Welcome to the second issue of Silliman Journal for 2017. The papers in this issue are multidisciplinary in nature; you should be able to find something of interest in more than one of these, no matter what your field might be. This issue begins with our colleagues from Rothlin International Management Consulting who write from the perspective of international business ethics using as case study the controversies surrounding Alibaba Group Holdings and its IPO (initial public offering) applications in Hong Kong and New York. In today’s demand for greater transparency, the authors ask hard questions including, Is transparency a moral absolute? If not, what are its limits? If it is a means, what ends must it serve? The authors conclude their analysis in this way: Transparency can become more apparent than real, unless one is sincerely committed to the basic principles of mutual respect, reciprocity, and inclusiveness, without which the trust necessary to conduct business will quickly evaporate. There will always be a need for moral leadership in business, since markets cannot and do not police themselves. They must be regulated to insure integrity, but it is also up to individual participants to be vigilant.” They add, “if claims to transparency are to be credible, they must be based on a demonstrated willingness to cultivate the moral virtues that sustain it.” The next two articles are by researcher-faculty who demonstrate how information technology can help facilitate learning and academic operations. First, Dave Marcial shows the usefulness of a portable USBbased learning management system that may be used even without Internet connection. Then, Jonathan Te and Albert Rivera developed and tested a support system to assist in the decision to grant scholarships to first year students at Silliman University. The system’s features were found to have worked as originally intended. In the fourth study, Barbara Lyn Galvez and colleagues investigated “The effect of clinical simulation on the cognitive learning abilities of undergraduates of Silliman University College of Nursing”, but found the strategy irrelevant to learning. The next two studies are by psychology faculty-practitioners. Michele Valbuena and others explored incivility as experienced by Silliman University personnel. Rationalizing that “Incivility in the workplace has become of interest in industrial/organizational psychology research to understand employee welfare and design programs to develop employee wellbeing,” the authors utilized a mixed method design to measure personnel experiences of incivility and how these were related to burnout. Limitations of the study indicated that the personnel did not understand what incivility really was, misconstruing the behaviors as bullying, leading to inconsistency in the data between the quantitative and qualitative methods. Then, in anticipation of the passing of the Mental Health Law in the Philippines, a case study was made of the province of Negros Oriental in terms of mental health services and availability of mental health practitioners trained in the discipline. The situation was found to be rather bleak, with many professionally licensed but not in mental health work while those in mental health facilities lacked training and needed to be empowered. The last three full-length articles come from the natural sciences; two are by frequent contributor Annie Paz-Alberto and her colleagues— one on animal diversity in a forest ecosystem in Nueva Ecija, Northern Philippines, the other on IEC and Technology Transfer for Biodiversity Conservation and Utilization in Central Luzon. The authors observed 53 animal species in the area; a bird species Cinnyris jugularis was the most dominant animal species surveyed in the forest ecosystem. In addition, six species were listed as vulnerable while three species as near threatened. Thus, the authors’ second study was conducted to enhance public awareness on the importance of biodiversity, given that information education communication or IEC is a potent tool in biodiversity conservation. Finally, Riza Abilgos-Ramos and others analyzed the nutritional composition and antimicrobial properties of Chili Pepper (Capsicum sp.) leaves, concluding that chili pepper leaves as a food ingredient are a substantial source of micronutrients and its dried and powdered form can be incorporated in many food preparations.