Assessment of the Capability of Hog Raisers’ Cooperatives as Conduits of Agricultural Loans in Laguna, Philippines

In view of the importance of credit to agriculture and rural development, it is the objective of this paper to provide an assessment of the capability of hog raisers’ cooperatives as conduits of agricultural loans in Laguna. To attain this objective, the analytical methods namely, (1) Standard Performance Rating Approach, and (2) Pearson and Spearman correlation were employed. The primary data was generated from nine hog raisers’ cooperatives from Laguna. Data from secondary sources was also obtained to further assess the capability of the subject cooperatives from the Cooperative Development Authority Regional Office and hog raisers’ cooperatives. The results of the analyses showed that one out nine cooperatives had a rating of Very Satisfactory, while three and four of them had attained Satisfactory and Fair performance rating, respectively. Only one cooperative had an adjectival rating of Needs Improvement. It is established that the capability of the cooperative as conduit of credit is dependent on its member-borrowers. The result of the correlation analysis revealed that the cooperative’s financial capability indicators namely, assets, profitability, operational strength, solvency, and net institutional capital were correlated with the capability of its member-borrowers to make timely payments. Only net institutional capital had negative association with the member-borrowers’ capability in making timely payments. Thus, the cooperatives are still viable conduits of credit as long as the capability of the member-borrowers is enhanced. This, in effect, led to higher profitability and financial sustainability among hog raisers’ cooperative in Laguna. With this, the study recommended that government should devise and implement a sound credit and technical assistance program that will benefit the hog raisers’ cooperatives. If possible, they should provide training and assistance to enhance cooperatives’ loan absorptive capacity as conduit of credit

Extension of multifactor dimensionality reduction for identifying multilocus effects in the GAW14 simulated data

The multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) is a model-free approach that can identify gene × gene or gene × environment effects in a case-control study. Here we explore several modifications of the MDR method. We extended MDR to provide model selection without crossvalidation, and use a chi-square statistic as an alternative to prediction error (PE). We also modified the permutation test to provide different levels of stringency. The extended MDR (EMDR) includes three permutation tests (fixed, non-fixed, and omnibus) to obtain p-values of multilocus models. The goal of this study was to compare the different approaches implemented in the EMDR method and evaluate the ability to identify genetic effects in the Genetic Analysis Workshop 14 simulated data. We used three replicates from the simulated family data, generating matched pairs from family triads. The results showed: 1) chi-square and PE statistics give nearly consistent results; 2) results of EMDR without cross-validation matched that of EMDR with 10-fold cross-validation; 3) the fixed permutation test reports false-positive results in data from loci unrelated to the disease, but the non-fixed and omnibus permutation tests perform well in preventing false positives, with the omnibus test being the most conservative. We conclude that the non-cross-validation test can provide accurate results with the advantage of high efficiency compared to 10-cross-validation, and the non-fixed permutation test provides a good compromise between power and false-positive rate

Stability and aggregation of ranked gene lists

Ranked gene lists are highly instable in the sense that similar measures of differential gene expression may yield very different rankings, and that a small change of the data set usually affects the obtained gene list considerably. Stability issues have long been under-considered in the literature, but they have grown to a hot topic in the last few years, perhaps as a consequence of the increasing skepticism on the reproducibility and clinical applicability of molecular research findings. In this article, we review existing approaches for the assessment of stability of ranked gene lists and the related problem of aggregation, give some practical recommendations, and warn against potential misuse of these methods. This overview is illustrated through an application to a recent leukemia data set using the freely available Bioconductor package GeneSelector

Methods development for Analysis of Partially Deglycosylated Proteins and Application to an HIV Envelope Protein Vaccine Candidate

The work presented herein describes the first comprehensive analysis of a partially deglycosylated HIV vaccine candidate envelope protein (Env). The Env, JRFL gp140 ΔCF, with 27 potential glycosylation sites, was partially deglycosylated with PNGase F as part of a strategy to generate a more immunogenic HIV vaccine, and the resulting protein’s glycosylation was characterized in a unique workflow using two different glycosidases, Endo H and Endo F3. This unique analysis protocol provided for coverage on 26 of the 27 glycosylation sites, and the data showed that the biochemical treatment with PNGase F resulted in a highly heterogeneous glycoprotein product that had been partially deglycosylated at most of the glycosylation sites. The protocols described in this work could be useful for characterizing the glycosylation site occupancy of other native or biochemically deglycosylated proteins

