Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a process that allows them to imitate photosynthesis—a potentially critical breakthrough in the search for clean, sustainable energy.

Prof. Angela Belcher

Photosynthesis is the ability of plants to harvest the power of sunlight. It is a natural process that converts carbon dioxide into oxygen, as well as other organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight. Photosynthesis occurs in plants, algae, and many species of bacteria. By replicating the process, solar energy proponents hope to make unlimited amounts of “green” energy from water and sunlight alone.

The breakthrough was announced by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering at MIT.

Writing in the current issue of Nature Nantechnology, Belcher said, “Our results suggest that the biotemplated nanoscale assembly of functional components is a promising route to significantly improved photocatalytic water-splitting systems.”

Vial of glowing ultrapure hydrogen

In practical terms, the research could allow an inexpensive way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could then be used as a fuel source for vehicles or fuel cells. For dreamers, in means that you could store water in your car (or home, or wherever) and simply synthesize it into hydrogen and oxygen on the fly.

Belcher and her team took a harmless virus called M13. They engineered it so that one end carries a catalyst—iridium oxide. Bound at the other end are light-sensitive pigments, zinc porphyrins. The porphyrins capture light energy, and transmit it along the virus, acting as a wire, to the other end, activating the catalyst. That process splits water into oxygen and the constituents of hydrogen, a proton and electron.

“The role of the pigments is to act as an antenna to capture the light. and then transfer the energy down the length of the virus, like a wire,” Belcher said in her paper. “The virus is a very efficient harvester of light, with these porphyrins attached.”

For now, a prototype device that can carry out the splitting of water into oxygen and hydrogen should be able to be ready in two years, according to Belcher.

And there’s another problem.  For now, the process extracts the oxygen just fine, but the hydrogen atoms get split into their component protons and electrons. In the second phase of the project, Belcher and her team will combine these hydrogen atom components back into proper atoms and molecules. They also need to find a cheaper catalyst.

According to Thomas Mallouk, the DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics at Pennsylvania State University, for this process to actually be cost-competitive with other approaches to solar power, it has to be at least ten times more efficient than natural photosynthesis, be repeatable a billion times, and use less expensive materials.

But for now, the really hard part seems to be over.

VIDEO: Photosynthesis (Simple Science via Vimeo.com)

Photosynthesis Video from Simple Science on Vimeo.

CITATIONS:

GM viruses offer hope of future where energy is unlimited
Breakthrough as US researchers replicate photosynthesis in laboratory
The Independent (London) April 13, 2010

Biologically templated photocatalytic nanostructures for sustained light-driven water oxidation
Nature Nanotechnology, April 11, 2010

Engineered Virus Harnesses Light To Split Water
Scientific American, April 14, 2010

Virus to help split water into hydrogen for fuel cells?
PaulTan.org, April 14, 2010

Related posts:

• Turks turn tires into ‘stardust’
• Poop Power: Electricity generated from raw sewage
• Researchers on track to prevent train wrecks
• Saudis raise the ante in mobile desalination

The small, chinless “Hobbits” of Indonesia, cousins of modern humans also known as Homo floresiensis (“Flores Man”), turn out to be older than scientists had previously thought, according to a team of scientists at Australia’s University of Wollongong.

According to the university’s Web site, previous research by a joint Indonesian-Australian team in the Soa Basin of Flores in 2001 unearthed stone tools in ancient deposits dated to 880,000 years ago. This appeared to provide a maximum age for the arrival on the island of the ancestors of the so-called “hobbits,” who stood about three-and-a-half feet tall, had no chin and whose body types were characterized by a small brain and thick leg bones.

However, researchers recently discovered an even older site in the Soa Basin, Wolo Sege, which contains stone tools sealed by one million-year-old volcanic deposits, the university reported.  The findings also are reported in an article (“Evidence for hominins on Flores, Indonesia, by one million years ago”) in the latest issue of Nature magazine.

