Localizing Child Protection: Does the Local Council for the Protection of Children Matter?

Child protection pertains to “preventing and responding to violence, exploitation, and abuse against children.” More specifically, it encompasses all processes, policies, programs, interventions, and measures that aim to prevent and respond to violence, exploitation, and abuse against children, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the overall development of children to their fullest potential. The Local Council for the Protection of Children (LCPC) is responsible for planning and spearheading programs for children in the locality with the end in view of making the locality child-friendly. The LCPC matters but its current status in the country does not quite show it. The big challenge is how to convince all local government units to organize their own LCPC and, more importantly, how to encourage them to activate, strengthen, and sustain the already organized LCPCs.children's welfare, Philippines, children's rights, child protection

Proliferation of Street Children: a Threat to the MDGs

The abundance of street children in major cities in the country does not sit well with the country’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Street children are everywhere, especially in urban areas. In the context of child protection, street children are among those children in need of special protection (CNSP) because of the risks and hazards they face while on the streets without adult supervision. In particular, they are exposed to violence, sexual abuse and exploitation, STI and/or HIV/AIDS, drug or substance addiction, and accidents. If not properly addressed, the proliferation of street children poses a threat to the attainment of the MDGs.Philippines, street children, child protection

Isotopic Analysis of Sporocarp Protein and Structural Material Improves Resolution of Fungal Carbon Sources

Fungal acquisition of resources is difficult to assess in the field. To determine whether fungi received carbon from recent plant photosynthate, litter or soil-derived organic (C:N bonded) nitrogen, we examined differences in δ13C among bulk tissue, structural carbon, and protein extracts of sporocarps of three fungal types: saprotrophic fungi, fungi with hydrophobic ectomycorrhizae, or fungi with hydrophilic ectomycorrhizae. Sporocarps were collected from experimental plots of the Duke Free-air CO2 enrichment experiment during and after CO2 enrichment. The differential 13C labeling of ecosystem pools in CO2 enrichment experiments was tracked into fungi and provided novel insights into organic nitrogen use. Specifically, sporocarp δ13C as well as δ15N of protein and structural material indicated that fungi with hydrophobic ectomycorrhizae used soil-derived organic nitrogen sources for protein carbon, fungi with hydrophilic ectomycorrhizae used recent plant photosynthates for protein carbon and both fungal groups used photosynthates for structural carbon. Saprotrophic fungi depended on litter produced during fumigation for both protein and structural material

Isotopic Analysis of Sporocarp Protein and Structural Material Improves Resolution of Fungal Carbon Sources

Fungal acquisition of resources is difficult to assess in the field. To determine whether fungi received carbon from recent plant photosynthate, litter or soil-derived organic (C:N bonded) nitrogen, we examined differences in δ13C among bulk tissue, structural carbon, and protein extracts of sporocarps of three fungal types: saprotrophic fungi, fungi with hydrophobic ectomycorrhizae, or fungi with hydrophilic ectomycorrhizae. Sporocarps were collected from experimental plots of the Duke Free-air CO2 enrichment experiment during and after CO2 enrichment. The differential 13C labeling of ecosystem pools in CO2 enrichment experiments was tracked into fungi and provided novel insights into organic nitrogen use. Specifically, sporocarp δ13C as well as δ15N of protein and structural material indicated that fungi with hydrophobic ectomycorrhizae used soil-derived organic nitrogen sources for protein carbon, fungi with hydrophilic ectomycorrhizae used recent plant photosynthates for protein carbon and both fungal groups used photosynthates for structural carbon. Saprotrophic fungi depended on litter produced during fumigation for both protein and structural material

Publications of the NASA Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) Program, 1979-1989

Publications of research sponsored by the NASA Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) Program from 1979 to 1989 are listed. The CELSS Program encompasses research and technology with the goal of developing an autonomous bioregenerative life support system that continually recycles the solid, liquid, and gaseous materials essential for human life. The bibliography is divided into four major subject areas: food production, nutritional requirements, waste management, and systems management and control

Resolving the fine-scale structure in turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection

