The commercial asset value of sequestered forest carbon is based on protocols employed globally; however, their scientific basis has not been validated. We review and analyze commercial forest carbon protocols, claimed to have reduced net greenhouse gas emissions, issued by the California Air Resources Board and validated by the Climate Action Reserve (CARB-CAR). CARB-CAR forest carbon offsets, based on forest mensuration and model simulation, are compared to a global database of directly measured forest carbon sequestration, or net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of forest CO2. NEE is a meteorologically based method integrating CO2 fluxes between the atmosphere, forest and soils and is independent of the CARB-CAR methodology. Annual carbon accounting results for CAR681 are compared with NEE for the Ameriflux site, Howland Forest Maine, USA, (Ho-1), the only site where both methods were applied contemporaneously, invalidating CARB-CAR protocol offsets. We then test the null hypothesis that CARB-CAR project population data fall within global NEE population values for natural and managed forests measured in the field; net annual gC m−2yr−1 are compared for both protocols. Irrespective of geography, biome and project type, the CARB-CAR population mean is significantly different from the NEE population mean at the 95% confidence interval, rejecting the null hypothesis. The CARB-CAR population exhibits standard deviation ∼5× that of known interannual NEE ranges, is overcrediting biased, incapable of detecting forest transition to net positive CO2 emissions, and exceeds the 5% CARB compliance limit for invalidation. Exclusion of CO2 efflux via soil and ecosystem respiration precludes a valid net carbon accounting result for CARB-CAR and related protocols, consistent with our findings. Protocol invalidation risk extends to vendors and policy platforms such as the United Nations Program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and the Paris Agreement. We suggest that CARB-CAR and related protocols include NEE methodology for commercial forest carbon offsets to standardize methods, ensure in situ molecular specificity, verify claims of carbon emission reduction and harmonize carbon protocols for voluntary and compliance markets worldwide.
We assessed the nutritional status of 90 pygmies (Efe) and 211 members of a neighboring horticultural Lese in the Ituri forest in northeast Zaire. Clinical signs of iron and iodine deficiency were highly prevalent, but the frequency of these and other clinical signs of nutritional deficiency did not differ between the two groups. Infectious diseases such as yaws, cellulitis, and filiariasis were common. Absolute heights and weights of both Efe males and females aged 2-18 years were less than the 5th percentile of the National Center for Health Statistics standards. Weights for height of both groups were within the normal range. Weights and heights, expressed as percentages of the 50th percentile for age and sex, were significantly lower (P less than .001) in Efe males and females than among Lese males and females, but weights for height did not differ significantly. Z-Scores of height and weight were also significantly lower in Efe males and females than among their Lese counterparts. The differences in weight and height, expressed either as a percentage of the 50th percentile or as Z-scores, were most apparent in older adolescents and persisted among adults. The normal weight for height among both populations indicated that acute undernutrition did not exist at the time of the survey. Despite comparable levels of adult fatness, measured by triceps skinfold thickness, heights of Efe males and females were lower than those of the Lese. These observations support the hypothesis that genetic differences account for the short stature of the Ituri pygmy. However, because the environments shared by the two groups are not identical and because other practices differ, nutritional effects cannot be excluded.
Forest carbon sequestration offsets are methodologically uncertain, comprise a minor component of carbon markets and do not effectively slow deforestation. The objective of this study is to describe a commercial scale in situ measurement approach for determination of net forest carbon sequestration projects, the Direct Measurement Forest Carbon Protocol™, to address forest carbon market uncertainties. In contrast to protocols that rely on limited forest mensuration, growth simulation and exclusion of CO2 data, the Direct Measurement Forest Carbon Protocol™ is based on standardized methods for direct determination of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO2 employing eddy covariance, a meteorological approach integrating forest carbon fluxes. NEE is used here as the basis for quantifying the first of its kind carbon financial products. The DMFCP differentiates physical, project and financial carbon within a System-of-Systems™ (SoS) network architecture. SoS sensor nodes, the Global Monitoring Platform™ (GMP), housing analyzers for CO2 isotopologues (e.g., 12CO2,13CO2, 14CO2) and greenhouse gases are deployed across the project landscape. The SoS standardizes and automates GMP measurement, uncertainty and reporting functions creating diverse forest carbon portfolios while reducing cost and investment risk in alignment with modern portfolio theory. To illustrate SoS field deployment and operation, published annual NEE data for a tropical (Ankasa Park, Ghana, Africa) and a deciduous forest (Harvard Forest, Petersham, MA, USA) are used to forecast carbon revenue. Carbon pricing scenarios are combined with historical in situ NEE annual time-series to extrapolate pre-tax revenue for each project applied to 100,000 acres (40,469 hectares) of surrounding land. Based on carbon pricing of $5 to $36 per ton CO2 equivalent (tCO2eq) and observed NEE sequestration rates of 0.48 to 15.60 tCO2eq acre−1 yr−1, pre-tax cash flows ranging from $230,000 to $16,380,000 across project time-series are calculated, up to 5× revenue for contemporary voluntary offsets, demonstrating new economic incentives to reverse deforestation. The SoS concept of operation and architecture, with engineering development, can be extended to diverse gas species across terrestrial, aquatic and oceanic ecosystems, harmonizing voluntary and compliance market products worldwide to assist in the management of global warming. The Direct Measurement Forest Carbon Protocol reduces risk of invalidation intrinsic to estimation-based protocols such as the Climate Action Reserve and the Clean Development Mechanism that do not observe molecular CO2 to calibrate financial products. Multinational policy applications such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, constrained by Kyoto Protocol era processes, will benefit from NEE measurement avoiding unsupported claims of emission reduction, fraud, and forest conservation policy failure.
In this article, we focus on the candidate selection processes of Podemos in Spain and the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S – Five Star Movement) in Italy, processes which are related to intra-party democracy. With a mixed-methods approach (including novel data from the expert survey PoPES, 31 semi-structured interviews with party representatives and militants, and analysis of party documents, statutes and leader speeches) and a comparative perspective, we explore candidate selection in the context of the broader organizational party structures over time. We find that: (1) Podemos functions like a typical centralized party, whereas M5S is a deviant case with strong and centralized control over party organization but decentralized mechanisms for candidate selection; (2) both these logics of centralization of power undermine the parties’ democratic credentials but have different consequences in terms of cohesion (expulsions/departures in M5S and splintering in Podemos); and (3) in both cases, the parties’ organizational culture and symbolic tools legitimate their top-down features.
Abstract. GATA4 mutations are found in patients with different isolated congenital heart defects (CHDs), mostly cardiac septal defects and tetralogy of Fallot. In addition, GATA4 is supposed to be the responsible gene for the CHDs in the chromosomal 8p23 deletion syndrome, which is recognized as a malformation syndrome with clinical symptoms of facial anomalies, microcephaly, mental retardation, and congenital heart defects. Thus far, no study has been carried out to investigate the role of GATA4 copy number variations (CNVs) in non-syndromic CHDs. To explore the possible occurrence of GATA4 gene CNVs in isolated CHDs, we analyzed by multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) a cohort of 161 non-syndromic patients with cardiac anomalies previously associated with GATA4 gene mutations. The patients were mutation-negative for GATA4, NKX2.5, and FOG2 genes after screening with denaturing high performance liquid chromatography. MLPA analysis revealed that normalized MLPA signals were all found within the normal range values for all exons in all patients, excluding a major contribution of GATA4 gene CNVs in CHD pathogenesis.
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