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NANOTECHNOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE (FROM INDIA)
Erle Frayne Argonza
Putting together nanotechnology, biotechnology and bio-informatics is a new challenging area of R&D in the field of agriculture.
The experts of India, with the co-sponsorship by the state, are now into the next exciting phase of developing food production via this new integration methodology and practice. The implications of the new practice on quality control are legion, to say the least.
Happy reading.
[21 July 2003, Quezon City, MetroManila. Via SciDev update reports.]
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India looks to nanotechnology to boost agriculture
M. Sreelata
16 May 2008 | EN
Nanotechnology could help water delivery systems for farming
Flickr/IRRI
The Indian government is looking towards nanotechnology as a means of boosting agricultural productivity in the country.
In a report released in April, the Planning Commission of India recommends nanotechnology research and development (R&D) should become one of six areas for investment.
The commission recommends policies to and carries out financial planning for government departments. The report was written by a subgroup of the commission, and will be incorporated into India’s eleventh five-year plan, for 2007–2012.
The authors recommend ways to harness nanotechnology, biotechnology and bioinformatics to transform Indian agriculture, including creating a national institute of nanotechnology in agriculture.
The report says nanotechnology such as nano-sensors and nano-based smart delivery systems could help ensure natural resources like water, nutrients and chemicals are used efficiently in agriculture. Nano-barcodes and nano-processing could also help monitor the quality of agricultural produce.
The report proposes a national consortium on nanotechnology R&D, to include the proposed national institute and Indian institutions that are already actively researching nanotechnology.
It also recommends that Indian universities and institutions develop suitable graduate and postgraduate programmes to train young scientists in nanotechnology.
Vandana Dwivedi, coordinator of the subgroup and an advisor in the Planning Commission, says implementing all the report’s recommendations will take time, though she hopes to see some of the aspects rolled out in the 2007–2012 five-year plan. No specific initiatives on nanotechnology have yet been announced.
But not everyone is impressed by the government’s plans. India should be cautious about rushing for technologies, says M. S. Swaminathan, a former head of the National Commission for Farmers and widely considered the father of India’s green revolution.
“If technology has applications, it has limitations too. Right from the beginning it is advisable to have a national regulatory commission on nanotechnology so that people don’t get into litigation later,” he told SciDev.Net.
Swaminathan believes transferring existing technologies to farmers should take priority, saying, “We should first disseminate ordinary technology to the farmer. Even the basic know-how has not reached fields yet. The gap between scientific know-how and field level do-how remains as wide as ever.”
PACQUIAO BEATS DIAZ, RP BOXING SUPREMACY ASSURED
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good afternoon!
Elation and euphoria are back in the Philippines and across the borders today as Manny Paquiao beat David Diaz in the lightweight division of world boxing. Flat on his face in the ring’s floor, Diaz looked like a whacked baby in comatose, ready to face the surgeon for some serious eye and facial injuries sustained during nine (9) rounds of unrelenting offensive from the unbeatable Manny.
From the first through the ninth rounds, Manny Paquiao exhibited superior punching and maneuvering ability and was the clear upper hand points-wise for all of those rounds. His superiority in both speed and power, added to his outstanding maneuvering skill, made him throw every kind of punch on the pathetic Diaz, candidate of America, with ease.
On the 5th round of the game, my compassion as a yogi-mystic began to surface while watching with eyes glued 105% on the TV screen. My compassion was, of course, addressed towards Diaz, whose face already sustained bleeding as early as the 2nd round, and I wished that Manny would knock him out on the 6th round as a matter of compassion. It would be cruel for any professional boxer to go on throwing deadly punches on an enemy who is almost down, and should, in my mind, work out to knock out the opponent early enough so as to minimize heavy injuries that could lead to death at the worse.
That knock out came finally on the 9th round, which made me felt a feeling of relief, and so I exclaimed my jubilation for my compatriot’s victory and compassion. Of course, I thanked God that Diaz is still intact, and was able to stand on his feet at least, thus assuring no further need for surgical operations or whatever. It was just a fight, may this fighter practice more. But like the rest of my kabayans, Manny has warmed our hearts so much again, and on this day he’s the one hero who had united the nation for at least some couples of hours.
Manny is now assured of his Hall of Fame status, with his gaining of a 4th title victory, notwithstanding the awarding to him of the most prestigious World Boxing Council or WBC belt at the 135-lb category. He is also impeccably Asia’s best, as it was the first time that an Asian won four (4) world titles in his career, thus ensuring Asia it’s place in the globe as a continent worth watching for.