We present high-resolution direct numerical simulation studies of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in a closed cylindrical cell with an aspect ratio of one. The focus of our analysis is on the finest scales of convective turbulence, in particular the statistics of the kinetic energy and thermal dissipation rates in the bulk and the whole cell. The fluctuations of the energy dissipation field can directly be translated into a fluctuating local dissipation scale which is found to develop ever finer fluctuations with increasing Rayleigh number. The range of these scales as well as the probability of high-amplitude dissipation events decreases with increasing Prandtl number. In addition, we examine the joint statistics of the two dissipation fields and the consequences of high-amplitude events. We also have investigated the convergence properties of our spectral element method and have found that both dissipation fields are very sensitive to insufficient resolution. We demonstrate that global transport properties, such as the Nusselt number, and the energy balances are partly insensitive to insufficient resolution and yield correct results even when the dissipation fields are under-resolved. Our present numerical framework is also compared with high-resolution simulations which use a finite difference method. For most of the compared quantities the agreement is found to be satisfactory.Comment: 33 pages, 24 figure

DNA methylation changes associated with acquired platinum resistance in ovarian cancer

Despite high responses to initial chemotherapy most patients with ovarian cancer (OC) relapse and inevitably die from their disease. Aberrant DNA methylation is frequently seen in ovarian tumours and may provide biomarkers of clinical outcome or insight into mechanisms of chemoresistance. We firstly performed Differential Methylation Hybridisation (DMH) to identify loci that gained methylation between 34 matched cisplatin sensitive and resistant OC tumour cell lines. Differentially methylated loci identified were further validated by Methylation Specific PCR (MSP) and bisulphite pyrosequencing. Selected loci were further investigated for association with clinical outcome in primary OC tumour samples and matched tumour samples from patients' pre- and post-chemotherapy. Frequent increased methylation of a CpG island at the NR2E1 gene was identified in this experiment. Increased methylation correlated with decreased gene expression and could be reversed following treatment with a demethylating agent. Increased methylation at NR2E1 was observed between matched pre- and post-treatment tumour pairs. A novel biostatistical method, methylation linear discrimination analysis (MLDA), was next used to identify differentially methylated loci in sensitive and resistant A2780 human ovarian cell lines. Eight of nine loci identified were validated by MSP. A locus at the SP5 gene was further investigated by pyrosequencing and found to show a very high level methylation in most cell lines and ovarian tumours. Increased methylation correlated with decreased gene expression and this could be reversed using decitabine treatment. Knockdown of SP5 expression caused increased apoptosis. DMH was next used to identify loci that gained methylation between 3 in vivo derived matched sensitive and resistant cell lines. KIAA1383, a gene of unknown function, was identified and methylation shown to correlate with response to chemotherapy and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with OC. Over-expression was found to attenuate the response to cisplatin, in the PEA2 cell line, as measured by cell cycle analysis

Pitfalls in Targeting

Almost three years after the government launched two hunger-mitigation initiatives--the Food-for-School and Tindahan Natin programs--questions are being raised on whether these programs have adequately met their objectives. Did the programs benefit their intended beneficiaries? How well was the targeting for the programs made? This Policy Notes assesses the targeting rules used for the two programs.Food-for-School Program (FSP), conditional cash transfers, leakage rate, Tindahan Natin Program, hunger mitigation, food price subsidy

Maximum or Minimum Differentiation? An Empirical Investigation into the Location of Firms

We empirically test some implications from location theory using the location of Los Angeles area gasoline stations in physical space and in the space of product attributes. We consider the effect of demand patterns, entry costs, and several proxies for competition -- the total number of stations, the proportion of independent stations, and the proportion of same-brand stations in a market -- on the tendency for a gasoline station to be physically located more or less closely to its competitors. Using an estimation procedure that controls for spatial correlation and controlling for market characteristics as well as non- spatial product attributes, we find that firms locate their stations in an attempt to spatially differentiate their product as general market competition increases. In other words, the incentive to differentiate in order to soften price competition dominates the incentive to cluster locations to attract consumers from rivals. We also find that spatial differentiation increases as stations become more differentiated in other station characteristics.product differentiation, spatial theory, location theory, retail gasoline