Developing a Sustainable Food Security Program for an Urban Coastal City

Local urban coastal cities are most vulnerable to the impacts brought about by climate change. Very little attention, however, had been given to the role of coastal cities, including Navotas City, to the achievement of food security in urban centers like Metro Manila. A unified plan of action and a sustainable food security program are imperative given the unpredictability of climate change and the growing urban populations, which result in an increasing demand for a sustainable source of nutritious and affordable food. This study looked into developing a sustainable food security program designed to mitigate the impacts brought about by climate change on food availability, access, utilization, and stability; and how these affect Navotas City’s food security. Data from literature reviews and agency reports were validated by key informant interviews and focus group discussions to achieve the aforementioned objective

Roman Catholic Church-State relations in the Philippines and its implications on the passage of House Bill 5043: The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008

Government concern over the rapid population growth and its consequences spurred the promotion of contraception as the solution to fertility control. This goes against the moral doctrine of the Catholic Church which advocates natural family planning and creates tension between church and state. Notwithstanding Church influence in Philippine politics, the study of the dynamics of church-state interactions in resolving the fertility problem would be useful to arrive at a rational and meaningful recommendation for action amicable to all stakeholders. As it stands, The Reproductive Health and Population Development Act of 2008 will most likely remain in legislative limbo, unless its authors revise the framing of the bill in order to conform to Church moral doctrine. Only through policy compromise or ideological sacrifice can the Philippine population debate be settled

Developing a sustainable food security program for an urban coastal city, Navotas City, Metro Manila

Urban coastal cities are most vulnerable to the impacts brought about by climate change. However, very little attention had been given to the role of coastal cities to the achievement of food security in urban centers in the vicinity of the sea coast. The proposed project looked into developing a sustainable food security program for urban coastal cities designed to mitigate the impacts brought about by climate change to food availability, access, utilization and stability and how these affects food security. Data from literature reviews and agency reports were validated by key informant interviews and focus group discussions

Modelling climate change risks for food security in the Philippines

Purpose – The purpose of this paper was to look into the impacts brought about by climate change to the food security in Saguday, Quirino in the Philippines. Design/methodology/approach – A framework for developing community food security was utilized which identified the need to mitigate and address inherent externalities in a community such as flooding due to climate change as necessary preconditions to attaining a food secure environment. The study highlighted Saguday’s risk to externalities using risk assessment and modelling. Findings – Data from literature reviews and agency reports were validated by key informant interviews of local and national officials and focus group discussions with different stakeholder groups. Originality/value – A modification of the Urban Food Security Planning Process developed by Taylor and Carandang (2010, 2011) was utilized to address the local government unit’s need to mitigate and manage the inherent geographical risks that Saguday has in relation to its agricultural and food productivity. © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Speech-controlled human-computer interface for audio-visual breast self-examination guidance system

This paper presents the development of a speech-controlled human-computer interface (SR-HCI) as a subsystem of the audio-visual breast self-examination guidance system. This aims to better control the system during computer-guided breast self-examination (BSE) performance and allows for user indications of possible tumor locations by dictating it to the system through the speech recognition feature. Speech database for English and Hiligaynon languages are gathered and trained for this application. The speech recognition architecture includes Mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCCs) for speech feature extraction, artificial neural network (ANN) for training and classification, and genetic algorithm for optimization. The authors performed tests in the speech recognition system and present the outcomes. © 2015 IEEE

Feature driven development of a smartphone based vision-aware mhealth framework

Mobile health (mHealth) applications attempt to capitalize on the ubiquity and exponential growth of mobile technologies for the benefit of public health, leading to a growing research interest in devising frameworks for addressing specific or general mHealth challenges. In this context, the primary goal of this study is to present a novel smartphone-based development framework for prototyping vision-aware native mHealth applications developed using Feature Driven Development (FDD) methodology. Then, we describe a prototype mHealth educational application, \u27Dibdib\u27* * Advocacy App for breast cancer awareness, utilizing the proposed vision-aware mHealth framework in Android platform. The results illustrate that FDD is feasible option in mHealth application development under the proposed mHealth framework. © Medwell Journals, 2017

Characterizing the high breast cancer incidence in Bacolod City, Philippines

This paper characterizes the high incidence of breast cancer in Bacolod City, Philippines. The methods of research involved (1) an epidemiological study; (2) a determination study on the environmental factors that cause breast cancer; and (3) a breast cancer behavioral study. A statistical analysis of the personal demography profile found significant indicators of the presence or absence of breast cancer in the areas of breastfeeding duration (p = 0.0029), age when they experienced first sexual intercourse (p = 0.0449), cancer cases in the family (p \u3c 0.0001), incidence of smoking (p = 0.0322), and occupation (p \u3c 0.0001). From an environmental perspective, data obtained from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Region 6 showed nothing of suspect. The sociological dimension found a correlation between stress and the presence or vulnerability of patients and their families to breast cancer incidences. The study likewise found that the women in the study incorporated a range of attitude and behavior that directly and indirectly aim to manage the strains of home and office works revolving around the confluence of (i) faith, (ii) their family, and (iii) and anticipated future. The study promotes the creation of breast cancer support groups as they present a positive and viable mechanism within the community to create social awareness about breast cancer and foster genuine social support networks for its members and their families as well as promote initiatives for low-income members to obtain medicines, referrals, and information. Investing in counseling for the survivors and their families leads to stress management and increased awareness about self-examination, increasing the probability of early detection. Overall, this study can serve as an important document that could be used by government agencies in drawing up screening as well as treatment and management programs for breast cancer in the Philippines. © 2019 by De La Salle University

