Ripe for a big bang ? assessing the political feasibility of legislative reforms in the Philippines'local government code

In the Philippines'highly decentralized political system, smooth functioning of inter-governmental relations is key to effective service delivery and good governance overall. Although considered a milestone, the 1991 Local Government Code, the Philippines'basic legislation governing inter-governmental relations, contains provisions that thwart vertical and horizontal resource equalization among local government units, and contributes to mismatch between expenditure assignments and the fiscal capacities of the local government units. Numerous technical reports have called for adjustments to the existing revenue and expenditure assignments, yet no tangible progress has been made. This paper assesses the prospects of legislative reforms on the revenue side of the decentralization framework. Using a variety of approaches ranging from a historical analysis to institutional analysis of the legislative dynamics in the Philippine congress, it assesses the prospects of a major overhaul of the Local Government Code and concludes that a significant reform is highly unlikely under the conditions prevailing in the late 2010s. By implication, any effort to improve the Philippines'inter-governmental framework will have to settle for sub-optimal incremental measures within the inefficient revenue assignment arrangement.Parliamentary Government,Subnational Economic Development,Debt Markets,Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and Local Finance Management,Municipal Financial Management

The politics of power : the political economy of rent-seeking in electric utilities in the Philippines

This paper takes advantage of unique intra-country variation in the Philippines power sector to examine under what conditions politicians have an incentive to"capture"an electric utility and use it for the purposes of rent-seeking. The authors hypothesize that the level of capture is determined by the incentives of, and the interactions between, local and national politicians, where the concepts of"local"and"national"are context specific. A local politician is defined as one whose electoral jurisdiction lies within the utility’s catchment area; by contrast, a national politician is defined as one whose electoral jurisdiction includes two or more utility catchment areas. These jurisdictional differences imply different motivations for local and national politicians: because of"spillover"effects, local politicians have a greater incentive to use the utility for rent-seeking than a national politician as they capture only a portion of the political gains from utility performance improvements as some of the benefits of improved service will go to other electoral jurisdictions within the utility’s catchment area. The authors posit that three variables impact the magnitude of these incentives of local and national politicians: (i) the local economic context, specifically the scale of rents that can be extracted from an electricity cooperative (ii) the degree of competitiveness of local politics; and (iii) the political salience of an electricity cooperative’s catchment area for national politicians. The authors illustrate this framework through case studies of specific power utilities, and suggest some policy implications.Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Political Systems and Analysis,Politics and Government,Political Economy,Economic Theory&Research

Building governance and anti-corruption in the Philippines'conditional cash transfer program

The Philippine social protection notes series aims to summarize the good practices and key findings from the Philippines on the topics related to social protection, covering a variety of types of issues including Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) and targeting, broadening the social protection policy dialogue, analysis on social protection and service delivery. The Philippines is implementing a CCT program, which is called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (PPPP). CCT program provides cash to poorest households as long as the beneficiary households comply with the conditions of the program. Health grants are provided for beneficiary households with children 0-14 years old and/or with pregnant women with the conditions that all children 0-5 years old and the pregnant women visit health centers and receive services according to Department of Health (DOH) protocol, all children 6-14 years old undergo de-worming protocol at schools, and the household grantees (mainly women) attend family development sessions at least once a month. Education grants are provided for beneficiary households with children 6-14 years old with the conditions that the children are enrolled in primary or secondary school and maintain a class attendance rate of 85 percent every month.Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,National Governance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Governance Indicators

Neuromorphic application of oxide semiconductors

Artificial intelligences are promising as key technologies in future societies. However, the conventional ones are executed using complicated software on high-specked hardware, and the machine size is very bulky and power consumption is unbelievably huge. Therefore, we are investigating braintype integrated system , namely, neural network built only by hardware, which can be compact, low power, robust, and integrated on everything in future. In order to realize that system, simplification of the processing elements, such as neurons and synapse, three-dimensional structure, and low cost fabrication are required. We have succeeded in that simplification and are trying to utilize oxide semiconductors for the neuromorphic application because they can be fabricated using low cost fabrication such as sputtering and printing, by which the three-dimensional structure can be obtained in future. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

