Thursday, September 21, 2023

 

Language acquisition may work differently in people with autism


Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL




You’re looking at a truck. You’re with a young child and he follows your gaze. He’s interested in the object you’re looking at without you pointing at it. This is called joint attention and it is one of the primary ways children learn to connect words with objects and acquire language.

Lack of joint attention is a core feature of autism. Until now, it was thought that stimulating joint attention in people with autism would help them express themselves verbally. But a meta-analysis of 71 studies on autism challenges this assumption and suggests that people with autism spectrum disorders may acquire language differently.

The study – by Laurent Mottron, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Addiction at Université de Montréal and a psychiatrist at the Hôpital en santé mentale Rivière-des-Prairies of the CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal; Mikhail Kissine, a professor of linguistics at Université Libre de Bruxelles; and Ariane St-Denis, a medical student at McGill University – is published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

The authors looked at all studies of joint attention and language in children with autism since 1994.

They then selected all those that reported a clear measure of structural language using metrics such as vocabulary size, and excluded those that measured only communication skills.

In neurotypical individuals, social interaction plays an essential role in language development. “It makes sense to assume, therefore, that the ability to establish a shared attentional frame may increase the opportunities for autistic children to attend to linguistic stimuli and engage in communicative experiences,” the authors of the study write.

However, their meta-analysis did not find significant language gains from interventions aimed at promoting social communication in people with autism.

“Linking language outcomes to joint attention in autism is somewhat paradoxical, as the significant proportion of autistic children who become verbal still have a diagnosis of autism, a core component of which is, precisely, atypically low joint attention,” they observe. For example, children with Asperger’s develop impressive language skills without developing comparable social skills.

Of the 71 studies, only 28 reported a correlation between stimulation of joint attention in young children with autism and development of simple vocabulary.

“These studies do show that joint attention is associated with a very simple vocabulary of less than five words, but they cannot predict whether the child will be able to express himself correctly at age 7 or 8,” Mottron notes. Twenty-five other studies show no correlation between joint attention and vocabulary development in children with autism.

It is possible that people with autism learn language differently, without social interaction, he adds. “For example, in immigrant populations whose native language is not English, children with autism learn English by looking at digital tablets and never learn to speak their parents’ language."

If some children with autism are less sensitive to the human voice than to the written word, this could open up new avenues for intervention, Mottron says. “In this case, we should redirect autistic children towards exposure to non-communicative language, in addition to talking to them."

The study therefore opens the door to new ways of addressing neurodiversity.

 

New Mars gravity analysis improves understanding of possible ancient ocean


Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS




The first use of a novel method of analyzing Mars’ gravitational force supports the idea that the planet once had an extensive northern ocean.

In doing so, the method defines the scope of what scientists refer to as the northern Martian paleo-ocean in more detail.

The work was published in July in the journal Icarus, which is affiliated with the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences.

The research was led by Jaroslav Klokočník, professor emeritus at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Gunther Kletetschka, associate research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, is among the three co-authors. Kletetschka is also affiliated with Charles University in the Czech Republic.

“A lot of people are excited about water on Mars because there may be life forms that once existed on Mars or maybe exist today in some bacterial form,” Kletetschka said. “We can use this gravity approach to look for water on Mars, because we have done it already on Earth.

“In an area of northern Africa, for example, this gravity approach found a shoreline of a long-ago lake, and its finding was consistent with the archaeological evidence indicating a shoreline of that lake,” he said.

The authors write that analyzing the gravity aspects of Mars to better understand the planet improves upon prior approaches. They note that it can “provide complete information with a better insight of the celestial body, applicable in geology, geophysics, hydrology, glaciology and other disciplines.”

The work by Kletetschka and colleagues differs from the traditional approach of mapping a surface based on gravity anomalies alone.

Gravity anomalies are areas of greater or weaker gravitational force exerted by a planetary body’s surface features. A mountain would exert a greater gravitational force because it has a higher concentration of mass than would be expected on a planet without surface features. Ocean basins and trenches would have less gravitational force.

In their Mars research, the authors used a process developed by Klokočník that analyzes gravity aspects calculated from gravity anomaly measurements. Gravity aspects are mathematical products that characterize the gravity anomalies.

They also used topographic data from the Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter instrument  aboard NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which launched in November 1996 and mapped the planet for 4 ½ years.

Klokočník used that approach to confirm earlier research about the existence of extensive paleolakes or paleoriver systems under the Saharan sands on Earth. His 2017 research paper also suggested a part of the Grand Egyptian Sand Sea as another candidate for a paleolake.

