Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators.

Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today's globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly--depending largely on the stakeholder perspective--as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 "integrated" issues--24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues--that are composed of 318 "component" issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework

Predicting tensile properties of Ti-6Al-4V produced via directed energy deposition

Advanced manufacturing approaches, including additive manufacturing (i.e., “3D printing”) of metallic structures requires a change to qualification strategies. One approach, informed qualification, integrates modeling strategies to make predictions of material characteristics, including the prediction of tensile properties for given chemistries and microstructures. In this work, constitutive equations are developed and presented that can predict the yield strength of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V subjected to one of three different heat-treatments: a stress relief anneal in the α+β phase field; a hot isostatic press treatment in the α+β phase field; and a β-anneal. The equations are nominally identical, though different strengthening mechanisms are active according to subtle microstructural differences. To achieve an equation that can predict the yield strength of the material, it is also necessary to include an assessment of dramatic reduction in the tensile strength due to texture (i.e., a “knock-down” effect). This has been experimentally measured, and included in this paper. The resulting predictions of yield strength are generally within 5% of their experimentally measured values

Peer-Victimization and Mental Health Problems in Adolescents: Are Parental and School Support Protective?

The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and effects of peer-victimization on mental health problems among adolescents. Parental and school support were assumed as protective factors that might interact with one another in acting as buffers for adolescents against the risk of peer-victimization. Besides these protective factors, age and gender were additionally considered as moderating factors. The Social and Health Assessment survey was conducted among 986 students aged 11–18 years in order to assess peer-victimization, risk and protective factors and mental health problems. For mental health problems, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used. Effects of peer-victimization on mental health problems were additionally compared with normative SDQ data in order to obtain information about clinically relevant psychopathology in our study sample. Results of this study show that peer-victimization carries a serious risk for mental health problems in adolescents. School support is effective in both male and female adolescents by acting as a buffer against the effect of victimization, and school support gains increasing importance in more senior students. Parental support seems to be protective against maladjustment, especially in peer-victimized girls entering secondary school. Since the effect of peer-victimization can be reduced by parental and school support, educational interventions are of great importance in cases of peer-victimization

Understanding family dynamics in a cross-cultural sample: a multi-national study

The Family Systems Circumplex Model posits that balanced levels of cohesion and adaptability are associated with positive familial outcomes, whereas extremely high or low levels of these factors are associated with deleterious outcomes. Despite the popularity and utility of this model in Western cultures, there is a dearth of empirical data supporting its use in more culturally diverse contexts. The current, preregistered study assessed the Family Circumplex Model, cultural factors, and emerging adult outcomes across seven countries (i.e., China, Iran, Nigeria, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Participants were N = 3,593 emerging adults, mostly self-identifying as women (71.3%). Collaborators were participants in Psi Chi’s Network for International Collaborative Exchange (NICE) and administered measures related to family dynamics and cultural orientation to participants in a random order. Results indicated that the Family Circumplex Model did not fit cross-culturally. As such, a new model was adapted, the Expanded Circumplex Model, which demonstrated invariance across samples and between women and men. The Expanded Circumplex Model retained 6 constructs with differences regarding the separation of disengagement into 2 variables and the combining of adaptive flexibility and cohesion. The current study suggests that the cultural context in which family dynamics occur should be taken into consideration when conceptualizing family dynamics theory and measurement. Future work should seek to replicate and further apply the Expanded Circumplex Model to familial outcomes

Predicting tensile properties of Ti-6Al-4V produced via directed energy deposition

Advanced manufacturing approaches, including additive manufacturing (i.e., “3D printing”) of metallic structures requires a change to qualification strategies. One approach, informed qualification, integrates modeling strategies to make predictions of material characteristics, including the prediction of tensile properties for given chemistries and microstructures. In this work, constitutive equations are developed and presented that can predict the yield strength of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V subjected to one of three different heat-treatments: a stress relief anneal in the α+β phase field; a hot isostatic press treatment in the α+β phase field; and a β-anneal. The equations are nominally identical, though different strengthening mechanisms are active according to subtle microstructural differences. To achieve an equation that can predict the yield strength of the material, it is also necessary to include an assessment of dramatic reduction in the tensile strength due to texture (i.e., a “knock-down” effect). This has been experimentally measured, and included in this paper. The resulting predictions of yield strength are generally within 5% of their experimentally measured values.This article is published as Hayes, Brian J., Brian W. Martin, Brian Welk, Samuel J. Kuhr, Thomas K. Ales, David A. Brice, Iman Ghamarian et al. "Predicting tensile properties of Ti-6Al-4V produced via directed energy deposition." Acta Materialia 133 (2017): 120-133. doi: 10.1016/j.actamat.2017.05.025. Posted with permission.</p

Sustainable Sourcing of Global Agricultural Raw Materials: Assessing Gaps in Key Impact and Vulnerability Issues and Indicators.

Understanding how to source agricultural raw materials sustainably is challenging in today's globalized food system given the variety of issues to be considered and the multitude of suggested indicators for representing these issues. Furthermore, stakeholders in the global food system both impact these issues and are themselves vulnerable to these issues, an important duality that is often implied but not explicitly described. The attention given to these issues and conceptual frameworks varies greatly--depending largely on the stakeholder perspective--as does the set of indicators developed to measure them. To better structure these complex relationships and assess any gaps, we collate a comprehensive list of sustainability issues and a database of sustainability indicators to represent them. To assure a breadth of inclusion, the issues are pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms are integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues are then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis is then performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process results in 44 "integrated" issues--24 impact issues and 36 vulnerability issues--that are composed of 318 "component" issues. The gap analysis shows that although every integrated issue is mentioned at least 40% of the time across perspectives, no issue is mentioned more than 70% of the time. A few issues infrequently mentioned across perspectives also have relatively few indicators available to fully represent them. Issues in the impact framework generally have fewer gaps than those in the vulnerability framework

Number of related indicators per integrated issue.

<p>Number of related indicators per integrated issue.</p

Integrated issues linked to sources by perspective.

<p>Each link represents an individual source that mentions the issue. Size of node (and text) corresponds to the number of links. Issue nodes are distributed using a force-directed algorithm (Force Atlas 2 using Gephi 0.8.2) and hence closest to perspectives with which they share the most links. See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0128752#pone.0128752.s004" target="_blank">S3 Dataset.csv</a> for data on each individual source and their issue links.</p