Publications

In this piece, I aim to extend the spaces and tensions of populist ecologies by examining their contemporary urban forms. In the Philippines, urban populist ecologies articulate a politics of discipline that mines discontent among urban residents and fuels antagonistic rhetoric against the undisciplined “others” who are often blamed for the city’s problems. Using the controversy over an artificial white sand beach in Manila, I explore how environmental conflicts, visions of urban futures and authoritarian nostalgia coalesce around strongman populist performances that reimagine the urban environment by appealing to people’s aspirations for resolving urban disorder.

Introduction: This study focuses on a boy with autism spectrum disorder presenting with biting behaviors that interfere significantly with functioning.
Method: This was a single-case study design examining how techniques of applied behavior analysis can be utilized to decrease the frequency of the child’s biting behavior and increase more adaptive behaviors.
Results: The findings of the functional analysis indicated that other-inflicted biting behaviors were maintained by contingent escape from task demands (demand condition) and access to preferred objects and activities (tangible condition). Moreover, the self-inflicted biting behavior was found to be maintained by sensory stimulation (alone condition). Given these, a structured behavioral intervention, consisting of differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors, coupled with extinction targeted to each function of the behavior, was effective in reducing other-inflicted biting behavior in the demand conditions (67% reduction) and in the tangible conditions (95% reduction) as well as reducing self-inflicted behaviors in the alone conditions (100% reduction). More appropriate, adaptive behaviors like compliance, picture-assisted requests, and oral sensory activities also increased significantly.
Conclusion: These findings indicate that assessment and treatment based on the principles of applied behavior analysis can reduce not only problematic behaviors but also improve adaptive functioning.

In this article, we compare four fishing‐based areas in Thailand and the Philippines to examine if and how small‐scale fishing communities are able to escape marginalisation. Three questions guide our inquiry: (i) How have fishing communities been affected by overfishing, climate change and other pressures? (ii) What adaptive strategies have these communities employed to mitigate socio‐economic and environmental challenges? (iii) What has been the impact of these strategies on (escaping) marginalisation? Through a survey of 393 fishing‐based households and semi‐structured interviews with 59 key informants we find an uneven mixture of drivers, strategies and impacts. Respondents varyingly attribute declining fish catch to illegal fishing, overfishing, population increase, climate change and pollution. The case studies illustrate various degrees of adaptive successes that result from integration of top‐down and bottom‐up initiatives, and availability and access to livelihood strategies. However, the impact of adaptive strategies on overcoming marginalisation remains meagre and constrained by, among others, the power of illegal and commercial fishing and the absence of integrated spatial planning. We call for policy interventions and further research that takes into account the integration of top‐down and bottom‐up institutions, and the multiple dimensions and spaces of the drivers that shape fisherfolk marginalisation.

The study looked into how the University of the Philippines School of Library and Information Studies (UP SLIS), its faculty members, and the researcher executed their respective agencies in designing, developing, and implementing LIS 10 Information and Society as a general education (GE) course in UP Diliman. It utilized the structure-agency framework to examine the limitations set by structures the manner by which the agents exercised their agencies subject to such limits. The study is qualitative, with autoethnography as the primary method of inquiry. The researcher created a narrative to uncover knowledge and insight to answer the research questions. Related activities include analysis of documents, recollection of personal experiences, and documentation of perspectives and pertinent events. The study revealed that UP SLIS, in an exercise of its agency as an academic degree-granting unit, along with its various attributes and traits, took the opportunity to propose a GE course. The UP SLIS Faculty exercised its agency by unifying efforts to design a GE course on information issues. The faculty in charge of implementing the course was pivotal in successfully achieving the course outcomes and improving the overall image of the LIS 10 and UP SLIS. With the 2017 UP System GE Framework and the UP Diliman GE requirements as structures, all agents effectively exercised their agencies to ensure that the course satisfied the University policies and contributed to educating intellectually and morally able citizens that are responsible in their information engagements.

A marine outfall can be a wastewater management system that discharges sewage and stormwater into the sea; hence, it is a source of microbial pollution on recreational beaches, including antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs), which lead to an increase in untreatable diseases. In this regard, a marine outfall must be efficiently located to mitigate these risks. This study aimed to 1) investigate the spatiotemporal variability of Escherichia coli (E. coli) and ARGs on a recreational beach and 2) design marine outfalls to reduce microbial risks. For this purpose, E. coli and ARGs with influential environmental variables were intensively monitored on Gwangalli beach, South Korea in this study. Environmental fluid dynamic code (EFDC) was used and calibrated using the monitoring data, and 12 outfall extension scenarios were explored (6 locations at 2 depths). The results revealed that repositioning the marine outfall can significantly reduce the concentrations of E. coli and ARGs on the beach by 46–99%. Offshore extended outfalls at the bottom of the sea reduced concentrations of E. coli and ARGs on the beach more effectively than onshore outfalls at the sea surface. These findings could be helpful in establishing microbial pollution management plans at recreational beaches in the future.