Dr. Adam Brumm (center)

“These stone tools occur at the very bottom of the basin’s sedimentary sequence, and the bedrock on which the deposits sit is dated to 1.8 million years ago,” wrote Dr. Adam Brumm, on the university Web site. Brumm, the lead author of the study, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with UOW’s Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

“This means that if humans were present on Flores significantly earlier than one million years ago any evidence they may have left behind would not have been preserved.”

Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete cranium (skull), according to Wikipedia.  These remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans. This hominin is remarkable for its small body and brain and for its survival until relatively recent times—possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago.

Recovered alongside the skeletal remains were stone tools from archaeological horizons ranging from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago. The remains themselves have been dated to between 38,000 and 13,000 years ago.

Local geology suggests that a volcanic eruption on Flores approximately 12,000 years ago was responsible for the demise of the hobbits, along with other local fauna.

RELATED VIDEO: The Mystery Skulls of Palau (National Geographic)

Related posts:

• Beijing stinks! Deodorant cannons to the rescue
• The world of food … on a chart
• For Forests Under Fire, a Slight Return
• A damming effect on giant catfish

High-speed rail seems to be top of mind among the world’s transportation wonks and policy makers, with action in the U.S., Europe and, most of all, China.

Taiwan

As California puts a $9.95 billion high-speed rail project on the fast track, China has begun exploring plans to link its high-speed train routes to Europe. Meanwhile, the U.S. federal government has set aside $8.8 billion in stimulus funds for 13 high-speed rail projects.

China and Japan also have jumped into the market for manufacturing bullet trains, including trains that would connect Tampa, Fla. to Orlando, with a possible stop at Walt Disney World. They are the latest players in the bullet train sweepstakes. France’s Alstom SA, Germany’s Siemens AG and Canada’s Bombardier Inc. also want to sell trains, tracks and operating equipment for the U.S. effort.

French TGV

With the runaway success of Spain’s Alta Velocidad Española (AVE), connecting Madrid and Barcelona, the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) in France and the U.S. stimulus funds, high-speed rail has generated a considerable buzz. High-speed rail projects also are underway in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

Bullet trains are generally considered to be those traveling faster than 180 miles an hour(290 kph). Japan built the world’s first “Shinkansen” and has the biggest high-speed network, carrying 308 million people last year.

Spanish AVE

China is catching up fast, though. According to a report in Business Week, China is eying  two potential routes from Beijing, one passing through India, Pakistan and the Middle East, and another connecting Germany, through Russia. A third line would extend south from China to connect Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia.

Video: High-speed trains around the world (California High-Speed Rail Authority)

Citations:

China Explores Rail Routes to Europe
Business Week, March 16, 2010

First China, next the world
Economist, Gulliver blog, March 15, 2010

California High-Speed Rail
Wikipedia

High-Speed Rail Gains Traction in Spain
The New York Times, March 16, 2010

Disney High-Speed Support May Boost Japan, China Trainmakers
Bloomberg News (via Business Week)

Related posts:

• High-Speed Rail Makes Tracks Worldwide
• When High-Speed Internet Isn't, Try a Carrier Pigeon
• The Future Is Faster
• The route to Machu Picchu is open again

Is Evgenii Narimanov dabbling in black magic?

Unlikely, but the Purdue University electrical and computer engineering professor is undoubtedly running in the black, due to his creation of a blacker-than-black metamaterial that absorbs virtually all light.

Evgenii Narimanov

This metamaterial is composed of an array of extremely thin—35 nanometers in diameter— silver wires and centimeter squares of aluminum oxide, which causes light waves to bend and bounce in abnormal directions.

The material can function as a shield of sorts, making objects invisible to radar. The team’s original product, which had a smooth surface, absorbed 80 percent of the light that hit it. When they roughened the surface, however, the material absorbed up to 99 percent of the light.

The creation is “equally applicable to all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Narimanov in a New Scientist report. He worked on this project with Norfolk University’s Mikhail Noginov and a team of researchers.

Scientists have been exploring the use of metamaterials for decades. Imperial College’s John Pendry is the field’s pioneer. He created the first “invisibility cloak” using an artificial material that absorbs light, making it almost invisible to the human eye.

