Harnessing Rural Radio for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation in the Philippines

The working paper documents the pilot rural radio campaign, dubbed as 'Climate Change i-Broadkas Mo', implemented by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security in Southeast Asia (CCAFS SEA) and the Philippine Federation of Rural Broadcasters (PFRB)​ in strategic regions of the Philippines from 2015 to 2018. The radio campaign provided PFRB affiliated broadcasters with scripts and ready-to-be-aired (RTBA) interviews on climate-smart agriculture. The lessons learned from the project can be used to enhance the capacities of rural broadcasters on climate change reporting and to create a demand for radio-based distance learning, not only in Northern Philippines, but in similar regions in Southeast Asia

ASEAN Way: desafíos, problemas y oportunidades durante la COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous change to everyone's lifestyle as well as the social, political, and economic landscape. This novel global health crisis has challenged every state's healthcare system regardless of being a highly developed, newly developed, or developing economy. The southeast Asian region has been one of the heavily hit regions in the world because of its proximity to China, where the virus originated and the vulnerability of their lesser developed healthcare systems. However, despite these challenges to public health governance, these South East Asian countries were able to come up with innovative, inclusive, and effective public health policies, programs, and strategies to address the pandemic. Using the Global Health Governance theory, the study looked into four (4) thematic areas: Actions of the Government, Actions of the Private Sector, Criticisms of the People, and the Effects on the Economy to further gauge the landscape of the effects of the pandemic to the region. The researcher concluded from these responses to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and their continuing efforts to balance public health and socio-economic development agenda. Keywords: ASEAN; COVID-19 Pandemic; Health Governance; Public Health Governance.La COVID-19 trajo cambios tremendos en el estilo de vida de todos, así como en el panorama social, político y económico. Esta nueva crisis de salud global ha desafiado el sistema de salud de todos los estados, independientemente de que sean economías altamente desarrolladas, recientemente desarrolladas o en desarrollo. La región del sudeste asiático ha sido una de las regiones más afectadas del mundo debido a su proximidad a China, donde se originó el virus y la vulnerabilidad de sus sistemas de salud menos desarrollados. Sin embargo, a pesar de estos desafíos para la gobernanza de la salud pública, estos países del sudeste asiático pudieron idear políticas, programas y estrategias de salud pública innovadores, inclusivos y efectivos para abordar la pandemia. Usando la teoría de la Gobernanza de la Salud Global, el estudio analizó cuatro (4) áreas temáticas: Acciones del Gobierno, Acciones del Sector Privado, Críticas de la Gente y los Efectos en la Economía para evaluar aún más el panorama de los efectos de la pandemia a la región. Se concluyó que desde países en desarrollo hasta países avanzados, no se puede negar que COVID-19 ha afectado a personas de todo el mundo de una forma u otra. Dejó (y sigue dejando) impactos en los sectores de un país, desde su economía hasta los ajustes educativos. Palabras clave: TASEAN; COVID-19; Gobernanza en Salud; Gobernanza de la Salud Pública

Algebraic Properties of Qualitative Spatio-Temporal Calculi

Qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning is based on so-called qualitative calculi. Algebraic properties of these calculi have several implications on reasoning algorithms. But what exactly is a qualitative calculus? And to which extent do the qualitative calculi proposed meet these demands? The literature provides various answers to the first question but only few facts about the second. In this paper we identify the minimal requirements to binary spatio-temporal calculi and we discuss the relevance of the according axioms for representation and reasoning. We also analyze existing qualitative calculi and provide a classification involving different notions of a relation algebra.Comment: COSIT 2013 paper including supplementary materia

DogOnt - Ontology Modeling for Intelligent Domotic Environments

Abstract. Home automation has recently gained a new momentum thanks to the ever-increasing commercial availability of domotic components. In this context, researchers are working to provide interoperation mechanisms and to add intelligence on top of them. For supporting intelligent behaviors, house modeling is an essential requirement to understand current and future house states and to possibly drive more complex actions. In this paper we propose a new house modeling ontology designed to fit real world domotic system capabilities and to support interoperation between currently available and future solutions. Taking advantage of technologies developed in the context of the Semantic Web, the DogOnt ontology supports device/network independent description of houses, including both “controllable ” and architectural elements. States and functionalities are automatically associated to the modeled elements through proper inheritance mechanisms and by means of properly defined SWRL auto-completion rules which ease the modeling process, while automatic device recognition is achieved through classification reasoning.