The gravity aspects method has also been used in a comparison of Earth’s geographic features to those of the cloud-shrouded Venus. That research is described in a July 2023 paper in the journal Scientific Reports in which Kletetschka is a co-author.


CONTACTS:

• Gunther Kletetschka, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, 907-474-7090, gkletetschka@alaska.edu.

• Rod Boyce, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, 907-474-7185, rcboyce@alaska.edu

 

Sustainable energy for aviation: What are our options?


Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS GRAINGER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Production Pathways 

IMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATES THE PRODUCTION PATHWAYS FOR THE KEY ENERGY CARRIERS THAT EMERGED IN ANSELL’S RESEARCH view more 

CREDIT: THE GRAINGER COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AT UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN




Scientists and industry leaders worldwide are looking for answers on how to make aviation sustainable by 2050 and choosing a viable sustainable fuel is a major sticking point. Phil Ansell, aerospace engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, took a full inventory of the options to make a data-driven assessment about how they stack up in comparison. He reviewed over 300 research projects from across different sectors, not just aerospace, to synthesize the ideas and draw conclusions to help direct the dialogue about sustainable aviation toward a permanent solution.

Ansell said several key energy carriers emerged, including bio jet fuel pathways for synthetic kerosene, power-to-liquid pathways for synthetic kerosene, liquid hydrogen, ammonia, liquid natural gas, ethanol, methanol, and battery electric systems. Ansell compared each of them to conventional fossil-derived aviation turbine fuel.

For each of the alternate fuels Ansell addressed factors such as how their material properties impact aircraft performance and fuel handling, emissions, cost and scalability, and resource and land requirements, as well as social impacts, which can be difficult to measure.

“Let's face it, if we want to do this at scale, we need all three pillars of the environmental, economic, and societal contributions, to make that energy carrier sustainable, and every stakeholder in the value chain sees the challenges differently,” Ansell said. “Because the production and infrastructure costs required to adopt an alternative fuel source are significant, people think we can only pick one, the biggest contenders being bio jet fuel and hydrogen,” Ansell said. “But the choice doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. For example, we can use hydrogen to produce synthetic aviation fuels like the power-to-liquid pathway or use biomass to produce hydrogen.”

Ansell admitted this is not what he typically studies, but his research and teaching areas in aircraft design and aerodynamics must consider where the energy will come from to make flight possible. So, for any fuel associated with a bio aspect Ansell had to look at the stresses it might create for crops.

“I leaned on a lot of the observations from the community, especially for the land use change question,” he said. “It is so driven case by case. Making a broad assessment doesn't do it justice, because land use changes depend on their location.”

Ansell said he has been working with hydrogen for several years and battery/electric systems before that, so he needed to remain objective and all the data to drive the conclusion.

“About eight years ago, I realized that battery systems are a pie-in-the-sky solution. The technology challenge is insurmountable. The weight and volume required for batteries is too difficult to close. I think my biases were from the fact that I've been studying hydrogen for a long time, and I think it has real potential. That’s one of the conclusions I arrived at from the data, and I think I would have learned that independently.”

Ansell said hydrogen presents infrastructural and integration challenges, unique to the aircraft platform and unique to the cryogenic handling of fuel on aircraft.

“The technological challenges of hydrogen are very solvable. And I can say that with confidence because we’ve done it as a society.”  He referred to Tupolev 155, a commercial scale aircraft which was flown by the former Soviet Union with liquid hydrogen in the 1980s on a relevant airframe. Even earlier experimental studies were conducted by NASA. “It will take a bit longer to implement at scale, but it’s doable.”

In the study, Ansell examined numerous options to produce biofuel from just about anything, from municipal waste to seaweed and algae.

“Basically, anything that you can burn, create energy from, decompose, can be turned into a jet fuel. We’ve already been using corn to produce ethanol. But if you were to take corn, ferment it, then turn that ethanol into jet fuel, you now have lost the ability to feed people or animals that corn. This is one of the challenges of all first-generation biofuels.”

He said people are trying to use the stover, the parts of a corn plant left on the ground after harvesting to make fuel. Corn stover is full of sugar but it’s difficult to extract.

Why is an aerospace engineer studying feedstocks?

“I want to be able to know enough to interact with scientists who are tackling these options,” Ansell said. “And it’s important that the aviation community understands where the challenges exist. We need to draw the lines between the aircraft as a system, the aircraft operating in an airspace, and how that connects with energy. With a goal of net zero CO2 by 2050, I want the aviation community to recognize how big of a task this is.

