Local Ordinances

WHEREAS, Article II of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, which is designated "Declaration of Principles and State Policies," to wit: Section 13. The State recognizes the vital role of the youth in nation-building and shall promote and protect their physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual, and social well-being. It shall inculcate in the youth patriotism and nationalism, and encourage their involvement in public and civic affairs. Section 17. The State shall give priority to education, science and technology, arts, culture, and sports to foster patriotism and nationalism, accelerate social progress, and promote total human liberation and development.

Resumen
El argumento principal de este este artículo se centra en un problema medioambiental. Dividido en dos apartados, en la primera parte la reflexión gira en torno a los problemas de contaminación sufridos en las ciudades medievales. En la segunda parte, se presenta un caso de estudio centrado en el enriado del lino en las localidades andaluzas a finales de la Edad Media.

Palabras claves: Contaminación. Enriar lino. Andalucía. Siglo XV.

Abstract
The main argument of this article focuses on an environmental problem. Divided into two sections, in the first part the reflection revolves around the pollution problems suffered in medieval cities. In the second part, a case study is presented focusing on the retting of flax in Andalusian towns at the end of the Middle Ages.

Keywords: Contamination. Linen retting. Andalusia. 15th century.

This study evaluated the implementation of Republic Act 9003 (R.A. 9003), also known as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, in Barangay Gen. T. de Leon, Valenzuela City, Philippines. The researchers used a mixed-methods approach, combining surveys and interviews to collect both quantitative and qualitative data. Surveys were conducted with 398 residents aged 17 to 65, and interviews were held with five residents and two members of the Barangay Solid Waste Management Committee. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Solid Waste Management Program in the barangay, with a focus on waste segregation, recycling, garbage collection, implementation, and public awareness. The study also aimed to understand residents' views and reactions to the program and its impact on effective governance in the barangay. Findings revealed that while residents demonstrated awareness of the program and engaged in activities such as waste segregation and recycling, there were areas that needed improvement. Waste collection was generally rated as very effective; however, there was a recognized need for enhanced information dissemination, especially regarding waste reduction and recycling. The study concluded that cooperation between barangay committees and citizens is vital for the success and sustainability of solid waste management programs. It also emphasized the government's responsibility in addressing health issues related to waste, such as dengue and cholera. Recommendations included the need for continuous information campaigns, the implementation of policies with penalties for non-compliance, and the establishment of Material Recovery Facilities in each barangay.

Francesc Alegre translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses into Catalan prose between c. 1472-1482, and he revised it before its publication in 1494, with a print run of 1,000 copies. Some scholars have underlined its singularity
because it was translated directly from Ovid, whereas the French and the Italian incunabula were not. Nevertheless, Alegre turned to other vernacular versions, such as Giovanni Bonsignori’s and Joan Roís de Corella’s. He drew on different sources to approach Ovid’s
poem to a medieval readership who did not know classical mythology
deeply. This critical edition offers a study of Alegre’s methodology, learned style, intention, sources (including news on the Latin copy he used), and an analysis of the preserved incunabula.

Resum: L'arribada dels jesuïtes al Regne de Mallorca implicà profundes transformacions cn la cultura del país. Una d'aquests canvis es produí en el camp de la ciència. Maties Borrassà introduí la ciència renaixentista i, segurament, va esser l'iniciador d'un grup de
«novatores» que treballaria durant tot el s.egle XVII. Aquest cercle, preocupat per
l'astronomia, les matemàtiques especulatives, la física i la química, tengué el seu màxim
exponent amb el sergent major Vicenç Mut, però també amb el seu deixeble Josep
Saragossà. D'aquí que, quan la Universitat de la Ciutat i Regne de Mallorca decidí posar
orde en el vell sistema mètric medieval, acudís a ells com a especialistes teòrics.

Honorable Presiding Officer, esteemed colleagues in this august chamber, municipal officials and employees, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: It is my distinct honor and privilege today to sponsor this significant ordinance titled, "Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards Ordinance." As public servants, our primary obligation is to ensure the welfare, prosperity, and trust of our constituents. This ordinance represents a vital step toward fulfilling these obligations by institutionalizing the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability within our local government. Legally, this ordinance aligns our local policies with national laws, notably Republic Act No. 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. It enhances our compliance with essential statutes that guide the behavior of public officials, reinforcing our commitment to uphold the principle that "public office is a public trust." Moreover, it fortifies our adherence to existing procurement laws, transparency mandates, and ethical practices, thus safeguarding our municipality from legal disputes and liabilities.

