Rizal’s Morga and Views of Philippine History

Antonio de Morga, lieutenant governor of the Philippines in the late sixteenth century, described the food of the indios as follows: Their daily fare is composed of: lice crushed in wooden pillars and when cooked is called morisqueta (this is the staple throughout the land); cooked fish which they have in abundance; pork, venison, mountain buffaloes which they call carabaos, beef and fish which they know is best when it has started to mt and stink (Retana 1909,174). Reading this text in the British Museum 280 years later, Rizal was so incensed that he later responded in print with: This is another preoccupation of the Spaniards who, lii any other nation, treat food to which they are not accustomed or is unknown to them with disgust. The English, for ample, feel horror to see a Spaniard eating snails. To the Speninrd roast beef is repugnant and he cannot understad how Steak Tartar or raw beef can be eaten; the Chiiese who have taltlcn\u27 and eat shark cannot stand Roquefort cheese etc. etc. This fish that Morga mentions, that cannot be good until it begins to mt, is bagoong [salted and fermented fish or shrimp paste used as a sauce in Filipino cuisine] and those who have eaten it and tasted it know that it neither is nor should be rotten (Rizal 1890, 264): Rizal\u27s sarcastic rebuttal appears, surprisingly, not in his satirical novels or his polemical tracts, but in a scholarly work--his annotated reedition of Morga\u27s Sucesas de has Ishas Filipinas. Aside from the racial slurs to which he was reacting, however, RW maintained mixed feelings for the Morga, depending on its usefulness for his thesis that Spanish colonization retarded, rather than brought civilization to, the Philippines and its inhabitants. Unfortunately Rizal\u27s Morga has been relegated in the canon, under his minor writings (Craig 1927), and remains largely unread due to the pre-eminence of his novels, Noli me ta\u27ngere and El Filibusterismo. Unlike the novels, which have been attacked and condemned regularly in the past century, the Morga remains largely ignored. It is lamentable that, despite king a classic of nationalist historical writing, Rizal\u27s Morga is seldom read today. That Rizal\u27s annotations are largely disregarded today stems basically from the recent advances in historical, archeological and ethnographic research. Although many of Rizal\u27s assertions have been validated by recent research, the fact is that his work is now dated. Moreover Rizal\u27s annotations are secondary, and today\u27s scholars concentrate more on the primary source, Morga, than on Rizal\u27s notes. Few Filipinos today, even the most patriotic, would find the time and energy to read the sxnall text of Rizal\u27s footnotes, even if penned by the national hero. Another factor in the relative obscurity of Rizal\u27s annotations to Morga was censorship during the Spanish colonial period. Like Noli me ta\u27ngere and El Filibusterismo, the Rizal edition of Morga was banned in the Philippines in the late nineteenth century. Therefore copies confiscated by Spanish customs in Manila and other ports of entry were destroyed. Due to the burning of one particularly large shipment of the Morga, the book attained rare and out of print? status within a year of its publication. It did not have a second printing, and the few copies in circulation were left hidden and unread by frightened owners. There is also the problem of language, which restricted the impact of the Morga to a small, educated, Spanish-reading elite in Manila. Among this already minute circle, one could count with the fingers of one hand, the people who would read a historical work like Morga rather than the more entertaining Rizal novels. Rizal\u27s Morga was not read by the masses, although people heard a great deal about this controversial work. Rizal\u27s Morga, thus unread, is almost forgotten. This article deals with Rizal\u27s views on Philippine history. It attempts to place Rizal\u27s Morga within the framework of his work, as well as in the larger context of Philippine historiography. Rizal\u27s Morga may not have been read widely, but its significance lies in the fact that with this edition, Rizal began the task of writing the first Philippine history from the viewpoint of a Filipino

Self-management of context-aware overlay ambient networks

Ambient Networks (ANs) are dynamically changing and heterogeneous as they consist of potentially large numbers of independent, heterogeneous mobile nodes, with spontaneous topologies that can logically interact with each other to share a common control space, known as the Ambient Control Space. ANs are also flexible i.e. they can compose and decompose dynamically and automatically, for supporting the deployment of cross-domain (new) services. Thus, the AN architecture must be sophisticatedly designed to support such high level of dynamicity, heterogeneity and flexibility. We advocate the use of service specific overlay networks in ANs, that are created on-demand according to specific service requirements, to deliver, and to automatically adapt services to the dynamically changing user and network context. This paper presents a self-management approach to create, configure, adapt, contextualise, and finally teardown service specific overlay networks

Accessibility of promoter DNA is not the primary determinant of chromatin-mediated gene regulation

DNA accessibility is thought to be of major importance in regulating gene expression. We test this hypothesis using a restriction enzyme as a probe of chromatin structure and as a proxy for transcription factors. We measured the digestion rate and the fraction of accessible DNA at almost all genomic AluI sites in budding yeast and mouse liver nuclei. Hepatocyte DNA is more accessible than yeast DNA, consistent with longer linkers between nucleosomes, and suggesting that nucleosome spacing is a major determinant of accessibility. DNA accessibility varies from cell to cell, such that essentially no sites are accessible or inaccessible in every cell. AluI sites in inactive mouse promoters are accessible in some cells, implying that transcription factors could bind without activating the gene. Euchromatin and heterochromatin have very similar accessibilities, suggesting that transcription factors can penetrate heterochromatin. Thus, DNA accessibility is not likely to be the primary determinant of gene regulation.Fil: Chereji, Razvan V.. National Institutes of Health; Estados UnidosFil: Eriksson, Peter R.. National Institutes of Health; Estados UnidosFil: Ocampo, Josefina. National Institutes of Health; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular "Dr. Héctor N. Torres"; ArgentinaFil: Prajapati, Hemant Kumar. National Institutes of Health; Estados UnidosFil: Clark, David. National Institutes of Health; Estados Unido