In the past, other metamaterials have been used to create sound-proof walls and to simulate cosmological theories such as the “Big Bang”.

Metamaterial

Last year, Chinese researchers Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui created an electromagnetic black hole by absorbing radiation.

Narimanov had recently introduced his plan to create the darkest material on the planet, and commented in a Scientific American report that he was not surprised to see Cheng and Cui’s success, since he was aware of the vast potential of metamaterial. “It’s impressive, though, how quickly they have done it,” he said.

Narimanov’s blacker-than-black metamaterial will primarily be used for military endeavors, to build equipment that is not detectable by radar. It represents a great advance in the stealth technology arena.

Of the new material, Pendry said, “This is a new and valuable result.”

—Natalie Orenstein/Newsdesk

VIDEO: The invisibility shield

CITATIONS:

Radiation-soaking metamaterial puts black in the shade
New Scientist, June 11, 2010

It’s official: the new black is very, very black
UK Guardian, June 13, 2010

A new engineered stealth metamaterial is the blackest ever
POPSCI, June 11, 2010

Researchers create an electromagnetic ‘black hole’ the size of a salad plate
Scientific American, October 20, 2009

Related posts:

• Historically Black Schools: Change They can Believe in?
• Black Truckers Win Big Wal-Mart Settlement
• San Francisco's 'Black Exodus' Gathers Steam
• Researchers on track to prevent train wrecks

The head of an international wildlife organization says it has “failed miserably” to halt the precipitous population decline of tigers in the wild.

“How have we let this happen?” said Willem Wijnstekers, the secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), meeting this month in Doha, Qatar.

“If we use tiger numbers as a performance indicator,” he said, “then we must admit that we have failed miserably and that we are continuing to fail.”

In a statement released to the press this past week, Wijnstekers said, “Although the tiger has been prized throughout history, and is a symbol of incredible importance in many cultures and religions, it is now literally on the verge of extinction. 2010 is the Chinese Year of the Tiger and the International Year of Biodiversity; this must be the year in which we reverse the trend. If we don’t, it will be to our everlasting shame.”

In the early 1900s, tigers were found throughout Asia and numbered over 100,000. Current estimates indicate that fewer than 3,200 of these remain in the wild, mostly due to poaching.

Tigers are today primarily poached for their skins but almost every part of a tiger’s body can be used for decorative or traditional medicinal purposes. Most tigers are now restricted to small pockets of habitat, with several geographical populations on the brink of extinction.

There were nine subspecies of tiger in the world: the Siberian Tiger, the South China Tiger, Indochinese Tiger, the Sumatran Tiger, the Bengal Tiger, the Malayan Tiger, the Balinese Tiger, the Javan Tiger and the Caspian Tiger or Persian Tiger. Three of these nine subspecies of tiger have gone extinct in the last century and one of them is believed to become extinct in the near future because of human influences.

The historical range of these nine subspecies ranges from Russia to Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, China and southeast Asia, and the Indonesian islands. Today, with a third of the subspecies extinct, their range has greatly diminished.

Tiger conservation groups, scientists and celebrities, including U.S. actor Harrison Ford, have partnered with the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank Group to help save wild tigers.

VIDEO: From the World Bank Group, pleas by actors Harrison Ford and Bo Derek

Related posts:

• Fur Flies in Tiger Photo Fight
• Sri Lanka War Nearing End?
• An Asian Tiger Comes (House) Hunting
• Giant tortoises making a comeback on the Galapagos Islands

Putting aside mind-blowing cost overruns, along with delays at a Chinese steel fabrication plant, engineers and scientists are following the equally mind-blowing construction feats in the eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.

Scheduled (so far) to open in 2013, the $6 billion (so far) to replace the earthquake-vulnerable current span employing groundbreaking engineering to create the world’s first self-anchored suspension bridge. Unlike the current span, part of which collapsed in the 7.0-magnitude 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, this one is designed to withstand rare seismic events. Specifically, the span has a “1,500-year return period,” meaning the largest rock motions expected to occur at the bridge site once every 1,500 years.

