Whole-Of-Government Approaches to NCDs: The Case of the Philippines Interagency Committee—Tobacco

To address the rise in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), governments are now being urged to ‘put forward a multisectoral approach for health at all government levels, to address NCD risk factors and underlying determinants of health comprehensively and decisively’ [UN, 2011. Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases (No. A/66/L.1). New York, NY: United Nations]. There is a global consensus that whole-of-government approaches (WG) can be particularly effective in regulating products such as tobacco, pre-packaged foods and alcohol, which are or can be major risk factors for NCDs. Despite the overwhelming push towards interagency arrangements for health policymaking and implementation, including in contemporary efforts to prevent and control NCDs, there has been minimal investigation into how countries have pursued WG and which types of institutional designs and arrangements offer particular utility to achieve health objectives. This article examines these issues through a case study concerning the interagency mechanism that the Philippine government currently utilizes to govern tobacco control, the Interagency Committee—Tobacco (IAC-T). We conducted key informant interviews (n = 33) with government officials, and representatives from civil society organizations, health professional associations and intergovernmental organizations. We targeted informants who have been involved in the work of the IAC-T and/or tobacco control policy more broadly. We also analysed public documents to contribute to our analysis of the structure, functioning and legal status of the IAC-T. Our findings highlight two salient challenges that arose in the Philippines case: (1) the inclusion of industry representation on the IAC-T and (2) the attempt to consolidate the responsibilities of the different departments through a policy of ‘balance’ between health and commercial interests. We analyse how health proponents navigated this challenging institutional arrangement and the various barriers they faced in achieving the intended health objectives. We draw from this case to discuss the lessons that can inform broad calls for WG to NCDs

Blending of Cepheids in M33

A precise and accurate determination of the Hubble constant based on Cepheid variables requires proper characterization of many sources of systematic error. One of these is stellar blending, which biases the measured fluxes of Cepheids and the resulting distance estimates. We study the blending of 149 Cepheid variables in M33 by matching archival Hubble Space Telescope data with images obtained at the WIYN 3.5-m telescope, which differ by a factor of 10 in angular resolution. We find that 55+-4% of the Cepheids have no detectable nearby companions that could bias the WIYN V-band photometry, while the fraction of Cepheids affected below the 10% level is 73+-4%. The corresponding values for the I band are 60+-4% and 72+-4%, respectively. We find no statistically significant difference in blending statistics as a function of period or surface brightness. Additionally, we report all the detected companions within 2 arcseconds of the Cepheids (equivalent to 9 pc at the distance of M33) which may be used to derive empirical blending corrections for Cepheids at larger distances.Comment: v2: Fixed incorrect description of Figure 2 in text. Accepted for publication in AJ. Full data tables can be found in ASCII format as part of the source distribution. A version of the paper with higher-resolution figures can be found at http://faculty.physics.tamu.edu/lmacri/papers/chavez12.pd

Social Policy in ASEAN: The Prospects for Integrating Migrant Labour Rights and Protection

The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has made strides in regional integration and cooperation, aided by unique modes of governance privileging consensus and non-interference. However, the social dimension is in the early stages of development and is currently detached from economic integration initiatives. The movement of low- and unskilled workers, many of whom are undocumented, has received especially little attention in ASEAN. Their growing numbers underscore the importance of treating migration as integral rather than separate from labour and general social protection issues. The establishment of regional agreements on social protection and integration, with particular focus on migration and labour standards, should signal the recognition of the economic nature of migration, and help strengthen the relevance and profile of ASEAN among the citizens of member countries. While existing mechanisms can be used to push for this — from Track II discussions to regional coalition building — the political challenge lies in making the issue an active concern in official ASEAN agenda

