IPA Recipients for August 2018

Melchizedek I. Alipio and Nestor Michael C. Tiglao
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute
College of Engineering
UP Diliman

RT-CaCC: A Reliable Transport with Cache-Aware Congestion Control Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 17 (7): 4607-4619, July 2018

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of tiny nodes that are equipped with embedded computing devices interfacing with sensors or actuators. A sizable set of these nodes is dispersed over a wide geographical area to monitor a physical event like temperature, humidity, etc. Packets generated at source nodes are usually transmitted to the sink through a multi-hop communication. Because of these network characteristics, WSNs experience high probability of packet losses. Thus, an effective transport protocol is a must. One mechanism of improving transport reliability is intermediate caching by local retransmissions. Another mechanism is to utilize congestion control strategies which can alleviate packet losses. However, these two mechanisms are designed independently from each other. In effect, it underutilizes the cache memory of intermediate nodes. The main goal of this work is to develop a new WSN transport protocol that combines the two mechanisms – intermediate caching and congestion control. The combination of two mechanisms resulted in a superior network performance in terms of cache utilization, throughput and delay by 30 to 35% improvement gain compared with its predecessor cache-based transport protocols namely DTSN+ and Ca-RC. Possible applications of this novel WSN transport protocol are for event-based WSN implementations like forest wildfire detection, animal/wildlife tracking as well as in smart grid networks.

Link to the article: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8345748/
Impact Factor: (2016/2017) 4.951

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Jonathan A. Anticamara
Institute of Biology
College of Science
UP Diliman

National Estimates of Values of Philippine Reefs’ Ecosystem Services. Ecological Economics, 146: 633-644, April 2018

Well protected and managed reefs in Sombrero Island, Mabini, Batangas help maintain high reef biodiversity and in turn provide high values in terms of fisheries, livelihood, and tourism in the area.

Dead branching corals fragments lying on shallow reefs in Twin Rocks Marine Protected Area, Mabini, Batangas, showing that siltation, tourism volume and activities, typhoon may contribute to degradation even inside well protected areas – thus highlighting the need for active assessment of reef biodiversity status and recovery in order to ensure the sustainability of many values that Filipinos derived from Philippine reef biodiversity.

The Philippine reef biodiversity – i.e., the variety of living organisms found in many reefs throughout the Philippines, provide many contributions and benefits to Filipinos in terms of food, livelihood, income, traditional way of life, cultural values, and recreational uses. However, to date, no paper accounts for multiple values of Philippine reef biodiversity at a national scale. This paper analyzed data from literature, online databases, reports, and our own empirical national surveys of Philippine reef biodiversity to quantify multiple values or benefits that Filipinos derived from Philippine reef biodiversity. In particular, we quantified and assessed the following four values: (1) willingness-to-pay for reef protection and maintenance; (2) fisheries; (3) tourism; and (4) total economic values that Filipinos derived from Philippine reef biodiversity across all regions of the entire country. We found that Filipinos derived a very high magnitude of total economic values from Philippine reef biodiversity – amounting to about 4 billion US dollar per year. Thus, this paper highlight the need to maintain the health, prevent further degradation, and recover many degraded reefs throughout the Philippines in order to sustain the many benefits that Filipinos derived from Philippine reef biodiversity.

Link to the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800917300812
Imact Factor: (2016/2017) 2.965

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Ebinezer R. Florano
National College of Public Administration and Governance
UP Diliman

Integrated Loss and Damage – Climate Change Adaptation – Disaster Risk Reduction Framework: The Case of the Philippines” in Resilience: The Science of Adaptation to Climate Change. Zinta Zommers and Keith Alverson (editors). Oxford, United Kingdom: Elsevier, 2018

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Jose Regin F. Regidor* and Ma. Sheilah G. Napalang**
*Institute of Civil Engineering
College of Engineering
**School of Urban and Regional Planning
UP Diliman

Characteristics of Ridesharing as a Sustainable Transport Tool in Metro Manila” in Sustainable Development Research in the Asia-Pacific Region: Education, Cities, Infrastructure and Buildings. Walter Leal Filho, Judy Rogers and Usha Iyer-Raniga (editors). Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018

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Filomena C. Sta. Cruz* and Avalour T. Aspuria**
*Institute of Weed Science
**Institute of Crop Science
College of Agriculture and Food Science

Serological and Molecular Detection of Differential Infections of Bunchy Top and Mosaic Causing Viruses in Tissue Culture Plantlets of Abaca (Musa textilis Née). Journal of the International Society for Southeast Asian Agricultural Sciences, 23 (2): 81-93, December 2017.