El objetivo de este trabajo será reflexionar sobre cómo el sentido del olfato, junto con otra información sensorial, fue importante en las experiencias cotidianas de la vida urbana de los habitantes del reino de Castilla (siglos XV y XVI) y sus percepciones de diferentes lugares, calles y vecindarios, a través del análisis de la documentación concejil.

The Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance has been implemented in Quezon City since 2012 to regulate the use of plastic bags in an attempt to address plastic pollution. This study assessed the implementation of the ordinance. Customers' use of recyclable bags was directly observed in four retail stores in the District 4 of Quezon City. A survey was also conducted among 120 residents from six barangays comprising Area 24, District 4 of the city to gather data on awareness of and compliance to the ordinance. Focus group discussions and interviews with city government officials and store managers, among other stakeholders, were also conducted to enrich quantitative data. Survey results showed high level of awareness of the ordinance, but lower level of awareness of the green fund. Results of the chi-square test of independence revealed that awareness significantly differed across barangays. It is also revealed that the ordinance affects stakeholders in different ways, and that it may have somewhat reduced the percentage of plastic waste collected from households in the city. Lastly, retail stores face administrative challenges in translating green fund into meaningful environmental programs.

The Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance has been implemented in Quezon City since 2012 to regulate the use of plastic bags in an attempt to address plastic pollution. This study assessed the implementation of the ordinance. Customers’ use of recyclable bags was directly observed in four retail stores in the District 4 of Quezon City. A survey was also conducted among 120 residents from six barangays comprising Area 24, District 4 of the city to gather data on awareness of and compliance to the ordinance. Focus group discussions and interviews with city government officials and store managers, among other stakeholders, were also conducted to enrich quantitative data. Survey results showed high level of awareness of the ordinance, but lower level of awareness of the green fund. Results of the chi-square test of independence revealed that awareness significantly differed across barangays. It is also revealed that the ordinance affects stakeholders in different ways, and that it may have so...

Wolfgang Wüst, Franken als Bierland – eine Einführung, in: Wolfgang WÜST (Hg.), Bier, Brauereien und Wirtshäuser in Franken – eine kulturhistorische Perspektive (Fränkische Arbeitsgemeinschaft e.V., Heft 9) St. Ottilien 2024, S. 11–18.

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In recent years, the oil and gas industry has witnessed the discovery of groundbreaking natural gas shale plays throughout the world. In the United States, shale plays such as the Haynesville Shale in North Louisiana, the Barnett Shale in Texas, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York, and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas are but a few poteatial reserves that stand to fuel our nation's energy needs for decades to ,ome. The Haynesville Shale is a geological formation that lies approximately 10,500 to 13,000 feet below the surface in the area of northwestern Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas and eastern Texas, with most of the formation in Louisiana. The Haynesville Shale hot spot is primarily in five parishes-Caddo, Bossier, DeSoto, Sabine and Red River. More limited development of the Haynesville Shale can also be found in Webster, Bienville, and Natchitoches Parishes. It is estimated that the Hayneiville Shale could hold more than 243 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it potentially the largest onshore natural gas find in U.S. history. At that volume, it contains the equivalency of over 30 billion barrels of oil, or nearly 18 years of current U.S. oil production. In March of 2008, news of the Haynesville Shale went public and North Louisiana became a hotbed of leasing, drilling, and development activity. Record high natural gas prices and declining oil prices created positive market conditions for the rapid development of the Haynesville. Numerous companies, many for the first time, made the decision to commence operations in Northwest Louisiana from their corporate headquarters ir states like Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Colorado. In October of 2009, Department of Natural Resources Secretary Scott Angelle announced that activity in the Haynesville Shale accounted for nearly 10.4 percent of all of the then oil and gas exploration in the United States. Secretary Angelle also noted that "five percent of the nation's drilling activity is in one parish-DeSoto." As of February 24, 2011, there were 1,945 Haynesville Shale wells. Of those wells, 1,036 have been completed and are producing wells, 437 are permitted-185-1

