Breakthroughs Today

IN THE the right situations, disobedience to the order of an otherwise evil authority demands more courage than mindlessly following the order in the name of authority and obedience. Psychologically speaking, it becomes a healthy way to proceed as it provides no internal dissonance to the doer. “Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues,” according to George Bernard Shaw, “is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.” In 1963, a study demonstrated that “an average 65 percent of people had been willing to administer apparently painful and dangerous electric shocks to an innocent victim when ordered to do so by a seemingly legitimate authority.” Researcher S. Milgram published the report in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. In this study of 19 separate experiments involving thousands of ordinary Americans, researchers found that... [ Read more. ] This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 30 March 2011.  

THE fire that broke in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has sent radioactivity into the air, putting at high risk lives even as far away as Tokyo. As of March 15, 2010 the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that this radiation leak amounted to 400 millisievert (mSv) per hour. Exposure to over 100 mSv a year, said the World Nuclear Association, can already lead to cancer. To help control this radioactive cloud, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) considered using boric acid. So, what’s in boric acid that can help control radioactivity from spreading? Allow me to divert from my column focus in view of the crisis in Japan. Boron, its basic element, is chemically inert, making it a good fire retardant, and resistant to boiling even with such strong acids as hydrochloric and sulfuric acids. One of its naturally occurring and stable isotopes, boron-10, is good at... [ Read more .] This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 23 March 2011.

AN AFRICAN proverb wisely put it: “Filthy water cannot be washed.” Indeed, of all things we cannot wash, it is water. Once it’s dirty, there’s no washing it. And that’s exactly what happened in Arpili, Balamban, last February. The Department of Health Field Office 7 confirmed at least 24 cases of typhoid. And the culprit seemed to be the drinking water coming from the uncovered water collection pool common in the highlands of Cebu. During a research field work years ago, I had my time drinking water from uncovered sources in certain barangays in the south, having no other source of water in the area. For the World Health Organization (WHO), typhoid is a serious public health problem. Up to 33 million cases get documented each year, and 216,000 people die in endemic areas. And the Philippines belongs to countries “very endemic” with typhoid. A study in India reported last year in the Hepatobiliary Pancreatic and Intestinal Diseases found reasons that typhoid-causative agent Salmonel

The 8.9-magnitude quake, the world's fifth strongest, that hit Japan on 11 March 2011 shortens the day by 1.6 microseconds, said the United States Geology Survey. When the Pacific tectonic plate slipped under the North American plate, the earth's mass shifted towards the center compressing it, and shifted its axis 6.5 inches. This movement spurred the planet to spin a little faster, and moved Eastern Japan about 13 feet closer to North America. At the same time, it sank Japan about two feet, giving way for the tsunami waves to come rolling in. 2010 Chile Quake The quart, which registered 8.8-magnitude in Chile last year also shortened the day a fraction of a second. 2004 Sumatra Quake The stronger earthquate that rocked Sumatra in 2004 shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds. Source Liz Goodwin: " Japan's earthquake shifted balance of the planet ," The Boston Herald 14 March 2011.

A UK survey that Judi James conducted found that the famed "7-year-itch," that period in marriage afterwhich a pressured life--both in time and money--take its toll on the couples' relation, and either spouse started going out alone. Right now, it has gone down into three years, a serious drop by four years. [ Read full report ] Findings Here are some essential findings: Small irritations. Around 67 percent of the 2000 respondents reported that small irritations often expand into major irritations. Sexual satisfaction. Lesser number of couples enjoy sexual relations. Younger relationships, 52 percent of them, reported enjoying it at least three times a week. Relationships older than three years had it only in 16 percent of respondents. Scheduled intimacy. Around 55 percent of respondents said that they now have to "schedule" their romantic time because of day-to-day demands of their time. Compliment hunger. Those, about 33 percent of them, who stayed in a

ROBERT Louis Stevenson wrote: “Wine is bottled poetry.” It has been a common knowledge among medical scientists that elderly men are mostly at high risk to Squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity (OSCC) because of these elderly people's previous use of tobacco and excessive intake of alcohol. But as early as 2005, studies observed patients below age 40 as having OSCC. Seven researchers from four medical schools in Greece conducted a review of available studies on the subject, and found several factors common among OSCC patients. These are... [ Read more ] This article appears in Sun.Star Cebu on 9 March 2011.

It is not only in Libya that chaos visited recently. Well, Bob Dylan once said that "chaos is a friend of mine." That is something Bob and I do not share other than love for folk songs. What happened, an editorial staff accidentally deleted article submission files including my first one in March. The article was an extra one for the month of February that I have already submitted because of a special request to run an article for the Valentine's Day. In the chaos of daily article-making in Sun.Star Cebu, apparently there can always be a risk of this happening. So I was quite confident that today's installment for Breakthroughs had been well covered, only to find out yesterday when I opened the Breakthroughs email that notification emails from my editor, the ever-patient Lilith, that the article fridge was empty. I called her to find out what really happened. Chuck Palahniuk said, "Our real discoveries come from chaos." And what a thing to discover. So the