Welfare and distributionalimpacts of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program

This policy note presents the potential poverty impacts of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Pantawid Pamilya) using simple analytical tools and the government's largest database of poor households to date, the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR). In doing so, the note also aims to encourage policy-makers and researchers to not only use the NHTS-PR for its intended purpose, that is, for objective targeting of social assistance programs, but also for analysis to maximize the utility of information contained in the database. The Note finds that the Pantawid Pamilya can reduce poverty incidence and inequality in program areas by 2.6 percentage points and 6.6 percent in a year, respectively. Increasing compliance of existing beneficiaries will enhance the poverty-reducing impacts of the Pantawid Pamilya. Expanding program coverage will produce real impacts as long as targeting and program implementation remains properly managed.Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Regional Economic Development,Rural Poverty Reduction,Health Systems Development&Reform,Services&Transfers to Poor

The conditions for functional mechanisms of compensation and reward for environmental services

Mechanisms of compensation and reward for environmental services (CRES) are becoming increasingly contemplated as means for managing human–environment interactions. Most of the functional mechanisms in the tropics have been developed within the last 15 years; many developing countries still have had little experience with functional mechanisms. We consider the conditions that foster the origin and implementation of functional mechanisms. Deductive and inductive approaches are combined. Eight hypotheses are derived from theories of institution and policy change. Five case studies, from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, are then reviewed according to a common framework. The results suggest the following to be important conditions for functional CRES mechanisms: (1) localized scarcity for particular environmental services, (2) influence from international environmental agreements and international organizations, (3) government policies and public attitudes favoring a mixture of regulatory and marketbased instruments, and (4) security of individual and group property rights

Excitation of Surface Waves Due to Thermocapillary Effects on a Stably Stratified Fluid Layer

In chemical engineering applications, the operation of condensers and evaporators can be made more efficient by exploiting the transport properties of interfacial waves excited on the interface between a hot vapor overlying a colder liquid. Linear theory for the onset of instabilities due to heating a thin layer from above is computed for the Marangoni–Bénard problem. Symbolic computation in the long wave asymptotic limit shows three stationary, non-growing modes. Intersection of two decaying branches occurs at a crossover long wavelength; two other modes co-exist at the crossover point—propagating modes on nascent, shorter wavelength branches. The dispersion relation is then mapped numerically by Newton continuation methods. A neutral stability method is used to map the space of critical stability for a physically meaningful range of capillary, Prandtl, and Galileo numbers. The existence of a cut-off wavenumber for the long wave instability was verified. It was found that the effect of applying a no-slip lower boundary condition was to render all long waves stationary. This has the implication that any propagating modes, if they exist, must occur at finite wavelengths. The computation of 8000 different parameter sets shows that the group velocity always lies within 1/2 to 2/3 of the longwave phase velocity

Excitation of solitons in hexagonal lattices and ways of controlling electron transport

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Philosophical Transactions A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40435-017-0383-x.We construct metastable long-living hexagonal lattices with appropriately modified Morse interactions and show that highly-energetic solitons may be excited moving along crystallographic axes. Studying the propagation, their dynamic changes and the relaxation processes it appears that lump solitons create in the lattice running local compressions. Based on the tight-binding model we investigate the possibility that electrons are trapped and guided by the electric polarization field of the compression field of one soliton or two solitons with crossing pathways. We show that electrons may jump from a bound state with the first soliton to a bound state with a second soliton and changing accordingly the direction of their path. We discuss the possibility to control by this method the path of an excess electron from a source at a boundary to a selected drain at another chosen boundary by following straight pathways on crystallographic axes.DFG, 163436311, SFB 910: Kontrolle selbstorganisierender nichtlinearer Systeme: Theoretische Methoden und Anwendungskonzept

Application of Robust Model Predictive Control to a Renewable Hydrogen-based Microgrid

In order to cope with uncertainties present in the renewable energy generation, as well as in the demand consumer, we propose in this paper the formulation and comparison of three robust model predictive control techniques, i. i. e., multi-scenario, tree-based, and chance-constrained model predictive control, which are applied to a nonlinear plant-replacement model that corresponds to a real laboratory-scale plant located in the facilities of the University of Seville. Results show the effectiveness of these three techniques considering the stochastic nature, proper of these systems