The success of deploying energy and water technologies in remote communities in developing countries can be improved by considering their synergistic relationships and their social, economic and environmental implications. This paper first evaluates social implications of current energy and water supply in a prototypical remote community against five future (2030) scenarios for synergistic provision of electricity, heat for cooking and water. This is followed by an integrated assessment of the social, environmental and economic life cycle sustainability through multicriteria decision analysis. The Business-as-usual (BAU) scenario shows high life cycle health impacts but low impacts from local air pollution. The contrary is true for the Independent and Advanced Independent scenarios which assume community self-sufficiency in energy and water supply. Greater access to electricity and water in the Advanced and Advanced Independent scenarios increases the potential for human development and security of supply, but there is an increase in the risk of accidents and decrease in social acceptability of the water supply. Similarly, a transition towards clean cooking fuels away from traditional solid biomass reduces local air pollution but increases reliance on imported fuels (BAU and Advanced scenarios). The Transition scenario is socially the most sustainable option, while Independent and Advanced Independent are the best options environmentally. They also have the lowest total operating costs, but have higher capital requirements than most other scenarios. Overall, unless extreme preferences for either environmental or social aspects are adopted, the Transition and Independent scenarios emerge as the most sustainable options. This suggests that current energy and water supply to remote communities can be transitioned sustainably to a self-sufficient system that does not depend on imported resources. The scenarios developed in this work present a framework for an integrated design and evaluation of energy and water supply in remote communities with the aim of aiding stakeholders in defining sustainable transition pathways.
The unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a lot of changes in our lives and in our use of language. Scientific and technical terms have become part of our daily conversations. Words like coronavirus, self-quarantine, incubation period, while common to those in the medical field, were used perhaps infrequently by the general population, until recently. Tony Thorne called it the “medicalisation” of everyday language. (King’s College London, 2020). The #LexiCOVID Project was an online initiative carried out during the month of August 2020. The main goal was to look into words and concepts that Filipinos associated with the pandemic. The results of the project were then disseminated through a series of online posters on the UP Department of Linguistics Facebook page (shorturl.at/itIMR) and Instagram account (shorturl.at/yDL18). Responses to our survey featured words already in use, whether in a local or foreign language, but only recently gained usage outside their technical fields e.g., flatten(ing) the curve. Some have undergone shifts in meaning due to how they were being used in mass and social media e.g., social distancing. Some describe our new work arrangements and modes of interaction: WFH (work from home), and contactless delivery. Some neologisms in the year 2020 were also documented, e.g., Zoomustahan. All in all, what emerged from our results is a record of our lives in lockdown describing our collective experience and sense-making.
Keywords: medicalization, semantic shift, corpus linguistics
ISO 639-3 language codes: tgl, fil, eng, ita, ilo, spa, war, loc, ceb, deu, hil, pam
The prevalent sachet economy in the Philippines has led to the country becoming the third largest polluter of oceans in the world. The sachets used for packaging are made of plastic laminates which typically consist of varying polymeric layers combined with other modifiers to improve barrier properties. In this study, applicability of D-limonene and ethanol as solvent/non-solvent pair for the separation of polyethylene (PE) from vacuum-metallized polyethylene terephthalate (VMPET) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) was established. PE recovery from LDPE/VMPET/PET laminates were calculated to be 50.79% w/w.
The Festival of Our Lady of Peñafrancia is celebrated on a Sunday after the octave of 8 September. Housed at the Peñafrancia Basilica Minore, the image of the Peñafrancia is considered the patroness of the entire Philippine region of Bicol. In the essay, thePeñafrancia is described as a theatricalised devotion where devotees are transformed into a frenzied ensemble that normalises masculinity as a privileged norm. However, digging deeper into the festival’s peculiarity, the normalisation of masculinity is only incidental because the gendering, in fact, idealises and celebrates a figure of a woman. The idealisation and celebration of the woman-figure is asserted to have a precolonial root. In the end, it is argued that the Peñafrancia is a manifestation of a cultural community in which the pre-colonial lifeways of its members are recuperated through expressive bodily movements. At the same time, the legacy of Hispanic Catholicism is decolonised through rearticulating an indigenous past.
This essay is a descriptive narrative of my visit in Chavayan in August 2016. The trip was originally intended to observe the cultural performance palo-palo for a research project funded by the University of the Philippines through the Emerging Interdisciplinary Research Program. The palo-palo is loosely defined as a war dance mimicking the arm struggles of the Muslims and the Christians (Tiatco, Javier, and Landicho 2018). It is often performed during the celebration of the village pista (fiesta), “a complex phenomenon, thought of as solemn yet at the same time secular; a festivity where neither the state nor the Church is in the ultimate position of authority; a parade of holiness; and a procession of spectacle” (Tiatco 2016, 130). During my visit, the Chavayan fiesta provided an interesting performative encounter. According to Josephine Habana, an informant and a cultural worker, the celebration has been in existence since the time of their ninuno (first or older generation of ancestors). He mentioned that their activities are mere repetitions of what the locals have been performing since probably around the late 1800s. This narrative is a preliminary and expository account of the Chavayan fiesta which I intend to reflect upon sooner via the locus of iteration.
