Tradition as asset or burden for transitions from forests as cropping systems to multifunctional forest landscapes: Sweden as a case study

Expectations of what forests and woodlands should provide vary among locations, stakeholder groups, and over time. Developing multifunctional forests requires understanding of the dynamic roles of traditions and cultural legacies in social-ecological systems at multiple levels and scales. Implementing policies about multifunctional forests requires a landscape and social-ecological perspective, and recognition of both spatial and temporal features at multiple scales. This study explores the dissemination of even-aged silviculture in central, eastern and northern Europe, and the consequences of choosing different vantage points in social-ecological systems for mapping of barriers, and to identify levers, towards multifunctional forest landscapes. Using a narrative approach, we first summarise the development of even-aged silviculture in four European regions. Next, we focus on Sweden as a keen adopter of even-aged silviculture, and identify levers at three groups of vantage points. They were (1) biosphere with biodiversity as short-hand for composition, structure and function of ecosystems, which support human well-being at multiple scales; (2) society in terms of different levels of stakeholder interactions from local to global, and (3) economy represented by value chain hierarchies and currencies. The emergence of even-aged silviculture >200 years ago formed an expanding frontier from central to northern Europe. Sustained yield wood production and biodiversity conservation encompass different portfolios of ecosystem aspects and spatio-temporal scales. Ignorance and lack of knowledge about these differences enforce their mutual rivalry. An exploratory review of six groups of stakeholders at multiple levels in the traditional industrial forest value chain highlights inequalities in terms of distribution of income and power across different levels of governance. This effectively marginalises other than powerful industrial actors. The distribution of financial results along the value chain is dynamic in space and time, and not all benefits of forest ecosystems can be measured using monetary valuation. There are also other currencies and incentives. A discussion of cultural trajectories in central and eastern European, Russian and Swedish forest management illustrates that forest history patterns repeat themselves. Longitudinal case studies of countries and regions can help foster holistic multi-dimensional and multilevel systems thinking. Application of deep levers of change is likely to require external drivers. A key challenge is to handle the manufacturing of doubt and decay of truth, i.e., the appearance of alternative facts, and the diminishing role of evidence and systems analyses in political and civic discourses. This transition is fuelled by new and rapidly evolving digital arenas

Azimuthal Anisotropy of Photon and Charged Particle Emission in Pb+Pb Collisions at 158 A GeV/c

The azimuthal distributions of photons and charged particles with respect to the event plane are investigated as a function of centrality in Pb + Pb collisions at 158 A GeV/c in the WA98 experiment at the CERN SPS. The anisotropy of the azimuthal distributions is characterized using a Fourier analysis. For both the photon and charged particle distributions the first two Fourier coefficients are observed to decrease with increasing centrality. The observed anisotropies of the photon distributions compare well with the expectations from the charged particle measurements for all centralities.Comment: 8 pages and 6 figures. The manuscript has undergone a major revision. The unwanted correlations were enhanced in the random subdivision method used in the earlier version. The present version uses the more established method of division into subevents separated in rapidity to minimise short range correlations. The observed results for charged particles are in agreement with results from the other experiments. The observed anisotropy in photons is explained using flow results of pions and the correlations arising due to the decay of the neutral pion

Relationship between the Clinical Frailty Scale and short-term mortality in patients ≥ 80 years old acutely admitted to the ICU: a prospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) is frequently used to measure frailty in critically ill adults. There is wide variation in the approach to analysing the relationship between the CFS score and mortality after admission to the ICU. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of modelling approach on the association between the CFS score and short-term mortality and quantify the prognostic value of frailty in this context. METHODS: We analysed data from two multicentre prospective cohort studies which enrolled intensive care unit patients ≥ 80 years old in 26 countries. The primary outcome was mortality within 30-days from admission to the ICU. Logistic regression models for both ICU and 30-day mortality included the CFS score as either a categorical, continuous or dichotomous variable and were adjusted for patient's age, sex, reason for admission to the ICU, and admission Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score. RESULTS: The median age in the sample of 7487 consecutive patients was 84 years (IQR 81-87). The highest fraction of new prognostic information from frailty in the context of 30-day mortality was observed when the CFS score was treated as either a categorical variable using all original levels of frailty or a nonlinear continuous variable and was equal to 9% using these modelling approaches (p < 0.001). The relationship between the CFS score and mortality was nonlinear (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Knowledge about a patient's frailty status adds a substantial amount of new prognostic information at the moment of admission to the ICU. Arbitrary simplification of the CFS score into fewer groups than originally intended leads to a loss of information and should be avoided. Trial registration NCT03134807 (VIP1), NCT03370692 (VIP2)

J/psi production from proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV

J/psi production has been measured in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s)= 200 GeV over a wide rapidity and transverse momentum range by the PHENIX experiment at RHIC. Distributions of the rapidity and transverse momentum, along with measurements of the mean transverse momentum and total production cross section are presented and compared to available theoretical calculations. The total J/psi cross section is 3.99 +/- 0.61(stat) +/- 0.58(sys) +/- 0.40(abs) micro barns. The mean transverse momentum is 1.80 +/- 0.23(stat) +/- 0.16(sys) GeV/c.Comment: 326 authors, 6 pages text, 4 figures, 1 table, RevTeX 4. To be submitted to PRL. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm

Centrality Dependence of Charm Production from Single Electrons in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV

The PHENIX experiment has measured mid-rapidity transverse momentum spectra (0.4 < p_T < 4.0 GeV/c) of single electrons as a function of centrality in Au+Au collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV. Contributions to the raw spectra from photon conversions and Dalitz decays of light neutral mesons are measured by introducing a thin (1.7% X_0) converter into the PHENIX acceptance and are statistically removed. The subtracted ``non-photonic'' electron spectra are primarily due to the semi-leptonic decays of hadrons containing heavy quarks (charm and bottom). For all centralities, charm production is found to scale with the nuclear overlap function, T_AA. For minimum-bias collisions the charm cross section per binary collision is N_cc^bar/T_AA = 622 +/- 57 (stat.) +/- 160 (sys.) microbarns.Comment: 326 authors, 4 pages text, 3 figures, 1 table, RevTeX 4. To be submitted to Physical Review Letters. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.htm