Wolfgang Wüst, Frankens Policey – Alltag, Recht und Ordnung in der Frühen Neuzeit – Analysen und Texte (Schriftenreihe des Mittelalterlichen Kriminalmuseums Rothenburg ob der Tauber XIV) Darmstadt (wbg Academic) 2021 (Hardcover, 384 Seiten, 47 farb. und 7 s/w Abb., Quellenteil, Gruß- und Geleitwort von Markus Hirte und Karl Härter, ISBN: 978-3-534-40567-1)

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We have collected a new dataset consisting of color and depth videos of fluent American Sign Language (ASL) signers performing sequences of 100 ASL signs from a Kinect v2 sensor. This directed dataset had originally been collected as part of an ongoing collaborative project, to aid in the development of a sign-recognition system for identifying occurrences of these 100 signs in video. The set of words consist of vocabulary items that would commonly be learned in a first-year ASL course offered at a university, although the specific set of signs selected for inclusion in the dataset had been motivated by project-related factors. Given increasing interest among sign-recognition and other computer-vision researchers in red-green-blue-depth (RBGD) video, we release this dataset for use by the research community. In addition to the RGB video files, we share depth and HD face data as well as additional features of face, hands, and body produced through post-processing of this data.

We are releasing a dataset containing videos of both fluent and non-fluent signers using American Sign Language (ASL), which were collected using a Kinect v2 sensor. This dataset was collected as a part of a project to develop and evaluate computer vision algorithms to support new technologies for automatic detection of ASL fluency attributes. A total of 45 fluent and non-fluent participants were asked to perform signing homework assignments that are similar to the assignments used in introductory or intermediate level ASL courses. The data is annotated to identify several aspects of signing including grammatical features and non-manual markers. Sign language recognition is currently very data-driven and this dataset can support the design of recognition technologies, especially technologies that can benefit ASL learners. This dataset might also be interesting to ASL education researchers who want to contrast fluent and non-fluent signing.

Este estudio muestra que la clásica teoría de la policía administrativa, convenientemente acotada y constitucionalizada, ofrece una explicación satisfactoria de ciertas modulaciones en el sometimiento de la Administración al principio de legalidad que se han puesto de manifiesto en la actividad administrativa desarrollada frente al COVID-19. En particular, la validez de las cláusulas generales de apoderamiento contenidas en determinadas leyes sanitarias –que serían inadmisibles en otros sectores– y de las actuaciones praeter legem. Además, esta teoría aporta valiosos elementos que delimitan el alcance de estas modulaciones, tanto en su contenido como en sus destinatarios, y que parten de su fundamento: el deber jurídico de no perturbar el orden público. Por otro lado, el trabajo también explicita que la institución de la policía administrativa, complementada con la teoría del estado de necesidad, puede deslindar el espacio de legitimidad de las actuaciones administrativas contra leg...

The paper presents the first dataset that aims to serve interdisciplinary purposes for the utility of computer vision community and sign language linguistics. To date, a majority of Sign Language Recognition (SLR) approaches focus on recognising sign language as a manual gesture recognition problem. However, signers use other articulators: facial expressions, head and body position and movement to convey linguistic information. Given the important role of non-manual markers, this paper proposes a dataset and presents a use case to stress the importance of including non-manual features to improve the recognition accuracy of signs. To the best of our knowledge no prior publicly available dataset exists that explicitly focuses on non-manual components responsible for the grammar of sign languages. To this end, the proposed dataset contains 28250 videos of signs of high resolution and quality, with annotation of manual and nonmanual components. We conducted a series of evaluations in or...

The purpose of this work is to develop a human-robot interaction system that could be used as a sign language interpreter. The paper presents the results of the ongoing work, which aims to recognize sign language in real time. The motivation behind this work lies in the need to differentiate between similar signs that differ in non-manual components present in any sign. To this end, we recorded 2000 videos of twenty frequently used signs in Kazakh-Russian Sign Language (K-RSL), which have similar manual components but differ in non-manual components (i.e. facial expressions, eyebrow height, mouth, and head orientation). We conducted a series of evaluations in order to investigate whether non-manual components would improve sign’s recognition accuracy. Among standard machine learning approaches, Logistic Regression produced the best results, 73% of accuracy for dataset with 20 signs and 80.25% of accuracy for dataset with 2 classes (statement vs question).