Arao, D. A. (2020, October). Preface: Digital security as safety training and media literacy. In R. V. Olea (Ed.), Digital security policy and guidelines for Filipino journalists (p. 1). Internews, Alipato Media Center, and Bulatlat.
The Philippines is expected to have an increase in consumption of waste plastic laminates known as sachets, composed of polyethylene (PE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and used in various food and non-food consumer goods. The increase in demand of these sachets has led the country to become one of the top ocean polluters worldwide. Chemical recycling- specifically selective dissolution and reprecipitation- is seen as one viable option for the recovery of these polymers. In this study, the absorption and dissolution kinetics of D-limonene, a potential candidate solvent, in the two-layer (2LL) and three-layer (3LL) laminates were modelled and analyzed for the design of separation equipment to recovery PE. The absorption of limonene for both laminates was observed to initially follow Fickian diffusion, but plateaus when the dissolution rate becomes comparable with the solvent diffusion rate. The dissolution of the 3LL almost closely follows Fickian behavior, while 2LL initially follows Fickian behavior. Deviations from Fickian dissolution may be attributed to the difference in swelling behavior between the non-uniform solvent-polymer diffusion layer and the glassy polymer layer.
A solvent and non-solvent selection method for the chemical recycling through selective dissolution and precipitation of multi-component waste metallized film wrapper is studied to recover Polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), and the metal film separately. Preselection of solvent for dissolution and non-solvent for precipitation is based on the similarity and compatibility of polymer and solvent molecules measured in terms of solubility parameter and calculated using group contribution approach through Hoftyzer and Van Krevelen method. Toxicity, cost, and availability of the solvent are also considered on the selection. A Hansen sphere model is developed for the prediction of polymer solubility in which p-cymene, a lowcost and naturally derived solvent is chosen as solvent and acetone as non-solvent. PE was first recovered through dissolution at a given temperature, followed by precipitation. PP which remained undissolved together with the metal film was extracted through the same technique but with different dissolution temperature. FTIR spectra of the recovered polymers showed similarity compared to virgin PE and PP films. The melting point of the recovered PE and PP using p-cymene determined in the DSC curves were 107.37 °C and 164.55 °C, respectively. Furthermore, the simplicity of the process, high recovery yield obtained, and the application of p-cymene would make the recycling economical and environment-friendly.
Composite biomaterials can be formed by combining natural or synthetic, organic or inorganic materials which are exactly or partially compatible when in contact with a living organism. To greatly improve the utilization of these biomaterials, understanding its interaction with its environment or host is essential. In this work, naturally-occurring and locally-abundant materials such as zeolite (Z) and chitosan (Ch), were fabricated as a silver-exchanged zeolite/chitosan (AgZ-Ch) composite using a solvent casting approach. The composites were subsequently exposed to argon (Ar) plasma excited by a 13.56 MHz radio frequency (RF) power source. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) techniques were utilized to investigate the surface and subsurface properties of the AgZ-Ch composites. Results revealed different interactions within the bulk and on the surface of the composite. The interactions for the composite formation are dominated by the attraction of the AgZ species with the –OH and –NH2 functional groups of Ch. On the other hand, the surface composition of Ch was influenced by the etching effect of Ar with the –COCH3 termination from the Ch. This study showed that the surface layer prefers to be terminated with amine and hydroxyl groups instead of amide functional groups. The present work also demonstrated the use of plasma irradiation to tune AgZ-Ch composite surface and tailor the reactivity of the functional groups on the surface.
Investigations on the stability of titanium dioxide (TiO2)-coated zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films upon repeated uses for methylene blue (MB) degradation were conducted. Photocorrosion of ZnO, upon exposure to light in aqueous media, can affect the photocatalytic performance due to loss of material. Hence, coating with a more stable metal oxide was seen as a way to suppress the effects of photocorrosion. In this study, homogeneous wurtzite ZnO nanostructured thin films were obtained from thermal oxidation of sputter-deposited Zn films on glass substrates. TiO2 was subsequently deposited onto the ZnO nanostructured thin films using a reactive magnetron sputtering system in an admixture of argon and oxygen gases. After deposition, the thin films were annealed at 500 °C for 1 h. The photocatalytic efficiency and stability of the thin films were investigated after multiple degradation cycles. The addition of a TiO2 film increased the surface roughness and blueshifted the absorption edge of the ZnO thin films. The coated films obtained up to 94.3% degradation efficiency of MB after a 180-min exposure cycle using a solar light simulator. After three cycles, degradation efficiency decreased for the uncoated ZnO photocatalysts. Analysis of the MB solution after one degradation cycle revealed the presence of Zn2+ ions attributed to the effects of photocorrosion. Higher Zn2+ concentrations were observed when the ZnO surface is uncoated. This study showed that the addition of a thin, antiphotocorrosion material such as TiO2 layer decreased the dissolution of ZnO caused by photocorrosion without a significant reduction in the photodegradation efficiency.
