A History of Credit Programs Supporting Agricultural Mechanization in the Philippines

This article is part of the seminar-workshop on the “Consequences of Small Farm Mechanization on Production, Employment and Incomes in the Philippines” sponsored jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Economic and Development Authority, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and the International Rice Research Institute held on December 1-2, 1983 at Tagaytay City. It provides history of the credit programs related to agricultural mechanization from 1950 to 1980. Analysis indicates that the demand for farm machineries are mostly credit supply-led despite the effects of international and local events.agriculture sector, credit program, credit access, impact analysis, mechanization

Passing through the `chiral limit' in quenched QCD with Wilson fermions

We investigate the limit of vanishing quark mass in quenched lattice QCD with unimproved Wilson fermions at $\beta=6.0$. Exploiting the correlations of propagators at different time slices we extract pion masses extremely close to the `chiral limit', despite the presence of `exceptional configurations'. With this at hand, the existence of quenched chiral logarithms can be demonstrated, provided, finite size effects are small. With reference to the phase diagram proposed by Aoki also the range $\kappa > \kappa_c$ is investigated. The width of a potential parity-flavor violating phase can, if at all, hardly be resolved.Comment: LATTICE98(spectrum

The Philippines: External Shocks, Adjustment Policies and Impact on Selected Development Concerns, 1973-1985

With the objective of designing and implementing more effective policies and programs in the light of external shocks, this paper assesses the impact of economic crisis and adjustment policies on basic economic and social concerns particularly on vulnerable income groups. The development path implied in this article is a strategy that is expansionary within the limits set by external finance and other policy considerations.vulnerable groups, adjustment policies

On the Predictability of Talk Attendance at Academic Conferences

This paper focuses on the prediction of real-world talk attendances at academic conferences with respect to different influence factors. We study the predictability of talk attendances using real-world tracked face-to-face contacts. Furthermore, we investigate and discuss the predictive power of user interests extracted from the users' previous publications. We apply Hybrid Rooted PageRank, a state-of-the-art unsupervised machine learning method that combines information from different sources. Using this method, we analyze and discuss the predictive power of contact and interest networks separately and in combination. We find that contact and similarity networks achieve comparable results, and that combinations of different networks can only to a limited extend help to improve the prediction quality. For our experiments, we analyze the predictability of talk attendance at the ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia 2011 collected using the conference management system Conferator

Measurement of the multi-TeV neutrino cross section with IceCube using Earth absorption

Neutrinos interact only very weakly, so they are extremely penetrating. However, the theoretical neutrino-nucleon interaction cross section rises with energy such that, at energies above 40 TeV, neutrinos are expected to be absorbed as they pass through the Earth. Experimentally, the cross section has been measured only at the relatively low energies (below 400 GeV) available at neutrino beams from accelerators \cite{Agashe:2014kda, Formaggio:2013kya}. Here we report the first measurement of neutrino absorption in the Earth, using a sample of 10,784 energetic upward-going neutrino-induced muons observed with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The flux of high-energy neutrinos transiting long paths through the Earth is attenuated compared to a reference sample that follows shorter trajectories through the Earth. Using a fit to the two-dimensional distribution of muon energy and zenith angle, we determine the cross section for neutrino energies between 6.3 TeV and 980 TeV, more than an order of magnitude higher in energy than previous measurements. The measured cross section is $1.30^{+0.21}_{-0.19}$ (stat.) $^{+0.39}_{-0.43}$ (syst.) times the prediction of the Standard Model \cite{CooperSarkar:2011pa}, consistent with the expectation for charged and neutral current interactions. We do not observe a dramatic increase in the cross section, expected in some speculative models, including those invoking new compact dimensions \cite{AlvarezMuniz:2002ga} or the production of leptoquarks \cite{Romero:2009vu}.Comment: Preprint version of Nature paper 10.1038/nature2445