In adherence to legal frameworks and formal directives, this executive order is hereby promulgated to institute comprehensive mechanisms aimed at preventing and addressing incidents of gender-based sexual harassment within the barangay. Central to this initiative is the establishment of the Barangay Anti-Sexual Harassment (ASH) Desk, a dedicated focal point for addressing such matters. Concurrently, this order designates Anti-Sexual Harassment Enforcers (ASHEs) to ensure swift and effective response to reported cases. Additionally, it facilitates the establishment of the Anti-Sexual Harassment Referral Network, fostering collaboration with external entities to provide comprehensive support. The issuance of this executive order underscores the barangay's commitment to proactively tackle gender-based sexual harassment, promoting a safe and respectful environment for all residents within its jurisdiction.

We propose a lightweight real-time sign language detection model, as we identify the need for such a case in videoconferencing. We extract optical flow features based on human pose estimation and, using a linear classifier, show these features are meaningful with an accuracy of 80%, evaluated on the Public DGS Corpus. Using a recurrent model directly on the input, we see improvements of up to 91% accuracy, while still working under 4ms. We describe a demo application to sign language detection in the browser in order to demonstrate its usage possibility in videoconferencing applications.

Since American Sign Language (ASL) has no standard written form, Deaf signers frequently share videos in order to communicate in their native language. However, since both hands and face convey critical linguistic information in signed languages, sign language videos cannot preserve signer privacy. While signers have expressed interest, for a variety of applications, in sign language video anonymization that would effectively preserve linguistic content, attempts to develop such technology have had limited success, given the complexity of hand movements and facial expressions. Existing approaches rely predominantly on precise pose estimations of the signer in video footage and often require sign language video datasets for training. These requirements prevent them from processing videos 'in the wild,' in part because of the limited diversity present in current sign language video datasets. To address these limitations, our research introduces DiffSLVA, a novel methodology that utilizes pre-trained large-scale diffusion models for zero-shot text-guided sign language video anonymization. We incorporate ControlNet, which leverages low-level image features such as HED (Holistically-Nested Edge Detection) edges, to circumvent the need for pose estimation. Additionally, we develop a specialized module dedicated to capturing facial expressions, which are critical for conveying essential linguistic information in signed languages. We then combine the above methods to achieve anonymization that better preserves the essential linguistic content of the original signer. This innovative methodology makes possible, for the first time, sign language video anonymization that could be used for real-world applications, which would offer significant benefits to the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing communities. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach with a series of signer anonymization experiments.

Plastic waste has been one of the pressing problems in Baguio City. Among the largest contributors to waste is the City's Public Market. The study's main objective is to assess the implementation of the Plastic and Styrofoam-free Policy of Baguio City in its public market to draft an action plan for its possible improvement. Specifically, it sought to determine the level of implementation of the Plastic and Styrofoam-free Policy by the technical working group from the City General Services Office; to determine the level of compliance with the Plastic and Styrofoam-free Policy among the registered stall owners in the public market; and to determine significant difference between the level of compliance among the different groups of registered stall owners in the public market according to their Line of business. The findings shall be a basis for preparing and proposing an action plan. The researchers used a quantitative research design, particularly the descriptive survey res...

In the Philippines, Local Government Units (LGUs) are working to change the administration and functioning of public markets, and the study looked at how well these LGUs were internalizing the basic ideals of New Public administration (NPM). The study evaluated the effectiveness of PPP/BOT Public Markets in resolving the enduring issues with public markets in the Philippines using Public Private Partnership (PPP) as a framework of NPM for infrastructure development and service delivery. It questioned whether PPP had made public markets run more efficiently as a reform tool. Five of the nation's first PPP public markets, including the Mandaluyong Public Market in Mandaluyong City, the Carmen and Cogon Public Markets in Cagayan de Oro City, the Suki Market in Quezon City, and the Bocaue Public Market in Bocaue, Bulacan, were reviewed to support the evaluation. As performance indicators, it looked at management and organization, the range of facilities and services, LGU revenue income and expenditures, vendor income from the market, and client satisfaction with the caliber of the facilities and services. Case studies, content analyses, ocular inspections, and interviews with city and municipal administrators, market administrators, market vendors, and officials of market vendors organizations were some of the combined research approaches used to gather the study's data. The study shows that while PPP has improved the performance of public markets during the early years of operation, these gains and all advances were not sustained by the LGUs when management and operation of public markets were turned over to them from the private project proponent-operators. The study argued that to sustain public-private partnerships in the operation of the public market, it is imperative to institutionalize reforms in the structure, processes, mindsets of the leaders, and stakeholders. The institutionalization of NPM's core values can be carried out effectively through localization of PPP as a policy so that the necessary legal and institutional frameworks for PPP will be anchored based on the need, strength, and weaknesses of the LGU concerned.