“As a society, we are often attentive to challenges that are right in front of us, with limited foresight to plan for the future. So even as it pertains to the greenhouse gas effect, we still don't have an appreciation for the long-term sense of the damage that produces. We have other immediate concerns to spend money on. But without that foresight, we are going to struggle and regret decisions not to make investments and not to take seriously these aviation sustainability challenges when we still had time.”Again, Ansell stressed that it might not need to be a one-fuel-fits-all solution. In fact, countries may need different strategies, different rates of implementation, and adoption of renewables, based on their own resources. For example, Denmark doesn’t have as much land as the U.S. and so is making great use of offshore wind turbine platforms.

“Maybe we should play to our strengths. The U.S. has one of the world's largest agricultural sectors in the world. We may have more land than Europe that can be allocated to feedstock development, which can be used for a variety of bio-jet fuels or hydrogen production pathways. In contrast, Europe has an extensive network of clean energy, and as such is doing a lot of work in electrolytic hydrogen production.

The study, “Review of sustainable energy carriers for aviation: Benefits, challenges, and future viability,” by Phillip J. Ansell, appears in the journal Progress in Aerospace Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.paerosci.2023.100919

 

How climate warming could disrupt a deep-rooted relationship


Researchers from Syracuse University and the University of Minnesota find that warming trends will likely result in major disturbances of networks of fungi potentially harming forest resilience


Peer-Reviewed Publication

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Amanita muscaria, an ectomycorrhizal fungus 

IMAGE: AMANITA MUSCARIA, AN ECTOMYCORRHIZAL FUNGUS, FROM THE B4WARMED EXPERIMENT. THESE TYPES OF FUNGI PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN FOREST HEALTH AND MAY BE IN DANGER UNDER CURRENT LEVELS OF CLIMATE WARMING. view more 

CREDIT: LOUIS MIELKE




Children are taught to leave wild mushrooms alone because of their potential to be poisonous. But trees on the other hand depend on fungi for their well-being. Look no further than ectomycorrhizal fungi, which are organisms that colonize the roots of many tree species where the boreal ecosystem (zone encompassing Earth’s northernmost forests) and the temperate ecosystem (zone between the tropical and boreal regions) meet. This area features a mix of boreal trees including needle-leaved evergreens and temperate tree species including maple and oak.

Just like a healthy human relationship, trees and fungi work well together because they help one another. When the ectomycorrhizal fungi attach themselves to tree roots, they acquire carbon in the form of sugars from their tree hosts and in turn provide the trees with important nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous. It’s an important symbiotic relationship that drives ecosystem function and resilience.

But as climate change and global warming cause higher temperatures and amplified drought, little is known about how these important fungi will respond. Additionally, there are lingering questions about how climate warming will impact the underground threads – known as ectomycorrhizal networks - formed by fungi that connects trees and facilitates the transfer of water, nitrogen and other minerals.

To investigate this issue, a research team from Syracuse University and the University of Minnesota conducted a climate change experiment where they exposed boreal and temperate tree species to warming and drought treatments to better understand how fungi and their tree hosts respond to environmental changes.

The study, led by Christopher W. Fernandez, assistant professor of biology in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences, was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their findings revealed that the combined effects of warming and water stress will likely result in major disturbances of ectomycorrhizal networks and may harm forest resilience and function.

The team conducted their work at a long-term climate change experiment called B4WARMED (Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in Danger) in Minnesota. The experiment features plots where both boreal and temperate tree species have been planted and exposed to warming and drought treatments. This allows researchers to explore how the ectomycorrhizal fungi and the networks they form with their tree hosts respond to environmental stressors.

Fernandez, whose research aims to understand processes involving plant, microbial and ecosystem ecology, says their study revealed that composition of ectomycorrhizal fungal species changes dramatically with climate change. Specifically, they saw a shift from species commonly found in mature forests that have high biomass mycelium (the thread-like body of the fungus that explores the soil and that is likely important for network formation) towards low biomass species that are generally found in highly disturbed ecosystems.

“There is a supported hypothesis that these low biomass species probably do not provide the host much benefit in terms of nutrition compared to high biomass species,” says Fernandez. “We found that the networks formed by these fungi that ‘connect’ the trees shifted from relatively complex and well-connected networks to ones that are simpler with less connections.”

