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The design and implementation of systematic reviews and meta-analyses are often hampered by high financial costs, significant time commitment, and biases due to researchers' familiarity with studies. We proposed and implemented a fast and standardized method for search term selection using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and co-occurrence networks to identify relevant search terms to reduce biases in conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. • The method was implemented using Python packaged dubbed Ananse, which is benchmarked on the search terms strategy for naïve search proposed by Grames et al. (2019) written in “R”. Ananse was applied to a case example towards finding search terms to implement a systematic literature review on cumulative effect studies on forest ecosystems. • The software automatically corrected and classified 100% of the duplicate articles identified by manual deduplication. Ananse was applied to the cumulative effects assessment case study, but it can serve as a general-purpose, open-source software system that can support extensive systematic reviews within a relatively short period with reduced biases. • Besides generating keywords, Ananse can act as middleware or a data converter for integrating multiple datasets into a database.

With its northern location, the exposure and vulnerability of Canada's forest ecosystems to climate change impacts are all too glaring. While there is now an extensive body of literature describing expected climate change impacts and potential responses, studies characterizing the implementation of adaptation and mitigation practices in forest management remain rare in the Canadian forest sector. Using a systematic literature review, we examined reports on forest management practices implemented in response to climate change, specifically focusing on governance and institutional arrangements that either support or limit climate change adaptation and mitigation responses. Our literature sample size of 24 documents suggests that the body of literature reporting on adaptation and mitigation practices in forest management is scarce. Governments remain the dominant actors providing funding and leading the implementation and reporting of climate change adaptation practices, primarily in response to national or international climate change commitments. Forest practices such as enhanced silviculture, assisted migration, and nature-based solutions were the most frequently reported. However, given the scarcity of literature, it is difficult to conclude the scope of climate change adaptation practice uptake in Canada. Barriers such as lack of information/data, inter-jurisdictional knowledge transfer, policy conflicts, forest tenure models, technical capacity gaps, and economic barriers to adaptation need to be overcome to strengthen climate change response in forest management. Better coordination of reporting at the provincial and national levels and improved information flows between private sector organizations and governments are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada is recognized as a global leader in sustainable forest management. Canadian forests and the forest sector remain vital pillars of the Canadian economy and home to many rural and remote communities. However, climate change is an existential threat to the sustainability of forests and forest-dependent communities. While both direct and indirect threats posed by climate change to Canada's forest sector are now well understood, our understanding of specific forest practices that have emerged from the body of science to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts is not well documented. Through a review of the scientific and grey literature, this study expands our knowledge and operational gaps associated with implementing climate change adaptation and mitigation practices in Canadian forests. The study found a dearth of literature specifically dedicated to reporting on the type of forest practices currently in use across Canada to address mitigation and adaptation. Most reports or studies were published in 2019 or later, with federal and provincial governments being the dominant actors in reporting and monitoring, research, and funding. Across the 15 terrestrial ecozones in Canada, forest practices linked to climate change were reported in 12 ecozones, with most practices reported in the Montane Cordillera located in western Canada. Common forest practices reported include fuel management, assisted migration, enhanced silvicultural activities, and carbon offset projects. We conclude that climate change adaptation/mitigation practices in Canada are in their early stages of implementation. Many practices remain in experimental stages (e.g., genetic trials) or are implemented at a relatively small scale in Canada (e.g., climate-based seed transfer and carbon reserves). The literature suggests that the most mainstream practices associated with climate change mitigation in Canada include tree planting for carbon sequestration and the designation of protected areas to enhance ecosystem resilience. We conclude that despite increasing reports linking climate change benefits with reported forest practices, the reporting in the scientific literature is scarce, poorly reported, and often not grounded in credible evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Context. Currently, there are a lot of approaches that are used for textual search. Nowadays, methods such as pattern-matching and optical character recognition are highly used for retrieving preferred information from documents with proven effectiveness. However, they work with a common or predictive document structure, while unstructured documents are neglected. The problem – is automating the textual search in documents with unstructured content. The object of the study was to develop a method and implement it into an efficient model for searching the content in unstructured textual information. Objective. The goal of the work is the implementation of a rule-based textual search method and a model for seeking and retrieving information from documents with unstructured text content. Method. To achieve the purpose of the research, the method of rule-based textual search in heterogenous content was developed and applied in the appropriately designed model. It is based on natural language processing that has been improved in recent years along with a new generative artificial intelligence becoming more available. Results. The method has been implemented in a designed model that represents a pattern or a framework of unstructured textual search for software engineers. The application programming interface has been implemented. Conclusions. The conducted experiments have confirmed the proposed software’s operability and allow recommendations for use in practice for solving the problems of textual search in unstructured documents. The prospects for further research may include the improvement of the performance using multithreading or parallelization for large textual documents along with the optimization approaches to minimize the impact of OpenAI application programming interface content processing limitations. Furthermore, additional investigation might incorporate extending the area of imperative variables usage in programming and software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with ensuring the sustainability of the financial system and combating hybrid threats in relation to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) measures. International cooperation in the field of combating hybrid threats is only at the beginning, and in many ways, the experience of international cooperation in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, which is based on many years of experience in the institutional and legislative fields, could be used. Hybrid threats are constantly changing and evolving, which means our response to them must also constantly evolve and adapt. The aim of the presented study is the analysis of the problem of the legalization of income from criminal activity and the financing of terrorism and their possible relationship with the fight against hybrid threats and maintaining the stability of the financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines intersectionality and climate vulnerability in Ghana's Upper West Region. Located within the southern fringe of the West African Sahel, and inhabited largely by smallholder farmers, the Upper West faces recurring climate extremes. This paper asks, how do the intersections between different inequalities and power relations shape vulnerability to climate extremes? Evidence for the paper comes from intensive qualitative fieldwork. Focusing especially on lived experiences from four case studies, the paper demonstrates the textured ways in which masculinity ideals, health status, religion, gender, age, marital status, and poverty intersect to deepen farmers' vulnerability to dry spells, flash floods, and after-storm recovery. Overall, the paper advances two interrelated arguments. Firstly, it argues that vulnerability analysis that focuses independently on gender, class, religion, and other characteristics, is insufficient because it risks homogenizing entire groups. Secondly, the paper argues that climate extremes do not always affect women more adversely than men. Indeed, dominant ideals of threatened masculinity can make men highly vulnerable during extreme climatic events. In the end, the paper concludes that if vulnerability analysis fails to unmask difference or move beyond binary gender categories, ensuing interventions may miss the real needs of countless individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]