Optical BVRI Photometry of Common Proper Motion F/G/K+M Wide Separation Binaries

We present optical (BVRI) photometric measurements of a sample of 76 common proper motion wide separation main sequence binary pairs. The pairs are composed of a F-, G-, or K-type primary star and an M-type secondary. The sample is selected from the revised NLTT catalog and the LSPM catalog. The photometry is generally precise to 0.03 mag in all bands. We separate our sample into two groups, dwarf candidates and subdwarf candidates, using the reduced proper motion (RPM) diagram constructed with our improved photometry. The M subdwarf candidates in general have larger $V-R$ colors than the M dwarf candidates at a given $V-I$ color. This is consistent with an average metallicity difference between the two groups, as predicted by the PHOENIX/BT-Settl models. The improved photometry will be used as input into a technique to determine the metallicities of the M-type stars.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A

Prevalence of depression among adolescent males in residential treatment

Examines the prevalence of depression among delinquent adolescent boys placed in a residential placement facility located in Yucaipa, California and managed by Trinity Children and Family Services, a non-profit organization. The Beck Depression Inventory was administered to 54 randomly selected boys (ages 12-18) of different ethnic backgrounds. Independent variables included length of time in the group home, the level of support from the family and the number of visitations the client received from family or other support systems. Results indicated that (1) White adolescents experience the highest levels of depression, (2) there was no difference in regards to depression in relation to age, and (3) that time in placement and the amount of family involvement had an impact on the level of depression of the adolescent

Isotopic Titanium Abundances in Local M Dwarfs

Relative abundances of the five stable isotopes of titanium (^46Ti to ^50Ti) are measured for 11 M dwarfs belonging to the thin disk (four stars), thick disk (three stars), the halo (one star), and either the thick or the thin disk (three stars). Over the metallicity range of the sample (-1<[Fe/H]<0), the isotopic ratios are approximately constant to the solar system ratios. There is no discernible difference between the isotopic ratios for thin and thick disk stars. Isotopic ratios are in fair accord with recent calculations of Galactic chemical evolution despite the fact that such calculations underpredict [Ti/Fe] by about 0.4 dex at all metallicities.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Rethinking Measures of Democracy and Welfare State Universalism: Lessons from Subnational Research

Democracy and the welfare state are two of the most extensively studied concepts and themes in the field of comparative politics. Debate about how to best measure the two concepts has failed to contemplate the extent to which political and social rights are uniformly present across distinct regions of the national territory, despite the presence of substantial subnational research that underscores wide variation inside countries. We argue that this omission hampers our understanding of the two phenomena and we propose a new measure of democracy and healthcare unversalism, which we call the Adjusted Measures of Democracy and Welfare Universalism. The new measures integrate territorial inequality into existing national-level indicators, providing a more accurate picture of country performance and opening the door to new, multi-level theory building

Using graph theory to analyze biological networks

Understanding complex systems often requires a bottom-up analysis towards a systems biology approach. The need to investigate a system, not only as individual components but as a whole, emerges. This can be done by examining the elementary constituents individually and then how these are connected. The myriad components of a system and their interactions are best characterized as networks and they are mainly represented as graphs where thousands of nodes are connected with thousands of vertices. In this article we demonstrate approaches, models and methods from the graph theory universe and we discuss ways in which they can be used to reveal hidden properties and features of a network. This network profiling combined with knowledge extraction will help us to better understand the biological significance of the system

Detector signal characterization with a Bayesian network in XENONnT

We developed a detector signal characterization model based on a Bayesian network trained on the waveform attributes generated by a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber. By performing inference on the model, we produced a quantitative metric of signal characterization and demonstrate that this metric can be used to determine whether a detector signal is sourced from a scintillation or an ionization process. We describe the method and its performance on electronic-recoil (ER) data taken during the first science run of the XENONnT dark matter experiment. We demonstrate the first use of a Bayesian network in a waveform-based analysis of detector signals. This method resulted in a 3% increase in ER event-selection efficiency with a simultaneously effective rejection of events outside of the region of interest. The findings of this analysis are consistent with the previous analysis from XENONnT, namely a background-only fit of the ER data