“It falls on all our shoulders”: Overcoming Barriers to Delivering Sex Education in West Texas Schools

BACKGROUND: Many racial, socioeconomic, and geographic disparities exist in rates of teen birth and sexually transmitted infections. Increasing access to comprehensive sex education is one risk reduction strategy for these outcomes, yet access to and quality of sex education in schools often falls far below recommended standards, particularly in Texas. The current exploratory study examines barriers to effectively delivering sex education in West Texas schools and identifies strategies to help overcome these barriers. METHODS: In-depth interviews with school leaders and health education professionals (n=4) were conducted to understand teen sexual health needs in West Texas. Interviews were analyzed using descriptive coding, memoing, and quote matrices to interpret the data. RESULTS: Participants identified a number of policy-, organizational-, and interpersonal-level barriers to delivering sex education in public schools. School personnel experienced intense time pressures, a lack of institutional support, and tension with parents. Many expressed a desire to work more collaboratively with parents and participants acknowledged the important role of school health advisory councils (SHACs). CONCLUSIONS: School personnel face complex challenges at multiple levels when attempting to deliver sex education in public schools. Despite these challenges, SHACs represent a valuable opportunity for communities to work collaboratively to improve sex education in public schools

On Efficiency and Validity of Previous Homeplug MAC Performance Analysis

The Medium Access Control protocol of Power Line Communication networks (defined in Homeplug and IEEE 1901 standards) has received relatively modest attention from the research community. As a consequence, there is only one analytic model that complies with the standardised MAC procedures and considers unsaturated conditions. We identify two important limitations of the existing analytic model: high computational expense and predicted results just prior to the predicted saturation point do not correspond to long-term network performance. In this work, we present a simplification of the previously defined analytic model of Homeplug MAC able to substantially reduce its complexity and demonstrate that the previous performance results just before predicted saturation correspond to a transitory phase. We determine that the causes of previous misprediction are common analytical assumptions and the potential occurrence of a transitory phase, that we show to be of extremely long duration under certain circumstances. We also provide techniques, both analytical and experimental, to correctly predict long-term behaviour and analyse the effect of specific Homeplug/IEEE 1901 features on the magnitude of misprediction errors

Modeling, Analysis and Impact of a Long Transitory Phase in Random Access Protocols

In random access protocols, the service rate depends on the number of stations with a packet buffered for transmission. We demonstrate via numerical analysis that this state-dependent rate along with the consideration of Poisson traffic and infinite (or large enough to be considered infinite) buffer size may cause a high-throughput and extremely long (in the order of hours) transitory phase when traffic arrivals are right above the stability limit. We also perform an experimental evaluation to provide further insight into the characterisation of this transitory phase of the network by analysing statistical properties of its duration. The identification of the presence as well as the characterisation of this behaviour is crucial to avoid misprediction, which has a significant potential impact on network performance and optimisation. Furthermore, we discuss practical implications of this finding and propose a distributed and low-complexity mechanism to keep the network operating in the high-throughput phase.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networkin

GATT-UR and Philippine Agriculture: Facts and Fallacies

GATT-UR provisions on agriculture have been most controversial. Its ratification depends on the establishment of adequate “safety nets” to protect farmers from the anticipated adverse welfare impacts of the GATT-UR implementation. This paper argues that the global and Philippine trade liberalization in the spirit of GATT-UR will benefit the poor and farmers. Senate should therefore ratify the agreements to allow the government to attend their business of carrying out economic and institutional reform for sustainable economic growth.agriculture sector, General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, rural sector

GATT-UR and Philippine Agriculture: Facts and Fallacies

GATT-UR provisions on agriculture have been most controversial. Its ratification depends on the establishment of adequate “safety nets” to protect farmers from the anticipated adverse welfare impacts of the GATT-UR implementation. This paper argues that the global and Philippine trade liberalization in the spirit of GATT-UR will benefit the poor and farmers. Senate should therefore ratify the agreements to allow the government to attend their business of carrying out economic and institutional reform for sustainable economic growth.agriculture sector, General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, rural sector

Constraints to Food Security: The Philippine Case

Over the past two decades, the Philippine economic growth has been erratic and lower than most developing countries in Asia. The agriculture sector has not performed well since 1980s, hence losing its comparative advantage. Recommendations of Congressional Commission on Agricultural Modernization is adopted through the Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Act which spells out the need for policy and institutional reforms and setting up of public expenditures program. High food prices affect the food security of the large majority of the poor and distorted price incentives lead to lower sectoral and economy-wide income. To address market failure in the agriculture sector, there is therefore a need to implement appropriate policies with respect to trade and exchange rate policies, financial markets, intellectual property rights and biosafety. In addition, the paper cites the need for a cost-effective public expenditure program in research and extension, irrigation and market infrastructure. Efficient institutional frameworks for property rights and government bureaucracy are also suggested.agriculture sector, food price stability

Water Demand Projections for Metro Manila: A Critical Review

Establishment of an efficient water price structure requires an accurate water demand projections. This month’s issue points out the urgent need for greater efforts in developing the basic data requirements, estimating demand functions of various users and improving the methodology for reliable water demand projections.water sector, water demand, water demand models, water demand projections, household water demand, industrial and commercial water demand

Small unmanned airborne systems to support oil and gas pipeline monitoring and mapping

Acknowledgments We thank Johan Havelaar, Aeryon Labs Inc., AeronVironment Inc. and Aeronautics Inc. for kindly permitting the use of materials in Fig. 1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD