Ecosystem Services from Ecological Agroforestry in Brazil: A Systematic Map of Scientific Evidence

(1) Brazil has great potential to expand the area under agroforestry, and thereby simultaneously enhance multiple ecosystem services. However, divergent interests are currently polarized between drastic environmental deregulation and public resource allocation to chemical-intensive land use versus conservation and sustainable agriculture. This highlights an urgent need for a comprehensive overview of the evidence of the benefits to society generated by agroforestry across Brazil. (2) We present a systematic map of the scientific evidence related to the effects of agroforestry on ecosystem services in Brazil. (3) Reviewing 158 peer-reviewed articles, published in international scientific journals (database: Web of Science), we identified a disproportionate emphasis on the Atlantic Forest. Very little research has been published on the Cerrado savanna, Pampa grasslands and Pantanal wetlands. Regulating services were much more frequently studied (85%) than provisioning (13%), while cultural services represent a major gap. A consistent positive effect of agroforestry was demonstrated for soil quality, habitat and food provisioning. Trade-offs were demonstrated for soils and habitats. (4) Our analysis identifies high-priority gaps given their critical importance for human well-being which should be filled: agroforestry effects on water provision and regulation. Moreover, they should assess other ES such as erosion control, flood protection and pest control to enable a more reliable inference about trade-offs.

Cloud Provider Selection Based on Accountability and Security Using Interval Valued Fuzzy TOPSIS

Cloud computing enables on-demand access to a public resource pool. Many businesses are migrating to the cloud due to its popularity and financial benefits. As a result, finding a suitable and best Cloud Service Provider is a difficult task for all cloud users. Many ranking systems, such as ANP, AHP and TOPSIS, have been proposed in the literature .However, many of the studies concentrated on quantitative data. But qualitative attributes are equally significant in many applications where the user is more concerned with the qualitative features.The implementation of MCDM approach for the ranking and the selection of the best player in the market as per the qualitative need of the cloud users like business organization or cloud brokers is the aim of this article. An ISO approved standard SMI framework is available for the evaluation of the CSPs.The authors have considered SMI attributes like accountability and security as the criteria for evaluation of the CSPs. The MCDM approach called IVF-TOPSIS that can handle the inherent vagueness in the cloud dataset is implemented in this work

The Necessity of Economic Reparations for African-American Families from an Abolitionist Praxis

Racism has caused untold societal problems throughout U.S. history, damaging reputations, job prospects, livelihoods, and the physical and mental well-being of millions. While economic reparations will not wholly resolve the problem, they will serve as an acknowledgment of the problem and the associated damages that have been caused as a result of the manifestation of racism in every arena of life. The degree to which racism is present in the United States has been an ongoing and repeated problem within the country since the 1600s. Racism leads to inequality in public resource allocation; inequality in public resource allocation goes against the founding principles of the nation and are still evident in today’s society. Current efforts to address systemic racism are most frequently viewed as points of contention, which disproportionately decreases the ability to effectively resolve the problem by fostering and creating an environment in which people are pitted against one another instead of working in conjunction to address the problem. One way that this divide can be addressed is through the provision of economic reparations made by the upper class. From an economic praxis, members of the upper class must pay reparations to African-American families due to their historic use of racism as a means of exacerbating wealth inequity.

Performance Evaluation Model of Public Resource Trading Platform Using Entropy-Based Gray Clustering Method

In order to standardize public resource trading activities and improve the operating efficiency of public resource trading platforms, this paper conducts research on the performance of public resource trading platforms. A three-level and 28-dimension performance evaluation index system for public resource trading platform is established by considering the four levels of “input-process-output-effect.” Besides, entropy weight method, gray clustering, and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation are integrated on this basis. Entropy weight method is used to determine the index weight, and the degree value of membership for indexes on gray class is determined based on gray clustering method and converted into a matrix. Then, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to determine the evaluation value and finally carry out the platform performance evaluation, which provides theoretical support for academic researchers to conduct follow-up research on the performance evaluation of public resource trading platforms.

KinderMiner Web: a simple web tool for ranking pairwise associations in biomedical applications

Many important scientific discoveries require lengthy experimental processes of trial and error and could benefit from intelligent prioritization based on deep domain understanding. While exponential growth in the scientific literature makes it difficult to keep current in even a single domain, that same rapid growth in literature also presents an opportunity for automated extraction of knowledge via text mining. We have developed a web application implementation of the KinderMiner algorithm for proposing ranked associations between a list of target terms and a key phrase. Any key phrase and target term list can be used for biomedical inquiry. We built the web application around a text index derived from PubMed. It is the first publicly available implementation of the algorithm, is fast and easy to use, and includes an interactive analysis tool. The KinderMiner web application is a public resource offering scientists a cohesive summary of what is currently known about a particular topic within the literature, and helping them to prioritize experiments around that topic. It performs comparably or better to similar state-of-the-art text mining tools, is more flexible, and can be applied to any biomedical topic of interest. It is also continually improving with quarterly updates to the underlying text index and through response to suggestions from the community. The web application is available at https://www.kinderminer.org.