Intravenous alteplase for stroke with unknown time of onset guided by advanced imaging: systematic review and meta-analysis of individual patient data

Background: Patients who have had a stroke with unknown time of onset have been previously excluded from thrombolysis. We aimed to establish whether intravenous alteplase is safe and effective in such patients when salvageable tissue has been identified with imaging biomarkers. Methods: We did a systematic review and meta-analysis of individual patient data for trials published before Sept 21, 2020. Randomised trials of intravenous alteplase versus standard of care or placebo in adults with stroke with unknown time of onset with perfusion-diffusion MRI, perfusion CT, or MRI with diffusion weighted imaging-fluid attenuated inversion recovery (DWI-FLAIR) mismatch were eligible. The primary outcome was favourable functional outcome (score of 0–1 on the modified Rankin Scale [mRS]) at 90 days indicating no disability using an unconditional mixed-effect logistic-regression model fitted to estimate the treatment effect. Secondary outcomes were mRS shift towards a better functional outcome and independent outcome (mRS 0–2) at 90 days. Safety outcomes included death, severe disability or death (mRS score 4–6), and symptomatic intracranial haemorrhage. This study is registered with PROSPERO, CRD42020166903. Findings: Of 249 identified abstracts, four trials met our eligibility criteria for inclusion: WAKE-UP, EXTEND, THAWS, and ECASS-4. The four trials provided individual patient data for 843 individuals, of whom 429 (51%) were assigned to alteplase and 414 (49%) to placebo or standard care. A favourable outcome occurred in 199 (47%) of 420 patients with alteplase and in 160 (39%) of 409 patients among controls (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1·49 [95% CI 1·10–2·03]; p=0·011), with low heterogeneity across studies (I 2=27%). Alteplase was associated with a significant shift towards better functional outcome (adjusted common OR 1·38 [95% CI 1·05–1·80]; p=0·019), and a higher odds of independent outcome (adjusted OR 1·50 [1·06–2·12]; p=0·022). In the alteplase group, 90 (21%) patients were severely disabled or died (mRS score 4–6), compared with 102 (25%) patients in the control group (adjusted OR 0·76 [0·52–1·11]; p=0·15). 27 (6%) patients died in the alteplase group and 14 (3%) patients died among controls (adjusted OR 2·06 [1·03–4·09]; p=0·040). The prevalence of symptomatic intracranial haemorrhage was higher in the alteplase group than among controls (11 [3%] vs two [<1%], adjusted OR 5·58 [1·22–25·50]; p=0·024). Interpretation: In patients who have had a stroke with unknown time of onset with a DWI-FLAIR or perfusion mismatch, intravenous alteplase resulted in better functional outcome at 90 days than placebo or standard care. A net benefit was observed for all functional outcomes despite an increased risk of symptomatic intracranial haemorrhage. Although there were more deaths with alteplase than placebo, there were fewer cases of severe disability or death. Funding: None

Effect of general anaesthesia on functional outcome in patients with anterior circulation ischaemic stroke having endovascular thrombectomy versus standard care: a meta-analysis of individual patient data

Background: General anaesthesia (GA) during endovascular thrombectomy has been associated with worse patient outcomes in observational studies compared with patients treated without GA. We assessed functional outcome in ischaemic stroke patients with large vessel anterior circulation occlusion undergoing endovascular thrombectomy under GA, versus thrombectomy not under GA (with or without sedation) versus standard care (ie, no thrombectomy), stratified by the use of GA versus standard care. Methods: For this meta-analysis, patient-level data were pooled from all patients included in randomised trials in PuMed published between Jan 1, 2010, and May 31, 2017, that compared endovascular thrombectomy predominantly done with stent retrievers with standard care in anterior circulation ischaemic stroke patients (HERMES Collaboration). The primary outcome was functional outcome assessed by ordinal analysis of the modified Rankin scale (mRS) at 90 days in the GA and non-GA subgroups of patients treated with endovascular therapy versus those patients treated with standard care, adjusted for baseline prognostic variables. To account for between-trial variance we used mixed-effects modelling with a random effect for trials incorporated in all models. Bias was assessed using the Cochrane method. The meta-analysis was prospectively designed, but not registered. Findings: Seven trials were identified by our search; of 1764 patients included in these trials, 871 were allocated to endovascular thrombectomy and 893 were assigned standard care. After exclusion of 74 patients (72 did not undergo the procedure and two had missing data on anaesthetic strategy), 236 (30%) of 797 patients who had endovascular procedures were treated under GA. At baseline, patients receiving GA were younger and had a shorter delay between stroke onset and randomisation but they had similar pre-treatment clinical severity compared with patients who did not have GA. Endovascular thrombectomy improved functional outcome at 3 months both in patients who had GA (adjusted common odds ratio (cOR) 1·52, 95% CI 1·09–2·11, p=0·014) and in those who did not have GA (adjusted cOR 2·33, 95% CI 1·75–3·10, p&lt;0·0001) versus standard care. However, outcomes were significantly better for patients who did not receive GA versus those who received GA (covariate-adjusted cOR 1·53, 95% CI 1·14–2·04, p=0·0044). The risk of bias and variability between studies was assessed to be low. Interpretation: Worse outcomes after endovascular thrombectomy were associated with GA, after adjustment for baseline prognostic variables. These data support avoidance of GA whenever possible. The procedure did, however, remain effective versus standard care in patients treated under GA, indicating that treatment should not be withheld in those who require anaesthesia for medical reasons