A shear link beam

At the heart of the engineering is the design of the 525-foot tower and its four innovative “shear link beams” which can move and twist independently of each other. These beams attach to a complex foundation whose 13 angled piles extend 196 feet below the waterline and are anchored into bedrock through “rock socketing”—reinforced concrete that is placed within steel shafts which, in turn, are drilled into bedrock.

One of the 13 piles of the foundation contains seismic monitoring equipment to collect information for the California Division of Mines and Geology.

In addition to the tower, two huge marine foundations are to supply support for the tower on Yerba Buena Island and at the eastern end of the road decks.

Timoshenko

It is in the use of shear link beams that has caught the attention of engineers. The idea was to use elements of the Timoshenko beam theory, developed by Ukrainian/Russian Stephen Tomoshenko in the early part of the 20th century.

Timoshenko, a specialist in continuum mechanics, devised the formula to replace the Bernoulli-Euler theory of beam design.

Now, a century later, his work is put to use in the new Bay Bridge.

Much of this is to be explained on television April 9, when KQED’s Quest airs on Bay Area TV. The show segment currently is online, however, for those who want a sneak peak.

VIDEO: The New Bay Bridge, Earthquake Makeover (KQED)

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Citations:

Push to build 2 crucial Bay Bridge parts faster
San Francisco Chronicle, March 11, 2010

Timoshenko beam theory
ASCE Research Library, 2009

Re-engineering the Bay Bridge: Built Quake Tough
Popular Mechanics June 2007

Bay Bridge
Unparalleled bridge, unprecedented cost
San Francisco Panorama | San Francisco Public Press
Dec, 8, 2009

KQED Quest

Bay Bridge Info Web site (Caltrans)

Related posts:

• Blame Haiti’s deaths on shoddy construction
• Geo-Engineering: High Hopes, Climate Questions
• Got wind? Power up that ferry!
• The 1906 S.F. Earthquake commemoration is … all wrong

The number of apostles has remained constant and clearly the Middle East millieu has, too. But over the years, artists’ depictions of Jesus’ last supper have upped the ante on the portions—by a whopper-sized 69 percent.

Leonardo

This is according to a new study out of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, where a pair of scholarly brothers have teamed up to illustrate how our food habits have changed since Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous tempera painting depicting the scene.

By analyzing 52 paintings of the Last Supper, Brian Wansink and his brother, Craig, say “From its depiction circa 1000 AD/CE to the present, the ratio of (the) main course entree has generally increased by 69.2%. Similarly, the ratio of the size of bread has increased by 23.1% and that of the size of plate by 65.6%.”

What would Jamie Oliver say?

Tintoretto

Setting aside that question for a bit, the Wansinks said on Brian’s Web site, MindlessEating.org, that the portion sizes were indexed, based on the average size of the heads depicted in the paintings.

This was aided by the use of a CAD-CAM program that allowed the items to be scanned, rotated and calculated, regardless of their original orientation in the painting. An index of 2.0 for the bread would indicate that the average width of the bread was twice the width of the average disciple’s head.

Girolamo da Santacroce

“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food,” Brian Wansink said in a press release. “We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner.”

Brian Wansink is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics and director of the Food and Brand Lab. His brother, Craig, is a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, Va., and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Jacopo Bassano

The study found that the size of the entrées in paintings of the Last Supper, which according to the New Testament occurred during a Passover evening, has progressively grown 69 percent; plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent, over the past 1,000 years.

Since Leonardo, many artists have had a go at the Last Supper, including Tintoretto, William Blake, Jacopo Bassano, Girolamo da Santacroce and Valentin de Boulogne.

Valentin de Boulogne

All of different takes on the meal itself, but clearly the mise en place has changed, as well as the food itself.

As for Oliver, the English chef whose reality show, “The Food Revolution,” premiered this month on American television, it’s doubtful he’d have much of a problem with the nutritional value of the food. But the portions?

Wow.

