IPA Recipients for May 2017

Susan T. Bacud, Virginia R. Cardenas* and Luis Rey I. Velasco
Crop Science Cluster
College of Agriculture
*Institute for Governance and Rural Development 
College of Public Affairs
UP Los Baños

“Constructivist Research Method: Understanding the Resilience of a Marginalized Sampaguita Growing Community in the Philippines” in SAGE Research Methods Cases. Bronia Flett (editor). London: SAGE Publication Ltd., 2017

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Allan Abraham B. Padama
Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Los Baños

CO Adsorption on (110)-(1 × 2) Missing-Row Reconstructed Surfaces of Pd, Au, and Pd3Au: Electronic Structures and Vibrational Frequencies. Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 86 (4): 044712, 9 pages, 15 April 2017. 

Catchy title of research: Relationship between electronic properties and vibrational frequencies of adsorbates: The case of CO on PdAu surface

In investigations focused on adsorbate-surface systems, electronic properties are usually analyzed in order to explain the adsorption mechanism. On the other hand, vibrational frequencies of adsorbed species are usually calculated to predict their stability and their tendency to undergo surface-related processes such as diffusion, desorption, dissociation and others. This present study attempts to establish relationship between the electronic properties and the vibrational frequencies of adsorbed CO on PdAu surface. We demonstrated in this work that the adsorption of CO on reconstructed PdAu surface strongly depends on the type of metal atom to which it interacts, and on its position on the reconstructed surface. Electronic properties such as density of states, charge distributions, and orbital overlaps support the calculated adsorption energies. With regard to the vibration of adsorbed CO, we conclude that the stretching mode gives the largest contribution to the calculated frequency. The number of metal atoms that surround the CO affects the magnitude of the frequency. Also, higher frequency is obtained if CO interacts with Au than Pd. We determined that for the CO-PdAu system, the density of states profiles can predict the variation in the calculated magnitudes of vibrational frequencies. Since it is possible to determine the occupancy of the CO states when it interacts with metal atoms, the change in CO parameter and hence to its vibrational frequency, can also be determined.

Link to the article: http://journals.jps.jp/doi/abs/10.7566/JPSJ.86.044712
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 1.559

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Maria Claret L. Tsuchiya
Institute of Biological Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Los Baños

Strain Differences in the Proteome of Dioxin-Sensitive and Dioxin-Resistant Mice Treated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrabromodibenzo-p-Dioxin. Archives of Toxicology, 91 (4): 1763–1782, April 2017. 

Catchy title of research: Dioxin-resistant vs dioxin-sensitive mice proteome

Dioxins are persistent organic polltants and cause various toxic effects in vertebrates. Protein profiles of two inbred mouse strains: C3H/HeJ-lpr/lpr (C3H/lpr), dioxin-sensitive and MRL/MpJ-lpr/lpr (MRL/lpr) dioxin-sensitive and dioxin-resistant mice treated with 2,3,7,8-tetrabromodibenzo-p-dioxin (TBDD) were studied and compared to understand the molecular mechanism underlying the difference in susceptibility to dioxins. Proteins that were more induced or suppressed by TBDD treatment in C3H/lpr mice include proteins responsible for AHR activation through production of endogenous ligands as well as proteins reducing oxidative stress. Expression of two cytochrome P450 monooxygenase enzymes (1A1 and 1A28) confirmed that the C3H/lpr mice are more sensitive to dioxins than MRL/lpr mice.

Link to the article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-016-1834-4
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 6.637

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Junley L. Lazaga
Department of Language, Literature and the Arts
College of Arts and Communication
UP Baguio

Four Contemporary Ilokano Poems in Translation. Kritika Kultura, 28: 368-395, 2017.

The suite comprises translations in English of four poems originally written in Ilokano by Roy V. Aragon, Ariel S. Tabag, and Mighty C. Rasing, with an introduction by the translator.

Link to the article: http://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/kk/article/view/KK2017.02822/2426
Impact Factor: Not yet available

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Harvey Jake G. Opeña and John Paul T. Yusiong
Tacloban College
UP Visayas

Automated Tomato Maturity Grading using ABC-Trained Artificial Neural Networks. Malaysian Journal of Computer Science, 30 (1): 12-26, 2017. 

Catchy title of research TomatoBee: An Automated Tomato Maturity Grading System

Automated tomato maturity grading systems are crucial in commercial farms as these systems minimize the chances of misclassification. This study proposed an automated system for tomato classification based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) that are trained using the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. Results show that the ABC-trained ANN classifiers were able to obtain high accuracy rate. Moreover, empirical results reveal that the ABC-trained ANN classifiers produce better accuracy rate by using different color models for the color features vector as compared to using a single color model for the color features vector.

