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• Carbon forest finance often fails for political reasons. • Forest finance cannot address systematic environmental injustices. • Finance opportunities are vulnerable to capture by powerful entities. • Strong enforceable rights, accountability, and countervailing power are needed. • Non-financial reforms must accompany forest finance. Interest in forest-based carbon storage has led to growth in financing for carbon forestry. Most financial strategies rest on strong assumptions which are not valid in many parts of the world. We use cases drawn from tribal forestry in the US and government forestry in India to illustrate how carbon finance relies on the presence of enforceable rights, representative and accountable institutions, clear incentives, and symmetrical power relations. In the absence of these conditions, carbon finance provides perverse incentives that undermine biodiversity and human rights without storing carbon. We suggest that for forest-based carbon storage to be successful, more attention needs to be paid to underlying political reforms, as well as to policies that are not reliant on finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic diversity existing in sorghum cultivation has produced varieties oriented to a dual-purpose scheme, fulfilling agronomic characteristics like acceptable grain yield and a good sugar content in the stem, allowing its use in grain production and obtaining good quality forage. The objective of this work was to quantify the sugar content in three stem sections of 106 grain sorghum genotypes. The evaluation was carried out during the spring-summer agricultural cycle, 2019-2020. The genotypes were planted under a randomized complete block design with three replications. For each genotype and its three repetitions, the juice sugar content of the basal, intermediate, and upper section of the stem was evaluated, using the Brix degree scale during the flowering stage. Sugar content in the sorghum stem was 9.11 % in the intermediate section and 7.97% in the upper section, the mean test generated 21 differentiated groups, and the cluster analysis produced seven groups considering the values of the mean test for each stem section. Concentrations of sugars in the upper sections of the sorghum stem were for the phenological development of the crop since these sugars are being translocated towards the panicle in formation to be used for reserves in the grain's endosperm. The cluster analysis generated seven groups with identical profiles of sugars considering the values for each section of the stem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce the design and manufacturing process of a transtibial orthopedic implant. We used medical-grade polyurethane polymer resin to fabricate a 3D porous architected implant with tunable isotropy, employing a high-speed printing method known as Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP). Our objective is to enhance the weight-bearing capabilities of the bone structures in the residual limb, thereby circumventing the traditional reliance on a natural bridge. To achieve a custom-made design, we acquire the topology and morphology of the residual limb as well as the bone structure of the tibia and fibula, utilizing computed tomography (CT) and high-resolution 3D scanning. We employed a dynamic topological optimization method, informed by gait cycle data, to effectively reduce the mass of the implant. This approach, which differs from conventional static methods, enables the quantification of variations in applied forces over time. Using the Euler-Lagrange energy approach, we propose the equations of motion for a homologous multibody model with three degrees of freedom. The versatility of the Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) method facilitates the integration of homogenization methods for microscale porous architectures into the optimized domain. The design of these porous architectures is based on a bias-driven tuning symmetry isotropy of a Triply Periodic Minimal Surface (Schwarz Primitive surface). The internal porosity of the structure significantly reduces weight without compromising the isotropic behavior of the implant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few prospective studies in the gynecologic surgical literature that compared patient-reported outcomes between open and minimally invasive hysterectomies within enhanced recovery after surgery pathways. This study aimed to compare prospectively collected perioperative patient-reported symptom burden and interference measures in open compared with minimally invasive hysterectomy cohorts within enhanced recovery after surgery pathways. We compared patient-reported symptom burden and functional interference in 646 patients who underwent a hysterectomy (254 underwent open surgery and 392 underwent minimally invasive surgery) for benign and malignant indications under enhanced recovery after surgery protocols. Outcomes were prospectively measured using the validated MD Anderson Symptom Inventory, which was administered perioperatively up to 8 weeks after surgery. Cohorts were compared using Fisher exact and chi-squared tests, adjusted longitudinal generalized linear mixed modeling, and Kaplan Meier curves to model return to no or mild symptoms. The open cohort had significantly worse preoperative physical functional interference (P =.001). At the time of hospital discharge postoperatively, the open cohort reported significantly higher mean symptom severity scores and more moderate or severe scores for overall (P <.001) and abdominal pain (P <.001), fatigue (P =.001), lack of appetite (P <.001), bloating (P =.041), and constipation (P <.001) when compared with the minimally invasive cohort. The open cohort also had significantly higher interference in physical functioning (score 5.0 vs 2.7; P <.001) than the minimally invasive cohort at the time of discharge with no differences in affective interference between the 2 groups. In mixed modeling analysis of the first 7 