don’t take this fact consciously into their theories of society, then such theories are bound to fail in the long run.
Mr. Kim Gargar, a long time active member of AGHAM, has earned his MS in Physics in UP Diliman and is now finishing his PhD in chronobiology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Link
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Galit Na
To the tune of Bruno Mars' Grenade
Date dito, Porsche doon
Ganyan lang ang kaya mo
Papogi ka lang sa Malacanang
Nun pa lang alam ko na
Na ang interes mo lang
Ay ang iyong hacienda, Hacienda Luisita
Binoto ka nila pero iyong binalewala
Ang kanilang mga sigaw
Hinding hindi na kami magpapaloko pa
Kaya humanda ka na
Kami ay magpoprotesta
Magmamartsa sa kalsada
Susugod sa Mendiola
Dahil kami ay galit na
Magsasaka na wala pa ring lupa
Manggagawang sahod ay kay baba
Mamamayang naghihirap
Ngayo'y lalaban na
Bayan, bayan ko
Ating tandaan na ang kahirapan ay
Hindi pa nalulunasan
Kaya magkaisa tayo
At ating isulong ang isang
pamahalaang naglilingkod at lipunang maayos
Date dito, Porsche doon
Ganyan lang ang kaya mo
Papogi ka lang sa Malacanang
Nun pa lang alam ko na
Na ang interes mo lang
Ay ang iyong hacienda, Hacienda Luisita
Binoto ka nila pero iyong binalewala
Ang kanilang mga sigaw
Hinding hindi na kami magpapaloko pa
Kaya humanda ka na
Kami ay magpoprotesta
Magmamartsa sa kalsada
Susugod sa Mendiola
Dahil kami ay galit na
Magsasaka na wala pa ring lupa
Manggagawang sahod ay kay baba
Mamamayang naghihirap
Ngayo'y lalaban na
Bayan, bayan ko
Ating tandaan na ang kahirapan ay
Hindi pa nalulunasan
Kaya magkaisa tayo
At ating isulong ang isang
pamahalaang naglilingkod at lipunang maayos
Link
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