Government (DILG) and the Department of Finance (DOF) issued Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) No. 2019-01, date May 17, 2019, entitled "Guidelines for the Review, Adjustment, Setting and/or Adoption of Reasonable Regulatory Fees and Charges of Local Government Units"; WHEREAS, said Joint Memorandum Circular requires the creation of an Oversight Committee on the revision of fees and charges to ensure the compliance of guidelines exemplified in the JMC;

La política de seguridad pública municipal en México ha dado un salto ideológico al incorporar un modelo considerado integral en la atención a los conflictos comunitarios, el llamado Modelo Homologado de Justicia Cívica. Si bien esta nueva política busca dejar atrás los procesos punitivistas para dar paso a una perspectiva de impartición de justicia municipal con base en la protección de los derechos humanos, están pendientes los análisis relativos a la descripción de las llamadas infracciones o faltas administrativas que describen las conductas objeto
de sanción. En este documento se proponen tres elementos de análisis que faltan en la justificación de las infracciones señaladas en los reglamentos municipales, a saber: (1) la descripción objetiva y sin carácter axiológico, (2) la identificación del componente de violencia y, (3) la validación social de la conducta. En suma, la propuesta se establece para incentivar líneas de investigación que terminen de dar sustento a un modelo de atención integral que verdaderamente logre la prevención
de la violencia y la reincidencia a nivel municipal.

Youth participation in governance is an investment of every nation. RA 7160 created the SK and KK as primary youth organizations mandated to work for reforms, policies, and projects. After three decades, the KK and SK have been blemished with issues such as corruption, political dynasty, mismanagement, skills deficiencies, and incompetence. In 2016, RA 10742 introduced the capacitation of the SK officials with training and seminars to enhance their skills and competencies. The study assessed the training needs of 116 KK members and SK officials of the municipality of Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya, by determining their knowledge and competencies. This study utilized a descriptive-quantitative type of research. Results of the study show that respondents have a fair knowledge of the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards, decentralization, and local governance, while poor on Parliamentary Procedures. They have low competencies in effective decision-making, strategic thinking, policy development, planning, and fostering collaboration among the youth. Results show significant differences in their knowledge of the Code of Ethics and Standards, decentralization and local governance, and Parliamentary Procedures, including their competencies in effective decision-making, strategic thinking, planning, and effective communication. Findings imply that the respondents have weak capacities in managing the KK and SK. Their limited capacities for strategic thinking, policy development, planning, and implementation, engaging other youth, as well as partnership, suggest for a training program that will capacitate and enhance fundamental skills of KK members and SK officials essential in organizational management and legislation.

Sign language recognition is a challenging gesture sequence recognition problem, characterized by quick and highly coarticulated motion. In this paper we focus on recognition of fingerspelling sequences in American Sign Language (ASL) videos collected in the wild, mainly from YouTube and Deaf social media. Most previous work on sign language recognition has focused on controlled settings where the data is recorded in a studio environment and the number of signers is limited. Our work aims to address the challenges of real-life data, reducing the need for detection or segmentation modules commonly used in this domain. We propose an end-to-end model based on an iterative attention mechanism, without explicit hand detection or segmentation. Our approach dynamically focuses on increasingly high-resolution regions of interest. It outperforms prior work by a large margin. We also introduce a newly collected data set of crowdsourced annotations of fingerspelling in the wild, and show that performance can be further improved with this additional data set.