Link to the article: http://mjcs.fsktm.um.edu.my/
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 0.476

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Juliana C. Baylon
Division of Biological Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Visayas

Use of Abdomen Looseness as an Indicator of Sexual Maturity in Male Mud Crab Scylla spp. Journal of Shellfish Research, 35 (4): 1027-1035, December 2016.

Catchy title of research: Use Of Abdomen Looseness As An Indicator Of Sexual Maturity In Male Mud Crabs

This paper investigated the feasibility of using looseness of male abdomen, color and size of the vas deferens, and presence of mating scars as sexual maturity indicators in the three species of mud crabs collected from Setiu Wetlands, Terengganu, Malaysia. The abdomen segments of immature male was firmly attached to the thoracic sternum and only the telson can be flipped open while the abdomen segments of mature male can be easily detached from the thoracic sternum. Dissecting the male crabs and examining their gonads showed that the color and size of the vas deferens differentiate immature from mature males. Mature males have enlarged, swollen, and creamy white vas deferens while vas deferens of immature males were barely visible and translucent. Among these three indicators studied, it was found out that determination of sexual maturity using the presence of mating scars as indicator was unreliable and inconsistent as some crabs that were mature in terms of looseness of abdomen and vas deferens development showed no presence of mating scars. This finding suggests that abdomen looseness is an accurate sexual maturity indicator in males. Using looseness of abdomen as sexual maturity indicator in the male mud crabs is practical, easy to carry out, and does not require sacrificing of the crabs.

Link to the article: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2983/035.035.0425
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 0.829

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Carlene Perpetua P. Arceo*, Editha C. Jose** and Eduardo R. Mendoza**
*Institute of Mathematics
College of Science
UP Diliman
**Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Los Baños

Reaction Networks and Kinetics of Biochemical Systems. Mathematical Biosciences, 283: 13–29, January 2017.

Catchy title of research: Connecting CRNT and BST via a Kinetics Landscape

Usual solution techniques for biochemical system models involve the use of parameters and the knowledge of their values. The absence of these parameter values may render certain problems formulated in the Biochemical Systems Theory framework as difficult, if not impossible, to solve. Hence the significance of Chemical Reaction Network Theory (CRNT), which allows the parameter-free analysis of proposed models. CRNT has actually been around for 40 or so years, but has been called upon more as a solver. CRNT is considered in this paper not just to be applied to a model, but it is studied for its intrinsic properties, particularly the algebraic ones. Similarities (coincidences) and differences between discovered CRNT and known BST properties are established. In the process, families of kinetics are developed along with their interrelations. As a result, a “kinetics landscape” (i.e. a family tree) is created. This landscape is validated through the analysis of fifteen models of biological systems cast in the BST framework. The analysis reveals novel network and kinetic properties little studied in CRNT so far. Through this paper, CRNT (re)emerges as a research topic in its own right.

Link to the article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025556416302486
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 1.256

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Marian Fe Theresa C. Lomboy, Romeo R. Quizon, Victorio B. Molina, Vivien Fe Fadrilan-Camacho and Adrian Paul M. Agravante
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health
College of Public Health
UP Manila

Updating National Standards for Drinking-Water: A Philippine Experience. Journal of Water and Health, 15 (2): 288-295, April 2017.

Link to the article: http://jwh.iwaponline.com/content/early/2016/11/08/wh.2016.177
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 1.025

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Stella Quimbo and Orville Solon
School of Economics
UP Diliman

Comparative Effectiveness of Two Disparate Policies on Child Health: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines. Health Policy and Planning, 32 (4): 563-571, 1 May 2017.

Should health systems invest more in access to care by expanding insurance coverage or in health care services including improving the quality of care? Comparing these options experimentally would shed light on the impact and cost-effectiveness of these strategies.
The Quality Improvement Demonstration Study (QIDS) was a randomized policy experiment conducted across 30 districts in the Philippines. The study had a control group and two policy intervention groups intended to improve the health of young children. The demand-side intervention in QIDS was universal health insurance coverage (UHC) for children aged 5 years or younger, and a supply-side intervention, a pay-for-performance (P4P) bonus for all providers who met pre-determined quality levels. In this paper, we compare the impacts of these policies from the QIDS experiment on childhood wasting by calculating DALYs averted per US$spent.
The direct per capita costs to implement UHC and P4P are US$4.08 and US$1.98 higher, respectively, compared to control. DALYs due to wasting were reduced by 334,862 in UHC and 1,073,185 in P4P. When adjustments are made for the efficiency of higher quality, the DALYS averted per US$ spent is similar in the two arms, 1.56 and 1.58 for UHC and P4P, respectively. Since the P4P quality improvements touches all patients seen by qualifying providers (32% in UHC versus 100% in P4P), there is a larger reduction in DALYs. With similar programmatic costs for either intervention, in this study, each US$spent under P4P yielded 1.52 DALYs averted compared to the standard program, while UHC yielded only a 0.50 DALY reduction.
P4P had a greater impact and was more cost-effective compared to UHC as measured by DALYs averted. While expanded insurance benefit ceilings affected only those who are covered, P4P incentivizes practice quality improvement regardless of whether children are insured or uninsured.

