Necessity is the mother of invention.

For Antonio Mateo, he invented the “Direct Rainwater Catchment System Module” to help solve the impending water shortage in the country over the next five years, specifically potable water.

Mateo said the lack of clean drinking water has been a problem for kids in remote areas who do not have the convenience to buy distilled water from purifying stations.

He cited how kids from the mountains, like the recent death cases in Baler, die from drinking unsafe water. Most of the kids in the mountains do not even reach the age of five, he lamented.

Having been involved in water system technology development for 20 years, he said it is imperative to invent a module that will allow Filipinos to access clean water resources, especially rainwater.

The use of rainwater even at 50 percent utilization would allow savings and would secure surface and groundwater sources, said Mateo.

Using the module, demand on fresh water needs supplied by utility companies in urban areas or by groundwater wells and streams in rural areas will be reduced.

His family, for instance, uses rainwater for 80 percent of its total water supply for household use over five years now.

“Rainwater harvesting is a method of collecting, storing and processing rainwater for human consumption and use,” said Mateo. It allows the provision of fresh water at or near the point of its use, such as the individual household, farm, industrial and commercial establishment.

The concept is nothing new; rain harvesting has been used a long time ago, said Mateo.

“Rainwater harvesting seeks to put rainwater to good use rather than be wasted through floods or natural runoff,” he said. He mentioned that the perennial rains in the Philippines can help supply water in many areas, thus benefiting people.

Mateo said that rainwater passes 14 out of the 16 parameters of potable water. Rainwater just needs to address two factors — reduction of acidity and purification from disease-causing microorganisms — for it to be potable, Mateo said.

According to Mateo, the rainwater becomes non-potable because when it falls on catchments such as roof, it usually washes adhering pollutants such as, dirt, soot, insect and animal manures — which all goes into the rainwater storage tanks or cisterns causing microbiological contamination. Added to these are dissolved solids in the atmosphere that initially comes with the first rainfalls.

To extend the use of rainwater for drinking, Mateo said the module can purify rainwater of sediments using different layers of ceramic filtration and remove, if not kill disease-causing microorganisms, such as E. Coli via a purifying chamber with non-pathogenic solution.

In rural areas, the purifying chamber can be replaced with malunggay seeds, Mateo said. The seeds are disinfecting and cleansing agent. Through three stages of rainwater purification of the module, he said rainwater can be used for watering plants and irrigation, bathing and flushing toilets and finally drinking.

Mateo said the rainwater harvesting industry will grow over the next five years.

Currently, he is looking for suppliers who can mass-produce the module design. He built the prototype with P100,000 budget.

Future plans for enhancement of the module include operation of the catchment’s roof by hydraulics or pneumatics, which can spread out when humidity changes as detected by sensors. – Inquirer.net

GMA News

MANILA, Philippines — A Filipino scientist currently studying in the United States has found a new source of coherent light, like lasers, which only potentially needs lower power to operate, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said on Wednesday.

In a press statement, the DOST’s Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) said Ryan Balili, together with his adviser David Snoke of University of Pittsburgh, were able to demonstrate that the transition of particles into waves could be done at higher temperature which would require lesser power to generate.

The phenomenon is called Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC), named after Indian physicist Satyendranath Bose who worked on the statistics of monoatomic ideal gases and Albert Einstein who speculated this macroscopic coherent state.

“Einstein proposed that at very low temperatures a certain type of identical particles, now called bosons, would’collapse,’ or condense, into a single quantum mechanical wave.

“However, in Balili’s work, he was able to demonstrate the same phenomenon at higher temperatures using polaritons, an energy particle which exists only in a medium that can be polarized by an electromagnetic wave,” the statement explained.

It quoted Balili as saying that the main challenge was making the polariton transition into a BEC even if polaritons exist only for very short times, approximately a few picoseconds.

Nevertheless, Balili and his adviser were able to trap polaritons which turned into a single, spatially compact condensate of gas analogous to atomic BEC.

“One way to think of a polariton BEC is that it is a state of matter that has some of the properties of a laser and some of the properties of a superconductor,” the DOST-SEI statement said.

Balili and his group at the University of Pittsburgh said that what they were able to show is that the emitted light of the polariton BEC and its electrons are coherent, which is a property of superconductors that allows it to make electric current flow without resistance and wavelike interference of electrical signals.

He said that the most promising applications of the polaritons BEC are in optical devises which takes advantage of laser-like sources at low-power coherent light sources.

“This may be useful for signaling, switching, and amplification in optical communications,” he said.

Balili, a 2002 summa cum laude Bachelor of Science in Physics graduate of the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology, is currently taking up his doctorate in Physics at the University of Pittsburgh where he also finished his Master of Science in Physics.

Balili was a scholar of the DOST during his undergraduate years.

Dr. Ester B. Ogena, director of the DOST-SEI, lauded Balili’s work saying his discovery is a manifestation of the caliber of scholars the DOST is getting every year.

“We are the germination box of soon-to-be great names in the science and technology world. Balili is just one of them and every year we get around 3,500 scholars who in the future would propel the Philippines into first world status,” she said in the statement.