Probability-guaranteed set-membership state estimation for polynomially uncertain linear time-invariant systems

2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksConventional deterministic set-membership (SM) estimation is limited to unknown-but-bounded uncertainties. In order to exploit distributional information of probabilistic uncertainties, a probability-guaranteed SM state estimation approach is proposed for uncertain linear time-invariant systems. This approach takes into account polynomial dependence on probabilistic uncertain parameters as well as additive stochastic noises. The purpose is to compute, at each time instant, a bounded set that contains the actual state with a guaranteed probability. The proposed approach relies on the extended form of an observer representation over a sliding window. For the offline observer synthesis, a polynomial-chaos-based method is proposed to minimize the averaged H2 estimation performance with respect to probabilistic uncertain parameters. It explicitly accounts for the polynomial uncertainty structure, whilst most literature relies on conservative affine or polytopic overbounding. Online state estimation restructures the extended observer form, and constructs a Gaussian mixture model to approximate the state distribution. This enables computationally efficient ellipsoidal calculus to derive SM estimates with a predefined confidence level. The proposed approach preserves time invariance of the uncertain parameters and fully exploits the polynomial uncertainty structure, to achieve tighter SM bounds. This improvement is illustrated by a numerical example with a comparison to a deterministic zonotopic method.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Level basin approaches to improve water management in surface irrigation for northeast Louisiana

In the state of Louisiana surface irrigation is widely used due to the low start-up cost, typically high rainfall, and soil conditions. Irrigation scheduling is an important practice to achieve water use efficiency in agriculture. The objectives of this study were to compare three different methods to determine crop evapotranspiration (ETc) for soybeans in addition to, evaluate a computer based irrigation scheduling program using real scale fields. Weather variables, soil moisture and irrigation water use collected during the summer months of 2005 and 2006 at a production agriculture farm in northeast Louisiana were studied. The ETc estimates obtained using atmometers (ETgage); a weather station approach; an evapotranspiration algorithm from the computer based Arkansas Irrigation Scheduler (AIS). Three weeks of continuous ETc values showed that the atmometer and the weather station methods estimated similar values. The AIS method estimated lower values than the other two methods. The higher estimates by the weather station compared to the AIS are related to higher ETo values throughout the analyzed period. Similar estimation by the atmometer and the weather station methods suggest that these approaches were more suitable than the AIS method for estimating ETc at Angelina Plantation. The AIS proved to be a good scheduling tool that accurately predicts the crop’s irrigation needs. However, the results obtained at Angelina Plantation suggest that the farmer or irrigator programs the irrigation events modified by on-farm requirements. The AIS monitored the Maximum Allowable Depletion (MAD). Higher MAD values at the end of the crop cycle reduced the number of irrigations per field but increased the water use. Non-standard procedures implemented in leveled basins suggested a negative impact in the field drainage and made the irrigation process more labor intensive. Extra care is necessary to avoid waterlogging with level basins

Warmblood fragile foal syndrome type 1 mutation (PLOD1 c.2032G>A) is not associated with catastrophic breakdown and has a low allele frequency in the Thoroughbred breed.

BackgroundCatastrophic fractures are among the most common cause of fatalities in racehorses. Several factors, including genetics, likely contribute to increased risk for fatal injuries. A variant in the procollagen-lysine, 2-oxoglutarate 5-dioxygenase1 gene (PLOD1 c.2032G>A) was shown to cause Warmblood fragile foal syndrome type 1 (WFFS), a fatal recessive defect of the connective tissue. Screening of multiple horse breeds identified the presence of the WFFS allele in the Thoroughbred. PLOD1 is involved in cross-linking of collagen fibrils and thus could potentially increase the risk of catastrophic breakdown.ObjectivesEstimate the frequency of the WFFS allele (PLOD1 c.2032G>A) and determine if it is a risk factor for catastrophic breakdown in the Thoroughbred.Study designCase-control genetic study.MethodsGenomic DNA from hair and/or tissue samples was genotyped for the WFFS allele. Fisher's Exact tests were performed to compare allele and carrier frequencies between the case cohort (catastrophic breakdown, n = 22) and several cohorts with no record of injury (n = 138 raced/trained at same track and season and n = 185 older than 7 years and raced during same season), nonracers (n = 92), and a random sample without consideration for racing history (n = 279).ResultsThe frequency of the PLOD1 c.2032G>A variant in the Thoroughbred breed is low (1.2%). Seventeen of 716 Thoroughbreds tested were carriers (2.4%) and no WFFS homozygotes were detected. Only one catastrophic breakdown case carried the WFFS allele. No statistically significant difference in allele or carrier frequency was identified between case and control cohorts (P>0.05 in all comparisons performed).Main limitationsThis study evaluated cases from one single track.ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that the PLOD1 c.2032G>A associated with WFFS is present at very low frequency in Thoroughbreds and is not a genetic risk factor for catastrophic breakdown