Finally, and this is what has given us great pride, Manny’s latest victory has ensured Philippine supremacy in boxing from here on till maybe at least ten (10) years to come. Manny was not just representing himself, but rather he’s the chief icon among couples of others in the middle down to lower weight categories. The coterie of top-gun boxers have made Manila the team to beat, and had swept off Mexico and Thailand as the previous holders of this sports tiara.
For all boxers as a whole, Manny Paquiao’s latest victory had added prestige to the lower boxing weight divisions, and the spotlight of boxing had all the more been focused on these divisions away from the middle-to-heavy weights. He joins the coterie of titans such as De La Joya who earlier gave so much prestige to the lower-to-middle divisions.
Mabuhay si Manny Paquiao! Mabuhay ang mga Filipino boxers! Mabuhay ang Inang Bayan!
[Writ 29 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago
Happy Centennial Anniversary to my Beloved Alma Mater, the University of the Philippines!
Being a development expert, I wish to highlight in this briefer the developmental side to the premier university of my beloved country. The University or the Philippines or U.P. is foremost of all an indication of the maturity of Filipino education and educators, in that after 100 years of existence, we as a people were able to show to the world the viability of a grand university run by ourselves (Filipinos).
Tertiary education was imported directly from the West, being transplanted here from Europe during the Spanish colonial era (1500s-1800s). Albeit the idea of tertiary institutes run by Filipinos themselves is a fairly recent development. To be exact, it was only after World War II, coherent with our own independence from the USA, that the striving for Filipino-run tertiary educational institutions became one of the greatest challenges in Philippine education.
The University of the Philippines was constituted by the Americans after the conclusion of the Philippine-American War. When that war ended in 1900, there was a period of intense reorganization of the entire society and state, as well as the reconstruction of the economy that was damaged by two (2) consecutive wars (the Philippine revolution against Spain was the first). In 1908 the University of the Philippines was born.
The idea of a premier state university was not, however, an imposition by the USA on the Philippines. During the brief period of Aguinaldo government (1898-2000), the new Philippine state already prioritized the constitution of such a university in consonance with its desire to establish a modern educational program. The pedagogy of that university, had it succeeded, could have been close to those of Spain’s tops, notably the University of Barcelona and University of Madrid.
But the grand vision of the new republic wasn’t fulfilled as the Americans grabbed that opportunity for self-governance by the new state. However, the Americans themselves realized the soundness of the concept, and so they took on the cudgels for constituting a premier state university. The flagship campus was then the Padre Faura campus in Manila, while the branch outside Manila was the UP College Los Banos. The Philippine General Hospital served as the service arm of the new university. Anglo-Saxon pedagogy and philosophy served as the core foundation, following those of the Ivy League universities.
Americans served as the first professors and administrators of the noble institution. Then, gradually their Filipino apprentices joined the faculty, until the time was ripe for Filipinos to serve as top management officials. Note that it took two (2) decades for such a process to take. When the grand statesman Manuel Luis Quezon became President of the commonwealth, Filipinos were already showing their prowess in administering the university, designing and managing academic programs, launching pioneering research programs, and running classrooms as professors.
The commonwealth government was a testing period for self-governance which incidentally found solid support inside the United States congress and executive. By the early 19040s the self-governance prowess of Filipinos in the state university was already established. So when the USA departed from the Philippines in 1946, Filipinos already had the upper hand in running this institution and there was no great need to import experts (professors and consultants) to run the university.
It was a rough ride all along for the state university. No matter how rough it may have seem, when asked for an opinion, I would prefer to stress the victory of Filipinos first of all in showing the capability to run the university ourselves.
Since that time on, the state university had become the bastion of nationalism and critical thinking in the country. During the dark years of Martial Law, the U.P. became the most powerful lamp that lighted the surrounds for the whole nation, and people outside were dying to read the Philippine Collegian and dying to hear U.P. professors and youth leaders speak about the true state of the nation. This libertarian and Enlightenment facets of the U.P. are very much intact till these days.
Furthermore, the Filipinos were already able to veer away from their Anglo-Saxon heritage in U.P. Gradual Filipinization across the decades led to a rediscovery of the Pacific and Asian roots of Philippine culture, and the result was a blending of Western (Anglo-Saxon, Continental) and Eastern (Malayan, Asiatic) philosophy cum pedagogy. The U.P has led efforts at re-engineering the Filipino language from a conversational to an intellectualizing language sufficient for articulating higher level concepts, a re-engineering that continues till these days.