postoperative days, both cohorts reported improved symptom burden and functional interference over time with generally slower recovery in the open cohort. From 1 to 8 postoperative weeks, the open cohort had worse mean scores for all evaluated symptoms and interference measures except for pain with urination, although scores indicated mild symptomatic burden and interference in both cohorts. The time to return to no or mild symptoms was significantly longer in the open cohort for overall pain (14 vs 4 days; P <.001), fatigue (8 vs 4 days; P <.001), disturbed sleep (2 vs 2 days; P <.001), and appetite (1.5 vs 1 days; P <.001) but was significantly longer in the minimally invasive cohort for abdominal pain (42 vs 28 days; P <.001) and bloating (42 vs 8 days; P <.001). The median time to return to no or mild functional interference was longer in the open than in the minimally invasive hysterectomy cohort for physical functioning (36 vs 32 days; P <.001) with no difference in compositive affective functioning (5 vs 5 days; P =.07) between the groups. Open hysterectomy was associated with increased symptom burden in the immediate postoperative period and longer time to return to no or mild symptom burden and interference with physical functioning. However, all patient-reported measures improved within days to weeks of both open and minimally invasive surgery and differences were not always clinically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No cut-off scores for the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory-Brief (SPAI-B) are available to screen for young adults with and without social anxiety disorder (SAD). In addition, there is a currently heated debate on the utility of the performance-only specifier in DSM-5. The present study is aimed at covering these gaps. Participants included 124 young adults in higher education with a clinical diagnosis of SAD and 81 healthy controls. The SPAI-B scores revealed a continuum of severity among the nonclinical population, performance-only specifier participants, and those with both performance and social interactional fears. Data suggested to use a rounded cut-off of 24 to screen for patients with both performance and interactional fears, and a rounded cut-off score of 23 for young adults with performance-only specifier. Findings demonstrated that the SPAI-B is particularly useful as a screening measure among young adults in higher education, but the limited discriminative capacity of the performance-only specifier may call into question the clinical utility of this recently established specifier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial body of research has demonstrated the challenges commonly facing people with visible differences (disfigurements) and explored the potential benefits offered by specialist psychosocial support and intervention for those who are negatively affected. However, little is known about the availability of such support in Europe for people whose appearance is in any way different to ‘the norm’. This survey of 116 psychosocial specialists from 15 European countries, working with a range of patient groups, has shown a tendency for specialists to prioritise Cognitive-behavioural-based approaches, amongst a wide range of other approaches and interventional techniques. It indicates variations in the availability of support, and a perceived need for improved access to interventions, additional training, and greater awareness of the psychosocial issues associated with visible differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of disciplines examine human-environment interactions, identifying factors that affect environmental outcomes important for human well-being. A central challenge for these disciplines is integrating an ever-increasing number of findings into a coherent body of theory. Without a repository for this theory, researchers cannot adequately leverage this knowledge to guide future empirical work. Comparability across field sites, study areas and scientific fields is hampered, as is the progress of sustainability science. To address this challenge we constructed the first repository of theoretical statements linking social and ecological variables to environmental outcomes. Stored in a relational database that is accessible via a website, this repository includes systematically formalized theories produced from researchers studying resilience, environmental conservation, common-pool resource governance, environmental and resource economics and political ecology. Theories are explicitly linked together in the database to form the first coherent expression of the types of human-environment interactions that affect outcomes for natural resources and, by extension, the people who use them. Analysis of this repository shows that a variety of types of theories exist, from the simple to the complex, and that theories tend to thematically cluster by scientific field, although the theories of every field were related in at least some way to theories from other fields. Thus there is much potential for increased interaction across these fields, hopefully with the help of resources such as this repository. The theories and variables employed to express their arguments are publicly viewable in a wiki-like format, as a resource for the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a practical application of POA (Parliamentary Optimization Algorithm) for creating personalized learning paths in online learning. The objective of building a personalized learning path is to produce a suitable sequence of learning units for a student to work with. We present and tune the parliamentary metaheuristic for a practical instance of the sequencing problem in a web engineering master programme and compare it with standard versions of other well established metaheuristics (PSO and genetic algorithms). Results suggest that permut-POA deals satisfactorily with sequencing problems and it is easy to fine tune, and also that it outperforms the other optimizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]