Design of a Remote Real-time Groundwater Level and Water Quality Monitoring System for the Philippine Groundwater Management Plan Project

Recent technological advances allow us to utilize remote monitoring systems or real-time access of data. While the use of remote monitoring systems is not new, there are still numerous applications that can be explored and improved on, one such is groundwater level and quality monitoring. In the Philippines, the extraction of groundwater for both domestic use and industrial use are manually monitored by the government’s concerned agency and is done at least once per year. With this current setup, the real and significant state of the groundwater is not reflected in a way that is most valuable to the government and to the community. This project aims to design and develop a remote real-time groundwater level and quality monitoring system. It is intended to provide quantitative data for policy makers in addressing recurrent water shortages in the Philippines. This paper discusses the designed system composed of three modules: power module, sensors and control, and data visualization. These three modules provide real-time data from far-flung locations while being energy-sustainable. Dry runs of the system in a controlled environment yielded excellent results — average data accuracy of 96.63% for all six (6) groundwater quantity and quality parameters namely: pH, temperature, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and static water level (SWL), and 90.63% data transmission reliability. Initial deployment of the system on one of the groundwater monitoring well in Metro Manila, Philippines returned a 91.16% data transmission reliability. The system is currently installed in 20 groundwater monitoring sites all-over the Philippines and is scheduled for more installations

Software and Data Visualization Platform for Groundwater Level and Quality Monitoring System

Rapid urbanization and increasing population come with the increased extraction and use of groundwater resources. To track the effect of these activities on groundwater level and quantity; a system for real-time monitoring is devised. In this paper; we present a software system design that enables a locally-developed groundwater level and water quality monitoring hardware setup to gather water quality parameter data; send it to a cloud server; and present organized data for better visualization. The hardware setup consists of an Arduino microcontroller. Upon deployment; the hardware setup is linked to an Android application that connects to the web-based platform

Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH): An Overview

The Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) is a 524-orbit multi-cycle treasury program to use the gravitational lensing properties of 25 galaxy clusters to accurately constrain their mass distributions. The survey, described in detail in this paper, will definitively establish the degree of concentration of dark matter in the cluster cores, a key prediction of CDM. The CLASH cluster sample is larger and less biased than current samples of space-based imaging studies of clusters to similar depth, as we have minimized lensing-based selection that favors systems with overly dense cores. Specifically, twenty CLASH clusters are solely X-ray selected. The X-ray selected clusters are massive (kT > 5 keV; 5 - 30 x 10^14 M_solar) and, in most cases, dynamically relaxed. Five additional clusters are included for their lensing strength (Einstein radii > 35 arcsec at z_source = 2) to further quantify the lensing bias on concentration, to yield high resolution dark matter maps, and to optimize the likelihood of finding highly magnified high-redshift (z > 7) galaxies. The high magnification, in some cases, provides angular resolutions unobtainable with any current UVOIR facility and can yield z > 7 candidates bright enough for spectroscopic follow-up. A total of 16 broadband filters, spanning the near-UV to near-IR, are employed for each 20-orbit campaign on each cluster. These data are used to measure precise (sigma_phz < 0.02(1+z)) photometric redshifts for dozens of newly discovered multiply-lensed images per cluster. Observations of each cluster are spread over 8 epochs to enable a search, primarily in the parallel fields, for Type Ia supernovae at z > 1 to improve constraints on the time dependence of the dark energy equation of state and the evolution of such supernovae in an epoch when the universe is matter dominated.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplements, 22 pages, 16 figures. Updated Tables 3,4,8 and figures 6 and 8 to reflect replacement of Abell 963 with Abell 1423 in CLASH survey. A963 cannot be observed with WFC3 due to the lack of usable guide star

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types

A first update on mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19

peer reviewe

Computer-assisted mechanistic evaluation of oxidation reactions of organic compounds

The scope and predictive capability of the CAMEO (Computer Assisted Mechanistic Evaluation of Organic Reactions) program have recently been enhanced to encompass the chemistry of 21 oxidative reagents including transition metal acetates, metal and non-metal oxides, hydrogen peroxides and peracids, chromium (VI) oxidants, and other miscellaneous reagents. The implementation of the oxidation module required a new strategy which deviates from the purely standard mechanistic approach employed by the other modules in CAMEO owing to the dearth of existing mechanistic information on various oxidative transformations. An alternative method which utilizes reaction conditions and keys reactivity on the nature of the reagent has been adopted for the module. A general procedure consisting of four basic steps has been implemented in the program: (1) perception or identification of potentially reactive sites; (2) ranking of the sites based on relative reactivity; (3) weeding out of unreactive sites based on input reaction conditions; and (4) evaluation of competing pathways, if necessary, and storage of the required manipulations for the formation of products. Reactivity tables for all the reagents covered have been devised to help assess competitions among viable reactive sites. Efficient algorithms for evaluating multi-pathway transformations for a specific site have also been developed based on new reaction schemes that can account for all the observed transformations

Factors Affecting Use or Nonuse of Free Trade Agreements in the Philippines

Within East Asia, the outward-oriented Philippine economy is a latecomer to using free trade agreements (FTAs) as a trade policy instrument and has relied heavily on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for regional liberalization. While negotiating FTAs has consumed scarce time and other resources, limited attention has been hitherto given to evaluating the impact of FTAs--particularly the 15-year-old ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA)--on business activity in the Philippines.Using a survey of 155 manufactured goods exporters from three sectors (machinery and transport equipment, processed foods, and electronics), this study deals with three questions: (1) Do firms use AFTA and why and how are firms responding to AFTA and other FTAs? (2) What impedes firms from using either AFTA or other FTAs? (3) What can be done to improve FTA use at the firm level in the future?The study finds that utilization of AFTA is higher than expected from existing studies and is set to double in the future. A lack of information has been identified as the biggest barrier to FTA use. Other impediments include the availability of export-processing zone incentive schemes, low most-favored-nation rates, delays in origin administration, rent-seeking behavior, and nontariff measures in partner country markets. The paper concludes by making the case for better mainstreaming of FTAs into Philippine national trade policy, effectively encouraging the use of FTAs, and putting in place support mechanisms to Philippine firms.ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), Philippines, trade, Philippine Journal of Development (PJD), potable water delivery, free trade agreements (FTAs), manufactured goods exports, trade policy, regional liberalization, trade agreements