Looking at Conditions of Persons with Disability in Metro Manila

How comprehensive and accurate is our knowledge and understanding of one vulnerable sector in our society--the people with disability? How can the government help improve their lives in the long run so that they will become more productive members of society? This Policy Note looks into this concern.persons with disability

Child Poverty in the Philippines: More Children Suffer as Poverty Rises

Who suffer most in times of poverty, crises, and calamities? What is the current situation of children in the Philippines amid poverty and hunger? Reyes and Tabuga show that as poverty worsens, more children suffer. Read more.poverty, child poverty

Understanding the Extent, Composition, and Characteristics of the Poor

Probing deeper into the poverty picture, this Policy Note examines the extent, composition, and characteristics of the poor, using various rounds of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and Annual Poverty Indicator Survey (APIS) as panel data sets. Understanding these aspects could provide insights that may guide the government in formulating specific types of interventions for different groups of households, especially the chronic and transient poor.Philippines, chronic poor, transient poor, panel data

Age Structure and Sex Ratio of Thrips Scirtothrips Dorsalis Hood (Thysanoptera : Thripidae) Associate with Mango Agroecosystem in East Java, Indonesia

A research aimed to investigate the age structure and sex ratio of S. dorsalis Hood in mango agroecosystem was conducted at PT. Trigatra Rajasa farm, Situbondo, East Java, Indonesia. The research was started from April to May 2013. A Completely Randomized Design, Analysis of Variance and Least Significant Difference were used to design, knew the variance and significantly different among the treatment, respectively. Thirteen mango trees set in cross section were sampled and observed for the presence of S. dorsalis including weeds under the mango canopy and four cardinal directions of border. A weekly sample was done for four weeks. The result showed that instar one and adult were preferred to associate with weeds under the mango canopy and borders compare to mango leaves except second instar. Further, observation was presented that all the age structures were given equal male female sex ratio. Based on total population numbers, there wasn't significantly difference of age structure and sex ratio of S. dorsalis associate with weeds inside the orchard including mango leaves and borders. Twenty seven species of weeds were discovered associate with mango agroecosystem and comprehensively discused based on the most dominance and preferred by S. dorsalis

Visualisation of tissue kallikrein, kininogen and kinin receptors in human skin following trauma and in dermal diseases

During dermal injury and inflammation the serine proteases kallikreins cleave endogenous, multifunctional substrates (kininogens) to form bradykinin and kallidin. The actions of kinins are mediated by preferential binding to constitutively expressed kinin-B2 receptors or inducible kinin-B1 receptors. A feature of the kinin-B1 receptors is that they show low levels of expression, but are distinctly upregulated following tissue injury and inflammation. Because recent evidence suggested that kinin-B1 receptors may perform a protective role during inflammation, we investigated the specific occurrence of the kallikrein-kinin components in skin biopsies obtained from normal skin, patients undergoing surgery, basalioma, lichenificated atopic eczema, and psoriasis. The tissue was immunolabelled in order to determine the localisation of tissue pro-kallikrein, kallikrein, kininogen and kinin receptors. The kinin components were visualised in normal, diseased and traumatised skin, except that no labelling was observed for kininogen in normal skin. Of the five types of tissue examined, upregulation of kinin-B1 receptors was observed only in skin biopsies obtained following surgery. In essence, the expression of kinin-B1 receptors did not appear to be enhanced in the other biopsies. Within the multiple steps of the inflammatory cascade in wound healing, our results suggest an important regulatory role for kinin-B1 receptors during the first phase of inflammation following injury

Treino da resistência psicológica na recruta militar em Portugal: o papel da coesão militar, da autoestima e da ansiedade na resiliência

The present study aims to explore the impact of military training on the psychological resilience of army recruits; the moderator role of other variables relevant for the military training (namely, group cohesion, self-esteem, and anxiety proneness) is also considered. A convenience sample of 104 military recruits was evaluated before and after the first six weeks of the Enlisted Basic General Military training. Although results showed a non significant global effect of the recruit training on resilience, individual changes in resilience levels between the beginning and the final of the training period seem to be moderately associated with participants' self-esteem and group cohesion perception. The results are discussed regarding to their implications in military training context.Este trabalho investiga o impacto do processo de treino militar de resistência psicológica na resiliência dos recrutas, considerando o papel moderador da coesão de grupo militar, da autoestima e da predisposição para a ansiedade. Uma amostra de conveniência de 104 militares foi avaliada antes e depois do Curso de Formação Geral Comum dos Praças do Exército Português, seguindo um desenho metodológico de medidas repetidas. Os resultados revelam que, embora não se possa atribuir ao processo de recruta alterações significativas nos níveis globais de resiliência, as variações individuais observadas na resiliência entre o início e o final da recruta se associam moderadamente à autoestima e à perceção da coesão do grupo. Estes resultados são discutidos quanto às implicações no contexto do treino militar. Palavras-chave: resiliência, coesão de grupo militar, autoestima, ansiedade, treino militar.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [FCT UID/PSI/00050/2013]; EU FEDER e COMPETE [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007294]

Student Training in a University Setting Voice Clinic- How do we do it?

This presentation will discuss the challenges that clinical supervisors face when trying to balance efficient graduate student training and patient welfare in university voice clinics. We will propose a model in which we seek to balance the needs of the patient, student clinician, and clinical instructor

Patterson Function from Low-Energy Electron Diffraction Measured Intensities and Structural Discrimination

Surface Patterson Functions have been derived by direct inversion of experimental Low-Energy Electron Diffraction I-V spectra measured at multiple incident angles. The direct inversion is computationally simple and can be used to discriminate between different structural models. 1x1 YSi_2 epitaxial layers grown on Si(111) have been used to illustrate the analysis. We introduce a suitable R-factor for the Patterson Function to make the structural discrimination as objective as possible. From six competing models needed to complete the geometrical search, four could easily be discarded, achieving a very significant and useful reduction in the parameter space to be explored by standard dynamical LEED methods. The amount and quality of data needed for this analysis is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Eye movement control during visual pursuit in Parkinson's disease

BACKGROUND: Prior studies of oculomotor function in Parkinson’s disease (PD) have either focused on saccades without considering smooth pursuit, or tested smooth pursuit while excluding saccades. The present study investigated the control of saccadic eye movements during pursuit tasksand assessed the quality of binocular coordinationas potential sensitive markers of PD. METHODS: Observers fixated on a central cross while a target moved toward it. Once the target reached the fixation cross, observers began to pursue the moving target. To further investigate binocular coordination, the moving target was presented on both eyes (binocular condition), or on one eye only (dichoptic condition). RESULTS: The PD group made more saccades than age-matched normal control adults (NC) both during fixation and pursuit. The difference between left and right gaze positions increased over time during the pursuit period for PD but not for NC. The findings were not related to age, as NC and young-adult control group (YC) performed similarly on most of the eye movement measures, and were not correlated with classical measures of PD severity (e.g., Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) score). DISCUSSION: Our results suggest that PD may be associated with impairment not only in saccade inhibition, but also in binocular coordination during pursuit, and these aspects of dysfunction may be useful in PD diagnosis or tracking of disease course.This work was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF SBE-0354378 to Arash Yazdanbakhsh and Bo Cao) and Office of Naval Research (ONR N00014-11-1-0535 to Bo Cao, Chia-Chien Wu, and Arash Yazdanbakhsh). There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. (SBE-0354378 - National Science Foundation (NSF); ONR N00014-11-1-0535 - Office of Naval Research)Published versio