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Less than two years after its inauguration in December 2011, the Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST) Disaster Risk and Exposure Assessment for Mitigation (DREAM) program has finished acquiring floodplain data for 17 of the 18 critical river systems through a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) equipment, a state-of-the-art technology used to generate high-resolution, up-to-date, and three-dimensional (3D) flood hazard maps.

This positive development, reported earlier by DOST Sec. Mario G. Montejo,  is among the information outlined in a progress report that DREAM, led by engineers from University of  the Philippines (UP) Diliman, is set to deliver in a stakeholders’ meeting at the UP-Diliman National Engineering Center on October 17, 2013.

 

We wish to clarify the role of Senator Pia Cayetano and former Senator Panfilo Lacson in regard to the DOST- FNRI’s priority program, the Malnutrition Reduction R&D Program.

Although both senators have expressed their support for the program, neither of them had sought budgetary support to fund the program through the Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP.

 

Global interest on functional foods is ramping up and the Philippines is expected to catch on to this trend, said an official from the Department of Science and Technology’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST- FNRI). Yet these foods should come with valid health claims that are government approved and market accepted, he stressed.

Mario V. Capanzana, PhD, director of FNRI, spoke on the topic during the 62nd Annual Convention of the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science (PhilAAS) held last September at Pearl Manila Hotel with the theme “Nutritional and Functional Food for Health and Wellness.” In his presentation titled “Functional Foods: Global Trends and Issues,”