Intellectual Property and Opportunities for Food Security in the Philippines

By 2050, the Philippine population is projected to increase by as much as 41 percent, from 99.9 million to nearly 153 million people. Producing enough food for such an expanding population and achieving food security remain a challenge for the Philippine government. This paper argued that intellectual property rights (IPR) can play a key role in achieving the nation’s current goal to be food-secure and provided examples to illustrate that the presence of sound intellectual property (IP) helps foster research, development, and deployment of agricultural innovations. This paper also offered key recommendations about how the IP system can be further leveraged to enable access, creation, and commercialization of new and innovative agricultural practices and technologies to enhance the nation’s agricultural productivity, meet rice self-sufficiency, and sustain food security

Prototype finline-coupled TES bolometers for CLOVER

CLOVER is an experiment which aims to detect the signature of gravitational waves from inflation by measuring the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background. CLOVER consists of three telescopes operating at 97, 150, and 220 GHz. The 97-GHz telescope has 160 feedhorns in its focal plane while the 150 and 220-GHz telescopes have 256 horns each. The horns are arranged in a hexagonal array and feed a polarimeter which uses finline-coupled TES bolometers as detectors. To detect the two polarizations the 97-GHz telescope has 320 detectors while the 150 and 220-GHz telescopes have 512 detectors each. To achieve the target NEPs (1.5, 2.5, and 4.5x10^-17 W/rtHz) the detectors are cooled to 100 mK for the 97 and 150-GHz polarimeters and 230 mK for the 220-GHz polarimeter. Each detector is fabricated as a single chip to ensure a 100% operational focal plane. The detectors are contained in linear modules made of copper which form split-block waveguides. The detector modules contain 16 or 20 detectors each for compatibility with the hexagonal arrays of horns in the telescopes' focal planes. Each detector module contains a time-division SQUID multiplexer to read out the detectors. Further amplification of the multiplexed signals is provided by SQUID series arrays. The first prototype detectors for CLOVER operate with a bath temperature of 230 mK and are used to validate the detector design as well as the polarimeter technology. We describe the design of the CLOVER detectors, detector blocks, and readout, and present preliminary measurements of the prototype detectors performance.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures; to appear in the Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Space Terahertz Technology, held 10-12 May 2006 in Pari

PenQuest Volume 3, Number 2

Table of Contents for this Volume: Untitled by Joe Avanzini Woodcutting on Lost Mountain by Tess Gallagher Untitled by Judith Mizrahi Women I have loved by Dottie Fletcher Untitled by Rick Wagner Untold Stories by William Slaughter Untitled by Steve Balunan Two German Women by Dottie Fletcher Untitled by Anne Calloway Tourists by Carol Grimes Untitled by Win Lyons Rollin\u27 Bones by Barbara Ritchey Untitled by Steve Balunan Hannukah Harbor by Jerry Nelson Night-letter by William Slaughter Untitled by Bruce Abbey Domestic by Carol Grimes Untitled by Steve Balunan The Storm Pit by Howard Denson Untitled by Judith Mizrahi Hattie by Dottie Fletcher Untitled by Linda Willcox Untitled by Helen Hagador

CCTV observation: The effects of event type and instructions on fixation behaviour in an applied change blindness task

Little is known about how observers’ scanning strategies affect performance when monitoring events in CCTV footage. We examined the fixation behaviour of change detectors and non-detectors monitoring dynamic scenes. 147 participants observed mock CCTV video featuring either a mock crime or no crime. Participants were instructed to look for a crime, something unusual, or simply to watch the video. In both videos, two of the people depicted switched locations. Eye movements (the number of fixations on the targets and the average length of each fixation on targets) were recorded prior to and during the critical change period. Change detection (24% overall) was unaffected by event type or task instruction. Fixation behaviour differed significantly between the criminal and non-criminal event conditions. There was no effect of instructions on fixation behaviour. Change detectors fixated for longer on the target directly before the change than did non-detectors. Although fixation behaviour before change predicted change detection, fixation count and durations during the critical change period did not. These results highlight the potential value of studying fixation behaviour for understanding change blindness during complex, cognitively demanding tasks (e.g., CCTV surveillance)

Exploring environmental entrepreneurship: identity coupling, venture goals, and stakeholder incentives

On the basis of a qualitative study of 25 renewable energy firms, we theorize why and how individuals engage in environmental entrepreneurship, inductively defined as: the use of both commercial and ecological logics to address environmental degradation through the creation of financially profitable organizations, products, services, and markets. Our findings suggest that environmental entrepreneurs: (1) are motivated by identities based in both commercial and ecological logics,(2) prioritize commercial and/or ecological venture goals dependent on the strength and priority of coupling between these two identity types, and (3) approach stakeholders in a broadly inclusive, exclusive, or co-created manner based on identity coupling and goals. These findings contribute to literature streams on hybrid organizing, entrepreneurial identity, and entrepreneurship’s potential for resolving environmental degradation

Distribution and Habitat Associations of Billfish and Swordfish Larvae across Mesoscale Features in the Gulf of Mexico

Ichthyoplankton surveys were conducted in surface waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico (NGoM) over a three-year period (2006–2008) to determine the relative value of this region as early life habitat of sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus), blue marlin (Makaira nigricans), white marlin (Kajikia albida), and swordfish (Xiphias gladius). Sailfish were the dominant billfish collected in summer surveys, and larvae were present at 37.5% of the stations sampled. Blue marlin and white marlin larvae were present at 25.0% and 4.6% of the stations sampled, respectively, while swordfish occurred at 17.2% of the stations. Areas of peak production were detected and maximum density estimates for sailfish (22.09 larvae 1000 m−2) were significantly higher than the three other species: blue marlin (9.62 larvae 1000 m−2), white marlin (5.44 larvae 1000 m−2), and swordfish (4.67 larvae 1000 m−2). The distribution and abundance of billfish and swordfish larvae varied spatially and temporally, and several environmental variables (sea surface temperature, salinity, sea surface height, distance to the Loop Current, current velocity, water depth, and Sargassum biomass) were deemed to be influential variables in generalized additive models (GAMs). Mesoscale features in the NGoM affected the distribution and abundance of billfish and swordfish larvae, with densities typically higher in frontal zones or areas proximal to the Loop Current. Habitat suitability of all four species was strongly linked to physicochemical attributes of the water masses they inhabited, and observed abundance was higher in slope waters with lower sea surface temperature and higher salinity. Our results highlight the value of the NGoM as early life habitat of billfishes and swordfish, and represent valuable baseline data for evaluating anthropogenic effects (i.e., Deepwater Horizon oil spill) on the Atlantic billfish and swordfish populations

Analysis of Temperature-to-Polarization Leakage in BICEP3 and Keck CMB Data from 2016 to 2018

The Bicep/Keck Array experiment is a series of small-aperture refracting telescopes observing degree-scale Cosmic Microwave Background polarization from the South Pole in search of a primordial B-mode signature. As a pair differencing experiment, an important systematic that must be controlled is the differential beam response between the co-located, orthogonally polarized detectors. We use high-fidelity, in-situ measurements of the beam response to estimate the temperature-to-polarization (T → P) leakage in our latest data including observations from 2016 through 2018. This includes three years of Bicep3 observing at 95 GHz, and multifrequency data from Keck Array. Here we present band-averaged far-field beam maps, differential beam mismatch, and residual beam power (after filtering out the leading difference modes via deprojection) for these receivers. We show preliminary results of "beam map simulations," which use these beam maps to observe a simulated temperature (no Q/U) sky to estimate T → P leakage in our real data