Publications

The five essays in this chapter survey well-known and lesser-known cities around the world where musical theatre is produced: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; New York City, USA; London, UK; Lagos, Nigeria; and Manila, the Philippines. Each one reflects on different historical moments, from the nineteenth century through to the twenty first century, and on particular practitioners who contributed a range of innovations to musical theatre. Alex Bádue considers the localization and assimilation processes that have combined European, US American, and Brazilian cultures in Rio de Janeiro’s musical theatre practice. Jennifer C. H. J. Wilson uses impresario Tony Pastor’s career to explore how musical theatre in nineteenth-century New York City circulated and responded to the city’s working-class immigrant population. Laura Milburn similarly takes an impresario, producer Charles B. Cochran, and unpacks his collaborative work in twentieth-century London with both British and American songwriters. Leesi Patrick privileges a third producer, Bolanle Austen-Peters, and highlights BAP’s pioneering work in developing musical theatre as a viable entertainment industry in Lagos. Sir Anril P. Tiatco examines musical theatre entanglements in Manila to better understand the processes of returning, rewriting, and repeating that define its industry.

The sugar industry played a significant role in the colonial economies of Indonesia and the Philippines. Growing the same commodity for the global market, the conditions under which the sugar industry operated in the two places were quite different. Using historical methods and drawing upon secondary sources, this article compares the colonial sugar industry in Indonesia with particular reference to Java and the Philippines between 1890 and 1940. Unlike the case of Indonesia, where the sugar industry operated in densely populated lowland areas, the Philippine sugar industry was established in a sparsely populated region. However, the sugar producers in the two countries took various measures to make their ventures more efficient and competitive. This article will outline broadly the early development of the sugar industry in Java and the Philippines, followed by a discussion on the choice of production technology and the performance of the sugar industry in the interwar period to provide a better understanding of the different development of the sugar industry in Java and the Philippines. The sugar industry in Java was more successful in improving its productivity and efficiency, making the industry more competitive than the Philippines. However, the sugar industry in the two countries had different destinies when the global crises hit hard in the 1930s. Only because of the preferential treatment obtained in the American market did the less efficient sugar industry in the Philippines survive during the Depression. Meanwhile, Java's more efficient sugar industry collapsed due to the unfair protection policy in the world sugar market.

The diversity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) extends to the media systems of its 10 member states. Cross-border journalism should explore various themes that transcend such diversity. Given the prevailing culture of impunity, this chapter proposes that journalists covering the ASEAN consider the state of media as a topic for collaborative research. Special attention should be given to the various forms of harassment and intimidation faced by ASEAN-based journalists and media workers, including work-related killings. This kind of research may branch out to other dimensions like human rights violations across the population, along with their political and economic situations. The ASEAN indeed remains a newsworthy topic and diversity should not get in the way of practicing cross-border journalism.

In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has been studied extensively through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory. However, only one study has focused on the metaphorization of the COVID-19 pandemic in a strictly Philippine milieu. None so far has published on pandemic- related multimodal metaphors in Philippine media, let alone shed light on these through a diachronic perspective. Using conceptual metaphor theory and visual metaphor identification procedure, this study analysed 203 pandemic-related editorial cartoons published by a Philippine national publication from December 2019 to February 2022. It investigated the diachronic conceptualizations of the conceptual domain COVID-19 VIRUS in the Philippines as captured by the neutralizing or ‘de-monstering’ of the virus from the COVID-19 IS A MONSTER to the COVID-19 IS A LIVING ENTITY multimodal metaphor. It argued that the trends of metaphorization correlate with the shifting sociocultural and political attitudes towards the COVID-19 pandemic as a global and local healthcare crisis. Essentially, this study not only explored the dynamics between media and cognition, but it also analysed how the multimodal metaphorizations of COVID-19 reflect Filipino socio-political realities and cultural underpinnings during turbulent times.

This paper presents information on LIS 10 Information and Society, a general education course offered by the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS), University of the Philippines Diliman. LIS 10 is the first course of its kind in the Philippines. This narrative establishes the motivations that led to the course’s development and gives pertinent information, including its description, expected student outcomes, and an enumeration of course topics. It also presents qualitative feedback received from students who took the course. As the pioneering instructor of the course, the author employs the autoethnographic method to narrate his personal experience and perspective on the collective conduct of UP SLIS faculty members on the design and development of the GE course.

A phycocolloidal hydrogel patch is studied as a potential material for the transdermal delivery device for vitamin B12. The vitamin release kinetics from an agar/κ-carrageenan hydrogel blend as a function of mass ratio and vitamin loading. Concentration measurements were done using a colorimetric method, and the experimental data were fitted into the Korsmeyer-Peppas model, Peppas-Sahlin model, and Berens-Hopfenberg model. From the curve fitting, parameters such as first-order polymer relaxation constant and diffusivity constant were obtained. The results showed that for the Korsmeyer-Peppas model and the Peppas-Sahlin model, the release mechanism followed Fickian diffusion predominantly. On the other hand, the Berens-Hopfenberg model fit shows that the release mechanism predominantly follows non-Fickian diffusion and may need to be modified.

