Published Scholars in the Philippines

Using Google Scholar data, webometrics ranks 453 scientists in the Philippines (June 2016 report). Each of these scientists has at least an h-index of 5. Starting 1978, the National Academy of Science and Technology of the Philippines has 117 Academicians, 38 of them became National Scientists. Since 1978, the Philippines has inducted 41 National Scientists.

To date, only 17 National Scientists are still living. I attempted to locate them in the Scopus database. Not all of them has a record at Scopus. The interactive map below is an attempt to visualize where these scholars served. Each pin is the location of an institution. A pop-up window shows the number of scholars in an institution, the total citations of the scholars, and the range of h-index of the scholars. The database I am curating now has 523 records (which is in no way exhaustive).

The scholars are obviously concentrated in the National Capital Region. The map however shows that there are scholars in other parts of country.

 

Champions!

My picks in championship games usually end up losing. Not this time though.

Dallas Mavericks won its first NBA championship trophy by winning 105-95 in its game 6 against Miami Heat! Miami Heat may have three of the best players but Dallas Mavs definitely is the better team.

Ateneo Eagles won the FilOil-Flying V Hanes Preseason Premier Cup (75-56) against the NCAA 2010 champion, San Beda Lions.

Pilipino Funny Komiks

Pilipino Funny Komiks for Children was published by Islas Filipinas Publishing Company from 1978 to 2004.  I collected PFK starting with issue #2.  I stopped buying PFK when I was already in College (but I did remember buying a PFK issue when I was still a freshman, as a 'pasalubong' to my siblings).  My whole PFK stash was left in our old house when we moved.  I remember having several boxes of PFKs.  I wish I could have those copies back. :-)

In October 2008, PFK was revived by Infinito Publishing.  Three issues were published in 2008 (#1405, #1406, #1407) and one issue in 2009 (#1408).  It is really hard to look for a copy of these PFKs.  I was able to purchase my first copy of #1407 at the National Bookstore at SM Megamall and #1408 at Filbars at SM Megamall.   The National Bookstore at Pavillion Mall (Sta Rosa) still has a copy of #1407.   I was able to get #1405 and #1406 from a newstand at Farmer's Market, Cubao.

#1405	#1406
#1407	#1408

There are some scans of old PFKs floating in the Internet.

If there are people out there who want to part with their old PFKs (circa 1978 to 1990), I would gladly take them. :-)

The Push for K+12

The Regional Consultation on the K+12 Educational Reform is on-going.  This morning, Dr. Isagani Cruz talked about the current ideas on how to implement K+12 in the near future.  K+12 is actually kindergarten + 6 years of elementary + 4 years of high school + 2 years of career academy.  Dr. Cruz however calls the last 2 years of basic ed as senior high school and not career academy.  Career academy is the one being pushed by Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ.

The K+12 will actually start next School Year (i.e., SY 2011-2012).  This however is met by hesitations and concerns.  Participants from Elementary schools expressed concern about training their teachers to teach an appropriate preparatory curriculum (i.e., the K in K+12 proposal).

The kindergarten program (the K in K+12) is essentially the familiar prep and not the current "kindergarten" program and not the nursery program.  In the K+12 proposal, kindergarten is necessary and not optional as before.

My concern is more on the assurance that graduates of Career Academies will actually get jobs.  This will entail close partnership with employers and the industry players.  I hope that DOLE and Employers Confederation of the Philippines actively participate in the implementation of K+12.

Nowadays, some employers would insist on a college degree requirement even if that is clearly an over-qualification.  I hope that graduates of a Career Academy will be attractive to employers and will be well paid.

Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ provides an excellent coverage of the K+12 Educational Reform (see : http://taborasj.wordpress.com/).

Remembering Robert Frost

I keep on hearing the President about "tuwid na daan" since his campaign to clinch the presidency.  I have this thought that people might mistake the "tuwid na daan" as the easy path and the "baluktot na daan" as the difficult one. 

I think it should be stressed that what we should be doing is to find the correct path, the path not easily discovered.  I recall a poem that we read in Mrs. Favoreal's class back in early 80s at NPS. The poem was written by Robert Frost, an American poet.  

The Road Not Taken

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

(Robert Frost, Mountain Interval,1916)

Robert Frost was born March 26, 1874 and died January 29, 1963.

Giyera ng gulay -- circa 70s

Noong unang panahon, sa konstantinopla
Hari ang pipino, reyna ang malunggay
May anak-anakan na isang prinsesa
Bansag na pangalan, si donya patola
Kaginsa-ginsa ko, nag-kagulo-gulo
Lumabas ang lahat na konstabularyo
Nagpa-embahada si heneral upo
Si kondeng kalabasa ang siyang sumaklolo
Si sundalong talong ay sulong pa nang sulong
Si sundalong patani ang siyang sumalubong
Si sarhento bataw, mga sundalo'y tinipon
Dahilan sa giyerang hindi mai-urong

-- author unknown

I recall that this is part of our required readings when I'm in Grade 1 or 2.

The author perhaps is referring to a sort of a vegetable cuisine that involves pipino, malunggay, patola, upo, kalabasa, talong, patani, bataw -- salad?

Revisiting Fractal Compression technique

During the early nineties, I was involved in the Fractal Image Compression research of Ateneo de Manila.  Last night, I uncovered an early IFS-based algorithm implemented by Michael F. Barnsley and Lyman P. Hurd in 1992.  The implementation was written in C and only works on TGA monochrome images.  I modified the algorithm so that it would work on colored images. I then implemented it in C++.

A total of 2304 affine maps are needed to encode the 192 x 192 image below:

Using the said 2304 affine maps, the image below was produced after 16 iterations:

Obviously, the resulting image is not good because the reconstruction errors are very apparent.  I decided to throw away the use of unsigned char (used by Barnsley and Hurd). Instead I used floating point datatype to represent pixel data.  After a thorough code modification, I got the result below:
 

This result is amazing!  The difference image below shows where the errors are:

While I'm quite satisfied by my implementation, the compression process is slow.  I recall that this is a problem that hindered the progress of our research then.  I may work on this problem again when I get a substantial amount of spare time.