The ageing population trend is correlated with an increased prevalence of acquired cognitive impairments such as dementia. Although there is no cure for dementia, a timely diagnosis helps in obtaining necessary support and appropriate medication. Researchers are working urgently to develop effective technological tools that can help doctors undertake early identification of cognitive disorder. In particular, screening for dementia in ageing Deaf signers of British Sign Language (BSL) poses additional challenges as the diagnostic process is bound up with conditions such as quality and availability of interpreters, as well as appropriate questionnaires and cognitive tests. On the other hand, deep learning based approaches for image and video analysis and understanding are promising, particularly the adoption of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), which require large amounts of training data. In this paper, however, we demonstrate novelty in the following way: a) a multi-modal machine learning based automatic recognition toolkit for early stages of dementia among BSL users in that features from several parts of the body contributing to the sign envelope, e.g., hand-arm movements and facial expressions, are combined, b) universality in that it is possible to apply our technique to users of any sign language, since it is language independent, c) given the trade-off between complexity and accuracy of machine learning (ML) prediction models as well as the limited amount of training and testing data being available, we show that our approach is not over-fitted and has the potential to scale up.

The noble spirit and intent behind Republic Act No. 9344, as amended by Republic Act No. 10360, encapsulate one of the most basic tenets of international human rights law: that the welfare of children must always be upheld. Too many reports have reached the police where the couriers of illegal drugs or the perpetrators of various crimes are children. The principle of restorative justice mandates that these erring children be afforded a chance to identify, reconcile and atone for their wrongful acts, with the full and convivial participation of the community and the victim. The philosophy behind the thrust for restorative justice, instead of punitive justice with its rigid adherence to the letter of the law, is to look beyond the offense committed by the child. We must look into why it was committed, and what the circumstances and social milieu of the child, the victim, and society in general are, in order to begin healing and reintegration. This Manual is a giant leap to that direction. The PNP continues to move forward in keeping society safe and free from crime, while at the same time, safeguarding the rights of all children. We stand by our sworn duty-to serve and to protect.

Sumario: 1. El cambio operado en 2013: de la seguridad en los lugares públicos a la policía local. 2. El sentido ampliatorio de la modificación: la policía no se circunscribe a la seguridad ni a los lugares públicos. 3. La recuperación de un título competencial municipal clásico en el régimen local español. 4. La policía local como inherente al “poder municipal”. 5. La policía local como título competencial directo de los municipios y justificador de actividad de limitación. 6. Orden público o convivencia ciudadana. 7. Competencias municipal sobre policía y competencias estatales y autonómicas.

Action quality assessment (AQA) aims at automatically judging human action based on a video of the said action and assigning a performance score to it. The majority of works in the existing literature on AQA divide RGB videos into short clips, transform these clips to higherlevel representations using Convolutional 3D (C3D) networks, and aggregate them through averaging. These higher-level representations are used to perform AQA. We find that the current clip level feature aggregation technique of averaging is insufficient to capture the relative importance of clip level features. In this work, we propose a learning-based weightedaveraging technique. Using this technique, better performance can be obtained without sacrificing too much computational resources. We call this technique Weight-Decider(WD). We also experiment with ResNets for learning better representations for action quality assessment. We assess the effects of the depth and input clip size of the convolutional neural network on the quality of action score predictions. We achieve a new state-of-the-art Spearman's rank correlation of 0.9315 (an increase of 0.45%) on the MTL-AQA dataset using a 34 layer (2+1)D ResNet with the capability of processing 32 frame clips, with WD aggregation.

Excessive alcohol use causes approximately 80,000 deaths in the United States each year. The Guide to Community Preventive Services recommends reducing the density of alcohol outlets-the number of physical locations in which alcoholic beverages are available for purchase either per area or per population-through the use of regulatory authority as an effective strategy for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms. We briefly review the research on density of alcohol outlets and public health and describe the powers localities have to influence alcohol outlet density. We summarize Regulating Alcohol Outlet Density: An Action Guide, which describes steps that local communities can take to reduce outlet density and the key competencies and resources of state and local health departments. These include expertise in public health surveillance and evaluation methods, identification and tracking of outcome measures, geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, community planning and development of multisector efforts, and education of community leaders and policy makers. We illustrate the potential for partnerships between public health agencies and local communities by presenting a contemporary case study from Omaha, Nebraska. Public health agencies have a vital and necessary role to play in efforts to reduce alcohol outlet density. They are often unaware of the potential of this strategy and have strong potential partners in the thousands of community coalitions nationwide that are focused on reducing alcohol-related problems.

