Compressive sensing and radar imaging

The field of remote sensing contains many unique and practical problems. Radar imaging, in all of its many forms, lies within this field of study. One problem is the need to acquire high-resolution images and store them on-board the system acquisition vessel . For some systems this could mean storing very high amounts of data, depending on the scene in question [3]. So a very natural goal is to store only what is absolutely necessary and nothing more. We investigate methods to compress signals into their most important components so that other parties can recover the original data completely or nearly completely. We show that certain transformations allow for minimal data acquisition and high reconstruction rate. We also show that the field of compressive sensing offers many tools highly amiable to the problems in question

Covid-19 air travel: do intervention measures influence intent?

Similar to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2002, safety measures in air travel are placed to combat the spread of COVID-19. With developing countries, like the Philippines, lagging behind post-pandemic aviation recovery, just how influential are these intervention measures in bringing back travellers to the skies? This research measured the passengers’ intent to return to air travel and analyzed the respondents’ assessment of the implementation of safety measures in air travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. The correlation of both variables was explored using Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The data were from a self-administered survey questionnaire disseminated to air travellers to and from Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA), Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the safety protocols were far from being exceptionally implemented. The study further revealed the respondents’ uncertainty on returning to air travel due to the COVID-19 crisis regardless of the safety measures in place.  Even with the high uncertainty, however, the respondents’ assessment of the implementation of protocols was found to be highly associated with the respondents’ intention to return to air travel. The pre-departure safety protocols had the highest association compared to in-flight and arrival protocols

The burnout level of call center agents in metro Manila, Philippines

The aim of this study was to measure the exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy that would determine an individual's level of burnout. A convenient sample of employees (N=747) was obtained from different call centers in Metro Manila. The results indicated a high level of exhaustion for the age group of 18-29 years old and for the female respondents. More than half of the respondents were high in cynicism and those who reported a low professional efficacy were mostly females. Age showed a significant relationship with exhaustion and cynicism while tenure at present job showed a significant relationship with professional efficacy. Results implied that working in a call center may lead to employee burnout especially for females and those who are new in their job

Assessing Students’ Satisfaction on the Use of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE): An Input to a Campus-wide E-learning Design and Implementation

Educational institutions have come to realize the potential benefits of using Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). When used correctly, VLE may transform learning experience of students into a more enjoyable, satisfying and effective setting. This paper evaluated students’ satisfaction on the use of VLE as a support technology in teaching students in the Graduate School. Procedures involved in the study include installation of a Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (MOODLE) package, customizing the VLE and determining the students’ satisfaction. The instrument used for data collection was the developed online questionnaire. A total of 67 Master of Business Administration (MBA) students of Batangas State University (BatStateU) enrolled in the course Management Control and Information System (MCIS) for the period of 2011-2013 served as the respondents of this study. The VLE is found to be effective as a supportive tool to supplement traditional classroom instruction as revealed by satisfied students. Positive attitude is exhibited on the use of VLE regardless of gender. On the other hand, young and experienced users of e-learning platforms tend to be difficult to satisfy with regards to the use of VLE. Keywords: e-learning, virtual learning environment, satisfactio

Employee engagement and areas of worklife of call center agents in the Philippines

This study described the level of work engagement and areas of worklife of 294 call center agents in Ortigas, Pasig City, Philippines. It also investigated the relationship between work engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to gender, age, tenure at present job and course. In addition, it also explored the differences in the perception of the call center agents when grouped according to the demographic profile. Gamma correlation was carried out to check if correlation exists between the variables of work engagement and variables of areas of worklife. Mood's median test was conducted to test the differences in the level of engagement and areas of worklife when grouped according to demographic profiles. Results of work engagement showed that those who were aged 31-35 and those who stayed for less than a year in the organization had a high level of dedication. Commerce or Business graduates had a high level of absorption. Results of the areas of worklife showed that majority of the respondents when grouped according to their demographic profile had a match with the variables of fairness, control, values, workload, and community except for the age group of 36 and above who had a mismatch for the variable control. No relationship existed between work engagement and the areas of worklife. Male call center agents are perceived to be more energetic, dedicated and absorbed than female call center agents. Lastly, the areas of control and fairness were reported to differ across all demographic profile of gender, age, tenure at the present job and course

