Breakthroughs Today

THE irony of abortion had been captured by the often funny late US president Ronald Reagan who said: “Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.” What he did not explicitly say was that those who have not been born will never advocate abortion. But here in the Philippines, despite the criminal ban, women can get away with it in droves. The New York-based human rights group, Center for Reproductive Rights, noted that an estimated 560,000 of induced abortions took place in 2008 alone. And from this mothers who chose to intentionally terminate pregnancy, 90,000 (or 16 percent) sought treatment for complications; while a thousand women died. Despite its proponents’ assertion that abortion is relatively safe when performed in clinics, once the criminal ban is lifted, it remains foolish to presume that it is. Not only because scientific trials that back up the drugs used in abortion can only assure a probability for safety, it is common sense that... [ Read more.

YOU might find it weird to talk about fasting during the Yuletide Season. But there is such a thing as the Nativity Fast. Fasting is common in the Old Testament times. But when Jesus came to establish the ancient Christian Church, he insisted on having the right intentions with fasting. Not for appearances, but for private spiritual discipline (Matthew 6:16). In this Christian tradition, fasting is required from ages 18 to 59 on certain days. Food intake was reduced to [ Read more. ] This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 22 December 2010.

NOT ALL things written must be understood literally. Many times meanings between the lines can be more fruitful than literalism. That, too, is true with red tide. A natural phenomenon known as “harmful algal bloom” (HAB), red tide does not necessarily show redness, or even any discoloration, in the affected seawater. Red tide results from... [ Read more. ]  This article appears in SunStar Cebu on 15 December 2010.

CHARLES Darwin, in his famous work On the Origin of Species (1859), wrote: “Each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved.” Seen in a different perspective, this principle tells us that a useful variation, even so slight, is preserved in a specific organism, and becomes its edge for survival. This active principle in nature works in more complex organisms such as humans as it does in those of simplest forms: bacteria. Good or bad, the most adaptive organisms survive to see another day. Scientists are convinced more than ever that antibiotic resistance evolved through... [ Read more ]  This article appears in SunStar Cebu on 8 December 2010.

Leslie Ann del Barrio and colleagues at the Philippine Carabao Center confirmed the water buffalo, popularly known in the country as carabao , descended from swamp buffalos native in China. Through a molecular analysis of gene-carrier mitrochondrial DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), Del Barrio sample carabaos from Cagayan (Luzon), Batangas (Luzon), Bohol (Visayas), and Bukidnon (Mindanao), and their genetic sequences are much the same as the maternal swamp buffalos of China. ( Read more . )

If arsenic can be toxic to humans, the new strain of Halomonadaceae strives, and indeed grew, with arsenic as food. And interestingly the more arsenic scientists put up with with them, the more they grew. The GFAJ-1 strain of Halomonadaceae, a family of water-loving Gram-negative bacteria, has been isolated, and grown (cultured), from the sediments collected along the shore of Mono Lake, near Yosemite National Park, in eastern California. It thrives on arsenic or phosophorus.  What is doubly interesting here is that GFAJ-1 does not only consume arsenic, it directly incorporate the toxic element into their genetic material (DNA). "We know some microbes can 'breathe' arsenic. But what we've found is a microbe doing something new--building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, who headed the research team. (Read more .) (photo by Wikimedia) 

FRANKLY I have serious reservations with the idea of outlawing plastic bags in grocery stores. First reusable bags cost around P35 each. Second, paying P3 for a free plastic bag simply rubs the poor the wrong way, and adds more income to the retailers. In a poor country like ours, a cost of P105 for reusable bags can bring around three kilos of rice on a poor man’s table. Instead of keeping this money with poor, the idea adds more income to the rich retailers. Another thing... [ Read more. ] This apprears in Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on 01 December 2010.