After Five Years of Pantawid, What Next?

When the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program was designed, the government publicly promised to limit to five years the giving of the education and health grants. This five-year limit is almost over for the first set of beneficiaries by 2013. The natural policy question then is: Would it be wise to keep the promise or would an extension be better? This paper presents five arguments and evidence why the extension of the program is better than keeping the promise to limit it to five years. The five arguments include: (a) the problems that the Pantawid had been designed to address continue to be high priority issues; (b) Pantawid remains credible as an effective and valuable instrument for poverty alleviation in the short run and for reducing the transmission of intergenerational poverty in the long run; (c) the extension could provide great opportunities to produce a much greater positive impact on the welfare of the poor; (d) the extension could buy much-needed time for developing and implementing an adequate and workable transition promotion strategy to help beneficiaries outgrow their need for CCT assistance and, therefore, facilitate its termination; and (e) secondary education enrollment and completion produces high returns in terms of increased earning and is achievable with a moderate amount of subsidy. The paper ends with cautionary notes including articulating that Pantawid remains a bridging program; the need for a careful study to ensure affordability and maximize its cost effectiveness; the need to continue to generate better estimates of key parameters such as income elasticities; and possible phasing for affordability and recognition of possible supply-side constraints

Colloids in light fields: particle dynamics in random and periodic energy landscapes

The dynamics of colloidal particles in potential energy landscapes have mainly been investigated theoretically. In contrast, here we discuss the experimental realization of potential energy landscapes with the help of light fields and the observation of the particle dynamics by video microscopy. The experimentally observed dynamics in periodic and random potentials are compared to simulation and theoretical results in terms of, e.g. the mean-squared displacement, the time-dependent diffusion coefficient or the non-Gaussian parameter. The dynamics are initially diffusive followed by intermediate subdiffusive behaviour which again becomes diffusive at long times. How pronounced and extended the different regimes are, depends on the specific conditions, in particular the shape of the potential as well as its roughness or amplitude but also the particle concentration. Here we focus on dilute systems, but the dynamics of interacting systems in external potentials, and thus the interplay between particle-particle and particle-potential interactions, is also mentioned briefly. Furthermore, the observed dynamics of dilute systems resemble the dynamics of concentrated systems close to their glass transition, with which it is compared. The effect of certain potential energy landscapes on the dynamics of individual particles appears similar to the effect of interparticle interactions in the absence of an external potential

Teaching & Learning The Spanish Aspect Using Blogs and Wikis: An Exploratory Study

This study investigated the influence of asynchronous computer text based technologies on the students’ performance when learning the preterite and the imperfect aspects in Spanish. Two research questions guided the study: Research Question 1) Is there a difference in students’ achievement levels in Spanish preterite and imperfect between those using wiki technologies and those using blog technologies after controlling for pre-intervention achievement levels? and Research Question 2) Are there differences in satisfaction levels for students learning Spanish preterite and imperfect via blog technologies as compared to those learning via wiki technologies? Results indicate that there were not significant differences between students who use blog or wiki technologies on performance levels when controlling for pre-existing knowledge. Results also indicated that there were not significant differences in satisfaction levels between those students using a wiki and those using a blog. These results suggest that wikis and blogs are good potential tools that may facilitate the teaching and learning of problematic grammar structures in a narrative context

Foodways in transition: food plants, diet and local perceptions of change in a Costa Rican Ngäbe community

Background Indigenous populations are undergoing rapid ethnobiological, nutritional and socioeconomic transitions while being increasingly integrated into modernizing societies. To better understand the dynamics of these transitions, this article aims to characterize the cultural domain of food plants and analyze its relation with current day diets, and the local perceptions of changes given amongst the Ngäbe people of Southern Conte-Burica, Costa Rica, as production of food plants by its residents is hypothesized to be drastically in recession with an decreased local production in the area and new conservation and development paradigms being implemented. Methods Extensive freelisting, interviews and workshops were used to collect the data from 72 participants on their knowledge of food plants, their current dietary practices and their perceptions of change in local foodways, while cultural domain analysis, descriptive statistical analyses and development of fundamental explanatory themes were employed to analyze the data. Results Results show a food plants domain composed of 140 species, of which 85 % grow in the area, with a medium level of cultural consensus, and some age-based variation. Although many plants still grow in the area, in many key species a decrease on local production–even abandonment–was found, with much reduced cultivation areas. Yet, the domain appears to be largely theoretical, with little evidence of use; and the diet today is predominantly dependent on foods bought from the store (more than 50 % of basic ingredients), many of which were not salient or not even recognized as ‘food plants’ in freelists exercises. While changes in the importance of food plants were largely deemed a result of changes in cultural preferences for store bought processed food stuffs and changing values associated with farming and being food self-sufficient, Ngäbe were also aware of how changing household livelihood activities, and the subsequent loss of knowledge and use of food plants, were in fact being driven by changes in social and political policies, despite increases in forest cover and biodiversity. Conclusions Ngäbe foodways are changing in different and somewhat disconnected ways: knowledge of food plants is varied, reflecting most relevant changes in dietary practices such as lower cultivation areas and greater dependence on food from stores by all families. We attribute dietary shifts to socioeconomic and political changes in recent decades, in particular to a reduction of local production of food, new economic structures and agents related to the State and globalization