•National Science and Technology Week (NSTW) will take place at the World Trade Center in Pasay City

from July 17 to 21,

2019.
•This year’s NSTW highlights local science agencies are addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG).
•Key focus areas include poverty, economic growth, and peace and justice.

Science and technology play major roles in our everyday lives–sometimes, in ways that we’re not even aware of. And as we move
closer towards a new, worldwide technological revolution, the importance of conducting and applying scientific research cannot be
overstated.

With the theme “Enabling Technologies for Sustainable Development,” the 2019 National Science and Technology Week (NSTW) will
take place at the World Trade Center in Pasay City on July 17 to 21. This year’s celebration will continue the annual NSTW tradition of
showcasing the impact of science and technology in the Philippines.

NSTW 2019 will highlight how the various agencies of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) are utilizing science and
technology in the country to address the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. Attendees will witness
Pinoy science in action, as a series of exhibits by the DOST’s agencies will demonstrate how the department’s programs are supporting
the SDGs through research, policy implementation, and funding.

Healthcare sector among top targets of 'hackers-for-hire'

By Priam Nepomuceno  September 5, 2019, 5:45 pm

YANGON, Myanmar -- There is an urgent need for the healthcare sector to boost its cyber-defense capabilities as it is among the industries on
the list of top targets of hackers-for-hire, an international cyber security firm said on Thursday.

“With the healthcare sector a bit lagging in terms of their cyber security capabilities, we observe that hacking groups are now off to exploit this
fact by adding medical information and hospital attacks to their services list publicly available on the dark web,” Kaspersky security researcher
Seongsu Park, said in a statement at the Cyber Security Weekend here.

He noted that medical records can be considered more valuable than a simple credit card because hospitals generally require a patient’s
personal and financial credentials before a check-up or an admission.

“Based on the indications and patterns we have seen and are still seeing on the dark web, the main purpose of the individuals behind these
hacking groups is to sell the medical information to another crime group or to any individual who aims to access confidential medical data,” Park
said.

Motives of the buyers can include call scams, identity and monetary theft, as well as blackmailing and any derived crimes.

Such malicious actions are possible with the amount of records and confidential data hacking-for-hire groups can illegally harvest from the
affected health institutions.

When it comes to the possible customer profiles, the nature of the dark web being anonymous opens the possibility that it could be anyone – from
a new hacker, to an enterprise, or even a nation-backed cyber-espionage group.

Securing hospital loopholes

The current threats posed against the healthcare sector show how more and more malicious actors are targeting the industry.

To be able to help protect these organizations and their patients, Kaspersky identified the possible security loopholes and how to build their
defenses.

For instance, exposed vulnerable servers and patient records are often a result of misconfiguration or unconcern.

Kaspersky suggests healthcare organizations to identify the important data they are storing and to figure out how they can protect them through
strengthening cyber security education for the workforce.

This, according to the company, can be done through a series of security awareness training, which in particular explains 'do's and dont's' and
the signs of a cyber security-related incident.

Another potential target of cyber-attacks are complex and ultra-connected medical devices that have diverse and complex functions.
Hospital and healthcare organizations, Kaspersky said, should conduct an assessment on these devices and networks to review the access
policies and the exposure of the devices to the internet.It added that basic rules, such as keeping all software up to date and the implementation
of strong password policy for devices connected to the web, must be enforced.

For an added layer of security, it is suggested to employ real-time and in-depth threat intelligence as well as holistic cyber-security solutions into
a medical organization’s IT infrastructure. (PNA)

Ancient animal species: Fossils dating back 550 million years among
first animal trails
Date: September 4, 2019
Source: Virginia Tech

Summary: A geoscientist calls the unearthed fossils, including the bodies and trails left by an ancient animal species, the
most convincing sign of ancient animal mobility, dating back about 550 million years.
In a remarkable evolutionary discovery, a team of scientists co-led by a Virginia Tech
geoscientist has discovered what could be among the first trails made by animals on the surface
of the Earth roughly a half-billion years ago.

Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geosciences with the Virginia Tech College of Science, calls the unearthed fossils, including the
bodies and trails left by an ancient animal species, the most convincing sign of ancient animal mobility, dating back about
550 million years. Named Yilingia spiciformis -- that translates to spiky Yiling bug, Yiling being the Chinese city near the
discovery site -- the animal was found in multiple layers of rock by Xiao and Zhe Chen, Chuanming Zhou, and Xunlai Yuan
from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.

Reactor turns greenhouse gas into pure liquid fuel

Lab's 'green' invention reduces carbon dioxide into valuable fuels
Date: September 3, 2019

Source: Rice University

Summary: An electrocatalysis reactor built at Rice University recycles carbon dioxide to produce pure liquid fuel solutions
using electricity. The scientists behind the invention hope it will become an efficient and profitable way to reuse the
greenhouse gas and keep it out of the atmosphere.

