196,161 research outputs found
Embedded deforestation: The Case study of the Brazilian-Italian bovine leather trade
Get PDFDeforestation and forest degradation driven by Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) are important sources of carbon emissions. Market globalization and trade liberalization policies reinforce this trend and risk deforestation to be embedded in global value chains. Due to the complexity of global production and trade systems, deforestation risk is also embedded in the supply chains of the products and sectors that are not direct deforestation drivers. Bovine leather is a commodity closely entangled in the debates about deforestation as it is a by-product of cattle. This research focuses on leather trade between Brazil and Italy to demonstrate the channels through which Italian imports of Brazilian leather could possess embedded Amazonian deforestation and related risks. The data employed for the analysis was searched at three different levels for the leather trade between Brazil and Italy: (a) the country level annual leather trade statistics for the years 2014-2018 taken from the Comtrade database; (b) the state level leather trade data, for the years 2014-2018 taken from the Comexstat database; and (c) the exporter-importer level leather trade data for the period of August 2017-August 2018, based on customs declarations. The analysis helps to demonstrate that the Italian leather trade with Brazil possesses the risk of deforestation unless the proper traceability and due diligence systems are in place to claim the opposite. The European and Italian leather industry need to be more proactive in acknowledging the existence of the risk at different levels, putting full traceability systems in place and sending out clear market signals that deforestation is not tolerated, and that sustainability is valued
On the extension problem for weak moment maps
No full textsponsorship: We thank Marco Zambon for helpful conversations and comments. L. M. acknowledges the support of the long term structural funding - Methusalem grant of the Flemish Government. L. R. was supported by the Ruhr University Research School PLUS, funded by Germany's Excellence Initiative [DFG GSC 98/3] and the PRIME programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) . The authors would like to thank the anonymous referee for a careful reading of the manuscript and very helpful suggestions. (long term structural funding - Methusalem grant of the Flemish Government, Ruhr University Research School PLUS - Germany's Excellence Initiative|DFG GSC 98/3, PRIME programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF))status: Publishe
Making deforestation risk visible. Discourses on bovine leather supply chain in Brazil
No full textLarge-scale agricultural production and trade of commodities is linked to deforestation risk in the tropics. This article explores political discourses of deforestation risk in the bovine leather supply chain in Brazil. It discusses how specific interpretations and practices of transparency in the leather supply chain affect legitimacy, fairness and sustainability outcomes. The article applies a political discourse analysis to data collected in multiple localities in Brazil between May and July 2018. The data entails thirty-nine semi-structured, recorded, and transcribed interviews, in the form of both face-to-face and video call interviews. We find that the concept of sustainable supply chains is as much a political term, as it is an economic and managerial term. The results show that different discourses articulate deforestation risk of bovine leather differently and highlights how the storylines of each discourse bring attention both to what is made visible and invisible in relation to sustainability, legitimacy, and fairness. Moreover, the results emphasise the importance of the role and voice of frontier settlers, by presenting how their storylines inform a political discourse on livelihoods. We argue that a simplistic understanding of transparency may lead to negative implications for livelihoods and sustainability outcomes. Accordingly, there is a need for increased public scrutiny of supply chains, including the leather one, and for special attention to unequal power relations and the importance of meaningful inclusion of vulnerable groups and populations
Voluntary sustainability standards to cope with the new European Union regulation on deforestation-free products: A gap analysis
No full textThe European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been recently adopted to fight deforestation and forest degradation associated with the trade of forest-risk commodities, including cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya, and wood. Operators must exercise due diligence (i.e., information collection, risk assessment, and risk mitigation) to ensure these commodities and their products are deforestation-free and produced in accordance with relevant legislation. In recent decades, Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) have been adopted in the private sector to promote sustainable and deforestation-free supply chains. The EUDR recognizes certification and other third-party verified schemes as supporting tools for risk assessment during the due diligence procedure.
