The Ilocos Times

By Noralyn Onto Dudt COLLABORATION is one of those terms with both positive and negative meanings.   Unfortunately, a younger me used to associate the word only with mischief as in "collaborating with the enemy" in time of war; or collaborating with someone to cheat the system; or to do harm to others.   And then about four decades ago when I was tasked to edit scientific reports for publication in journals, I came to recognize and appreciate its positive meaning:   The Action of Working with Someone to Produce or Create something.   When a research scientist writes a paper explaining the result of an experiment for publication in a scientific journal, he or she cites his references—those past experiments that he/she tried to replicate or ones that had similar theories but also went beyond or diverged into other direction for other goals. For example, a theory might be: "if patients with metabolic syndrome have dysregulation of cellular lipid metabolism, could it b...

By Noralyn O. Dudt The adage , "NECESSITY is the mother of invention" comes to mind when we pause to take stock of where we are in this COVID-19 era and see that 11 vaccines are currently in use worldwide.   Certainly, a technological feat, as it has only been barely a year when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Those 11 vaccines are being successfully injected into people's arms but they are not enough to fulfill the global need in the short term. According to Science News, only about 1.9 percent of the world's more than 7 billion people have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as of April 5 th . As the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines need to be stored in freezers, transporting them to far-flung areas can be logistically challenging. The necessity for other types of vaccines that would not require refrigeration has spurred scientists to think "outside the box."   To reach herd immunity around the globe we need as man...

By Dominic B. dela Cruz  (Staff Reporter) Laoag City —The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Ilocos Norte 1st District Engineering Office (DEO) emerged as number one in the current year disbursement rate (DR) for the first quarter of 2021. DPWH 1st DEO district engineer Maria Venus Torio announced that this is in recognition of their effectivity and efficiency in managing financial resources with a rate of 36.26 percent. “ Kapag sa disbursement rate ang pag-uusapan, mabilis kasi ang Ilocos Norte 1st DEO mag -implement ng projects at mabilis ding magbayad ,” Torio noted. Torio identified road projects and flood control projects which were easily completed unlike buildings. Completing the top 10 DEOs are Upper Kalinga, Laguna 3 rd , Zambales 2 nd , Abra, Bacolod City, Tarlac 2 nd , Pampanga 3 rd , Pangasinan 2 nd , and La Union 1 st . While the bottom 10 DEOs are Quezon City 1 st , Leyte 3rd, Rizal 2nd, Bohol 3 rd , South Cotabato 2 nd , Negros Occidental 2...

The books that came from Gilbert Grosvenor 's collection. Gilbert Grosvenor was the founder of the famous National Geographics Magazine.  His home (now a museum) is on Grosvenor Lane, just a few blocks from the author’s house. By Philip Dudt The time is almost 50 years ago in a place about as far from the Philippines as one can go. We (Philippine Group 39) are being trained in Burlington, Vermont in a boy’s prep school by the Center for International Living to become Peace Corps Volunteers. We were really a “mixed-bag” assortment of trainees as new and older college graduates in science or math from across the U. S. with different types of life experiences. Some folks were hippy types and others were more serious like me. My background was the least typical, a two-year leave of absence from my job as a civilian engineer in the U. S. Navy.  The plan was to train us volunteers in just three months to work with Philippine math or science teachers to introduce newer science/mat...