Models of carbon dioxide molecules (stock image).

Credit: © Ted Reinhard / Adobe Stock
A common greenhouse gas could be repurposed in an efficient and environmentally friendly way with an electrolyzer that uses renewable
electricity to produce pure liquid fuels.

The catalytic reactor developed by the Rice University lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer
Haotian Wang uses carbon dioxide as its feedstock and, in its latest prototype, produces highly
purified and high concentrations of formic acid.
Formic acid produced by traditional carbon dioxide devices needs costly and energy-intensive
purification steps, Wang said. The direct production of pure formic acid solutions will help to
promote commercial carbon dioxide conversion technologies.
The method is detailed in Nature Energy.
Wang, who joined Rice's Brown School of Engineering in January, and his group pursue technologies
that turn greenhouse gases into useful products. In tests, the new electrocatalyst reached an
energy conversion efficiency of about 42%. That means nearly half of the electrical energy can be
stored in formic acid as liquid fuel.
"Formic acid is an energy carrier," Wang said. "It's a fuel-cell fuel that can generate electricity and
emit carbon dioxide -- which you can grab and recycle again.
"It's also fundamental in the chemical engineering industry as a feedstock for other chemicals, and
a storage material for hydrogen that can hold nearly 1,000 times the energy of the same volume of
hydrogen gas, which is difficult to compress," he said. "That's currently a big challenge for hydrogen
fuel-cell cars."
Two advances made the new device possible, said lead author and Rice postdoctoral researcher
Chuan Xia. The first was his development of a robust, two-dimensional bismuth catalyst and the
second a solid-state electrolyte that eliminates the need for salt as part of the reaction.
"Bismuth is a very heavy atom, compared to transition metals like copper, iron or cobalt," Wang
said. "Its mobility is much lower, particularly under reaction conditions. So that stabilizes the
catalyst." He noted the reactor is structured to keep water from contacting the catalyst, which also
helps preserve it.
Xia can make the nanomaterials in bulk. "Currently, people produce catalysts on the milligram or
gram scales," he said. "We developed a way to produce them at the kilogram scale. That will make
our process easier to scale up for industry."
The polymer-based solid electrolyte is coated with sulfonic acid ligands to conduct positive charge
or amino functional groups to conduct negative ions. "Usually people reduce carbon dioxide in a
traditional liquid electrolyte like salty water," Wang said. "You want the electricity to be conducted,
but pure water electrolyte is too resistant. You need to add salts like sodium chloride or potassium
bicarbonate so that ions can move freely in water.
"But when you generate formic acid that way, it mixes with the salts," he said. "For a majority of
applications you have to remove the salts from the end product, which takes a lot of energy and
cost. So we employed solid electrolytes that conduct protons and can be made of insoluble polymers
or inorganic compounds, eliminating the need for salts."
The rate at which water flows through the product chamber determines the concentration of the
solution. Slow throughput with the current setup produces a solution that is nearly 30% formic acid
by weight, while faster flows allow the concentration to be customized. The researchers expect to
achieve higher concentrations from next-generation reactors that accept gas flow to bring out pure
formic acid vapors.

How humans have shaped dogs' brains

Findings suggest that selective breeding has altered brain anatomy in dogs
Date: September 2, 2019

Source: Society for Neuroscience

Summary: Dog brain structure varies across breeds and is correlated with specific behaviors, according to new research.
These findings show how, by selectively breeding for certain behaviors, humans have shaped the brains of their best friends.
Dog brain structure varies across breeds and is correlated with specific behaviors, according to
new research published in JNeurosci. These findings show how, by selectively breeding for
certain behaviors, humans have shaped the brains of their best friends.

Over several hundred years, humans have selectively bred dogs to express specific physical and behavioral characteristics.
Erin Hecht and colleagues investigated the effects of this selective pressure on brain structure by analyzing magnetic
resonance imaging scans of 33 dog breeds. The research team observed wide variation in brain structure that was not
simply related to body size or head shape.

The team then examined the areas of the brain with the most variation across breeds. This generated maps of six brain
networks, with proposed functions varying from social bonding to movement, that were each associated with at least one
behavioral characteristic. The variation in behaviors across breeds was correlated with anatomical variation in the six brain
networks.

Studying the neuroanatomical variation in dogs offers a unique opportunity to study the evolutionary relationship between
brain structure and behavior.

The article, "Significant Neuroanatomical Variation Among Domestic Dog Breeds," appears online Sept. 2, 2019 in
the Journal of Neuroscience.