China and the Global Market for Forest Products: Transforming Trade to Benefit Forests and Livelihoods

China's spectacular economic growth over the last decade is having a dramatic impact throughout the world. It has become a leading nation in terms of its demand for forest products, and its influence is being felt as far afield as Cameroon and Cambodia, Indonesia and the United States. Burgeoning domestic consumption, in a nation with very limited per capita forest resources, has fueled the rapid rise in China's imports of forest products. Growing demand in the US, Europe and elsewhere for low-cost wood products manufactured in China has also contributed to the country's ever-increasing demand for foreign timber. China has rapidly become the wood workshop of the world, capturing almost a third of the global trade in furniture over the last eight years. In many supplier countries, particularly those with weak governance records, the increasing trade flows into China are associated with unsustainable harvesting, illegal logging and the abuse of forest communities' rights. However, China's growing demand also creates the possibility that millions of low-income forest producers can benefit from this new market. Trees and forests are the primary asset of millions of the world's poorest people and when governments enable the poor to use them wisely, they can be an important instrument of rural development. China is now in the world's spotlight, with governments, industry and development agencies eager to learn more about the global impact the country is having on forests and forest industries. Until recently, they have been hampered by a scarcity of reliable information and a lack of rigorous, publicly accessible analysis of macro-level trends. The primary source of market information to date has been proprietary analysis, the costs of which have precluded their use by all but the largest international investors and trade associations. This paper and the body of research it represents aims to help fill the knowledge gap. It is an overview of the key findings of many research studies conducted by Forest Trends, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and their many partners in China and the Asia-Pacific region. As an overview, it necessarily focuses on broader and more globally critical issues. The synthesis of this research presents a wake-up call for the global forestry community. One of our key findings is that domestic and export demand for Chinese manufactured wood products will continue to grow dramatically, at least over the medium term and probably well beyond. So, in turn, will the demand for both home-grown and imported timber. Furthermore, China should be seen as the harbinger of even greater change, as India and other populous developing countries increase their demand for forest products. It is now clear that the global forest market is undergoing dramatic changes, and that these changes have important implications for forests, forest people and industry globally. We hope this paper helps governments, industry and civil society gain a clearer understanding of their respective roles in the global timber market. It is also hoped that it will help them to take an important leadership role in helping to transform the forest products market to one that not only ensures sustainable forestry and conservation, but to one that provides satisfactory livelihood opportunities for forest dependent communities, and promotes sustainable economic development for all nations

Exponential stability of the wave equation with memory and time delay

We study the asymptotic behaviour of the wave equation with viscoelastic damping in presence of a time-delayed damping. We prove exponential stability if the amplitude of the time delay term is small enough

Galaxy Clusters Associated with Short GRBs. II. Predictions for the Rate of Short GRBs in Field and Cluster Early-Type Galaxies

We determine the relative rates of short GRBs in cluster and field early-type galaxies as a function of the age probability distribution of their progenitors, P(\tau) \propto \tau^n. This analysis takes advantage of the difference in the growth of stellar mass in clusters and in the field, which arises from the combined effects of the galaxy stellar mass function, the early-type fraction, and the dependence of star formation history on mass and environment. This approach complements the use of the early- to late-type host galaxy ratio, with the added benefit that the star formation histories of early-type galaxies are simpler than those of late-type galaxies, and any systematic differences between progenitors in early- and late-type galaxies are removed. We find that the ratio varies from R(cluster)/R(field) ~ 0.5 for n = -2 to ~ 3 for n = 2. Current observations indicate a ratio of about 2, corresponding to n ~ 0 - 1. This is similar to the value inferred from the ratio of short GRBs in early- and late-type hosts, but it differs from the value of n ~ -1 for NS binaries in the Milky Way. We stress that this general approach can be easily modified with improved knowledge of the effects of environment and mass on the build-up of stellar mass, as well as the effect of globular clusters on the short GRB rate. It can also be used to assess the age distribution of Type Ia supernova progenitors.Comment: ApJ accepted versio

Fine structure in the α decay of 223U

Fine structure in the α decay of 223U was observed in the fusion-evaporation reaction 187Re(40Ar, p3n) by using fast digital pulse processing technique. Two α-decay branches of 223U feeding the ground state and 244 keV excited state of 219Th were identified by establishing the decay chain 223U →α1 219Th →α2 215Ra →α3 211Rn. The α-particle energy for the ground-state to ground-state transition of 223U was determined to be 8993(17) keV, 213 keV higher than the previous value, the half-life was updated to be 62−10+14 μs. Evolution of nuclear structure for N = 131 even-Z isotones from Po to U was discussed in the frameworks of nuclear mass and reduced α-decay width, a weakening octupole deformation in the ground state of 223U relative to its lighter isotones 219Ra and 221Th was suggested

Measurement of Z0 decays to hadrons, and a precise determination of the number of neutrino species

We have made a precise measurement of the cross section for e+e--->Z0-->hadrons with the L3 detector at LEP, covering the range from 88.28 to 95.04 GeV. From a fit to the Z0 mass, total width, and the hadronic cross section to be MZ0=91.160 +/- 0.024 (experiment) +/-0.030(LEP) GeV, [Gamma]Z0=2.539+/-0.054 GeV, and [sigma]h(MZ0)=29.5+/-0.7 nb. We also used the fit to the Z0 peak cross section and the width todetermine [Gamma]invisible=0.548+/-0.029 GeV, which corresponds to 3.29+/-0.17 species of light neutrinos. The possibility of four or more neutrino flavors is thus ruled out at the 4[sigma] confidence level.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28683/3/0000500.pd