A comparison of 'pruning' during multi-step planning in depressed and healthy individuals

BACKGROUND: Real-life decisions are often complex because they involve making sequential choices that constrain future options. We have previously shown that to render such multi-step decisions manageable, people 'prune' (i.e. selectively disregard) branches of decision trees that contain negative outcomes. We have theorized that sub-optimal pruning contributes to depression by promoting an oversampling of branches that result in unsavoury outcomes, which results in a negatively-biased valuation of the world. However, no study has tested this theory in depressed individuals. METHODS: Thirty unmedicated depressed and 31 healthy participants were administered a sequential reinforcement-based decision-making task to determine pruning behaviours, and completed measures of depression and anxiety. Computational, Bayesian and frequentist analyses examined group differences in task performance and relationships between pruning and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: Consistent with prior findings, participants robustly pruned branches of decision trees that began with large losses, regardless of the potential utility of those branches. However, there was no group difference in pruning behaviours. Further, there was no relationship between pruning and levels of depression/anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence that sub-optimal pruning is evident in depression. Future research could determine whether maladaptive pruning behaviours are observable in specific sub-groups of depressed patients (e.g. in treatment-resistant individuals), or whether misuse of other heuristics may contribute to depression

Lower limb joint angle variability and dimensionality are different in stairmill climbing and treadmill walking

The present study tested if the quadratic relationship which exists between stepping frequency and gait dynamics in walking can be generalized to stairmill climbing. To accomplish this, we investigated the joint angle dynamics and variability during continuous stairmill climbing at stepping frequencies both above and below the preferred stepping frequency (PSF). Nine subjects performed stairmill climbing at 80, 90, 100, 110 and 120% PSF and treadmill walking at preferred walking speed during which sagittal hip, knee and ankle angles were extracted. Joint angle dynamics were quantified by the largest Lyapunov exponent (LyE) and correlation dimension (CoD). Joint angle variability was estimated by the mean ensemble standard deviation (meanSD). MeanSD and CoD for all joints were significantly higher during stairmill climbing but there were no task differences in LyE. Changes in stepping frequency had only limited effect on joint angle variability and did not affect joint angle dynamics. Thus, we concluded that the quadratic relationship between stepping frequency and gait dynamics observed in walking is not present in stairmill climbing based on the investigated parameters

The improvement of Mo/4H-SiC Schottky diodes via a P2O5 surface passivation treatment

Molybdenum (Mo)/4H-silicon carbide (SiC) Schottky barrier diodes have been fabricated with a phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) surface passivation treatment performed on the SiC surface prior to metallization. Compared to the untreated diodes, the P2O5-treated diodes were found to have a lower Schottky barrier height by 0.11 eV and a lower leakage current by two to three orders of magnitude. Physical characterization of the P2O5-treated Mo/SiC interfaces revealed that there are two primary causes for the improvement in electrical performance. First, transmission electron microscopy imaging showed that nanopits filled with silicon dioxide had formed at the surface after the P2O5 treatment that terminates potential leakage paths. Second, secondary ion mass spectroscopy revealed a high concentration of phosphorus atoms near the interface. While only a fraction of these are active, a small increase in doping at the interface is responsible for the reduction in barrier height. Comparisons were made between the P2O5 pretreatment and oxygen (O2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) pretreatments that do not form the same nanopits and do not reduce leakage current. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy shows that SiC beneath the deposited P2O5 oxide retains a Si-rich interface unlike the N2O and O2 treatments that consume SiC and trap carbon at the interface. Finally, after annealing, the Mo/SiC interface forms almost no silicide, leaving the enhancement to the subsurface in place, explaining why the P2O5 treatment has had no effect on nickel- or titanium-SiC contacts