Publications

Despite attempts to problematize and reconsider the roles of commerce and culture in shaping America’s informal empires in West Pacific, it remains a puzzle why, after World War II, America privileged Japan—“the enemy”—over the Philippines—“the friend” and erstwhile colony. Japan’s economy grew by leaps and bounds, enough to create a dent in global affairs during the latter half of the twentieth century. In sharp contrast, America chose to maintain the Philippine ruling elite, which contributed greatly to political instability, economic collapse and over-all sorry state throughout the archipelago from the late 1960s onwards. Still, Fujiwara and Nagano’s book creates an opening for future scholars to explore many possible paradigms of understanding on the subject. Many other hows and whys of informal empires deserve to be constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed in the context of America’s dangerous precedents.

This essay interrogates the traditionally gendered Filipino female domestic helper vis-à-vis her “constructed” role in transnational relations and the idea of globalization represented in the 2007–2008 musical The Silent Soprano. Through this musical, the essay explores how globalization and transnational relations are experienced and mediated on the stage of the developing city of Manila, which claims to be a cosmopolitan one. It is posited that the representations of transnational relations and globalization are predicated within methodological nationalism, inscribing a fear of participation in a globalized and cosmopolitan living.

The study proposes a method utilizing 3D nonlinear dynamic analysis of buildings with the objective of achieving predictable seismic performance and building strengthening that translates to the owner’s requirement. The frame model assumes that the nonlinear behaviour of the structure is concentrated in plastic hinges, modelled as spring system located at element ends. The nonlinear parameters of the spring systems are derived from the actual member section. The model is verified via agreement of elastic and nonlinear behavior with that obtained using conventional software. The dynamic simulation allows the analysis of progressive collapse sequence providing ease in the assessment of performance and identification of critical members. The ground acceleration data used is selected to be compatible with the project site’s seismic design spectrum. Strengthening critical members is accomplished by recalculation of spring parameters based on the capacity increase and the material used. This paper analyzes a newly designed and an existing residential building using the proposed method and shows that it is capable of simulating the seismic performance and the potential collapse mechanism. The results show that increasing member dimension and applying CFRP are applicable to prevent collapse.

Folklore, such as the narratives of the supernatural, functions as a vehicle for elements of culture such as belief systems, ideologies and shared memories. This study explores the changes undergone by Philippine narratives of the supernatural vis-à-vis the urban development of the community where they thrive. It is demonstrated that the characters of the narratives of the supernatural are perceived to be of equal or even higher stature than those of members of the rural communities. With the locality experience changes brought about by urbanisation, this folklore is inevitably modified to suit the people’s environment and sensibilities, by reappropriating new functions and roles in the community. A different impression is observed in the context of the urban community; but, the collective sense of respect evoked by the urban dwellers has endured. This is the form which the latent belief system among Filipinos has taken, one that forges their common identity.

There are two major approaches in dealing with autocorrelated process data in process control, that is, residual‐based approaches and methods that modify control limits to adjust for autocorrelation. We proposed a methodology for constructing control charts for autocorrelated process data using the AR‐sieve bootstrap. The simulation study illustrates the relative advantage of the AR‐sieve bootstrap control chart with respect to the in‐control and out‐of‐control run length and false alarm rate. The proposed methodology works even for small sample sizes and conditions of the near nonstationarity of the generating process. The proposed AR‐sieve bootstrap control chart presents the advantage of being distribution‐free for certain class of linear models as well as the tracking of actual process observations instead of model residuals, thus facilitating the implementation during actual plant operations.