The almost ubiquitous association of 6.7-GHz methanol masers with dust

We report the results of 870-μm continuum observations, using the Large APEX Bolometer Camera, towards 77 class-II, 6.7-GHz methanol masers identified by the Methanol MultiBeam (MMB) survey to map the thermal emission from cool dust towards these objects. These data complement a study of 630 methanol masers associated with compact dense clumps identified from the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) survey. Compact dust emission is detected towards 70 sources, which implies a dust-association rate of 99 per cent for the full MMB catalogue. Evaluation of the derived dust and maser properties leads us to conclude that the combined sample represents a single population tracing the same phenomenon. We find median clump masses of a few 103 M⊙ and that all but a handful of sources satisfy the mass–size criterion required for massive star formation. This study provides the strongest evidence of the almost ubiquitous association of methanol masers with massive, star-forming clumps. The fraction of methanol-maser associated clumps is a factor of ∼2 lower in the outer Galaxy than the inner Galaxy, possibly a result of the lower metallicity environment of the former. We find no difference in the clump-mass and maser-luminosity distributions of the inner and outer Galaxy. The maser-pumping and clump formation mechanisms are therefore likely to be relatively invariant to Galactic location. Finally, we use the ratio of maser luminosity and clump mass to investigate the hypothesis that the maser luminosity is a good indicator of the evolutionary stage of the embedded source, however, we find no evidence to support this

Descriptive Analysis of Socio-Demographic Profile, Family Structure, and Parental Involvement During the Modular Distance Education on the Student’s Academic Achievement in Science

Following the descriptive research design, the study focused on describing the distribution of respondents according to the student’s and parent’s socio-demographic profile, their Family Structure, Parental Involvement, as well as their academic achievement in science during the implementation of modular distance education at Bugallon Integrated School S.Y. 2021-2022.  For the respondents’ socio-demographic profile, results showed that most are female, with only one available device at home that could be used for learning and have available internet usage. For the parents’ socio-demographic profile, most of the respondents has   only one parent who is working with   income of P10, 000 or below. Majority of the respondents have a father and a mother whose highest Educational Attainment is secondary education.   Most of them are 4Ps beneficiary. For the Family Structure, most of the respondents live with both parents. For students who are in a single-parent household, majority of them has only one financial support. Also, most of the respondents tied with two (2) and three (3) learners in a household. For Family and Parental Involvement, majority of the respondents have one (1) household member that can provide instructional support and most of them have 1 -2 hours of parental support each day. The most common form of parental involvement based on the mean responses is retrieving the student’s module in school (x?= 3.44, SD = 0.88). As for their Academic achievement in Science manifested through their grade, majority of the respondents have a grade range of 85 – 89 with an equivalent of Very Satisfactory

Modular Distance Education: The Role of Socio Demographic Profile, Family Structure, and Parental Involvement on the Student’s Final Grade in Science

The current descriptive-correlational study focused on the role of socio-demographic profile, family structure, and parental involvement on the student’s academic achievement in science during the Modular Distance Education at Bugallon Integrated School. Correlation analysis showed that gender is highly related to the students’ final grade in science (r = 0.167, p < 0.05), number of devices available is highly related to final grade in science (r = 0.326, p < 0.01), and internet usage is highly related to final grade in science (r = 0.245, p < 0.01). For parents’ socio-demographic characteristics, correlation analysis showed that income is positively highly related to the students’ final grade in science (r = 0.241, p < 0.01), father’s educational attainment is positively related to the students’ final grade in science (r = 0.191, p < 0.05), and mother’s educational attainment is positively highly related to the students’ final grade in science (r = 0.332, p < 0.01). The student's Family Structure was not significantly related to the students’ final grade in science. The number of learners in household was also not significantly related to science grade. For parental involvement, retrieval of student’s modules in school (r = 0.251, p < 0.01), enquiring the teachers  on the student’s performance in their modules (r = 0.217, p < 0.01), encouraging the student to do their performance task (r = 0.390, p < 0.01), monitoring the student’s television watching habit and playing games (r = 0.272, p < 0.01), and involving the student in decision making regarding their education (r = 0.220, p < 0.01) were the only significantly related to academic achievement in science as manifested by science grade which was shown by the correlation analysis. Further, the study did not show any significant difference between the family structure (living with whom), and students’ final grade in science

ATLASGAL - physical parameters of dust clumps associated with 6.7 GHz methanol masers

We have constructed the largest sample of dust-associated class II 6.7 GHz methanol masers yet obtained. New measurements from the Methanol Multibeam (MMB) survey were combined with the 870 μm APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) and the 850 μm JCMT Plane Survey (JPS). Together with two previous studies we have now identified the host clumps for 958 methanol masers across the Galactic Plane, covering approximately 99 per cent of the MMB catalogue and increasing the known sample of dust-associated masers by over 30 per cent. We investigate correlations between the physical properties of the clumps and masers using distances and luminosities drawn from the literature. Clumps hosting methanol masers are significantly more compact and have higher volume densities than the general population of clumps. We determine a minimum volume density threshold of n(H2) ≥ 104 cm−3 for the efficient formation of intermediate- and high-mass stars. We find 6.7 GHz methanol masers are associated with a distinct part of the evolutionary process (Lbol/Mfwhm ratios of between 100.6 and 102.2) and have well-defined turning on and termination points. We estimate the lower limit for the mass of embedded objects to be ≥6 M⊙ and the statistical lifetime of the methanol maser stage to be ∼3.3 × 104 yr. This suggests that methanol masers are indeed reliable tracers of high-mass star formation, and indicates that the evolutionary period traced by this marker is relatively rapid