Roadmap for UN 2030 Education Agenda for Learners with Special Educational Needs of Department of Education, Pangasinan Division II, Philippines

The UN 2030 Education Agenda is a global platform directed towards creating opportunities for learners with special educational needs (LSENs) for their holistic development and eventual mainstreaming in the society. The schools being the catalysts of societal transformation are focal points for the provision of instruction and intervention that emphasize inclusion, equity and gender equality among learners. Policies, programs, activities as well teachers’ training and orientation must be crafted to address the proper mainstreaming and placement of LSENs that will prepare them for self-independence and enhancement of their skills while ensuring that incidents of gender bias and bullying is eliminated, thus creating a wholesome learning environment. The objectives of this paper are mainly focused on the following areas; emphasis on the level of awareness of the goals of UN 2030 Education Agenda; assess the level of effectiveness of initiatives and activities for implementation; point out the severity of the problems that hinder implementation. A plan of action reflected as the roadmap in order to attain the UN 2030 Education Agenda was conceptualized. Descriptive-analytical method of research was employed with survey-questionnaire as its data-gathering instrument. Respondents were teachers and stakeholders of the eleven (11) special education centers of DepEd Division of Pangasinan II. From the data gathered, it was concluded that respondents have a very high awareness of the goals of UN 2030 education agenda, the initiatives and activities to be undertaken were perceived very much effective while the problems were moderately severe. The findings indicated that principals should keep track of the activities being implemented to ensure alignment with the set of goals, stakeholders must work collaboratively to intensify the implementation of the activities and that applicable solution must be thought of to minimize the problems encountered. Hence, principals in unison with the teachers and stakeholders must religiously implement the plan of action to ensure achievement of the goals on providing inclusive, equitable and gender equality education for learners with special educational needs of DepEd, Pangasinan Division II, Philippine

Governance and HIV - Government-Civil Society Interface: An Aspect of Governance Critical to an Effective Response

There exists a dynamic interrelationship between good governance, a successful government organisation (GO) - civil society organisation (CSO) interface and an appropriate response to the HIV-AIDS epidemic. Good governance creates an environment that promotes collaboration among various sectors of society. Appropriate response to the epidemic, on the other hand, are engendered by positive interfaces and cooperation between key sectors of a community. The case study will specifically examine three examples of interface: the Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC) at the national level; and for the local implementation, Olongapo city, and the province of Palawan. Characteristics of good governance that promote GO-CSO interface include transparency or mutual sharing of information among the parties to the interface especially government. Another is accountability and responsibility to the community. These are important because they recognize the right of the community or society to participate in governance activities. Openness and toleration of diverse perspectives sustain dialogue and partnership between government and civil society. A government that formulates policies creating an enabling environment for people to participate, and a dynamic active civil society which recognizes the need to participate, are important ingredients for a successful interface

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Corticostriatal afferents can engage parvalbumin-expressing (PV+) interneurons to rapidly curtail the activity of striatal projection neurons (SPNs), thus shaping striatal output. Schemes of basal ganglia circuit dynamics generally consider striatal PV+ interneurons to be homogenous, despite considerable heterogeneity in both form and function. We demonstrate that the selective co-expression of another calcium-binding protein, secretagogin (Scgn), separates PV+ interneurons in rat and primate striatum into two topographically-, physiologically- and structurally-distinct cell populations. In rats, these two interneuron populations differed in their firing rates, patterns and relationships with cortical oscillations in vivo. Moreover, the axons of identified PV+/Scgn+ interneurons preferentially targeted the somata of SPNs of the so-called ‘direct pathway’, whereas PV+/Scgn- interneurons preferentially targeted ‘indirect pathway’ SPNs. These two populations of interneurons could therefore provide a substrate through which either of the striatal output pathways can be rapidly and selectively inhibited to subsequently mediate the expression of behavioral routines