Link to the article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5400045/
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 2.513

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Alexander De Los Reyes, Elizabeth Ann Prieto, Karim Omambac, Jeremy Porquez, Lorenzo Lopez Jr., Karl Cedric Gonzales, John Daniel Vasquez, Mae Agatha Tumanguil, Joselito Muldera, Armando Somintac, Elmer Estacio and Arnel Salvador
National Institute of Physics
College of Science
UP Diliman

Terahertz Emission Characteristics of GaMnAs Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor under 650 mT External Magnetic Field. Current Applied Physics, 17 (4): 522–526, April 2017.

Terahertz refers to the 0.1 to 10 THz frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. Due to the special properties of terahertz waves such as high transmission and spectroscopic fingerprinting capabilities, terahertz spectroscopy has found application in various fields such as agriculture, medical imaging, pharmaceuticals, military screening, art preservation among others. There is a strong need to develop intense terahertz emitters in order to develop these possible technologies.
In this work, we have shown that manganese-doping in GaAs can result to increased terahertz emission. Furthermore, since manganese is a magnetic material, manganese-doped gallium arsenide can have possible application both in terahertz optoelectornics and  spintronics. Manganese-doped gallium arsenide was grown via molecular beam epitaxy. The structural and optical properties of the manganese-doped gallium arsenide was investigated using x-ray diffraction and photoluminescence spectroscopy, respectively while the intrinsic magnetic properties was investigated using a terahertz time-domain spectroscopy setup with an applied magnetic field.

Link to the article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567173917300275
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 2.144

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Jake Rom Cadag
Department of Geography
College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
UP Diliman

Participatory Numbers for Integrating Knowledge and Actions in Development. Development in Practice, 26: (8): 998-1012, 16 November 2016.

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers for integrating locals’ and outsiders’ knowledge, as well as actions from the bottom-up and top-down, in development. It places emphasis on the contribution of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers to foster dialogue between a wide range of stakeholders, for example, local people, NGOs, government agencies and scientists, who usually seldom directly engage with each other. The article draws on case studies that discuss remittances and disasters in Samoa, and disaster risk reduction in the Philippines.

Link to the article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09614524.2016.1226263
Impact Factor: Not yet available

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Ma. Charisma T. Malenab, Emilia S. Visco, Dhino B. Geges, Jennifer Marie S. Amparo, Diana A. Torio and Carla Edith G. Jimena
Department of Social Development Services
College of Human Ecology
UP Los Baños

Analysis of the Integrated Water Resource Management in a Water Quality Management Area in the Philippines: The Case of Meycauayan-Marilao-Obando River System. Journal of Environmental Science and Management, 19 (2): 84-98, December 2016.

The research, “Analysis of the Integrated Water Resource Management in a Water Quality Management Area (WQMA) in the Philippines: The Case of Meycauayan-Marilao-Obando River System (MMORS)” was funded by the UP Center for Integrative Development Studies (CIDS). The research was the first attempt to review one of the first areas designated as MMORS WQMA. The project aimed to evaluate the implementation and management of the MMORS WQMA in reference to the Philippine Clean Water Act (RA 9375) and the Integrated Water Resource Management framework.
The research looked into the factors affecting the designation of WQMA, the performance of the Governing Board under the WQMA and its implication in the rehabilitation and management of the identified water resource since the policy’s implementation in 2004.
The designation of WQMA was due to the state of pollution of the ecosystem, institutional drivers such as enactment of the laws related to water resource management and socio-political drivers as shared common interest and endorsement of local stakeholders including financial support from international agencies. However, disparities in WQMA Governing Board’s (GB) and local government units’ (LGUs) level of awareness and actual level of implementation of functions are observed due to lack of framework in monitoring, evaluation and information management and lack of financial, human and technical resources. Thus, the need for better integration among MMORS WQMA stakeholders, approval of the National Water Quality Management Fund (NWQMF) and capacity building.