The study measured the factors affecting effective dissemination of peace and order ordinances to punong barangays in the Municipality of Maria Aurora, Aurora Province, Philippines. The study used predesigned survey questionnaires and key informants in the gathering of data. The questionnaire distribution was based on purposive sampling. The participants are thirty-four (34) punong barangays. The barangay is the smallest political unit in the Philippines. The data gathered are treated with frequency distribution and weighted mean. The factors of dissemination are: a) socio-demographic characteristics of respondents, b) information sources, c) strategies and channels of communication are measured. In general, participants’ level of interest towards new legislation is positive. However, a slight divergence is noticed in the case of upland barangays as they manifested little awareness on the existing peace and order ordinances. Thus, it is recommended that effective dissemination strat...

This study investigates the effectiveness of Makati City's plastic ban ordinance in promoting responsible waste management practices among its citizens. Enacted as part of the city’s broader environmental agenda, the ordinance aims to curb plastic pollution by prohibiting the distribution and use of single-use plastics in commercial establishments. However, it allows exemptions for certain plastic-packaged goods, including bottled water, food wrappers, and products sold by micro-businesses, raising questions about the policy’s overall impact. Through a combination of policy analysis, field observations, and surveys of local residents and business owners, the study assesses public awareness, compliance levels, and behavioral changes resulting from the ban. Findings highlight both the strengths and limitations of the ordinance: while it has increased environmental consciousness and reduced certain forms of plastic waste, the exemptions and inconsistent enforcement have limited its overall effectiveness. Given the resilience of plastic in ecosystems and its role in worsening environmental degradation (Mundo, 2014), this study underscores the need for more comprehensive waste management strategies, stronger enforcement mechanisms, and support for sustainable packaging alternatives.

Purpose Lack of competition in procurement processes may affect the sustainable procurement due to overpriced and low-quality infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current practices in Malaysian public-private partnership (PPP) in handling unsolicited proposals within PPP and to suggest ways in which the practices can be improved to achieve sustainability. Design/methodology/approach Case study was conducted within which 13 semi-structured interviews were carried out with different groups: the policy makers, the practitioners and the experts. The study also scrutinised published guidelines and relevant regulations used by in management of unsolicited proposals in Malaysian PPP. Findings The Government of Malaysia welcomes unsolicited proposals from the private sector, even though it does not publish any established mechanisms to handle such proposals. Lack of competition in unsolicited proposals is a major concern in achieving sustainable goals of procureme...

El alcoholismo, a diferencia del simple consumo excesivo o irresponsable de alcohol, ha sido considerado en el pasado un síntoma de estrés social o psicológico, o un comportamiento inadaptado. El alcoholismo ha pasado a ser definido recientemente, y quizá de forma más acertada, como una

So many years after independence, more importation of foreign brand of alcohol has remained a strategy of economic imperialism. Attempts to modernize African brands of alcohol such as bottled palm wine and burukutu have not received the kind of scientific endorsement it deserve. In all drinking spaces in Nigeria, the foreign brand of drinks in Nigeria dominates the market. These brands no doubt serve as a yardstick of measuring class distinction. This trend began as part of deliberate effort to dominate the local economy by re-inventing sense of class, modernity and sense of new belonging expressed through the kind bottles of drinks consumed by the people. As a result, the African brands of drinks were downgraded in a kind of economic war that she plays a subservient role even though by drinking, Africans contributes greatly to the Europeans economy at their own peril.

Action quality assessment (AQA) aims at automatically judging human action based on a video of the said action and assigning a performance score to it. The majority of works in the existing literature on AQA transform RGB videos to higher-level representations using C3D networks. These higher-level representations are used to perform action quality assessment. Due to the relatively shallow nature of C3D, the quality of extracted features is lower than what could be extracted using a deeper convolutional neural network. In this paper, we experiment with deeper convolutional neural networks with residual connections for learning representations for action quality assessment. We assess the effects of the depth and the input clip size of the convolutional neural network on the quality of action score predictions. We also look at the effect of using (2+1)D convolutions instead of 3D convolutions for feature extraction. We find that the current clip level feature representation aggregatio...