The complexity associated with water quality models (WQMs) has increased owing to the introduction of numerous physical and biological mechanisms in the models. Sensitivity analysis (SA) is conducted to identify influential parameters in these mechanisms. However, enormous computational power and time are required to obtain numerical solutions from thousands of model simulations. Therefore, a cloud-based toolbox is developed for performing SA of WQMs by implementing a cloud computing system using grab sampling data and hyperspectral images (HSI) of waterbodies. Cloud computing can provide high-performance computation by adjusting the scale of the computational power according to user preference. The developed toolbox with the cloud system can reduce the computation time for SA by approximately 20 times compared to that of a desktop computer.

In recent years, as agricultural activities and types of crops have become diverse, the occurrence of micro-pollutants has been reported more frequently in rural areas. These pollutants have detrimental effects on human health and ecological systems; thus, it is important to manage and monitor their presence in the environment. The modeling approach could be an effective way to understand and manage these pollutants. This study predicts the concentrations of micro-pollutants (MPs) using deep learning (DL) models, and the results are then compared with simulation results obtained from the soil water assessment tool (SWAT) model. The SWAT model showed an unacceptable performance owing to the resulting negative Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) values for the simulations. This may be caused by the limitations of SWAT, which pertains to adopting simplified equations to simulate micro-pollutants. In addition, the ambiguous plan of pesticide application increased the model uncertainty, thereby deteriorating the model result. Here, we developed two different DL models: long short-term memory (LSTM) and convolutional neural network (CNN). LSTM exhibited the highest model performance, with NSE values of 0.99 and 0.75 for the training and validation steps, respectively. In the multi-target MP model, the error decreased as the number of simulated pollutants increased. The simulation of the four pollutants had the highest error, while the six-target simulation had the lowest error. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the LSTM model has the potential to improve the prediction of MPs in aquatic systems.

Current available methods for water desalination are energy intensive, expensive, and not
feasible for small-scale applications. As an alternative, hydrogels may be utilized as a draw agent and semi-permeable membrane forward osmosis by acting as both to desalinate water. This study aims to synthesize and characterize hydrogels made from cellulose derivatives and reduced graphene oxide nanofillers in order to desalinate and remove microbes from seawater without requiring a large energy input. The hydrogels are formed by combining carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxymethyl cellulose, reduced graphene oxide, and water to form a paste which is soaked in a crosslinking solution made of citric acid. Swelling, compression, antimicrobial efficiency and desalination efficiency tests were done. The hydrogel that obtained the highest values has a swelling ratio of 1,447%, compressive strength of 4 bar, desalination efficiency of 30%, and antimicrobial properties.

Past studies assert that the code-specified response modification factor (R) for structures may not always be suitable due to variations in material properties, geometric configuration and site characteristics. This study presents a method that may be used to optimize the design of reinforced concrete (RC) dual systems utilizing R obtained from incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). A regular nine-story three-dimensional building with a dual system in y-direction and a special moment-resisting frame in x- direction was designed as per NSCP 2015. A nonlinear model of the building was created by defining hinges based on design results. Nonlinear M3-hinges for girders, fiber P-M2-M3 hinge for columns and fiber P-M3 hinge for walls were employed in ETABS. Incremental dynamic analyses for the building case were then performed utilizing seven (7) ground motions obtained from the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research online database. Capacity curves were generated for each ground motion by recording the maximum base shear and roof displacement obtained from each time-history analysis. Roughly, a total of 150 time-history analyses were conducted to determine the building’s overstrength factor (Ω) and ductility factor (R_μ ). For each ground motion, the IDA-based response modification factor (R_D ) was computed as the product of Ω and R_μ. Results have shown that the actual R for the building employed varies from 8.0 to 10. Values of R in this range were used to redesign the building, and it was found out that for the building case considered,the building-specific response modification factor R_b=9.5 resulted in the largest reduction of 10.24% in weight and volume of concrete. The proposed method can be used to investigate further the quantification of R for other building configurations and types.

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This paper explores the limitations and possibilities of Habermas’ critical social theory and discourse ethics by utilizing the analyses of two of his former students, Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib. Fraser shows us the limitations of Habermas’ position because it fails to take into consideration the female perspective and contribution to the labor force. This raises the question of migration within the gender framework. On the other hand, Benhabib argues for the potential of Habermas’ philosophy by reminding us of its universalist stance.