Category: NEWS & EVENTS

Two new state-of-the-art ambulances were turned over to the University Health Service (UHS) by Chancellor Fernando C. Sanchez, Jr in a simple ceremony held on July 10 at the driveway of BM Gonzalez Hall.

Dr. Jessie Imelda Foronda-Walde, UHS director, accepted a mock-up vehicle key to signify the turnover from Chancellor Sanchez of the two ambulances.

The two ambulances are equipped with advance cardiovascular life support (ACLS) equipment, ambulatory external defibrillators (AED) to resuscitate a person who goes on sudden cardiac arrest, a nebulizer, suction machine, and oxygen supply.

There’s a new, faster way of searching through the University Library’s collection of materials with “Tuklas,” a web-scale discovery service that can search across the print and electronic resources of an entire library in real time.

“Tuklas” functions much like an online public access catalog or OPAC, where users can search through the various library resources such as books, academic journals, theses and dissertations, archival documents and articles from local newspapers and magazines.

The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) has collaborated with the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) for the seventh episode of the “Edu-Hack: Navigating a Turbulent Educational Landscape.”

UPLB formally opened its COVID-19 Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory (CMDL) in ceremonies held on July 10 at the site.

The UPLB-CMDL will serve as a subnational testing center for Laguna and nearby provinces, thereby helping ease a major bottleneck in the COVID-19 response in the country.

At first glance, the field of agricultural biotechnology (agri biotech) does not seem to have any relation at all to fighting a pandemic. But according to Dr. Flerida A. Cariño, professor of biochemistry at UP Diliman, agri biotech has a bigger role in countering the current COVID-19 crisis than most people realize.

She said that the techniques and tools used in agri biotech are the same ones used in molecular biology and biotechnology, a field that facilitates virus detection, disease management and treatment, and development of vaccines and therapeutics.

How risky are your job and workplace in this time of COVID-19 pandemic?

You can calculate this using job and workplace risk calculators developed by UPLB biomathematicians based at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics (IMSP) of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The two modeling tools called the Job Risk Calculator and the Workplace Outbreak Simulator, provide answers to these crucial questions in just a few clicks. These two platforms are free and can be accessed online.

The virtual discussion addresses the challenges, issues, and concerns that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are experiencing as they transition into a digital mode of delivery of education, and their varied ways of managing and coping with learning disruptions in the current higher education environment.

Mayor Arlene B. Arcillas of the City of Santa Rosa, Laguna and Mayor Rex T. Gatchalian of Valenzuela City narrated how PPP enabled their local government units (LGUs) to conduct targeted testing, establish the needed isolation facilities and diagnostic laboratories, and distribute more relief goods in these critical times.

The two talked about their COVID-19 management strategies during the Center for Strategic Planning and Policy Studies (CSPPS) Policy Webinar Series on June 29.

A molecular epidemiologist from UPLB explained how pandemics, such as COVID-19, are caused by declining biodiversity.

Dr. Mary Grace B. Dacuma, an assistant professor at the Animal Biology Division of the Institute of Biological Sciences, discussed this during the third leg of the Biodiversity and Resiliency Webinar Series of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) on June 19.

Dr. Dacuma, a PhD holder from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, shed light on the concept of pathogen spillover, or the transmission of the agents of infectious diseases such as virus, to humans.

The UPLB COVID-19 Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory (UPLB-CMDL) received today, June 29, its certification as a molecular laboratory that can perform independent testing for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) by Realtime PCR from the Department of Health-Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (DOH-RITM).

Along with this, it was issued a license to operate for the year 2020 by the DOH Health Facilities and Service Regulatory Bureau.