<ORIGINAL>Combined Effects of Erbium : YAG laser and Fluoride Application on Acid Resistance of Tooth dentin in vitro

This study examined the inhibition of dentin demineralization in initial caries with Er : YAG laser irradiation only and laser irradiation combined with fluoride application. Dentin blocks were prepared from the roots of bovine incisors and pretreated with one of the following five procedures : A) untreated, B) Er : YAG laser irradiation for 5min at 50mJ/pulse, C) APF gel application for 5min, D) Er : YAG laser followed by APF application for 5min,and E) APF treatment for 5min followed by Er : YAG laser irradiation. Subsequently the samples were demineralized in a 0.1M lactic acid gel (pH5.0) containing 6wt% CMC at 37℃ for 2 weeks. The mineral distributions in the dentin surfaces were assessed quantitatively by transversal microradiography (TMR) and videodensitometry. The mineral parameter values were not significantly different for samples with and without laser treatment at p=0.05, as tested by paired t-tests. The present results suggest that the progress of demineralization in dentin lesions is not effectively inhibited by the single treatment with laser irradiation. Combined Er : YAG laser and APF treated samples had the highest acid resistance with significantly lower lesion depth (ld) and mineral loss (ΔZ) values lower even than the APF treated samples

Emotional Communication in Finger Braille

We describe analyses of the features of emotions (neutral, joy, sadness, and anger) expressed by Finger Braille interpreters and subsequently examine the effectiveness of emotional expression and emotional communication between people unskilled in Finger Braille. The goal is to develop a Finger Braille system to teach emotional expression and a system to recognize emotion. The results indicate the following features of emotional expression by interpreters. The durations of the code of joy were significantly shorter than the durations of the other emotions, the durations of the code of sadness were significantly longer, and the finger loads of anger were significantly larger. The features of emotional expression by unskilled subjects were very similar to those of the interpreters, and the coincidence ratio of emotional communication was 75.1%. Therefore, it was confirmed that people unskilled in Finger Braille can express and communicate emotions using this communication medium

Application of the Erbium : YAG Laser to Cavity preparation for Cast Metal Inlay Restoration

Recently, an Er : YAG laser has been developed for dental hard tissue cutting. This laser has been usually used for cavity preparation of composite resin restorations, but not for cast metal inlays, because it is difficult to create a cavity form which ensures retention form and convenience form. An experimental chisel shaped contact tip for use in cavity preparation for cast metal inlays was developed. This tip has specified irradiation energy distribution characteristic and the usefulness of this tip in inlay cavity reparation was examined. The tooth cutting efficiency was determined in extracted human and bovine teeth, and the irradiated sites were observed with SEM. The experimental tip cuts dentin as well as conventional tips while enamel cutting is poorer than with the conventional tip. It was possible to obtain flat properly inclined dentin walls in the cavity preparation. It is suggested that inlay cavity preparation is possible using the experimental chisel shaped contact tip

Increased Anti-HSP60 and Anti-HSP70 Antibodies in Women with Unexplained Recurrent Pregnancy Loss

　Vascular dysfunction has been reported in women with recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL). We investigated the severity of vascular dysfunction in non-pregnant women with RPL and its correlation with anti-heat shock protein (HSP) antibodies that are known to induce arteriosclerosis. We measured the serum anti-HSP60 antibodies, anti-HSP70 antibodies, and anti-phospholipid antibodies (APA) in 68 women with RPL and 29 healthy controls. Among the women with RPL, 14 had a diagnosis of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), and in the remaining 54, the causes for RPL were unexplained. Compared to the controls, the brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), carotid augmentation index (cAI), and uterine artery pulsatility index (PI) were all significantly higher in the women with both APS and unexplained RPL. Compared to the controls, the anti-HSP60 antibody levels were significantly higher in the APA-positive group of women with unexplained RPL, and the anti-HSP70 antibody levels were significantly higher in APS and APA-positive group of women with unexplained RPL. However, the anti-HSP60 and anti-HSP70 antibody levels did not correlate with the values of baPWV or cAI. Our results demonstrated anti-HSP60 and anti-HSP70 antibodies are increased in women with unexplained RPL. Further studies are needed to elucidate the roles of anti-HSP antibodies and their pathophysiology in unexplained RPL