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Restoring LB’s glory

Posted by Focus Pacific on May 18th, 2025

It was October last year when Given Grace Cebanico, a computer science student at the University of the Phil­ippines Los Banos was raped and murdered just outside the school campus.

The tragic event caused such an alarm. The townspeople forced their officers to impose stronger security ordinances – more security guards, more CCTV cameras and stricter curfews.

Barely a year later, news of a student at Batong Malake National High School being raped and killed broke out and spread throughout the city. Soon enough, residents grew afraid to step out of their homes at night, their main reason being “it’s no longer safe.”

(source: http://www.bukidresort.com)

But let’s face it: No city is truly safe these days. Those crimes captured on CCTVs from all over the country and broadcast on primetime news programs are just one proof of this fact.

What is to blame for this growing trend? Poverty? Corruption? Greed?

Safety, above everything else, begins with discipline. A little discipline goes a long way. If more people had restraint, then crime rates in the Philippines would decrease. That way there would be less stealing, less murders and fewer victims.

Also, choose who you trust wisely. This is an essential tool in building a safer place for future generations. Citizens should be responsible enough to maintain that trust.

Lastly, there is the matter of conscience. Know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. Safety cannot be achieved if we ourselves are the perpetrators.

In the end, it all comes down to our ignorance. As citizens and as individuals, we all must make an effort to make our city safer for the better of us citizens. After all, it won’t hurt to try.

Tina Magpusao

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Coming clean: Drug and alcohol testing in the workplace

Posted by Focus Pacific on May 13th, 2025

Coming clean: Drug and alcohol testing in the workplace

Drug testing in the workplace is a comparatively new situation that is observed to exist globally, relocating all around companies operating in developing countries. Others state authoritatively that it should be carried out because it is a practical way of controlling drug abuse in the workplace. Arguments occur in the workplace drug testing. The problems cover from privacy questions to duty every individual has to perform. This topic is to be covered with questions like whether examination results exactly serve an indication of substance abuse in the workplace or if they primarily manifest activities outside of the workplace.

The initial debate in favor of Workplace Drug Testing involves most to “safety-critical” business occupations like medicine, transport and construction where disabled senses and discrimination can have impactful outcomes. In addition, advocates of Workplace Drug Testing claim that employers have a “duty of care” to produce a secure working environment.

The justification and opposition are immeasurable. Oppositions of the benefit of Workplace Drug Testing do not argue that it can display only use instead of the influence of presentation, nor can it recognize between use and abuse. Workplace Drug Testing lifts a variety of moral concerns, including the privacy of personal information and whether an employer has a freedom to know what employees do outside of working hours. Moreover, Workplace Drug Testing is not totally reliable, resulting rare “false positives”.

R. Soriano

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Scientists Turn Fat Cells Into Tiny Lasers

Posted by Focus Pacific on May 4th, 2025

Lasers have been part of the human world for the past ten years with the implementations of laser pointers and CD players to medicine and science research. Lasers are also significant because of its précised way of production and have an exact emission color. We can also picture out lasers as an electronic device we can touch and hold with our bare hands or as a huge box in the center of a research laboratory.

Fluorescent dyes are also common in research and used in to diagnose or distinguish specific cell and tissue types. To light up a fluorescent dye makes it to produce and discharge the light with a distinctive color. This color and intensity are used for measurement in concentrations of different chemical substances like DNA and proteins. The essential disadvantage of fluorescent dyes is that only limited colors can be identified.

Two different technologies that have joined research identifies that if a dye is put in an optical cavity, it can produce a laser. This optical cavity is an electric equipment that keeps light. Based on the research of the journal Nature Photonics, it can give a tiny laser that produce and release light inside a single living cell.

When it comes to attentively designing a laser, it is possible to reach 1 trillion cells which have extraordinary label. That is approximately similar to the total number of cells in the human body. For this reason, every cell in the human body can be possibly identified and monitored. This is a long jump from cell-tagging methods which can tag at most few hundred cells. Up to this time, Petri dishes were only tagged cells and it is still possible that it can also work for human body cells.

S. Yun

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Autumn Part 3

Posted by Focus Pacific on March 25th, 2025

 

 

Autumn Part 3 (2014 Korea)

by

K. Song

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Off the menu: China moves to protect endangered species

Posted by Focus Pacific on March 24th, 2025

Off the menu: China moves to protect endangered species

Curbing China’s hunger for wild game is just the starting point of the battle against illegal poaching according to the people who advocates or acts for the protection and preservation of the environment and wildlife.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) explained the laws of the country on the unauthorized wildlife trade. Person who is proven guilty of eating endangered species or buys them for other intentions is sentenced by up to ten years imprisonment according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

China has four hundred twenty animals which were listed on the official preserved endangered species such as giant panda and golden monkey.

Most species on the list were market illegally for their meat and organs and considered expensive food and valued extremely for their generally assumed medicinal properties.

Domestic to China, the seriously at risk of extinction pangolin can be found on the list of dishes available in a restaurant selling it for as much as three hundred twenty four dollars per dish.

The high price connected in consuming on endangered species means the menus are possessions that is taken to indicate high social or professional status..

Today, those craving for a taste of the endangered wildlife will have to consider a course of action carefully before taking a bite.

Z. Li

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