Fungal mycelium is a network of thread-like tissue filaments that help plants and trees share nutrients. (Credit: Christopher Fernandez)

The authors say these shifts were significantly related to the performance of the tree hosts and their ability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and sugars through photosynthesis. “Climate change is reducing the amount of carbon the trees fix and likely has cascading effects on how much carbon they can provide to their ectomycorrhizal fungi,” continues Fernandez. “This is likely causing a shift towards low biomass species, resulting in the breakdown of networks between trees.”

The research team believes this to be the first study examining the response of ectomycorrhizal networks to climate change and their results should generate new research focusing on other ecosystems. Building on this work, they say the next step will be to link the changes in ectomycorrhizal networks to ecosystem level processes such as nutrient and carbon cycling to better understand how resilient they are to changing climate.

Full publication citation: Christopher W. Fernandez, Louis Mielke, Artur Stefanski, Raimundo Bermudez, Sarah E. Hobbie, Rebecca A. Montgomery, Peter B. Reich, Peter G. Kennedy; Climate change–induced stress disrupts ectomycorrhizal interaction networks at the boreal–temperate ecotone. PNAS August 2023; 120 (34): e2221619120. doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221619120

Fungal mycelium is a network of thread-like tissue filaments that help plants and trees share nutrients.

CREDIT

Christopher Fernandez, Syracuse University


 

Researchers reveal novel AI-based camera alert system to promote coexistence between tigers and humans


Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES

The TrailGuard AI camera system 

IMAGE: THE TRAILGUARD AI CAMERA SYSTEM (LEFT, US QUARTER FOR SCALE) CAN BE WELL CAMOUFLAGED NEAR A TRAIL SUCH AS THIS ONE IN DUDHWA TIGER RESERVE, AS SEEN FROM THE TRAIL, THAT SENT MULTIPLE REAL-TIME NOTIFICATIONS OF POACHERS WITHOUT BEING DETECTED (RIGHT). view more 

CREDIT: TRAILGUARD AI




For decades, wildlife biologists have dreamt of a “smart” camera alerting system capable of detecting tigers and other endangered species on the prowl. Legacy camera-trap technology, while valuable for many research applications, has historically been hindered by false positives and an inability to facilitate rapid responses.

            Writing in BioScience, Jeremy Dertien of Clemson University and colleagues announce that for the first time ever, wild tigers and elephants have been detected by an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, cryptic camera-alert system, TrailGuard AI, that transmits images to the cell phones and computers of park managers and other concerned entities in real time.

            The technology, originally developed to detect poachers, limits false positives, and its fast alert times permit "park managers the chance for rapid response to intrusion by poachers or to alert villagers to the nearby presence of tigers," according to the authors. Dertien and colleagues describe the first months of field deployment in India during the monsoon period of 2022, when TrailGuard AI was immediately useful in detecting tigers moving close to villages and using the same trails as wildlife poachers.

            Such technology is expected to be a valuable tool in mitigating human–wildlife conflict and furthering conservation efforts, report the authors. However, cautions coauthor Hrishita Negi, “integrating communities is essential for coexistence to work." Efforts are under way to educate those who may use the system and foster greater uptake of this and other valuable technologies.

___

This work was supported by the Global Tiger ForumNational Tiger Conservation AuthorityClemson University, and the nongovernmental organization RESOLVE.

 

How to tackle the global deforestation crisis


Vital forest is cleared every day, with major climate effects. Satellites have revolutionized measurement of the problem, but what can we do about it?


Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY




Imagine if France, Germany, and Spain were completely blanketed in forests — and then all those trees were quickly chopped down. That’s nearly the amount of deforestation that occurred globally between 2001 and 2020, with profound consequences. 

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, producing between 6 and 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2009 study. Meanwhile, because trees also absorb carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere, they help keep the Earth cooler. And climate change aside, forests protect biodiversity. 

“Climate change and biodiversity make this a global problem, not a local problem,” says MIT economist Ben Olken. “Deciding to cut down trees or not has huge implications for the world.” 

But deforestation is often financially profitable, so it continues at a rapid rate. Researchers can now measure this trend closely: In the last quarter-century, satellite-based technology has led to a paradigm change in charting deforestation. New deforestation datasets, based on the Landsat satellites, for instance, track forest change since 2000 with resolution at 30 meters, while many other products now offer frequent imaging at close resolution. 

“Part of this revolution in measurement is accuracy, and the other part is coverage,” says Clare Balboni, an assistant professor of economics at the London School of Economics (LSE). “On-site observation is very expensive and logistically challenging, and you’re talking about case studies. These satellite-based data sets just open up opportunities to see deforestation at scale, systematically, across the globe.”

