Unconditional Transfers and Tropical Forest Conservation: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Sierra Leone

Unconditional conservation payments are increasingly used by conservation non-governmental organizations to further their environmental objectives. One key objective in many conservation projects that use such unconditional payments schemes is the protection of tropical forest ecosystems in buffer zone areas around protected parks where the scope of instating mandatory restrictions is more limited. We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of unconditional livelihood payments to local communities on land use outside a protected area – the Gola Rainforest National Park – which is a biodiversity hotspot on the border of Sierra Leone and Liberia. High resolution RapidEye satellite imagery from before and after the intervention was used to determine land use changes in treated and control villages. We find support for the hypothesis that unconditional payments, in this setting, increase land clearance in the short run. The study constitutes one of the first attempts to use evidence from a randomized control trial to evaluate the efficacy of conservation payments and provides insights for further research.Cambridge Conservation Initiative International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (grant # TW1.1042) NWO (#45-14-001 and #451-14-001

Dissecting the illegal ivory trade: an analysis of ivory seizures data

Reliable evidence of trends in the illegal ivory trade is important for informing decision making for elephants but it is difficult to obtain due to the covert nature of the trade. The Elephant Trade Information System, a global database of reported seizures of illegal ivory, holds the only extensive information on illicit trade available. However inherent biases in seizure data make it difficult to infer trends; countries differ in their ability to make and report seizures and these differences cannot be directly measured. We developed a new modelling framework to provide quantitative evidence on trends in the illegal ivory trade from seizures data. The framework used Bayesian hierarchical latent variable models to reduce bias in seizures data by identifying proxy variables that describe the variability in seizure and reporting rates between countries and over time. Models produced bias-adjusted smoothed estimates of relative trends in illegal ivory activity for raw and worked ivory in three weight classes. Activity is represented by two indicators describing the number of illegal ivory transactions--Transactions Index--and the total weight of illegal ivory transactions--Weights Index--at global, regional or national levels. Globally, activity was found to be rapidly increasing and at its highest level for 16 years, more than doubling from 2007 to 2011 and tripling from 1998 to 2011. Over 70% of the Transactions Index is from shipments of worked ivory weighing less than 10 kg and the rapid increase since 2007 is mainly due to increased consumption in China. Over 70% of the Weights Index is from shipments of raw ivory weighing at least 100 kg mainly moving from Central and East Africa to Southeast and East Asia. The results tie together recent findings on trends in poaching rates, declining populations and consumption and provide detailed evidence to inform international decision making on elephants

Who is teaching and supervising our junior residents' central venous catheterizations?

Article deposited according to agreement with BMC, December 6, 2010.YesFunding provided by the Open Access Authors Fund

Pastoral Herding Strategies and Governmental Management Objectives: Predation Compensation as a Risk Buffering Strategy in the Saami Reindeer Husbandry

Previously it has been found that an important risk buffering strategy in the Saami reindeer husbandry in Norway is the accumulation of large herds of reindeer as this increases long-term household viability. Nevertheless, few studies have investigated how official policies, such as economic compensation for livestock losses, can influence pastoral strategies. This study investigated the effect of received predation compensation on individual husbandry units’ future herd size. The main finding in this study is that predation compensation had a positive effect on husbandry units’ future herd size. The effect of predation compensation, however, was nonlinear in some years, indicating that predation compensation had a positive effect on future herd size only up to a certain threshold whereby adding additional predation compensation had little effect on future herd size. More importantly, the effect of predation compensation was positive after controlling for reindeer density, indicating that for a given reindeer density husbandry units receiving more predation compensation performed better (measured as the size of future herds) compared to husbandry units receiving less compensation

A Biological Global Positioning System: Considerations for Tracking Stem Cell Behaviors in the Whole Body

Many recent research studies have proposed stem cell therapy as a treatment for cancer, spinal cord injuries, brain damage, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions. Some of these experimental therapies have been tested in small animals and, in rare cases, in humans. Medical researchers anticipate extensive clinical applications of stem cell therapy in the future. The lack of basic knowledge concerning basic stem cell biology-survival, migration, differentiation, integration in a real time manner when transplanted into damaged CNS remains an absolute bottleneck for attempt to design stem cell therapies for CNS diseases. A major challenge to the development of clinical applied stem cell therapy in medical practice remains the lack of efficient stem cell tracking methods. As a result, the fate of the vast majority of stem cells transplanted in the human central nervous system (CNS), particularly in the detrimental effects, remains unknown. The paucity of knowledge concerning basic stem cell biology—survival, migration, differentiation, integration in real-time when transplanted into damaged CNS remains a bottleneck in the attempt to design stem cell therapies for CNS diseases. Even though excellent histological techniques remain as the gold standard, no good in vivo techniques are currently available to assess the transplanted graft for migration, differentiation, or survival. To address these issues, herein we propose strategies to investigate the lineage fate determination of derived human embryonic stem cells (hESC) transplanted in vivo into the CNS. Here, we describe a comprehensive biological Global Positioning System (bGPS) to track transplanted stem cells. But, first, we review, four currently used standard methods for tracking stem cells in vivo: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), bioluminescence imaging (BLI), positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and fluorescence imaging (FLI) with quantum dots. We summarize these modalities and propose criteria that can be employed to rank the practical usefulness for specific applications. Based on the results of this review, we argue that additional qualities are still needed to advance these modalities toward clinical applications. We then discuss an ideal procedure for labeling and tracking stem cells in vivo, finally, we present a novel imaging system based on our experiments

Experiments in Globalisation, Food Security and Land Use Decision Making

The globalisation of trade affects land use, food production and environmentsaround the world. In principle, globalisation can maximise productivity andefficiency if competition prompts specialisation on the basis of productive capacity.In reality, however, such specialisation is often constrained by practical or politicalbarriers, including those intended to ensure national or regional food security.These are likely to produce globally sub-optimal distributions of land uses. Bothoutcomes are subject to the responses of individual land managers to economicand environmental stimuli, and these responses are known to be variable and often(economically) irrational. We investigate the consequences of stylised food securitypolicies and globalisation of agricultural markets on land use patterns under avariety of modelled forms of land manager behaviour, including variation inproduction levels, tenacity, land use intensity and multi-functionality. We find that asystem entirely dedicated to regional food security is inferior to an entirelyglobalised system in terms of overall production levels, but that several forms ofbehaviour limit the difference between the two, and that variations in land useintensity and functionality can substantially increase the provision of food and otherecosystem services in both cases. We also find emergent behaviour that results inthe abandonment of productive land, the slowing of rates of land use change andthe fragmentation or, conversely, concentration of land uses following changes indemand levels