VIDEO: Dr. Brian Wasnik, explaining the study

CITATIONS:

Cornell University Food and Brand Lab

The Largest Last Supper
MindlessEating.org

The Last Supper: Art as Large as Life
Smithsonian.com, March 23, 2010

Is Jesus making you overeat?
Obesity Panacea, March 26, 2010

Related posts:

• The biggest liars in the world are …
• Common bacteria may boost intelligence, decrease anxiety in humans
• The world of food … on a chart
• Way up north, another kind of oil controversy

It wasn’t the quake that did most of the killing in Haiti.

The blame for the 7.0-magnitude earthquake‘s staggering death toll—which is expected to rise to over 200,000—lies at the feet of that country’s construction industry, says a Berkeley, Calif., engineer.

Eduardo Fierro, a Berkeley seismic engineer who arrived in Haiti shortly after the earthquake, told a University of California audience that shoddy materials, unacceptable building practices and a lack of government oversight caused the vast majority of the deaths there. Fierro’s presentation was the first public technical assessment of the Jan. 12 Haitian quake.

“My God, this was not an earthquake disaster — it was a disaster caused by the construction industry in Haiti who didn’t know anything about building codes,” Fierro said on Jan. 26 to a group of students and professionals at the Pacific Engineering Earthquake Research Center on the UC Berkeley campus.

“These were the people who caused the loss of human life. We have to design things and assume our children and mothers are going to be in the building when the earthquake hits.”

Fierro’s remarks were widely published in the local, Northern California press, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times, but made little impact in major, mass-market media such as the New York Times.

Among the most remarkable scenes in Port-au-Prince, Fierro said, is that he saw just one building that remained undamaged by the earthquake, and that was the American embassy. In an interview with the Chronicle’s David Perlman, Fierro said that was the only structure whose construction methods embodied the most modern building codes enforced in American cities.

He said most of the concrete buildings had steel reinforcement bar—rebars— that were drastically inadequate, and many structures had none at all, such those buildt with hollow cinder block.

Haiti, he said, has no government building codes whatsoever.

By contrast, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, which also measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, killed 63 people throughout northern California, injured 3,757 and left some 3,000-12,000 people homeless, according to data gathered by Wikipedia. Twenty years later, Bay Area builders and engineers are still working on retrofiting many structures, such as the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge.

If Haiti is to recover, Fierro said, its government will have to take the lead in establishing building codes, then enforcing them. After all, it wasn’t the quake that did the killing. It was lack of construction standards.

—George Shirk/Newsdesk.org

Eduardo Fierro’s full presention is here:

Related posts:

• Sean Penn’s urgent plea for Haiti relief
• Darwin saw Chile’s earthquake coming
• The 1906 S.F. Earthquake commemoration is … all wrong
• Shear beams, engineering and the science of the new Bay Bridge

The California Owens Valley, the scene of decades of intense environmental hostilities and the subject of the famous Roman Polanski film “Chinatown,” once more finds itself at center stage.

Owens Lake

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which turned Owens Lake into a dry wasteland and created one of the most prodigious polluters in America, wants to turn its lake bed into one of the world’s largest sources of solar power.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, and many other news and blog sources, interim DWP Chief S. David Freeman says the valley on the dry side of the Sierra Nevada is blessed with the “best sun in the country.” He envisions a gigantic solar array that could cover 80 square miles of dry lake bed and nearby flatlands, a sea of photovoltaic cells roughly the size of Cleveland, that would generate up to 10 percent of all the power produced in California while simultaneously calming the region’s fierce dust storms.

But not so fast.

Landowners in the valley, along with an array of environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, have their doubts, much of them based on a long history of disputes over land and water rights in the valley.

“Given our history with them, there’s skepticism,” said Mark Bagley of the Owens Valley Committee and Sierra Club, which took successful legal action to force the DWP to restore the Lower Owens River. “But it’s promising if it’s done right, the right way.”

First, the DWP must show that a solar array can eliminate the wind-blown dust storms born on Owens Lake.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, water was first diverted from the Owens River to the City of Los Angeles in 1913, and by 1926 Owens Lake was dry. The dry bed of Owens Lake has produced enormous amounts of windblown dust since the desiccation of the lake. The term “Keeler fog” (for the town on the east side of the lake) was coined locally decades ago for the pervasive, unusually fine-grained, alkaline dust that infiltrates the smallest cracks and contaminates residences.

