Wood product carbon substitution benefits: a critical review of assumptions

Background There are high estimates of the potential climate change mitigation opportunity of using wood products. A significant part of those estimates depends on long-lived wood products in the construction sector replacing concrete, steel, and other non-renewable goods. Often the climate change mitigation benefits of this substitution are presented and quantified in the form of displacement factors. A displacement factor is numerically quantified as the reduction in emissions achieved per unit of wood used, representing the efficiency of biomass in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. The substitution benefit for a given wood use scenario is then represented as the estimated change in emissions from baseline in a study’s modelling framework. The purpose of this review is to identify and assess the central economic and technical assumptions underlying forest carbon accounting and life cycle assessments that use displacement factors or similar simple methods. Main text Four assumptions in the way displacement factors are employed are analyzed: (1) changes in harvest or production rates will lead to a corresponding change in consumption of wood products, (2) wood building products are substitutable for concrete and steel, (3) the same mix of products could be produced from increased harvest rates, and (4) there are no market responses to increased wood use. Conclusions After outlining these assumptions, we conclude suggesting that many studies assessing forest management or products for climate change mitigation depend on a suite of assumptions that the literature either does not support or only partially supports. Therefore, we encourage the research community to develop a more sophisticated model of the building sectors and their products. In the meantime, recognizing these assumptions has allowed us to identify some structural, production, and policy-based changes to the construction industry that could help realize the climate change mitigation potential of wood products.

New York FED Staff Nowcasts and Reality: What Can We Learn about the Future, the Present, and The Past? §

We assess the forecasting performance of the nowcasting model developed at the New York FED. We show that the observation regarding a striking difference in the model’s predictive ability across business cycle phases made earlier in the literature also applies here. During expansions, the nowcasting model forecasts at best are at least as good as the historical mean model, whereas during the recessionary periods, there are very substantial gains corresponding in the reduction in MSFE of about 90% relative to the benchmark model. We show how the asymmetry in the relative forecasting performance can be verified by the use of such recursive measures of relative forecast accuracy as Cumulated Sum of Squared Forecast Error Difference (CSSFED) and Recursive Relative Mean Squared Forecast Error (based on Rearranged observations) (R2MSFE(+R)). Ignoring these asymmetries results in a biased judgement of the relative forecasting performance of the competing models over a sample as a whole, as well as during economic expansions, when the forecasting accuracy of a more sophisticated model relative to naive benchmark models tends to be overstated. Hence, care needs to be exercised when ranking several models by their forecasting performance without taking into consideration various states of the economy.

Near-infrared light–triggered platelet arsenal for combined photothermal-immunotherapy against cancer

To address long-standing issues with tumor penetration and targeting among cancer therapeutics, we developed an anticancer platelet-based biomimetic formulation (N+R@PLTs), integrating photothermal nanoparticles (N) and immunostimulator (R) into platelets (PLTs). Exploiting the aggregative properties of platelets and high photothermal capacity, N+R@PLTs functioned as an arsenal by targeting defective tumor vascular endothelial cells, accumulating in a positive feedback aggregation cascade at sites of acute vascular damage induced by N-generated local hyperthermia, and subsequently secreting nanosized proplatelets (nPLTs) to transport active components to deep tumor tissue. The immunostimulator augmented the immunogenicity of antigens released from ablated tumors, inducing a stronger immunological response to attack residual, metastatic, and recurrent tumors. Following activation by low-power near-infrared light irradiation, the photothermal and immunological components synergistically provide exceptionally high therapeutic efficacy across nine murine models that mimicked a range of clinical requirements, and, most notably, a sophisticated model based on humanized mouse and patient-derived tumor xenograft.

Building Models of Functional Interactions Among Brain Domains that Encode Varying Information Complexity: A Schizophrenia Case Study

ABSTRACTRevealing associations among various structural and functional patterns of the brain can yield highly informative results about the healthy and disordered brain. Studies using neuroimaging data have more recently begun to utilize the information within as well as across various functional and anatomical domains (i.e., groups of brain networks). However, most whole-brain approaches assume similar complexity of interactions throughout the brain. Here we investigate the hypothesis that interactions between brain networks capture varying amounts of complexity, and that we can better capture this information by varying the complexity of the model subspace structure based on available training data. To do this, we employ a Bayesian optimization-based framework known as the Tree Parzen Estimator (TPE) to identify, exploit and analyze patterns of variation in the information encoded by temporal information extracted from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) subdomains of the brain. Using a repeated cross-validation procedure on a schizophrenia classification task, we demonstrate evidence that interactions between specific functional subdomains are better characterized by more sophisticated model architectures compared to less complicated ones required by the others for optimally contributing towards classification and understanding the brain’s functional interactions. We show that functional subdomains known to be involved in schizophrenia require more complex architectures to optimally unravel discriminatory information about the disorder. Our study points to the need for adaptive, hierarchical learning frameworks that cater differently to the features from different subdomains, not only for a better prediction but also for enabling the identification of features predicting the outcome of interest.