However, questions persist regarding the extent to which these schemes can assist operators in assessing compliance with the EUDR. This study addresses these concerns by developing an assessment framework to evaluate the suitability of VSS schemes in covering the due diligence requirements established in the EUDR. The assessment of five major agricultural and forestry VSS schemes against this framework revealed both potentialities and limitations in covering these requirements. Most of the indicators from the framework were at least partially covered. Nevertheless, the assessed schemes fell short in providing a comprehensive prohibition of deforestation and forest degradation. They also presented variable coverage of the relevant legislation outlined in the EUDR, as well as deficiencies in their systems to assure compliance with the standards. Overall, this study indicates that VSS schemes can be incorporated as elements of due diligence systems but are insufficient demonstrate compliance with the EUDR
Deforestation As a Systemic Risk. The Case of Brazilian Bovine Leather
Get PDFTropical deforestation and forest degradation driven by agricultural commodity production remains one of the important sustainability challenges of our times. The responses to tropical deforestation so far have not managed to reverse global trends of forest loss, reigniting the discussion about more robust and systemic measures. The concept of deforestation risk is highly relevant for current debates about policy and trade, and likely to increase in importance in the context of the proposed EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products and EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement. We argue that deforestation is a systemic risk that permeates through different economic sectors, including production, manufacturing, service and control sectors. International trade, investment and economic policies thus act as a systemic trap that cause the production sector to continue with nature’s destruction. This article seeks to more clearly define deforestation risk and uses the case of bovine leather from Brazil to illustrate how pressures for deforestation accumulate across economic sectors towards production, while deforestation risk is dispersed in an opposite trajectory. The article draws on multiple datasets and an extensive literature review. Included are quantitative data sources on annual slaughter, bovine hide/leather registry and annual deforestation, slaughterhouse and tannery locations. We argue that the EU banning unsustainable products from entry and putting incentives for more sustainable agricultural production in the tropics addresses deforestation risks that are currently visible and relatively easy to identify. These response mechanisms are conditioned upon traceability of deforestation risk across supply chains, which is prone to falsifications, leakage and laundry. Although proven to be essential, the proposed EU responses still miss out deeper leverage points to address the systemic drivers of deforestation coming from the manufacturing, service and control sectors that make production through deforestation profitable in the first place
Dr. Duane M. Jackson, Morehouse College, July 2011
No full textThis video is a conversation with Dr. Duane M. Jackson. Dr. Jackson talks about his paper, "Recall and the Serial Position Effect: The Role of Primacy and Recency on Accounting Students' Performance." Jackie Daniel, AUC Woodruff Library, is the interviewer
Successful use of impella CP through femoral access in a patient with bilateral iliac and aortic endoprosthesis in the setting of cardiogenic shock
No full textWe report the case of a 67-year-old male, with previous history of severe peripheral vascular disease (abdominal aorta aneurism and bilateral iliac stenosis) requiring the implantation of 3 endoprostheses 7 months ago (Figure 1(A)), and previous myocardial infarction 10 years ago. The left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was preserved at last control (58%).
The patient was referred for acute coronary syndrome complicated with pulmonary oedema and cardiogenic shock. Echocardiography showed a severe impairment of LVEF (18%) and the patient was transferred to cathlab for emergency percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Coronary angiography via right femoral 7Fr access showed a chronic total occlusion of the mid-segment
of the right coronary artery (RCA) and a severely calcified stenosis of proximal left anterior descending (LAD) (Figure 1(B)) which provided collateral circulation to RCA. The Heart Team concluded that the patient was too fragile to undergo surgery and opted for ad-hoc PCI of the culprit lesion with circulatory support device. Despite abdominal and iliac endoprosthesis, and extreme tortuosity of the aortic arch as well as the ascending aorta, Impella CP (Abiomed Inc., Danvers, Massachusetts, USA) was able to be successfully delivered and implanted without major difficulties through left femoral arterial access (Figure 1(C).
Small low profiles balloons were not able to cross LAD lesion due to severe calcifications. Therefore, rotational atherectomy of LAD with a 1.5 mm burr was performed (Figure 1(D)) allowing balloon crossing. Then, further pre-dilatation was performed followed by one drug-eluting stent implantation and post-dilatation (Figure 1(E)). Impella CP allowed satisfactory hemodynamic status along the PCI procedure. Immediate outcome was good and the patient was discharged after 4 uneventful days. At 3-month follow-up, the patient was asymptomatic and LVEF was 45%. Recently, the use of Impella as left ventricular assist device supporting PCI has increased not only in the setting of cardiogenic shock but also in complex and high-risk elective procedures, with good short and long-term outcome. While hemodynamically the intra-aortic balloon pump modestly improves cardiac output by 0.5 L/min, the Impella CP provides 3.0–4.0 L/min of increased cardiac output and improves coronary perfusion. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of using Impella CP in a patient with iliac and aortic endoprosthesis. Despite the theoretical risk of vascular complication, our case highlighted the feasibility and the safety of PCI supported by Impella CP delivered through endoprosthesis and challenging anatomy. Further cases and larger series are required to
extend its use in this particular subset of patients
"Reflections on the subject of Emigration from Europe with a view to Settlement in the United States" By M. Carey.
No full text"Reflections on the subject of Emigration from Europe with a view to Settlement in the United States: containing bried sketches of the moral and political character of those states.
By M. Carey, member of the American philosophical, and of the American Antiquarian Society, and author of The Olive Branch, Cindiciae Hibernicae, essays on banking, on political economy, and on internal improvement.
To which are now added the English editor's comments on the subject; together with Important Advice to Emigrants, and Cautions Against Impositions Practiced in the Outports
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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