Battling media corruption in the Philippines: Profile interview: Chay Florentin Hofileña, Center for Journalism, Ateneo de Manila University

In 1998, Ma. Rosario “Chay” Florentin-Hofilena exposed what journalists in the Philippines acknowledge is a perennial problem in the media industry but are hesitant to discuss in public-- corruption in media. Her extensive documentation and interviews with media practitioners resulted in a book in 2004 - “News for Sale: The Corruption of the Philippine Media” - published jointly by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (www.pcij.org) and the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (www.cmfr.com.ph/). The book focuses on the rampant media corruption during the May 2004 presidential election in the Philippines. Chay covered the 1986 “People Power” Philippine revolution for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, was a freelance writer for publications in Dallas and San Francisco, a senior reporter for The Manila Chronicle and ABC-5 television in the Philippines. She was deputy editor for The Manila Times and associate editor of Newsbreak Magazine, which she writes for regularly. She is currently Director of the Master of Arts in Journalism Program at the Konrad Adenauer Center for Journalism at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. Leo Magno (email: [email protected]) IT editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer and executive editor of INQ7.net spoke with her about her latest book

KRATOS: An Open Source Hardware-Software Platform for Rapid Research in LPWANs

Long-range (LoRa) radio technologies have recently gained momentum in the IoT landscape, allowing low-power communications over distances up to several kilometers. As a result, more and more LoRa networks are being deployed. However, commercially available LoRa devices are expensive and propriety, creating a barrier to entry and possibly slowing down developments and deployments of novel applications. Using open-source hardware and software platforms would allow more developers to test and build intelligent devices resulting in a better overall development ecosystem, lower barriers to entry, and rapid growth in the number of IoT applications. Toward this goal, this paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of KRATOS, a low-cost LoRa platform running ContikiOS. Both, our hardware and software designs are released as an open- source to the research community.Comment: Accepted at WiMob 201

Payment and Settlement Systems in the SEACEN Countries

The main objectives of this study are to review and analyse the present status of, as well as the recent developments in, domestic and cross-border payments in the SEACEN member countries; and to recommend the measures or roles that the central bank should undertake to ensure the safety and efficiency of the payment and settlement systems (PSS) The study notes that the SEACEN countries are generally moving towards a cashless society as reflected in the significant growths in the use of non-cash payment instruments.However, the electronic-based instruments are still at an early stage of development in several SEACEN countries. This collaborative study was led by Dr. Magno L. Torreja, Jr., Visiting Research Economist from Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and participated by country researchers from all the member banks.

Guarantee schemes : an alternative to the supervised credit program

Paper presented during the ACPC-PIDS-OSU sponsored Seminarworkbhop on "Financial Intermediation in the Rural Sector: Research Rebultb and Policy Ibbueb" held on 26-27 September 1988 at the Cuaderno Hall, Central Bank of the Philippines. This ib part of a larger Study on comparative bank analysis jointly conducted by the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC), Philippine Institute for Development Studied (PIDS) and Ohio State University (OSU). The project wab coordinated by Dr. Mario B. Lamberte (PIDS) and Dr. V. Bruce J. Tolentino (ACPC)

Model-based design for self-sustainable sensor nodes

Long-term and maintenance-free operation is a critical feature for large-scale deployed battery-operated sensor nodes. Energy harvesting (EH) is the most promising technology to overcome the energy bottleneck of today’s sensors and to enable the vision of perpetual operation. However, relying on fluctuating environmental energy requires an application-specific analysis of the energy statistics combined with an in-depth characterization of circuits and algorithms, making design and verification complex. This article presents a model-based design (MBD) approach for EH-enabled devices accounting for the dynamic behavior of components in the power generation, conversion, storage, and discharge paths. The extension of existing compact models combined with data-driven statistical modeling of harvesting circuits allows accurate offline analysis, verification, and validation. The presented approach facilitates application-specific optimization during the development phase and reliable long-term evaluation combined with environmental datasets. Experimental results demonstrate the accuracy and flexibility of this approach: the model verification of a solar-powered wireless sensor node shows a determination coefficient () of 0.992, resulting in an energy error of only -1.57 % between measurement and simulation. Compared to state-of-practice methods, the MBD approach attains a reduction of the estimated state-of-charge error of up to 10.2 % in a real-world scenario. MBD offers non-trivial insights on critical design choices: the analysis of the storage element selection reveals a 2–3 times too high self-discharge per capacity ratio for supercapacitors and a peak current constrain for lithium-ion polymer batteries

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE RENEWAL OF BUSINESS MODELS

With the advent of the information age, shrinking product lifecycles and intense competition, organizations continuously seek to renew their business models to exploit new market opportunities. Existing literature suggests that advances in IT and the rise of corporate-wide IT platforms facilitate the use of IT resources across the organization and can drive the evolution of business models. However, we still know little about the role of IT in enabling successful business models. This study investigates the relationship between corporate IT platforms and business model evolution. We examine the case of DHL Express to understand how its efforts to build a corporate IT platform influenced the company’s business model. Drawing on insights from prior literature and findings from the DHL case, we discuss evidence that corporate IT platforms enable business model evolution to the extent that they generate digital options that can be exercised by managers to renew value propositions for customers

Genetic programs controlling cortical interneuron fate.

The origins of cortical interneurons in rodents have been localized to the embryonic subcortical telencephalon where distinct neuroepithelial precursors generate defined interneuron subsets. A swathe of research activity aimed at identifying molecular determinants of subtype identity has uncovered a number of transcription factors that function at different stages of interneuron development. Pathways that lead to the acquisition of mature interneuron traits are therefore beginning to emerge. As genetic programs are influenced by external factors the search continues not only into genetic determinants but also extrinsic influences and the interplay between the two in cell fate specification

Fly, Wake-up, Find: UAV-based Energy-efficient Localization for Distributed Sensor Nodes

A challenging application scenario in the field of industrial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is the capability of a robot to find and query smart sensor nodes deployed at arbitrary locations in the mission area. This work explores the combination of different communication technologies, namely, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and Wake-Up Radio (WUR), with a UAV that acts as a "ubiquitous local-host"of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). First, the UAV performs the localization of the sensor node via multiple UWB range measurements, and then it flies in its proximity to perform energy-efficient data acquisition. We propose an energy-efficient and accurate localization algorithm - based on multi-lateration - that is computationally inexpensive and robust to in-field noise. Aiming at minimizing the sensor node energy consumption, we also present a communication protocol that leverages WUR technology to minimize ON-time of the power-hungry UWB transceiver on the sensors. In-field experimental evaluation demonstrates that our approach achieves a sub-meter localization precision of the sensor nodes - i.e., down to 0.6 m - using only three range measurements, and runs in 4 ms on a low power microcontroller (ARM Cortex-M4F). Due to the presence of the WUR and the proposed lightweight algorithm, the entire localization-acquisition cycle requires only 31 mJ on the sensor node. The approach is suitable for several emerging Industrial Internet of Things application scenarios where a mobile vehicle needs to estimate the location of static objects without any precise knowledge of their position

Ultrahigh energy neutrinos and non-linear QCD dynamics

The ultrahigh energy neutrino-nucleon cross sections are computed taking into account different phenomenological implementations of the non-linear QCD dynamic s. Based on the color dipole framework, the results for the saturation model supplemented by DGLAP evolution as well as for the BFKL formalism in the geometric scaling regime are presented. They are contrasted with recent calculations using NLO DGLAP and unified BFKL-DGLAP formalisms.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Version to be published in Physical Review