Link to the article: https://journals.uplb.edu.ph/index.php/JESAM/article/view/1559
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 0.146

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Jason R. Albia and Marvin A. Albao
Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Los Baños

Dynamic Scaling of Island Size Distribution in Submonolayer One-Dimensional Growth. Physcial Review E, 95: 042802, 8 pages, 2017.

Catchy title of research: Dynamic scaling in submonolayer one-dimensional epitaxial growth: a kinetic Monte Carlo study

The dynamic scaling of the island size distribution (ISD) in the submonolayer growth of low-dimensional nanostructured systems is aninteresting phenomenon in epitaxial growth. Understanding the nature of this scaling and its dependence on growth parameters is of considerable importance as it may lead to reliable predictions of parameters describing interaction and kinetics for a wide variety of aggregation processes. In this work, we formulated a realistic atomistic lattice-gas model describing the one-dimensional (1D) formation of aluminum (Al) chains (nanowires) on Si(100):2×1 and used kinetic Monte Carlo simulation technique to investigate the effect of varying the temperature (T), coverage (q), flux rates (F) and defect density (N_def) on the dynamic scaling. Consistent with previous experimental data and theoretical predictions, our results show that shape of the scaled ISD can be altered by tuning the T and N_def. For low N_def, the shift from monomodal to monotonically decreasing scaled ISD is expected as temperature increases. In contrary, high N_def resulted to a shift from monotonically decreasing to monomodal scaled ISD as temperature increases. We attributed the monomodal ISD to enhanced nucleation and aggregation whereas monotonically decreasing distribution is attributed to restricted aggregation. Furthermore, our results show that ISD is generally insensitive to flux variations and the scaling behavior vanishes when the deposition coverage is high. Lastly, further analyses suggest that the transition in the shape of scaled ISD can be used to explain the experimentally observed deviation, i.e., existence of transition temperature wherein average island density increases with temperature, from the prediction of classical nucleation theory.

Link to the article: https://journals.aps.org/pre/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevE.95.042802
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 2.252

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Zenaida M. Zumalde* and Florencia G. Palis**
*Department of Economics
College of Economics and Management
**Department of Social Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Los Baños

Effects of Alternate Wetting and Drying on Rice Farming in Bohol, Philippines. Philippine Journal of Crop Science, 41 (3): 50-56, December 2016.

AWD was introduced in the Bohol Irrigation System (BIS) 1 in 2006 to mitigate the increasing scarce irrigation water among rice farmers in the province of Bohol. The changes in the area cultivated, yield, and mean net income of rice farmers were assessed using household panel data for 2005 and 2010. The mean and total rice areas cultivated were higher in 2010 compared to 2005. There were significant increases in the mean yield and net income of farmers, especially among those from the downstream areas. AWD did not cause yield penalty. Farmers, particularly those from the downstream areas, had a more reliable water supply after AWD implementation, resulting in a closing of the yield gap between upstream and downstream farmers.

Link to the article: https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20173034445
Impact Factor: (2015/2016) 0.333

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Florencia G. Palis
Department of Social Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
UP Los Baños

Bringing Farmer Knowledge and Learning into Agricultural Research: How Agricultural Anthropologists Transformed Strategic Research at the International Rice Research Institute. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 38 (2): 123-130, 1 December 2016.

Social research is vital to the CGIAR centers, fulfilling their mandate to improve farmer livelihoods and food availability, and reduce poverty, among other important human-centered objectives, yet the CGIAR inclusion of social science, particularly non-economists, has been meager when compared with the vast research portfolio of the centers. This study presents a historical account of the contributions of eight practicing agricultural anthropologists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), one of the 15 world Consortium for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) centers, between 1978 and 2010. While relatively few in number over the years, have made valuable contributions to IRRI’s mission. The types of research undertaken reflect how they work in the area of strategic research, with the mandate to contribute upstream to basic science and downstream to applied outcomes. The innovations of these practicing anthropologists have been documented, including methodologies by which integrated pest management interventions and other agricultural technologies are adapted by and for farmers.

Link to the article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cuag.12067/full
Impact Factor: Not yet available

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Erwin A. Alampay
National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG)
UP Diliman

“Information Technologies and Development” in Introduction to International Development: Approaches, Actors, Issues, and Practice 3^rd Edition. Paul A. Haslam, Jessica Schafer and Pierre Beaudet (editors). Canada: Oxford University Press, 2017.

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