Tatangkain ng pag-aaral na ito na palitawin ang mga dayalekto ng Inonhan sa Isla de Carabao, Romblon, bilang tugon sa obserbasyon ng mga tagaroon na mayroong pagkakaiba-iba sa “salita” ang bawat sitio sa nasabing isla. Bilang preliminaryong pag-aaral, gagamitin ang antas na lexicostatistic sa metodolohiya ng dialect geography upang mapalitaw ang mga dayalektal na katangian ng bawat sitio. Matapos makalap ang datos sa pormang wordlist at maiparaan sa mga pamamaraang idinidikta ng mga nabanggit na metodolohiya, lumitaw na (1) tunay na magkakalapit ang mga speech habit ng mga nakatira sa lahat ng sitio ng Isla de Carabao, base sa cognate percentage ng mga ito sa isa’t isa; at (2) may limang posibleng dayalekto ng Inonhan sa isla: Inonhan-Busay, Inonhan-Tinap-an, Inonhan-Pacul, Inonhan-Tan-agan, at Inonhan-Sa-id-Batacan, batay sa mga lexical feature na masasabing katangi-tangi sa mga sitiong ito. Gayumpaman, dahil sa napansing labis na nakakalat ang mga posibleng isogloss ng isla, malaki ang posibilidad na bukod sa limang dayalektong nabanggit, mayroong iba pang varieties ang Inonhan sa Isla de Carabao.

This paper is an overview of the linguistic situation of Isla de Carabao, Romblon, and a preliminary dialectology of Inonhan, the language predominantly spoken in the island. Methodologies from lexicostatistics will be employed so as to process the lexical data obtained from fieldwork. The brief historical account and current socio-economic condition of the island discussed in this paper will be taken into account to explain the erratic behavior of the cognate forms found in the sitios that comprise the island. Accordingly, it is discovered that the dynamics of the population in this permeable island results in the multilingualism of the locality, as evidenced principally by the large number of loanwords from other languages. Using these findings, it can therefore be said that Inonhan is a living language which is open to linguistic innovations, enabling it to cope with the development and advancements in the way of life in Isla de Carabao.

In pursuit of testing earthquake-resilient building models, ground motion records are necessary input in the analysis. Although using actual seismic records has many advantages, there is a lack of strong ground motion records in the Philippines. To compensate these shortcomings, available records in Japan and Taiwan were used to verify the seismological model that was applied in the simulation of the time-history records. A local earthquake record was used to determine the region-specific source parameters of this model to match the local site conditions of the country. Stochastic simulations were performed to generate acceleration time-history records for scenario earthquakes in West Marikina Valley Fault with different magnitudes and distances depending on the current seismic stations in Metro Manila. The peak acceleration produced by a M7.0 earthquake corresponds to the maximum PGA estimate of 0.5g in Metro Manila while the extreme scenario of M7.2 and M7.5 produced 0.57g and 0.63g, respectively.

Keywords: accelerogram, artificial, specific barrier model, local

This paper presents a method that can analyze earthquake response of typical non-structural components in a hospital. Wheel-movable, free-standing and desk-mounted equipment typically found in emergency rooms, intensive care units and operating rooms were modeled and restraints were designed to minimize or eliminate rolling, sliding and overturning. The method utilizing rigid bodies subjected to inertial forces due to earthquake was introduced and validated using simple analytical computations and numerical experiments. Examples show that non-slip mats are effective in restraining equipment that are unlikely to overturn while the 1⁄4”-diameter bungee cord with optimal orientation or pre-tensioning significantly reduces the acceleration response of the equipment. Heavy equipment, like the 175-kg medical cabinet, may be restrained using bolts or 4-mm accessory cord. This study recommends that soft materials be attached to the equipment at points of possible collision with the wall in order to prevent further damage and large displacement of the equipment.

Keywords: earthquake, furniture, hospital, simulation

We propose a method of forecasting customer lifetime value using the customer usage database, sampling strategy, segmentation, modeling, and validation techniques in data mining.  The highly heterogeneous customer database being mined will allow the inclusion of uncertainty components in the estimation of customer lifetime value.  A hazard function model based on a truncated lifetime data of customers can provide adequate information to compute the value of the incentive to be offered and the length of the lock up period for the customer.