Zur Gliederung der Rechtskommunikation: mit einem Ansatz im Strafrecht

Variation in legal communication amounts to different use of legal language. Therefore, systematic recording and understanding of linguistic stratification is crucial both for the communication and the translation process. In this paper, we study existing classification models for legal communication and analyse their prerequisites. Based on the result that the presented models focus on different aspects of legal communication and are too general in their design for them to bring the complexity of legal communication across, we propose a more sophisticated model, which combines all the aspects of the analysed models. The model is discussed, using the language of German criminal law as an example. At the end, we explain the importance of the proposed model for translation-oriented analysis.

A Ground Model and Opechancanough's Peace

This study explores the character of the Powhatan Chief Opechancanough. Characterized later by English colonists and even some of his own people as a hostile leader, this image of Opechancanough is far too simplistic. To discuss how Opechancanough and other Powhatan chiefs adjusted to and handled the circumstances of the arrival of Europeans on their shores, a more sophisticated model is needed. A ground model of the negotiations, interchanges, and even hostilities that occurred between the Powhatan paramount chiefdom and the English colonists presents the complex shift from native dominance, through a middle ground of conciliation, to one of colonial dominance.

A Methodology for the Statistical Calibration of Complex Constitutive Material Models: Application to Temperature-Dependent Elasto-Visco-Plastic Materials

The calibration of any sophisticated model, and in particular a constitutive relation, is a complex problem that has a direct impact in the cost of generating experimental data and the accuracy of its prediction capacity. In this work, we address this common situation using a two-stage procedure. In order to evaluate the sensitivity of the model to its parameters, the first step in our approach consists of formulating a meta-model and employing it to identify the most relevant parameters. In the second step, a Bayesian calibration is performed on the most influential parameters of the model in order to obtain an optimal mean value and its associated uncertainty. We claim that this strategy is very efficient for a wide range of applications and can guide the design of experiments, thus reducing test campaigns and computational costs. Moreover, the use of Gaussian processes together with Bayesian calibration effectively combines the information coming from experiments and numerical simulations. The framework described is applied to the calibration of three widely employed material constitutive relations for metals under high strain rates and temperatures, namely, the Johnson–Cook, Zerilli–Armstrong, and Arrhenius models.

Arbitrage Bounds on Currency Basket Options

This article exploits arbitrage valuation bounds on currency basket options. Instead of using a sophisticated model to price these options, we consider a set of pricing models that are consistent with the prices of available hedging assets. In the absence of arbitrage, we identify valuation bounds on currency basket options without model specifications. Our results extend the work in the literature by seeking tight arbitrage valuation bounds on these options. Specifically, the valuation bounds are enforced by static portfolios that consist of both cross-currency options and individual options denominated in the numeraire currency.

Comparison of effective health ages between the sophisticated model for researchers and simplified model for patients using GH-Method: math-physical medicine (No. 323)

This is the fourth article the author has written regarding the subject of effective health age (“Health Age”) related to the medical branch of geriatrics. Originally, he used his metabolism indexes data which were collected and processed via a sophisticated software for researchers. Later, he developed a simplified APP on the iPhone for other patients. This specific article discusses the differences of health input data and output results based on metabolism indexes and estimated health ages between these two different software versions. A comparison study between the difference of estimated health ages by using two different computer software versions was completed. The finding indicates that the complex metabolism model of his chronic software version would gain an extra 1.4% of accuracy on estimating his health age when compared to the simplified APP version. The author is not a fortune teller who uses a crystal ball to predict his or other people’s future life expectancy. Rather, he is a scientist who applies solid and sophisticated scientific techniques, such as math-physical medicine with biomedical evidence, to develop a simple arithmetical formula which can serve as a useful tool for the general population to maintain their health and achieve their desired longevity.

Real-world visual texture cloning upon prolonged gaze fixation

It is widely acknowledged that, in order to provide a rich unified experience to our internal conscious observer, the brain constructs a sophisticated model of the world on the basis of fragmented pieces of information incoming from sensory organs. It has been long known that perceptual filling-in mechanisms exist to extrapolate missing information from adjacent visual fields, especially in the periphery. Recently, a uniformity illusion has been reported for primitive features, such as color, shape and motion, in which the content of central vision spreads to the periphery upon prolonged gaze fixation. Here I report that similar illusion exists for real-world textures, such as grass and foliage, observed directly in a real environment or on a photographic image. The texture around the point of gaze fixation is perceptually cloned to cover the areas of similar texture and color. This illusion may be triggered by the fading of textural information in the periphery due to the Troxler effect. This is a preliminary report and requires validation in multiple subjects and detailed characterization.