Like humans and animals, abaca plants can also get infected by viruses. Abaca viruses such as the abaca bunchy virus (AbTV) can cause stunting and a whorl-like appearance which renders short, very weak, and practically useless fibers. AbTV infected abaca plants have significantly lower yield, which translates to large reduction in farmer incomes. To help the farmers cope with the effects of virus diseases and to increase their yield, the government implements abaca rehabilitation program which involves eradication of AbTV infected plants and replacing them with new and healthy ones. This involves mass propagation and distribution of abaca planting materials. However, there is a need to ensure that these are indeed virus-free. Virus detection is conducted using protein and nucleic acid-based diagnostic method called ELISA and PCR. These methods exploit viral properties such as protein coat and nucleic acid core, to detect and identify virus presence in the sample. Contrary to the previous idea that tissue cultured plants are always virus-free, it was demonstrated that abaca viruses can still be detected during tissue culture. A mixture of two or three virus species were detected at different stages of tissue culture, e.g. during shoot proliferation stage (in-vitro) and growing out inside the greenhouse (ex-vitro). However, there was no definitive pattern observed during virus detection at different tissue culture stages, thus detection may be influenced by differential infections.

Link to the article: http://www.issaas.org/journal/v23/02/journal-issaas-v23n2-07-sta-cruz-et-al.pdf
Impact Factor: Not yet available

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Zamantha Nadir Z. Martin, Imee Su Martinez and Ricky B. Nellas
Natural Sciences Research Institute/ Institute of Chemistry
College of Science
UP Diliman

Surface Tension Data of n-propane, n-octane and n-dodecane from Nucleation Simulations. Tellus, Series B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 70 (1): 1463807, 5 pages, 1 January 2018

Nucleation is a process wherein particles come together to form a new phase. In this work, we studied the nucleation of representative alkanes through computer simulations. Alkanes are simple substances which can be found in oil and gasoline products. Using an advanced Monte Carlo approach, we computed for the omega values of propane, n-octane, and n-dodecane. Here, omega is a temperature-dependent constant that is inherent in all substances and is related to the surface tension and density values. From there we calculated the surface tension of the selected alkanes. Our results show close agreement with experimentally obtained data. This strategy, nucleation simulations with density measurements, can then be applied to simple and complex substances and mixtures. Furthermore, by specifying the desired properties of a material, we can extend the application of our procedure to the tailor-design of innovative and smart materials for potential biological, medical, technological, and engineering purposes.

Link to the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16000889.2018.1463807
Impact Factor: (2016/2017) 2.854

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Timothy Joseph R. Quimpo, Patrick C. Cabaitan, Edwin E. Dumalagan Jr., Jeffrey Munar and Fernando P. Siringan
Marine Science Institute
College of Science
UP Diliman

Preliminary Observations of Macrobenthic Invertebrates and Megafauna Communities in the Upper Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems in Apo Reef Natural Park, Philippines. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 66: 1-11, 2018.

Link to the article: 
Impact Factor: (2016/2017) 0.851

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Lean L. Dasallas, Wilson O. Garcia and Norihiko Hayazawa
National Institute of Physics
College of Science

Position, Orientation, and Relative Quantum Yield Ratio Determination of Fluorescent Nanoemitters Via Combined Laser Scanning Microscopy and Polarization Measurements. Optical Materials Express, 8 (5): 1290-1304, May 2018

The development of microscope allowed us to observed micron – sized objects and biological entities such as bacteria, viruses and cells. However, the dimension is usually limited by the capability of the light to be focused. In order to improve the capability to see smaller objects, scientists and researchers have employed fluorescent nanoemitters. It allowed us to view microscopic and sub – microscopic objects in a much smaller scale. However, in order to realize the full potential and proper use of the fluorescent nanoemitters, its optical, mechanical, and chemical properties such as position, orientation, and quantum yield of nanoemitters must be fully determined. In practice and in experiments, these are difficult to measure and requires sophisticated set-up. Aside from that, it is challenging to measure it in the nanoscale dimension. In the paper, we proposed and demonstrated simple, yet effective technique to determine the position orientation, and relative quantum yield ratio of a fluorescent nanoemitter. Our approach is a combination of two standard and conventional techniques, namely, polarization measurement and laser scanning microscopy.

Link to the article: https://www.osapublishing.org/ome/abstract.cfm?uri=ome-8-5-1290
Impact Factor: (2016/2017) 2.571

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