Wolfgang Wüst (Hg.),
Tobias Riedl, Regina Hindelang (Red.),
Die „gute“ Policey im Reichskreis. Zur frühmodernen Normensetzung in den Kernregionen des Alten Reiches, Band 5: Policeyordnungen in den Markgraftümern Ansbach und Kulmbach-Bayreuth. Ein Quellenwerk, Erlangen 2011 (722 Seiten, 14 Abbildungen, Glossar, Orts-, Personen – und Sachregister).

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Alcohol use can cause significant harm. We examined the relationships between neighborhood disadvantage, consumption of high-alcohol-content beverages (HACB), drinking norms, and self-reported drinking consequences using data from the 2000 and 2005 National Alcohol Surveys (N09,971 current drinkers) and the 2000 Decennial Census. We hypothesized that (1) individuals living in disadvantaged neighborhoods would report more negative drinking consequences than individuals living in more affluent neighborhoods, and (2) this relationship would be mediated by HACB consumption and pro-drunkenness drinking norms. Neighborhood disadvantage was based on a composite measure of socioeconomic indicators from the 2000 Decennial Census (five-item composite, alpha00.89). We measured high alcohol content beverage consumption in terms of whether respondents engaged in frequent or heavy consumption of malt liquor, fortified wine, or distilled spirits/liquor. The outcome was a dichotomous indicator of two or more of 15 past-year social, legal, work, and health consequences. Simultaneous, multivariate path modeling tested direct and indirect effects of neighborhood disadvantage, HACB consumption, and prodrunkenness norms on consequences. Individuals living in disadvantaged neighborhoods reported significantly more negative drinking consequences than individuals living in more affluent neighborhoods. Consumption of high-alcoholcontent beverages and pro-drunkenness norms did not mediate this relationship. However, heavy distilled spirits/liquor use was a significant mediator of other neighborhood characteristics (i.e., percent African American). Living in an African American neighborhood was related to increased spirits/liquor consumption and, in turn, reporting more negative drinking consequences. Greater scrutiny of advertising and tax policies related to distilled spirits/liquor is needed to prevent future drinking problems, especially in minority neighborhoods.

So many years after independence, more importation of foreign brand of alcohol has remained a strategy of economic imperialism. Attempts to modernize African brands of alcohol such as bottled palm wine and burukutu have not received the kind of scientific endorsement it deserve. In all drinking spaces in Nigeria, the foreign brand of drinks in Nigeria dominates the market. These brands no doubt serve as a yardstick of measuring class distinction. This trend began as part of deliberate effort to dominate the local economy by re-inventing sense of class, modernity and sense of new belonging expressed through the kind bottles of drinks consumed by the people. As a result, the African brands of drinks were downgraded in a kind of economic war that she plays a subservient role even though by drinking, Africans contributes greatly to the Europeans economy at their own peril.

Hand gesture recognition is an attractive research field with a wide range of applications, including video games and telesurgery techniques. Another important application of hand gesture recognition is the translation of sign language, which is a complicated structured form of hand gestures. In sign language, the fingers' configuration, the hand's orientation, and the hand's relative position to the body are the primitives of structured expressions. The importance of hand gesture recognition has increased due to the prevalence of touchless applications and the rapid growth of the hearing-impaired population. However, developing an efficient recognition system needs to overcome the challenges of hand segmentation, local hand shape representation, global body configuration representation, and gesture sequence modeling. In this paper, a novel system is proposed for dynamic hand gesture recognition using multiple deep learning architectures for hand segmentation, local and global feature representations, and sequence feature globalization and recognition. The proposed system is evaluated on a very challenging dataset, which consists of 40 dynamic hand gestures performed by 40 subjects in an uncontrolled environment. The results show that the proposed system outperforms state-of-the-art approaches, demonstrating its effectiveness.

So many years after independence, more importation of foreign brand of alcohol has remained a strategy of economic imperialism. Attempts to modernize African brands of alcohol such as bottled palm wine and burukutu have not received the kind of scientific endorsement it deserve. In all drinking spaces in Nigeria, the foreign brand of drinks in Nigeria dominates the market. These brands no doubt serve as a yardstick of measuring class distinction. This trend began as part of deliberate effort to dominate the local economy by re-inventing sense of class, modernity and sense of new belonging expressed through the kind bottles of drinks consumed by the people. As a result, the African brands of drinks were downgraded in a kind of economic war that she plays a subservient role even though by drinking, Africans contributes greatly to the Europeans economy at their own peril.