Bringing "Climate-Smart Forestry" Down to the Local Level-Identifying Barriers, Pathways and Indicators for Its Implementation in Practice

The theoretical concept of "climate-smart forestry" aims to integrate climate change mitigation and adaptation to maintain and enhance forests' contributions to people and global agendas. We carried out two local transdisciplinary collaboration processes with the aim of developing local articulations of climate-smart forestry and to identify barriers, pathways and indicators to applying it in practice. During workshops in northern and southern Sweden, local stakeholders described how they would like forests to be managed, considering their past experiences, future visions and climate change. As a result, the stakeholders framed climate-smart forestry as active and diverse management towards multiple goals. They identified several conditions that could act both as barriers and pathways for its implementation in practice, such as value chains for forest products and services, local knowledge and experiences of different management alternatives, and the management of ungulates. Based on the workshop material, a total of 39 indicators for climate-smart forestry were identified, of which six were novel indicators adding to the existing literature. Our results emphasize the importance of understanding the local perspectives to promote climate-smart forestry practices across Europe. We also suggest how the concept of climate-smart forestry can be further developed, through the interplay between theory and practice

Interface Trap States in Organic Photodiodes

Organic semiconductors are attractive for optical sensing applications due to the effortless processing on large active area of several $cm^2$, which is difficult to achieve with solid-state devices. However, compared to silicon photodiodes, sensitivity and dynamic behavior remain a major challenge with organic sensors. Here, we show that charge trapping phenomena deteriorate the bandwidth of organic photodiodes (OPDs) to a few Hz at low-light levels. We demonstrate that, despite the large OPD capacitances of similar to 10 nF $cm^{-2}$, a frequency response in the kHz regime can be achieved at light levels as low as 20 nW $cm^{-2}$ by appropriate interface engineering, which corresponds to a 1000-fold increase compared to state-of-the-art OPDs. Such device characteristics indicate that large active area OPDs are suitable for industrial sensing and even match medical requirements for single X-ray pulse detection in the millisecond range

Inkjet-printed organic photodiodes

Inkjet-printed organic photodiodes are reported, which eliminate the need for photodiode patterning as compared to other solution-based fabrication techniques. Both interlayer and bulk heterojunction ink formulations are optimized to fabricate diodes with low dark currents of 2 μA/cm2 and high external quantum efficiencies of 68.5% at − 5 V reverse bias. The current–voltage characteristics of the printed devices are competitive with photodiodes fabricated with established solution based technologies, such as spray-coating or blading. A comparison of photodiodes fabricated with a variety of solution processes showed that dark current densities are not related to microscale bulk heterojunction roughness

Combining scientific and local knowledge improves evaluating future scenarios of forest ecosystem services

Forest scenario analysis can help tackle sustainability issues by generating insight into the potential long-term effects of present-day management. In northern Sweden, forests provide important benefits including climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, reindeer husbandry, local livelihoods, and recreation. Informed by local stakeholders’ views on how forests can be enabled to deliver these benefits, we created four forest management scenarios: the close-to-nature scenario (CTN) which emphasises biodiversity conservation, the classic management scenario (CLA) optimising the forests’ net present value, the intensified scenario (INT) maximising harvested wood from the forest, and the combined scenario (COM) applying a combination of measures from the CTN and INT. The scenarios were applied to the local forest landscape and modelled over a 100-year simulation period, and the results of the modelling were then evaluated by a diverse group of stakeholders. For most ecosystem services, there was a time lag of 10–50 years before noticeable effects and differences between the scenarios became evident, highlighting the need to consider both the short- and long-term effects of forest management. Evaluation by the stakeholders put the modelled results into a local context. They raised considerations relating to wildlife and hunting, climate change risks, social acceptability, and conflict, highlighting the value of evaluating the scenarios qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Overall, stakeholders thought that the CTN and CLA scenarios promoted more ecosystem services and posed fewer climate risks, while also creating less conflict among stakeholders. Our results emphasise the value of combining scientific and local knowledge when developing and evaluating future forest scenarios.Bring down the sky to the earth: how to use forests to open up for constructive climate change pathways in local context

Patients with type 3 severe von Willebrand Disease are not protected against atherosclerosis. Results from a multicenter study group.

BACKGROUND: The results of a number of studies in pigs and mice suggest that absence of von Willebrand factor (vWF) protects against the development of atherosclerosis. We studied whether patients with a complete deficiency of vWF (type 3 von Willebrand disease [vWD]) develop fewer atherosclerotic vessel wall changes than healthy controls. METHODS AND RESULTS: This study included 47 individuals with type 3 vWD and 84 healthy controls. Early atherosclerotic changes were assessed by measuring the thickness of the intima-media in the carotid and femoral arteries by B-mode ultrasonography. Advanced atherosclerotic changes were quantified by summing the maximal thickness of atherosclerotic plaques in the carotid and femoral arteries and were expressed as a plaque score. Established risk factors were determined to adjust for possible differences between the groups. We found no substantial difference in intima-media thickness between vWD patients and controls (adjusted difference for carotid artery 0.007 mm, 95% CI -0.022 to 0.036 mm; femoral artery 0.069 mm, 95% CI -0.056 to 0.19 mm). Similar proportions of patients and controls had atherosclerotic plaques (19% and 17%, respectively). No difference was found in the plaque score between groups (adjusted difference -0.22 mm, 95% CI -0.69 to 0.26). Among vWD patients, we found no effect of treatment with vWF concentrates on intima-media thickness or plaque score. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that vWF does not play a substantial role in human atherogenesis

Pharmacokinetics of intramuscularly administered thermoresponsive polymers

Aqueous solutions of some polymers exhibit a lower critical solution temperature (LCST); that is, they form phase-separated aggregates when heated above a threshold temperature. Such polymers found many promising (bio)medical applications, including in situ thermogelling with controlled drug release, polymer-supported radiotherapy (brachytherapy), immunotherapy, and wound dressing, among others. Yet, despite the extensive research on medicinal applications of thermoresponsive polymers, their biodistribution and fate after administration remained unknown. Thus, herein, they studied the pharmacokinetics of four different thermoresponsive polyacrylamides after intramuscular administration in mice. In vivo, these thermoresponsive polymers formed depots that subsequently dissolved with a two-phase kinetics (depot maturation, slow redissolution) with half-lives 2 weeks to 5 months, as depot vitrification prolonged their half-lives. Additionally, the decrease of T-CP of a polymer solution increased the density of the intramuscular depot. Moreover, they detected secondary polymer depots in the kidneys and liver; these secondary depots also followed two-phase kinetics (depot maturation and slow dissolution), with half-lives 8 to 38 days (kidneys) and 15 to 22 days (liver). Overall, these findings may be used to tailor the properties of thermoresponsive polymers to meet the demands of their medicinal applications. Their methods may become a benchmark for future studies of polymer biodistribution