“The lake bed is probably the largest single source of PM10 dust (aerosol particles smaller than 10 microns in aerodynamic diameter) in the United States,” the USGS reported.

To comply with federal clean air standards, the DWP already has spent $500 million on control measures, covering close to 40 square miles of the lake bed with shallow water or fields of vegetation. Still, the airborne pollution exceeds federal limits by 10 times.

The Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District has put Webcams into use so people can monitor the dust storms.

Ted Schade pollution control district told the Times that  the DWP must prove that solar panels will slow  the typically 60 miles-an-hour wind to 15 mph.

If it works,  only a portion of the electricity generated by an Owens Valley array would be transmitted to Los Angeles, according to the Times. The rest would be sold to other utilities around the West, with an ample share of the profits heading to L.A., 180 miles away.

A KABC (Los Angeles) news report on Owens Lake is here:

Related posts:

• Yosemite’s Range of Light goes solar
• New tech turns ordinary windows into solar cells
• Solar Battery to Fuel Italian Farm
• High-speed rail is all the rage: here, there and everywhere

A Filipino Bride and Groom

The bill, House Bill No. 1799, also known as “An Act Introducing Divorce in the Philippines” was filed by Congresswomen Luzviminda Ilagan and Emerenciana De Jesus on July 27.  Both congresswomen are members of the political party group Gabriela Women’s Party, which focuses on advancing women’s rights in the Philippines.

Currently, it is illegal to obtain a divorce in the Philippines.  An annulment or legal separation is recognized by the government, according to the Family Code, executive order number 209, signed July 26, 1987.

“Reality tells us that there are many failed, unhappy marriages across all Filipino classes,” wrote the two congresswomen in HB 1799’s explanatory note.

Map of Philippines

“In the Filipino culture, marriage is regarded as a sacred union, and the family founded on marriage is considered as a fount of love, protection and care. Philippine society generally frowns upon and discourages marital break-ups and so provides cultural and legal safeguards to preserve marital relations. Cultural prescriptions and religious norms keep many couples together despite the breakdown of the marriage,” the bill added.

Walden Bello, a member of the House of Representatives, publicly supports the proposed divorce bill.  “Let’s join the 20th century,” said Bello.

The Philippines is predominantly Roman Catholic, where marriage is highly revered and divorce is not an option.  Congressman Ben Evardone has publicly opposed the bill.  “We must continue to work for the preservation of the sanctity of marriage and the family,” said Evardone.   ”Legalizing divorce might encourage or promote destruction of families.”

“With the predominance of the Catholic faith in the Philippines, the fear that divorce will erode personal values on marriage appears unfounded,” stated congresswomen Ilagan and De Jesus.

“This bill is being introduced based on indications that Philippine society is ready for the legalization of divorce.  The sanctity of marriage is not based on the number of marriages existing but on the quality of marital relationships,” they added.

According to the Family Code, a marriage may be annulled for various reasons, such as if a bride or groom was married without the consent of their parents and is under 21 years old.  Other factors include that the marriage was forced and not voluntary or if either spouse had an “incurable” sexual transmitted disease.

A legal separation may be granted if there was physical abuse in the relationship, drug or alcohol abuse, homosexuality or infidelity among other factors, according to the Family Code.

—Lemery Reyes/Newsdesk

VIDEO:

CITATIONS:

Gabriela Women’s Party

Congresswoman Luzviminda Ilagan

Congresswoman Emerenciana De Jesus

Divorce bill filed at House; lawmakers divided

GMA News, August 11, 2010

Executive Order No. 209, Family Code of the Philippines

House Bill No. 1799 (full text)

Related posts:

• Expelling unwed mothers banned in Philippines
• French DNA Bill Stirs Anti-Immigrant Fears
• Brazil bill could grant rights to ‘unborn’
• ‘Secrecy Bill’ debated in South Africa