Banana pseudostems (BPS), which comprise about 60% of a banana plant's mass, represent a significant waste fraction in banana farms as they are cut down after each harvest. Because BPS fibers exhibit characteristics suitable for pulp and paper, and composite applications, a patented technology has been demonstrated to utilize BPS into moulded clamshells for food packaging and liquid Musa fertilizer. To determine the environmental sustainability of this technology, a life cycle assessment (LCA) is performed on the co-production of food packaging and fertilizer from BPS. Material and energy flows of the system are collected from the demonstration plant and their environmental impacts are analyzed through the ReCiPe, 2016 model with a functional unit of 1000 kg of BPS waste. System expansion revealed that the co-production of clamshell and fertilizer from BPS contributes less environmental burden than both of its corresponding conventional processes combined. The products are also compared to their conventional counterparts – expanded polystyrene (EPS) clamshell and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) fertilizer. In comparison to the conventional EPS clamshell, the PPY clamshell scored 1.6 to 4.2 times greater in 7 out of 18 midpoint indicators while the Musa fertilizer displayed an overall 4% to 99% lower environmental impact on all indicators than its counterpart, UAN fertilizer. Reducing the farm-to-plant distance by half is revealed to decrease toxicity and land occupation potential impacts by up to 47%. Siting of the BPS utilization plant further affects its environmental impacts as the electricity grid supplying the operations in a sensitive parameter on the life cycle impacts. The use of renewable energy sources is highly recommended to reduce the environmental impacts of its energy-intensive unit processes namely, pulp refining and moulding. The results of this work suggest that this patented technology can provide environmentally preferable products.

Presentation was an abridged version of my undergraduate thesis.

This study aims to understand how University of the Philippines Diliman Speech 30  instructors use communication accommodation strategies to address student difficulties in a post- COVID-19 instructional setting. Verbal and non-verbal immediacy from Anderson (1979) and  Christophel & Gorham (1995), along with Giles and Ogay's Communication Accommodation typologies (2007) comprise the theoretical framework. A triangulation approach was utilized in identifying the prevalent student difficulties among the respondents. First, a modified version of Robert Goodman's Student Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was administered to 369 students taking the course. The results were then cross-examined in one-on-one follow-up interviews with 8 consenting participants. Upon a thematic analysis of the findings from the questionnaire and the interviews, emotional and mental disposition, focus, and emergent logistical and behavioral difficulties were identified as the most prevalent categories of student difficulties. Subsequently, the consenting participants were interviewed about the immediacy behaviors of their Speech 30 instructors that they perceive in class, primarily those that address their in-class difficulties. With regards to verbal immediate behaviors, the students perceived instructors incorporating humor, personal examples, simple language, feedback, reassuring tone, content and trigger warnings,  familiarity with course content, and building on students’ answers to their pedagogy in post- COVID-19 face-to-face classes. Perceived non-verbal immediacy behaviors included modified  seating arrangement, physical gestures, proximity, movement, fashion, and visual aids. These student-perceived immediacy behaviors indicate the instructor usage of approximation, interpretability, discourse management, emotional expression, and interpersonal control strategies to address student difficulties in post-COVID-19 Speech 30 classes held in the University.

This publication is part of the “Advancing human rights reporting in the Philippines as a tool for upholding gender fairness, democracy and accountability” project by Bulatlat through its publisher, the Alipato Media Center Inc. The project is supported by the German Embassy in Manila.

Intellectual freedom is one known core value in the LIS profession, but there needs to be more clarity over how to define it and apply it to the actual work. In the Philippines, this concept only exists as a clause or a section of a broader guideline or policy, and a formal framework has yet to be specifically dedicated to it. This study offers insights into how intellectual freedom is perceived in Philippine academic libraries. Academic library directors (N =44) in Southern Tagalog, composed of Regions IV-A and IV-B, were asked about their knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding this principle. It was found that the respondents know what intellectual freedom means and consider it highly important despite its challenges. Based on their responses, they are likely to express support for intellectual freedom but still exhibit some degree of censorship tendencies during selection. This study underscores the complexities LIS professionals face as they navigate the challenging terrain between their intellectual freedom advocacies and their roles as gatekeepers of information.

Ang kuwentong ito ay nakasentro sa panipis nang panipis na mga
ugnayang domestiko sa pagitan ng mag-asawang Chard at Meling, at
ang dalawa nilang anak na sina Bugsy at Jonesy. Si Bugsy ay papatapos
na sa kaniyang kursong Civil Engineering at desididong kumuha ng
licensure examinations sa susunod na taon. Ang pagkadesidido niyang
ito ay nagmumula sa pagkabigo ng kaniyang ama na nakatapos nga
ng naturang kurso ngunit hindi na nakuha ang lisensiya sa pagiging
inhinyero. Si Meling naman at Jonesy ay nagkakaisa sa pagpapaalala at
pagtawag ng pansin sa mag-iisang taon nang sira nilang telebisyon. Sa
panahon kung saan nakalunan ang kuwento, pangunahing libangan pa
rin ang panonood ng iba’t ibang mga palabas sa TV. Magpipresenta ng
oportunidad upang mapanumbalik ang kapayapaan at katahimikan sa
kanilang tahanan ang isang sorpresang raffle draw sa Christmas party
sa kanilang kapitbahayan, pati na ng oportunidad kay Bugsy na balikan
ang isang bahagi ng kaniyang pagkabata na matagal na niyang isinantabi.