Revisiting convergence and divergence: support for older people in Europe

Recent commentators have distinguished ‘weak’ from ‘strong’ family societies, arguing that older people in less family-oriented societies receive less support from family members than those in countries with strong family ties (e.g. Southern Europe). This study explored the north-south divide in various dimensions associated with support for older people among selected European countries participating in a European Scientific Foundation network, ‘Family Support for Older People: Determinants and Consequences’ (FAMSUP). Employing data from a wide variety of sources (e.g. nationally representative surveys, censuses, and official publications) we used principal components and cluster analysis to investigate patterns across countries in four dimensions designed to be indicative of the balance between family and formally provided resources for older people and the socio-economic, demographic and policy contexts in which these are provided. Rather than a clear-cut north-south division European countries reflect a more complex classification in terms of support for older individuals when a wide range of measures associated with different dimensions of support for older people are used. Future research requires comparable cross-national data on key indicators of family support

Philippine-American Relations Beyond the Bases

This article has been delivered by the author for the 1988 Florence Macaulay Distinguished Lecture on Asia and the Pacific at the University of Hawaii on September 23, 1988. It discusses America’s colonial policy and the Philippines' security alliance with America. It also traces the termination of Military Base Agreement and the future of Philippine security without the U.S. military bases.military and military bases

On the intersection of free subgroups in free products of groups

Let (G_i | i in I) be a family of groups, let F be a free group, and let G = F *(*I G_i), the free product of F and all the G_i. Let FF denote the set of all finitely generated subgroups H of G which have the property that, for each g in G and each i in I, H \cap G_i^{g} = {1}. By the Kurosh Subgroup Theorem, every element of FF is a free group. For each free group H, the reduced rank of H is defined as r(H) = max{rank(H) -1, 0} in \naturals \cup {\infty} \subseteq [0,\infty]. To avoid the vacuous case, we make the additional assumption that FF contains a non-cyclic group, and we define sigma := sup{r(H\cap K)/(r(H)r(K)) : H, K in FF and r(H)r(K) \ne 0}, sigma in [1,\infty]. We are interested in precise bounds for sigma. In the special case where I is empty, Hanna Neumann proved that sigma in [1,2], and conjectured that sigma = 1; almost fifty years later, this interval has not been reduced. With the understanding that \infty/(\infty -2) = 1, we define theta := max{|L|/(|L|-2) : L is a subgroup of G and |L| > 2}, theta in [1,3]. Generalizing Hanna Neumann's theorem, we prove that sigma in [theta, 2 theta], and, moreover, sigma = 2 theta if G has 2-torsion. Since sigma is finite, FF is closed under finite intersections. Generalizing Hanna Neumann's conjecture, we conjecture that sigma = theta whenever G does not have 2-torsion.Comment: 28 pages, no figure

Antimicrobials: a global alliance for optimizing their rational use in intra-abdominal infections (AGORA)

Intra-abdominal infections (IAI) are an important cause of morbidity and are frequently associated with poor prognosis, particularly in high-risk patients. The cornerstones in the management of complicated IAIs are timely effective source control with appropriate antimicrobial therapy. Empiric antimicrobial therapy is important in the management of intra-abdominal infections and must be broad enough to cover all likely organisms because inappropriate initial antimicrobial therapy is associated with poor patient outcomes and the development of bacterial resistance. The overuse of antimicrobials is widely accepted as a major driver of some emerging infections (such as C. difficile), the selection of resistant pathogens in individual patients, and for the continued development of antimicrobial resistance globally. The growing emergence of multi-drug resistant organisms and the limited development of new agents available to counteract them have caused an impending crisis with alarming implications, especially with regards to Gram-negative bacteria. An international task force from 79 different countries has joined this project by sharing a document on the rational use of antimicrobials for patients with IAIs. The project has been termed AGORA (Antimicrobials: A Global Alliance for Optimizing their Rational Use in Intra-Abdominal Infections). The authors hope that AGORA, involving many of the world's leading experts, can actively raise awareness in health workers and can improve prescribing behavior in treating IAIs