A Topological Representation of Branching Neuronal Morphologies

The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12021-017-9341-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Among others, we thank Athanassia Chalimourda and Katherine Turner for helpful conversations in various stages of this research and Jay Coggan for a critical reading of the manuscript. We also thank Hanchuan Peng and Xiaoxiao Liu for providing and curating the BigNeuron datasets. This work was supported by funding for the Blue Brain Project (BBP) from the ETH Domain. P.D. and R.L. were supported part by the Blue Brain Project and by the start-up grant of KH. Partial support for P.D. has been provided by the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council GUDHI (Geometric Understanding in Higher Dimensions). MS was supported by the SNF NCCR “Synapsy”.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Petilla terminology: nomenclature of features of GABAergic interneurons of the cerebral cortex

Autores: Giorgo A. Ascoli et al.Neuroscience produces a vast amount of data from an enormous diversity of neurons. A neuronal classification system is essential to organize such data and the knowledge that is derived from them. Classification depends on the unequivocal identification of the features that distinguish one type of neuron from another. The problems inherent in this are particularly acute when studying cortical interneurons. To tackle this, we convened a representative group of researchers to agree on a set of terms to describe the anatomical, physiological and molecular features of GABAergic interneurons of the cerebral cortex. The resulting terminology might provide a stepping stone towards a future classification of these complex and heterogeneous cells. Consistent adoption will be important for the success of such an initiative, and we also encourage the active involvement of the broader scientific community in the dynamic evolution of this project.The authors are grateful to funding agencies in their respective countries for supporting this work. The Gobierno de Navarra/Nafarroako Gobernua and the town and people of Petilla are acknowledged for graciously hosting the meeting that originated this document.Peer reviewe

A business framework to survive the COVID-19 pandemic: A multiple case study on the dynamic capabilities and improvisational capabilities among selected food service MSMEs

Purpose: This paper explored the concept of dynamic capabilities and improvisational capabilities in the pandemic in the food services industry in the Philippines. Furthermore, this study focused on the theories of dynamic capabilities, improvisational capabilities, and turbulent environments. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers conducted interviews with two MSMEs in the food service industry to understand how they adapted to the pandemic. The researchers synthesized the data using thematic analysis and created a general model or framework that other companies can use with the information gathered. Research limitations/implications: This research’s main implication was that it took place during the height of the pandemic, ergo not many similar studies were published on the matter. Furthermore, the researchers used a more flexible criteria to acquire enough respondents to pursue the study. However, the researchers preferred to garner more interviewees for deeper analysis. Another limitation was that while the researchers interviewed similar ranking employees but of different experience and perspectives, hence the differences in answers and understanding for some questions. Lastly, this research was limited to only the food services industry, as the researchers wanted to focus on one primary industry to get a better grasp of the conditions it faces. Opportunities for future research include focusing on different industries or focusing the research on another kind of business (e.g., social enterprises, NGOs). Practical and social implications: This research explained how businesses recovered through combining both dynamic and improvisational capabilities and not solely depending on only one or the other. Key Words: dynamic capabilities, improvisational capabilities, COVID-19, management, turbulent environment, food service industr

Single player tracking in multiple sports videos

Vision-based analysis of sports videos provides a consistent and concise performance statistics which are essential for developing athlete training programs. Existing applications such as Sport VU [8] and SAGIT [17], are vision-based systems for analyzing player performance which requires precise and rigid setup of equipment. This limits the application to large organizations. In order to provide the same service for minor league coaches, the objective of the study is to develop a tracking system capable of adapting multiple camera from any vantage point for tracking. The developed system tracks a selected player using Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) with Symmetric Nearest Neighbor Filtering, and Kalman filter for object tracking. Using the spatial overlap metric, the average tracking accuracy of the system is 40% with a tracking precision of 74% in basketball clips wherein tracked player is un-occluded. On the other hand, the tracking accuracy during occlusion significantly drops due to the implemented motion models even with the use of Kalman Filter as a motion estimator. With the use of multiple cameras, cross-correlation is applied on the translated 2D coordinates of the target to synchronize location information from each camera. The synchronized data are averaged together into a single representation to decrease the location error. Improvement after data averaging is dependent on the availability of reliable data. A reliable data with a tracking accuracy of 59.8% and tracking precision of 93.8% could improve location data by as much as 70