The late Dr. Ernesto Constantino was a prominent Filipino linguist who conducted many comparative studies on the morphology and syntax of various Philippine indigenous languages. As such, his personal collection, which was donated to the University Archives of the University of the Philippines Diliman, contains a wealth of raw data collected from different communities all over the Philippines. To date, we have cataloged 458 magnetic reel tapes and 733 cassette tapes from various linguistic fieldwork conducted by Dr. Constantino and his team of research assistants between the 1960s and the 1990s. We have also so far cataloged word and sentence lists in over a hundred Philippine language varieties. Many of these languages and dialects are under-studied while some, such as Yogad, Bolinao, and Manide, are also currently marked as threatened or endangered languages. This paper presents a preliminary assessment of the state of the legacy language materials in the Constantino Collection. We identify challenges that we face in cataloging and archiving the materials and the issues that should be faced in attempting to get subsequent use of the materials.

Water quality is substantially influenced by a multitude of dynamic and interrelated variables, including climate conditions, landuse and seasonal changes. Deep learning models have demonstrated predictive power of water quality due to the superior ability to automatically learn complex patterns and relationships from variables. Long short-term memory (LSTM), one of deep learning models for water quality prediction, is a type of recurrent neural network that can account for longer-term traits of time-dependent data. It is the most widely applied network used to predict the time series of water quality variables. First, we reviewed applications of a standalone LSTM and discussed its calculation time, prediction accuracy, and good robustness with process-driven numerical models and the other machine learning. This review was expanded into the LSTM model with data pre-processing techniques, including the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise method and Synchrosqueezed Wavelet Transform. The review then focused on the coupling of LSTM with a convolutional neural network, attention network, and transfer learning. The coupled networks demonstrated their performance over the standalone LSTM model. We also emphasized the influence of the static variables in the model and used the transformation method on the dataset. Outlook and further challenges were addressed. The outlook for research and application of LSTM in hydrology concludes the review.

Data analysis techniques that rely on standard statistical tools and algorithms often encounter problems when dealing with data sets that have large sample sizes. In this study, two statistical tests done in conducting simple linear regression analysis were revisited. In particular, the study simulated the effects of large sample sizes and amount of contamination in the data due to non-sampling errors on the false positive rate of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test in testing for normality of error terms. The study also characterized the effects of varying sample size and amount of contamination in the data on the false negative rate of the t-test in testing the significance of a regression coefficient. Lastly, an optimality index was developed to determine the sample sizes and the values of the percent noise at which both the false positive rate of the K-S test and the false negative rate of the t-test are minimized.

Small island communities across the Visayas region of the Philippines are sites of convergence,
engagement, and tension among people and entities of different origins and backgrounds. I
examine the content of folk narratives gathered through linguistic fieldwork in two such
communities: (i) the Municipality of Romblon, on the island of Romblon, Province of Romblon
(from 28 April-2 May, 2014) and (ii) the Municipality of Poro, on the island of Poro, in Camotes,
Province of Cebu (from 8 March-30 April, 2022) and sketch out the ways in which high relative
insularity (Baldacchino, 2006; Nash, et al., 2020) may have influenced these accounts. One
account is a tale involving a golden ship which allegedly abducts children during Holy Week in
Romblon, Romblon (Santiago, 2019). Another tale involves the intermediary named
Panganoron who is said to have settled a dispute between the two tribes Tag-Anito and Tag-
Maktang in Poro Island (Costas, 1997; Santiago, 2022). Further, I seek to demonstrate that the
specific experiences associated with island life in the Central Philippines are encoded in these
two selected folk narratives. The distinctiveness of Southeast Asian island experiences
(Andaya, 2006) may also be gleaned from comparing the above case studies with narratives
from other sites which have a similar character, such as the island of Jandayan, Bohol where
entities called agta inhabit the mangrove forests (Guieb, 2017) and the island of Cuyo, in
Palawan where a place called napuro in the local language is said to be inhabited by similar
supernatural entities (Lee, 2021, 2022).

Keywords: island studies, folklore, Visayan communities

The article problematizes state penality as a mechanism of repression of precarious workers through a war on drugs in the Philippines. The narratives of 27 arrested ‘drug personalities’ in Metro Manila tell of how methamphetamine energizes bodies and motivates minds for productive work. Bidding to be classified as willing and able workers and family men, the study’s participants orient to a moral stratification that pits the ‘moral versus immoral’ and the ‘hardworking versus lazy’. Qualifying their drug use as strategic and calculated, they uphold the neoliberal values of individual choice and accountability. Their support for the anti-drug campaign stems from their recognition of a drug problem and the socioemotional toll of the dysfunctions of living in the slums. While trade liberalization facilitates methamphetamine inflow, a war on drugs fuels an authoritarian populism. As the state reaffirms symbolic mission to protect its citizens, it blames precarity to a problem population.