University of the Philippines

About: University of the Philippines is a education organization based out in Quezon City, Philippines. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 4589 authors who have published 4437 publications receiving 114846 citations. The organization is also known as: UP.

International multicenter evaluation of the clinical utility of a dipstick assay for detection of Leptospira-specific immunoglobulin M antibodies in human serum specimens

Abstract: We performed a multicenter evaluation of a robust and easily performed dipstick assay for the serodiagnosis of human leptospirosis. The assay is aimed at the detection of Leptospira-specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies. The study involved 2,665 serum samples collected from 2,057 patients with suspected leptospirosis in 12 countries on five continents with different levels of endemicity and different surveillance systems. The patients were grouped as laboratory-confirmed leptospirosis case patients and noncase patients based on the results of culturing and the microscopic agglutination test. Paired samples from 27.7% of the subjects were tested. Of the 485 case patients, 87.4% had a positive dipstick result for one or more samples. Of the 1,513 noncase patients, only 7.2% had a positive result. Whereas most (88.4%) of the positive samples from the case patients showed moderate to strong (2+ to 4+) staining in the dipstick assay, most (68.1%) of the positive samples from the noncase patients showed weak (1+) staining. The sensitivity of the dipstick assay increased from 60.1% for acute-phase serum samples to 87.4% for convalescent-phase samples. The specificities for these two groups of samples were 94.1 and 92.7%, respectively. The dipstick assay detected a broad variety of serogroups. The results of the dipstick assay were concordant (observed agreement, 93.2%; kappa value, 0.76) with the results of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the detection of specific IgM antibodies, a test which is often used in the laboratory diagnosis of current or recent leptospirosis. This study demonstrated that this easily performed dipstick assay is a valuable and useful test for the quick screening for leptospirosis; has a wide applicability in different countries with different degrees of endemicity; can be used at all levels of the health care system, including the field; and will be useful for detecting and monitoring outbreaks of leptospirosis.

Exploitation-related reef fish species richness depletion in the epicenter of marine biodiversity

Abstract: The central Visayan region of the Philippines historically has the highest concentration of coral reef fishes than any other large marine area in the world. This well-supported biogeographic phenomenon is contradicted by recent transect observations on coral reefs that indicates that the Visayan region and the southern Philippine Sea region have the lowest species richness in the Philippines. The Visayan region has unusually low counts of species typically exploited in fisheries and the aquarium trade. This evidence, coupled with numerous reports of intense fishing and habitat degradation and subsequent species declines at local scales suggests that this exploitation is having a cumulative effect on the overall species richness of the Visayan region. Successes in Marine Protected Areas in this region in increasing species richness at local scales suggests that improved management of these protected areas coupled with much more intensive fisheries management will be key to reviving a healthy biodiversity in the Visayas.

Diversity of the seaweed flora of the Philippines and its utilization

Abstract: Some 820 species of marine macrobenthic algae, including many species of Cyanophyta, are reported from the Philippines. These consist of 472 species of Rhodophyta belonging to 37 families and 11 orders, 134 species of Phaeophyta belonging to 10 families and 7 orders and 214 species of Chlorophyta belonging to 11 families and 7 orders. The Rhodophyta comprise 57.6%, the Phaeophyta 16.3% and the Chlorophyta 26.1% of the flora. Many of these species are of economic importance as food, sources of industrial products such as polysaccharides, bioactive and nutritional natural products, and growth promoting substances. Farming seaweeds is presently one of the most productive and environmentally friendly forms of livelihood for coastal populations. More than 80 000 people have been estimated to culture some 10000 ha of the coastal area. For example, production of farmed Kappaphycus/Eucheuma reached 58 324 dry metric tons in 1995 and was valued at US$44 million dollars. Production areas are concentrated in the southern Philippines. Other species in limited commercial production are Caulerpa lentillifera through farming, Gracilaria species through farming and gathering of local wild stocks and Gelidiella acerosa from harvesting wild stocks. Today, seaweeds and their products are the third most important fishery export.

A Framework for Invertible, Real-Time Constant-Q Transforms

Abstract: Audio signal processing frequently requires time-frequency representations and in many applications, a non-linear spacing of frequency bands is preferable. This paper introduces a framework for efficient implementation of invertible signal transforms allowing for non-uniform frequency resolution. Non-uniformity in frequency is realized by applying nonstationary Gabor frames with adaptivity in the frequency domain. The realization of a perfectly invertible constant-Q transform is described in detail. To achieve real-time processing, independent of signal length, slice-wise processing of the full input signal is proposed and referred to as sliCQ transform. By applying frame theory and FFT-based processing, the presented approach overcomes computational inefficiency and lack of invertibility of classical constant-Q transform implementations. Numerical simulations evaluate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm and the method's applicability is illustrated by experiments on real-life audio signals .