Clima, ciudad y ecosistemas: impactos del cambio climático en el medio natural y en las actividades humanas

Ponencia presentada en: VII Congreso de la Asociación Española de Climatología: clima, ciudad y ecosistemas, celebrado en Madrid entre el 24 y 26 de noviembre de 2010

Predicting and stabilising the 3D structure of aptamers using computational methods

The purpose of this dissertation was to predict and stabilise the three-dimensional (3D) structure of aptamers. The focus was in the area of bioinformatics. A guideline was provided on how to obtain 3D images of aptamers, predict the binding site and stabilise the aptamer’s structures. Such a study is of importance to facilitate in vivo experiments by using computational methods to determine if stabilising agents and shortened aptamer sequences interfere with the predicted binding site. Research methods included a literature search and creating a protocol on which software and webserver to use, combined with the collection and analysis of figures. The 2D (two dimensional) structures were obtained through Mfold alongside RNAComposer to obtain the PDB file containing the predicted 3D structure. The aptamer’s 3D structures were visualised with YASARA, PyMOL and Chimera. The findings provided evidence that shortening the aptamer’s sequence stabilised the structures. The predicted binding sites show that the ligand binds in the stem-loop region. The main conclusions drawn from this project were that computational methods can be used to analyse and gain insight into 3D aptamer structures. Some common challenges and technological difficulties, such as modifying an aptamer, were discussed. This project recommended Mfold to be used to obtain the secondary structure of aptamers, whereas for the tertiary structure PyMOL and YASARA were the easiest to navigate in providing a clear and detailed structure

Classifying Barako coffee leaf diseases using deep convolutional models

This work presents the application of recent Deep Convolutional Models (DCM) to classify Barako leaf diseases. Several selected DCMs performed image classification tasks using Transfer Learning and Fine-Tuning, together with data preprocessing and augmentation. The collected dataset used totals to 4,667. Each labeled into four different classes, which included Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR), Cercospora Leaf Spots (CLS), Sooty Molds (SM), and Healthy Leaves (HL). The DCMs were trained using the partial 4,023 images and validated with the remaining 644. The classification results of the trained models VGG16, Xception, and ResNetV2-152 attained overall accuracies of 97%, 95%, and 91%, respectively. By comparing in terms of True Positive Rate (TPR), we found that Xception has the highest number of correct classifications of CLR, VGG16 with SM, and CLS, while ResNetV2-152 with the lowest TPR for CLR. The evaluated results indicate that the use of Deep Convolutional Models with an adequate amount of data, proper fine-tuning, preprocessing, and transfer learning can yield efficient classifiers for identifying several Barako leaf diseases. This work primarily contributes to the growing field of deep learning, specifically for helping farmers improve their diagnostic process by providing a solution that can automatically classify Barako leaf diseases

Ultrasonication of Sugary -2 Corn for Enhanced Enzymatic Hydrolysis

This study investigates the potential application of high powered ultrasonics as a liquefaction pretreatment of sugary-2 corn slurry. Ground sugary-2 corn ( Zea Mays L. ) slurry was treated with ultrasonics at 20kHz and amplitudes of 192-320 µ m pp (peak-to-peak) for 5, 10, 15, 20 and 40 seconds. After sonication, enzymes (Stargen TM 001) were added to the samples to hydrolyze the starch into fermentable sugars. It was found that the reducing sugar released in the treated samples were 6-fold higher than in the non-treated samples. Scanning electron microscopy images revealed that the sugary starch was partially gelatinized during sonication. This observation was confirmed by polarized-light microscopic images, where deformed “Maltese crosses” were found. The swelling rate of sonicated samples was nearly 66 times higher than when applying conventional heating. This result confirms better gelatinization capability of ultrasonics compared to conventional heating. The maximum relative net energy gain (additional chemically released energy) of the sonicated samples was at 5s of sonication time with a power setting between 248-330W. The findings in this study indicated ultrasonics as a promising pretreatment step in sugary-2 corn hydrolysis