On the occasion of the 2017 National Arts Month in the Philippines, José Estrella directed Faust, a contemporary Philippine adaptation written by Rody Vera. This chapter looks at Faust as an allegory of the current Philippine political landscape. Specifically, it traces how the journey of Faust in search of the most ideal and perfect knowledge parallels the contemporary political affairs in the Philippines. The chapter reads the characters of Faust, Mephistopheles/Mephisto, Gretchen and the mangkukulam (witch) as relatable figures to Filipino audience, especially since they are presented as reminders that in an era of what many have identified as post-truth, someone will always emerge to tell the real story.
Recent intensification in climate change have resulted in the rise of hydrological extreme events. This demands modeling of hydrological processes at high temporal resolution to better understand flow patterns in catchments. To model surface and sub-surface flows in a catchment we utilized a physically based model called Hydrological Simulated Program-FORTRAN and two deep learning-based models. One deep learning model consisted of only one long short-term memory (simple LSTM), whereas the other model simulated processes in each hydrological response unit (HRU) by defining one separate LSTM for each HRU (HRU-based LSTM). The models use environmental time-series data and two-dimensional spatial data to predict surface and sub-surface flows at 6-minute time step simultaneously. We tested our models in a tropical humid headwater catchment in northern Lao PDR and compared their performances. Our results showed that the simple LSTM model outperformed the other models on surface runoff prediction with the lowest MSE (7.4e−5 m3 s−1), whereas HRU-based LSTM model better predicted patterns and slopes in sub-surface flow in comparison with the other models by having the smallest MSE value (3.2e−4 m3 s−1). This study demonstrated the performance of a deep learning model when simulating hydrological cycle with high temporal resolution.
Improving access to energy and water in remote communities is an important step towards sustainable development. However, integrated sustainability studies at the community or household scale are rare compared to industrial or national studies. Thus, this paper presents an integrated approach to the development and evaluation of energy and water supply systems in remote communities in developing countries. Termed here “synergistic generation” (“synergen”), the approach considers simultaneously electricity, heat for cooking and water supply to determine their environmental and economic sustainability on a life cycle basis. Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing are used for this purpose. Both the current situation and future scenarios to 2030 are considered for a representative remote community. The life cycle costs of the current energy and water supply are estimated at 2944 USD/household per year, most of which (91%) is due to bottled water. The latter is also the main cause of current environmental impacts (62%), followed by cooking fuels (33%) and electricity (5%). If business as usual (BAU) continues to 2030, air pollution and eutrophication could be reduced by >40% but other 14 impacts would increase by 2–63% on the current situation due to higher dependence on diesel for electricity generation and bottled water. For the same reason, BAU also has 82% higher life cycle costs (5364 USD/household∙yr) than at present. Assuming full supply self-sufficiency (Independent scenario) leads to a >12% reduction in all impact categories, except terrestrial ecotoxicity, which increases by 5% – both trends are due to utilisation of waste biomass for cooking. The life cycle costs are reduced by 92% (231 USD/household∙yr), mainly due to the phasing out of bottled water. However, capital costs are 21% higher due to the need for multiple renewable energy installations. Pursuing moderate rather than full independence of supply (Transition scenario) would reduce most impacts and costs below those of the current situation. Overall, the Transition and Independent scenarios have lower impacts than at present in almost all environmental categories as well as lower life cycle costs. These findings demonstrate the environmental and economic feasibility of energy and water independence in remote communities as well as highlighting the likely trade-offs that should be considered during the transition.
Providing enough water in farming has become a challenge in the Philippines due to insufficient irrigation and escalating drought conditions, thereby decreasing agricultural productivity. The impact of this problem can be lessened through efficient water usage: by reducing water wastage in runoff or evaporation and improving soil water retention. Hydrogels can be used for this purpose due to their water absorption capabilities. In this study, a novel, biodegradable agricultural hydrogel was developed from κ-carrageenan, sodium alginate and carboxymethyl cellulose, crosslinked with Ca2+ and K+ ions. Scanning electron microscopy analysis confirmed the successful crosslinking while swelling tests revealed them as superabsorbent hydrogels, with maximum absorption reaching 2000%. Soil amended with 2% (w/w) hydrogel showed reduced water-depletion rate and improved field capacity by a maximum of 17.6% and 17.4%, respectively. Fertilizer release test also showed the potential of these hydrogels as fertilizer carriers.