Finally, the U.P. also evolved into the top producer of knowledge and art works for the archipelago. It is the nation’s top think-tank, the bastion of national collective reflection, where we can find the highest concentration of brilliant minds among professors, research scientists, artists and students. All other institutions in the country seek counsel from the U.P. about their core state of affairs, a proof of the maturity and esteem that the U.P had gained across the decades.
Long and arduous will be the route that the state university will traverse yet, but having proved its resiliency and capacity across one century, I am confident that this University will grow and prosper over the next one hundred (100) years of its sojourn. Let us all wish the best of luck for this very noble institution, which may turn out to be the last bastion of freedom for Asia at a time of growing global fascism.
Glory, genius, grandeur!
[20 June 2008, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne Argonza
Visionary genius, patriot, martyr for Philippine independence, Gat Jose Rizal was a man too far ahead of his own time. So titanic was the luck that came upon this blessed archipelago, the Philippine islands, for the embodiment among its humble people of this encyclopedic mind, Dr. Jose Rizal. He is impeccably a ‘man for all seasons’. And he is the national hero of the Philippine nation.
Most nations declare among their top patriots a warrior or military leader as their ‘national hero’. But for the Philippines, ours’ is a genius, an intellectual giant, a mind capable of engaging in issues so recondite and subjects so diverse that, in so short a span, he was able to pen an enormous variegation of topics that befit, in their totality, an encyclopedia. At the age of 35, he was terminated by the demonic imperial forces of Spain, but he never died in vain. On the contrary, his death continued to inspire libertarian patriots here and in other Asian lands, an inspiration that continues for our youth till these days.
Mystically gifted, little did people know that he was actually transformed into a spiritual guru before his death. His guruship was unique, in that he mentored his fellows on the wisdom of nationhood and patriotism. One of his avowed readers if not disciples, Mohandas Gandhi of India, followed in his steps and became, upon his transformation into a spiritual master, a mentor of nationhood and patriotism just like Rizal.
So mighty a mind Rizal possessed, without doubt, that till these days his works overshadow the combined works of his own fellow patriots, including those who’ve gained double doctorate degrees and published widely in academic circles. Rizal’s following is solid, he need not further articulate nor gesticulate thoughts in the vogue of a desperate social marketing campaign, for even long after his death, youthful and scholarly minds read him, try to follow his ethical precepts, and emulate his exemplary patriotic behavior.
He was the first Filipino. Before his time, the term Filipino was bestowed only on those Spaniards born and raised in the Philipines. The Malayan natives were pejoratively called Indios; Chinese, Sangleys; Aetas and IPs, negritos and montanosas; and Muslims, Moros. With scathing indictment of arrogant racism of Spaniards most especially the friars, Rizal declared, with his mighty pen, that from this day on everybody born and raised in the islands will be called Filipino. That was how we islanders were to be bestowed with the name Filipino, a term that will stick till way into the distant future when a ‘Filipino race’ will evolve from out of a mere nationality today.
In his thoughts he pre-empted the political philosophy of Antonio Gramsci, the eminent Marxist leader of the Italian Left. Rizal mentored his fellow patriots that it will prove unwise to wage an insurrectionary campaign and seize political power, at a time when the ideas of nationhood haven’t permeated the private sphere yet. The most fitting strategy for that long-term goal—of building nationhood—is education. Build the new world’s ideas first till they become hegemonic, after which winning a revolution will be more facile as it was in the French revolution. That’s Rizal, and that’s Gramsci as well, but Rizal preceded Gramsci, let the world be made aware of this fact.
In gender relations, Rizal was no less ahead of his time. He scorned the ‘Old World woman complex’ so deeply that he chose to bury this woman in catacombs of history, which he did by killing Maria Clara, the Old World’s embodiment, in his novels. He advanced the idea of Modern Woman in the figures of the ‘women of Malolos’, even as he championed women who were civic-minded, actively engaged as co-partner in shaping the modern world, intellectually adroit and well-schooled. The Filipino nation he likened to the figure of Sisa in his novels, a nurturing mother who no matter under dire duress will never self-destruct but will stand out firm, tall and well-esteemed by fellows.
Amid Rizal’s liberalism, he never had any fondness for anarchism. Following Zola’s novel-writing tradition (e.g. Germinal), Rizal embodied the anarchist in the young bourgeois creole Ibarra who, at the end of his novel scripts, self-destructed. Anarchism can never be a substitute for prudent authority that should follow the Enlightenment principles of reason, progress, fraternity, and scientific verity. He was a true-blue liberal nationalist, never an anarchist.
