After Five Years of Pantawid, What Next?

When the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program was designed, the government publicly promised to limit to five years the giving of the education and health grants. This five-year limit is almost over for the first set of beneficiaries by 2013. The natural policy question then is: Would it be wise to keep the promise or would an extension be better? This paper presents five arguments and evidence why the extension of the program is better than keeping the promise to limit it to five years. The five arguments include: (a) the problems that the Pantawid had been designed to address continue to be high priority issues; (b) Pantawid remains credible as an effective and valuable instrument for poverty alleviation in the short run and for reducing the transmission of intergenerational poverty in the long run; (c) the extension could provide great opportunities to produce a much greater positive impact on the welfare of the poor; (d) the extension could buy much-needed time for developing and implementing an adequate and workable transition promotion strategy to help beneficiaries outgrow their need for CCT assistance and, therefore, facilitate its termination; and (e) secondary education enrollment and completion produces high returns in terms of increased earning and is achievable with a moderate amount of subsidy. The paper ends with cautionary notes including articulating that Pantawid remains a bridging program; the need for a careful study to ensure affordability and maximize its cost effectiveness; the need to continue to generate better estimates of key parameters such as income elasticities; and possible phasing for affordability and recognition of possible supply-side constraints

Manufacture, observation, and test of membranes with locatable single pores

A method for generating single pores down to 0.1 μm diameter in the center of a large circular foil is described, based on nuclear tracks. The foil is framed by a tension ring which enables one to handle the foils in a well‐defined precise way. The single pore has a lateral displacement of ±0.1 mm with respect to the tension ring center. The foils used are polycarbonate of the type Makrofol and have thicknesses between 2 and 10 μm. For calibration of the single pore diameters, multiple nuclear tracks between 0.1 and 3.5 μm diameter are etched and observed by microscopy. The microscopic observations are compared with gas‐flow measurements, using two alternative methods: multiple holes are tested under viscous flow conditions of N2 gas at normal temperature and pressure; single holes are tested under collisionless flow conditions of 4He gas at liquid‐nitrogen temperature, using a capacitance method.Peer reviewe

Supercooled confined water and the Mode Coupling crossover temperature

We present a Molecular Dynamics study of the single particle dynamics of supercooled water confined in a silica pore. Two dynamical regimes are found: close to the hydrophilic substrate molecules are below the Mode Coupling crossover temperature, $T_C$, already at ambient temperature. The water closer to the center of the pore (free water) approaches upon supercooling $T_C$ as predicted by Mode Coupling Theories. For free water the crossover temperature and crossover exponent $\gamma$ are extracted from power-law fits to both the diffusion coefficient and the relaxation time of the late $\alpha$ region.Comment: To be published, Phys. Rev. Lett., 4 pages, 3 figures, revTeX, minor changes in the figures, references added, changes in the tex

Aspectos de Implementação de um Servidor MMS

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar um modelo de implementação de um servidor MMS que atue no ambiente de manufatura integrada. Esse modelo inclui um subconjunto de serviços que atendem, no mínimo, aos requisitos de comuni­cação de um dispositivo controlador lógico programável (CLP). Será apresentada inicialmente una visão geral dos serviços MMS, bem como do controlador lógico programável, seguida da definição dos serviços MMS a serem implementados com base nas funções de um CLP. Finalmente, será apresentado um modelo de implementação, incluindo a descrição da estru­tura de processos e das estruturas de dados. ABSTRACT This paper presents a MMS server implementation model that actuates in an integrated manufacturing environ­ment. This model includes a subset of services that attends, at least, the communications requirements of a programmable logic controller device (PLC). Initially, it presents a survey of MMS services and PLCs, followed by the definition of the MMS services that will be implemented based on PLC's functions. Finally, it presents the implementation model, including the process and data structures description

X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure (XANES) at the O K-Edge of Bulk Co₃O₄: Experimental and Theoretical Studies

We combine theoretical and experimental X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) to probe the local environment around cationic sites of bulk spinel cobalt tetraoxide (Co3O4). Specifically, we analyse the oxygen K-edge spectrum. We find an excellent agreement between our calculated spectra based on the density functional theory and the projector augmented wave method, previous calculations as well as with the experiment. The oxygen K-edge spectrum shows a strong pre-edge peak which can be ascribed to dipole transitions from O 1s to O 2p states hybridized with the unoccu- pied 3d states of cobalt atoms. Also, since Co3O4 contains two types of Co atoms, i.e., Co3+ and Co2+, we find that contribution of Co2+ ions to the pre-edge peak is solely due to single spin-polarized t2g orbitals (dxz, dyz, and dxy) while that of Co3+ ions is due to spin-up and spin-down polarized eg orbitals (dx2−y2 and dz2 ). Furthermore, we deduce the magnetic moments on the Co3+ and Co2+ to be zero and 3.00 μB respectively. This is consistent with an earlier experimental study which found that the magnetic structure of Co3O4 consists of antiferromagnetically ordered Co2+ spins, each of which is surrounded by four nearest neighbours of oppositely directed spins

Prevalência e fatores de risco associados à Leptospira spp. em rebanhos bovinos da região centro-sul do estado do Paraná.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi determinar a prevalência de anticorpos anti-Leptospira spp. e os fatores de risco para infecção de Leptospira spp. na criação de rebanhos bovinos no centro-sul da região do Estado do Paraná

Exploring the performance of the spectrometer prisma in heavy zirconium and xenon mass regions

We present results from two recent runs which illustrate the performance of the PRISMA spectrometer in the proximity of the upper limit of its operational interval, namely 96Zr + 124Sn at Elab = 500 MeV and 136Xe + 208Pb at Elab = 930 MeV. In the latter run, the γ array CLARA also allowed us to identify previously unknown γ transitions in the nuclides 136Cs and 134I