Dynamics and Trends in Vaccine Procurement and Distribution in Zimbabwe

The subject of COVID-19 vaccines has generated debate across the globe as it has created a fecund ground for a plethora of dynamics such as vaccine diplomacy, misinformation, and struggle for dominance among global powers to mention but a few. Thus, the vaccine subject has taken-center stage in global discourses, resulting in developing and developed nations experiencing challenges in respect to purchase, transparency, and accountability in the administration of vaccines. The subject of vaccines in Zimbabwe has provoked public skepticism indicative of the existing trust deficit between government and the citizens. This emanates from strong evidence of abuse of public resources and hence questions of transparency and accountability especially in relation to disaster situations. To this end, this paper seeks to bring to light the trends and dynamics in vaccine procurement and distribution in Zimbabwe. The study examines the correlation between vaccine diplomacy (donation-trap diplomacy) and vaccine purchases. A chronological analysis of the approved vaccines, rejection of Johnson and Johnson and sudden acceptance, natural resource implications of the donations from ALROSA, poor public resource management, vaccine shortages, vaccine misinformation and vaccine cheating. Possible ways of enhancing vaccine intake through quality information are also discussed and Zimbabwe`s performance against other African nations is examined. The research ends by proposing a series of questions which should be embraced to fully comprehend the trends and dynamics of vaccine procurement and distribution.

Financialized savings in public water governance: An illustrative case study in the arid American West

How does financialization of the economy impact public governance of natural resources? One way includes a shift in how savings and cash accumulation are understood and practiced within public agencies. This article proffers that in the second half of the twentieth century, it became a taken-for-granted understanding that long-term savings should be held in financial investment accounts instead of traditional savings accounts. As a result of this, municipal organizations act as fiscally independent investors, marshaling economic resources to pursue strategic objectives that align with financialized institutional logics. Using a case study of the largest supplier of drinking water in the US, this article examines how the use of financial investments by a major public resource agency, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, evolved since first establishing an investment policy in the 1940s. Today, this organization maintains investments worth over one billion dollars. Analysis of archival documents suggests that financial activities, even if yielding dwindling returns over time, are counted upon as a source of revenue, deployed to obtain favorable bond ratings, used for access to earmarked funds, and leveraged to acquire land in water-strategic locations. Considering the ubiquity of these financial practices among medium to large-sized municipal governing bodies, the results of this study are suggestive and generalizable across substantive governing fields and in other locations. Ultimately, this study shows that public governance agencies are intertwined with private capital flows, problematizing the oft-assumed distance between public and private actors. The article also interrogates the influence that financial markets have over of public policy, showing that elected governance officials engage in the commodification of money, encouraging the further commodification of environmental resources.

Research on Optimal Matching Scheme of Public Resource Management Based on the Computational Intelligence Model

The management of public resources means that people’s governments at all levels and other public administrative subjects should use certain means and methods, follow certain principles, rationally allocate and utilize public resources, and maximize their functions and benefits. Under the background of limited human resources, this study adheres to the principle of maximizing the benefits of human resources and rationally allocates the use of human resources. In this study, this kind of resource allocation problem is regarded as a linear programming problem by specifying the benefit function, and then, genetic algorithm, ant colony algorithm, and hybrid genetic-ant colony algorithm are used to solve the problem; the cost and time consumption of different algorithms under different scales are evaluated. Finally, it is found that genetic algorithm is superior to ant colony algorithm when the task scale is small and the effect of genetic algorithm is lower than ant colony algorithm with the expansion of task scale, whereas the improved hybrid genetic-ant colony algorithm is better than ordinary algorithm in general.

Is artificial intelligence capable of understanding? An analysis based on philosophical hermeneutics

From Deep Blue to AlphaGo, the rapid advance of artificial intelligence (AI) in the areas of problem solving and deep learning has lent credence to the prospect that it may one day develop an ability for understanding similar to that of humans or even surpass human intelligence. However, understanding is not a piece of knowledge, a method or an ability. Knowledge can be possessed as an impersonal and public resource. In a certain sense, it can be objectified by a group's understanding, which is characterized by certainty, whereas understanding seems to be in a state of constant transformation and movement. Moreover, a method cannot be separated from the subject and is always subsumed by understanding and interpretation. For a method to be useful, it must be the product of understanding and interpretation. Understanding is not enabled by a method; rather, it is understanding that possesses the method. Finally, understanding cannot be described and defined simply as ability. As an important manifestation of human intelligence, understanding is not an empty shell of method filled by its objects, but an appreciation and extension of the meaning of the objects. Computers are good at dealing with simple and formalized activities that are not associated with a context, but the human activities of understanding are not formalized. From the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, understanding is filled with elements of reflection and in itself is a form of self-understanding. Furthermore, AI lacks the fore-structure of human understanding. Therefore, whether understanding can be viewed from the perspective of historicity is an important difference between human intelligence and AI, and the missing historical connection of computational programs of AI may be an important reason why it cannot acquire understanding in a real sense.