Ogena expressed optimism that more DOST-SEI scholars would make a mark in science and technology with the implementation of the Accelerated Science and Technology Human Resource Development Program (ASTHRDP) and the Engineering Research and Development for Technology Program (ERDTP) which provides students to proceed to the MS and PhD studies as a scholar.

“We are beefing up our critical mass of scientists and engineers through the ASTHRDP and ERDTP by providing them with scholarships in our top universities,” she said.

Ogena avowed to continuously entice students to venture into science careers through promotional programs and scholarship grants.

“We shall be at the forefront of science and technology human resources development and create the necessary critical mass of scientists and engineers the Philippines needs,” she said.

Good News Pilipinas

A beer that takes some of the guilt out of drinking won the top prize at the International Federation of Inventors’ Association in Bangkok, Thailand.

While many of the inventions are highly technical efforts, possibly breakthroughs in the fields of medicine, agriculture and environment, crowds at the convention center in the Thai capital were rather drawn to displays such as the fail-safe hammock and Vitamin Beer.

“If you are looking for an excuse to take a swig, this is it,” said Billy L. Lalang, who concocted a beer mixed with Vitamin B, to replace this essential vitamin lost when excessive amounts of alcohol are consumed.

Although yet to be marketed, this “prophylactic for drinkers” as the Philippine inventor calls it, has won a gold medal at the European Union-sponsored Genius-Europe competition.

Lalang, president of the Manila Innovation Development Society, says he has 42 inventions to his name, including a one-a-day lollipop, packed with vitamins and other essentials for undernourished children.

Other popular creations from inventors all over the globe on display include a system to stop would-be car bombers, an even a better mousetrap, a new jam spreader from Taiwan or a “cat averter garbage bag” thought up by an Iranian.

“Every time you give inventors an opportunity to have their ideas seen, that’s what starts their blood flowing,” said Deb Hess, executive director of the Minnesota Inventors Congress.

More than 150 of their brainchildren were unveiled at this conference of the International Federation of Inventors’ Association, a Hungary-based group celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

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The Philippine Star

The Filipino inventor of rent-a-coffin is back with another creation: a coffin with multimedia capability wherein Filipinos abroad can express their condolences in real-time to those who lost their loved ones back home.

Antonio Andes yesterday said one of the features of his newest invention is a multi-function display panel and through the use of the Internet, it can provide video stream of messages from relatives who can’t make it to the wake.

“During the wake period, we usually witness strips of ribbon where names of the family members of the deceased are written and with the aid of a safety pin, it is pasted at the inner cover of the coffin. A single picture frame of the deceased may be displayed atop the full glass cover of the coffin,” said the 42-year-old Filipino inventor.

Andes said the multi function display panel is “detachable or fixed on the inner or outer coffin cover that will provide a pre-edited presentation of pictures, videos and memoirs of the deceased with his family and friends taken during those happy days when he was still alive.”

The multi-function display panel can also be used to show videos of the deceased’s last wishes and other screen text messages about the interment schedule, family tree and place of burial, he said.

The invention also provides entertainment in form of music or video being played during the wake.

Andes said the rental for the flat screen monitor is P5,000 and above for five days of wake, adding the price depends on the length of time and type of presentation the relatives want.

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MagicClip Website

PEOPLE are generally born curious. Our fascination with a lot of things come early. At a young age, we ask a range of simple questions like “What’s that?” or “What are you doing?” to the lip-stuttering “How was I born?” or “How did you make me?” which parents find difficulty answering.

And finally through learning, we become inventive. We pile up our knowledge to come up with new things which usually comes from environment. But little did we know that our path to success sometimes just lies around the corner. Just as what Col. Geronimo A. Dango, the one who gave the world the “magiclip” took.

The simple yet very useful trick started when, in the early 70s, in a small firm in Los Angeles where Dango works as a maintenance engineer, he observed Mexican delivery boys playing with an engineer’s T-square and junked ball bearings. The ball bearings when pressed against the T-square can hold up pieces of paper even without tapes, clips, or thumb tacks. This was a neat trick that took Dango’s interest and without his knowing brought an overwhelming change in his life. Born with a curious and inventive mind, Dango bought the idea and realised that by using the similar technique, he could come up with a simple device that could bring great help to office workers in holding up paper works. And that was when the “magiclip” came into being.

After years of perfecting his simple invention, Dango had the device patented in America which unfortunately did not do well. Thus, in 1977, when the former President Ferdinand Marcos issued P.O. 819, the Balik-Scientist Program which allows Filipino scientists to come home and be given the privilege to contribute to the economy’s development.

Though the market in the Philippines for his magiclip did not do magic with sheer courage and determination, he relentlessly pushed his product and took the risk of putting up his own company, the Herdan Enterprises, which later on became Herdan Corporation, which produces a multiple other products using the “MagiClip” concept. These included copy holders, telephone organizers, flip charts, desk organizers, and holders for negatoscope x-rays.

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