We Filipino nationalists will continue to be inspired by Gat Jose Rizal. And his thoughts, the most treasured jewels of Asia during his time, will continue to inspire us, diadems that we magnanimously share to all enthused Fellows of the Planet, thoughts that mentor and serve as balm on the soul, like unto those writ by the most sagely personages. For these are the thoughts of a man no less sagely than the wisest of the days of old, thoughts that long after they are gone will continue to make waves into the minds of men and women of many generations yet to come.
Hail Gat Jose Rizal! Glory, genius, grandeur!
[12 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good morning!
As I was moving back to home-base, done with my gym exercise, my eyes caught the news bit in the newsstands about the biggest Philippine flag recently unfurled in Baguio City. So huge was the flag, it weight over 3 tons.
Whoever may have conceived the idea (a lady), she was acting magnanimously on the behest of her own Guide from Above. The choice of creating and unfurling a big flag, on the occasion of Philippine Independence day, can be perceived as a token of patriotism and love for fellow Filipinos.
On a deeper level, however, the unfurling of a flag so huge goes beyond simple tokenism. There’s more to the flag beyond people coming together and building bridges of Love for peace and world healing, which indeed had been delivered by the flag team at the moment of unfurling. It also goes beyond the hospitality of the Baguio people that was rightly exhibited too at that moment of unfurling.
For one, the size signifies the growth and galvanization of the Filipino identity and weltanschauung that took over 300 years to build. Building that weltanschauung began when the secularization movement was launched during the Spanish Era, and then moved on to the nationalist movement of Rizal’s time, and onwards to the Filipino Renaissance of the 1990s (pre-centennial through post-centennial jubilee). The Renaissance still goes on and may be the next phase of weltanschauung formation that would take probably two (2) centuries to ferment.
The Philippine nation used to be circumscribed within the confines of the archipelago, the same island group that was created by Westphalian-type treaties among world powers. Today, the nation has gone beyond the archipelago’s borders, as Filipinos have been spread across the globe, nearly 100 million strong.
That huge flag signified the strength of the weltanschauung formation galvanizing as identity, psyche, collective taste and temper that now inhere among the equally large population of 100 million. A globalized people and nation must be signified with dignity and honor by an emblem as huge as the world: a 3+ tonner flag. Hugeness means strength, power, potency, global extent. It means there is not any place in the world that we can’t dip our hands into and be part of their reshaping. It means global imprint, global impact.
The year of unfurling is very auspicious: 110th year after the independence declaration. 110 contains the numbers 11 and 10, 11 X 10 equals 110. 11 signifies conquest and leadership in certain domains of planetary life. 10 means 9 + 1, the number of completion that starts with zero (1 is leadership, 9 is martial abilities). Somehow, the Cosmic Hierarchs are heralding to the world, via this huge flag, on this 110th year of Filipinas, that from hereon a new phase of history begins: the phase of global leadership in certain aspects of life.
By the fact that Filipinos were spread across the globe, a feat that can be attributed largely to the Divine Hierarchy in pursuit of a greater Plan (which we 3-dimensional mortals are blind about), already is one cause for wonderment. Hidden Divine Hands are working on these islands, and so the message of the Hierarchy to the Dark Forces who want to destroy our people is for them to ‘make no mistake’, the Divine Plan holds and will hold through. No Dark Force can ever wreck the destiny of the Filipinos, a destiny that has global effects in the future eras to come.
Not even the destruction today of the archipelago through WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and the mass termination of 90 million inhabitants can ever kill Divine Plan. That huge quake that struck China recently, using a Tesla Earthquake Machine or TEM, was already a forewarning by the Dark Forces (Luciferans) of their resolve for destruction and global domination. But they will fail, they can never make Filipinos submit to their dictates, the future Filipino as a distinct sub-race or ‘species race’ will come, no Luciferan abomination can deter or deviate it from happening.
My kudos goes to the team that did this flag project. But most specially, I salute the Cosmic Hierarchy who actually gave the go signal for this event to take place on this year, 2008, the 110th anniversary of our independence.
[Writ 13 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
FIND LIGHT & PEACE IN BRO. ERLE ARGONZA’S BLOGS
Gracious Day to all friends, partners in development, fellows in the Path!
You’re all invited to relish moments of Light-seeking reflections, call to relevant actions and self-development thoughts with me, through my blogs:
Development, Economics, Better World: http://unladtau.wordpress.com
Seekers’ Lessons, Freethought, Yoga, Self-Development:
http://erleargonza.blogspot.com, http://raefdargon.mysticblogs.com
Poetry for Inspirational Living: http://erleargonza.wordpress.com
Happy Reading!
Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza / Guru Ra Efdargon
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