Modernized Tradition: Transformation of Public Transport

Due to incrementing environmental issues, the Philippine government has aimed solutions for sustainable development by pursuing the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP), which was launched in 2017 and took effect in 2020. The program included the modernization of jeepneys, which is a historical icon in the country. The modernization of jeepneys affected jeepney drivers, operators, and commuters alike; thus it is crucial to take their opinions into consideration. In this study, the researchers ought to know the thoughts and opinions of jeepney drivers and commuters concerning the PUVMP in Baguio City. The study that was executed embraced a phenomenological approach. Due to the pandemic the world is facing at present, the responses were gathered using an online survey as it was seen to be fit for the current situation. The results exhibited divided opinions towards the program as drivers and operators were against it, while commuters supported the program. The jeepney drivers and operators used their financial status as a basis for their opinion, while commuters prioritized their safety and comfort. When asked how will they cope with the PUVMP, jeepney drivers showcased a negative array of choices. Their answers varied from complying just because it is what the government wants, opting for illegal schemes to earn money, to losing their jobs completely. The results acquired can be used as a basis for adjustments and changes to produce an ameliorated program which satisfies the needs and wants of the affected groups

Stigma, discrimination, and attitude towards the Chinese community in the USA and Canada during the outbreak of COVID-19

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak, declared a global pandemic by the WHO, raises some serious health, as well as discrimination concerns worldwide. This study outlines the knowledge, stigma, and discrimination of people towards the Chinese community in the USA and Canada at the onset of the pandemic.   Methods: An online community-based, opt-in descriptive survey was conducted spring of 2020. The study collected data with anonymity about demographics, travel history, COVID-19 knowledge, awareness, as well as stigmatization and discrimination against the Chinese community. Data was compiled with excel using descriptive statistics and Chi-square for the analysis.   Results: Among 172participants, the highest number of responses came from the 21 to 40-year-old age groups. There was some reported stigma against the Chinese community in the study, particularly during the early days of the outbreak; 6.4% participants indicated that only Chinese infected COVID-19 individuals need to be quarantined with 13.4% avoiding only the Chinese community; Furthermore, 30% blamed people from China for the COVID-19 outbreak; while 13% people said they would avoid Chinese people and/or their communities. Results from the study suggest that those who live in urban settings, who are married and hold university degrees have a better understanding of the infection, knowledge of how it spreads, and also are less likely to discriminate against the Chinese community or blame the Chinese from China for COVID-19.   Conclusion: Lack of knowledge caused anxiety and fear among some people, which thus played the main role in the rising cases of Chinese community stigma and discrimination reported

Pemanfaatan Limbah Cair Industri Tahu Harapan Maju, Cimanggis, Depok sebagai Media Kultur Spirulina sp.

Industrial waste in Depok still a problem raised because its contents were not following the government’s quality standards. Contaminants were considered pollutant are Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) were quite high. One of these wastes was tofu wastewater which produced a foul odor and pollutes the environment when discharged directly into water bodies. Lack of industrial owners' education of the economic value of the waste caused direct disposal without being utilized first. Therefore, this Community Service activity aims to determine the feasibility of tofu industrial wastewater as a Spirulina sp. culture medium and provided education to the tofu factory owners, to utilize their liquid waste. In the implementation several stages are carried out, namely literature studies, sampling, implementing wastewater assessments, counseling also training. The result of this activity is tofu industrial wastewater can be utilized as a medium for cultivating Spirulina sp. which added economic value while reducing the environmental pollution. This can be seen from the results of Spirulina cultivation on the 10th day where the Optical Density (OD) continues to increase and harvested for further use.Industrial waste in Depok still a problem raised because its contents were not following the government’s quality standards. Contaminants were considered pollutant are Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) were quite high. One of these wastes was tofu wastewater which produced a foul odor and pollutes the environment when discharged directly into water bodies. Lack of industrial owners' education of the economic value of the waste caused direct disposal without being utilized first. Therefore, this Community Service activity aims to determine the feasibility of tofu industrial wastewater as a Spirulina sp. culture medium and provided education to the tofu factory owners, to utilize their liquid waste. In the implementation several stages are carried out, namely literature studies, sampling, implementing wastewater assessments, counseling also training. The result of this activity is tofu industrial wastewater can be utilized as a medium for cultivating Spirulina sp. which added economic value while reducing the environmental pollution. This can be seen from the results of Spirulina cultivation on the 10th day where the Optical Density (OD) continues to increase and harvested for further use

In search of belonging: first generation, low-income students navigating financial, bureaucratic, and academic experiences at Vassar

A qualitative report on the experiences of first-generation, low income students at Vassar College. This report is the culmination of the Transitions Research Project

A Tale of Two Regulatory Regimes: Creation and Analysis of a Bilingual Privacy Policy Corpus

Over the past decade, researchers have started to explore the use of NLP to develop tools aimed at helping the public, vendors, and regulators analyze disclosures made in privacy policies. With the introduction of new privacy regulations, the language of privacy policies is also evolving, and disclosures made by the same organization are not always the same in different languages, especially when used to communicate with users who fall under different jurisdictions. This work explores the use of language technologies to capture and analyze these differences at scale. We introduce an annotation scheme designed to capture the nuances of two new landmark privacy regulations, namely the EU\u27s GDPR and California\u27s CCPA/CPRA. We then introduce the first bilingual corpus of mobile app privacy policies consisting of 64 privacy policies in English (292K words) and 91 privacy policies in German (478K words), respectively with manual annotations for 8K and 19K fine-grained data practices. The annotations are used to develop computational methods that can automatically extract “disclosures” from privacy policies. Analysis of a subset of 59 “semi-parallel” policies reveals differences that can be attributed to different regulatory regimes, suggesting that systematic analysis of policies using automated language technologies is indeed a worthwhile endeavor. © European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0

Twenty-Three High-Redshift Supernovae from the Institute for Astronomy Deep Survey: Doubling the Supernova Sample at z > 0.7

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of 23 high-redshift supernovae (SNe) spanning a range of z = 0.34-1.03, nine of which are unambiguously classified as Type la. These SNe were discovered during the IfA Deep Survey, which began in 2001Partial support for this work was provided by NASA grants GO-08641 and GO-09118 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Funding was also provided by NSF grant AST 02-06329. S. T. H. acknowledges support from the NASA LTSA grant NAG5-9364