Workers’ Remittances and Economic Growth in the Philippines

This paper considers the present issues surrounding the role of workers remittances and its contribution/effect on economic growth and development. In particular, this paper focuses on how such remittances have been able to spur development and growth. As a case study, the paper focuses on the Philippines, one of the countries in the world with a long history of sending workers abroad. In 2005, the Philippines received approximately US$11Bn of remittances, almost 10% of its GDP. It ranks as the 3rd largest recipient of remittances in the world after India and Mexico. Along this line, the paper looks into the following areas: (a) remittance and overall growth, (b) linkages between remittances and microfinance, (c) tracing the contribution of remittances to countryside development, and (d) relationship between worker remittances and structural reform policies. We are also concerned at how these remittances have impacted the poor in general. This is important as the expected benefits have generally been unfelt at the level of the poor. We hypothesize that workers’ remittance have not been properly utilized into productive and investment uses in the Philippines. There are strong anecdotal evidences that show that most of these resources are being used to fund conspicuous consumption. Hence, we would like to find ways where these resources can be harnessed into funding development needs of the country.Remittances, Development, Migrant Workers

Modelling and regulation of dual-output LCLC resonant converters

The analysis, design and control of 4th-order LCLC voltage-output series-parallel resonant converters (SPRCs) for the provision of multiple regulated outputs, is described. Specifically, state-variable concepts are employed and new analysis techniques are developed to establish operating mode boundaries with which to describe the internal behaviour of a dual-output resonant converter topology. The designer is guided through the most important criteria for realising a satisfactory converter, and the impact of parameter choices on performance is explored. Predictions from the resulting models are compared with those obtained from SPICE simulations and measurements from a prototype power supply under closed loop control

GreenPhylDB: A Gene Family Database for plant functional Genomics

With the increasing number of genomes being sequenced, a major objective is to transfer accurate annotation from characterised proteins to uncharacterised sequences. Consequently, comparative genomics has become a usual and efficient strategy in functional genomics. The release of various annotated genomes of plants, such as _O. sativa_ and _A. thaliana_, has allowed setting up comprehensive lists of gene families defined by automated methods. However, like for gene sequence, manual curation of gene families is an important requirement that has to be undertaken. GreenPhylDB comprises protein sequences of 12 plant species fully sequenced that were grouped into homeomorphic families using similarity-based methods. Clusters are finally processed by phylogenetic analysis to infer orthologs and paralogs that will be particularly helpful to study genome evolution. Previously, each cluster has to be curated (i.e. properly named and classified) using different sources of information. A web interface for plant gene families’ curation was developed for that purpose. This interface, accessible on GreenPhylDB ("http://greenphyl.cirad.fr":http://greenphyl.cirad.fr), centralizes external references (e.g. InterPro, KEGG, Swiss-Prot, PIRSF, Pubmed) related to all gene members of the clusters and shows statistics and automatic analysis. We believe that this synthetic view of data available for a gene cluster, combined with basic guidelines, is an efficient way to provide reliable method for gene family annotations

Coexistence of superconductivity and charge-density-wave domain in 1T1T-Fex_xTa1−x_{1-x}SSe

A series of $1T$-Fe$_x$Ta$_{1-x}$SSe (0 $\leq x \leq$ 0.1) single crystals was fabricated via the chemical-vapor-transport (CVT) method and investigated by structure, transport, and magnetic measurements along with the density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations. The superconductivity (SC) in parent $1T$-TaSSe can be gradually suppressed by Fe-substitution ($x\leq0.03$), accompanied by the disappearance of charge-density-wave (CDW). DFT calculations show that the Fe-substitution effectively inhibits the CDW superstructure and thereby the CDW domains are destroyed. With further increasing $x$ ($x>0.03$), the disorder-induced scattering increases, and the system enters into the possible Anderson localization (AL) state. Our results prove the SC develops in the CDW phase and coexists with the CDW domain in $1T$-TaSSe system

Analysis and control of dual-output LCLC resonant converters, and the impact of leakage inductance

The analysis, design and control of 4th-order LCLC voltage-output series-parallel resonant converters (SPRCs) for the provision of multiple regulated outputs, is described. Specifically, state-variable concepts are developed to establish operating mode boundaries with which to describe the internal behaviour of dual-output resonant converters, and the impact of output leakage inductance. The resulting models are compared with those obtained from SPICE simulations and measurements from a prototype power supply under closed loop control to verify the analysis, modeling and control predictions