Balboni and Olken have now helped write a new paper providing a road map for thinking about this crisis. The open-access article, “The Economics of Tropical Deforestation,” appears this month in the Annual Review of Economics. The co-authors are Balboni, a former MIT faculty member; Aaron Berman, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Economics; Robin Burgess, an LSE professor; and Olken, MIT’s Jane Berkowitz Carlton and Dennis William Carlton Professor of Microeconomics. Balboni and Olken have also conducted primary research in this area, along with Burgess.

So, how can the world tackle deforestation? It starts with understanding the problem. 

Replacing forests with farms

Several decades ago, some thinkers, including the famous MIT economist Paul Samuelson in the 1970s, built models to study forests as a renewable resource; Samuelson calculated the “maximum sustained yield” at which a forest could be cleared while being regrown. These frameworks were designed to think about tree farms or the U.S. national forest system, where a fraction of trees would be cut each year, and then new trees would be grown over time to take their place.

But deforestation today, particularly in tropical areas, often looks very different, and forest regeneration is not common. 

Indeed, as Balboni and Olken emphasize, deforestation is now rampant partly because the profits from chopping down trees come not just from timber, but from replacing forests with agriculture. In Brazil, deforestation has increased along with agricultural prices; in Indonesia, clearing trees accelerated as the global price of palm oil went up, leading companies to replace forests with palm tree orchards. 

All this tree-clearing creates a familiar situation: The globally shared costs of climate change from deforestation are “externalities,” as economists say, imposed on everyone else by the people removing forest land. It is akin to a company that pollutes into a river, affecting the water quality of residents. 

“Economics has changed the way it thinks about this over the last 50 years, and two things are central,” Olken says. “The relevance of global externalities is very important, and the conceptualization of alternate land uses is very important.” This also means traditional forest-management guidance about regrowth is not enough. With the economic dynamics in mind, which policies might work, and why? 

The search for solutions

As Balboni and Olken note, economists often recommend “Pigouvian” taxes (named after the British economist Arthur Pigou) in these cases, levied against people imposing externalities on others. And yet, it can be hard to identify who is doing the deforesting. 

Instead of taxing people for clearing forests, governments can pay people to keep forests intact. The UN uses Payments for Environmental Services (PES) as part of its REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) program. However, it is similarly tough to identify the optimal landowners to subsidize, and these payments may not match the quick cash-in of deforestation. A 2017 study in Uganda showed PES reduced deforestation somewhat; a 2022 study in Indonesia found no reduction; another 2022 study, in Brazil, showed again that some forest protection resulted. 

“There’s mixed evidence from many of these [studies],” Balboni says. These policies, she notes, must reach people who would otherwise clear forests, and a key question is, “How can we assess their success compared to what would have happened anyway?” 

Some places have tried cash transfer programs for larger populations. In Indonesia, a 2020 study found such subsidies reduced deforestation near villages by 30 percent. But in Mexico, a similar program meant more people could afford milk and meat, again creating demand for more agriculture and thus leading to more forest-clearing. 

At this point, it might seem that laws simply banning deforestation in key areas would work best — indeed, about 16 percent of the world’s land overall is protected in some way. Yet the dynamics of protection are tricky. Even with protected areas in place, there is still “leakage” of deforestation into other regions.  

Still more approaches exist, including “nonstate agreements,” such as the Amazon Soy Moratorium in Brazil, in which grain traders pledged not to buy soy from deforested lands, and reduced deforestation without “leakage.” 

Also, intriguingly, a 2008 policy change in the Brazilian Amazon made agricultural credit harder to obtain by requiring recipients to comply with environmental and land registration rules. The result? Deforestation dropped by up to 60 percent over nearly a decade.  

Politics and pulp

Overall, Balboni and Olken observe, beyond “externalities,” two major challenges exist. One, it is often unclear who holds property rights in forests. In these circumstances, deforestation seems to increase. Two, deforestation is subject to political battles. 

For instance, as economist Bard Harstad of Stanford University has observed, environmental lobbying is asymmetric. Balboni and Olken write: “The conservationist lobby must pay the government in perpetuity … while the deforestation-oriented lobby need pay only once to deforest in the present.” And political instability leads to more deforestation because “the current administration places lower value on future conservation payments.”

Even so, national political measures can work. In the Amazon from 2001 to 2005, Brazilian deforestation rates were three to four times higher than on similar land across the border, but that imbalance vanished once the country passed conservation measures in 2006. However, deforestation ramped up again after a 2014 change in government. Looking at particular monitoring approaches, a study of Brazil’s satellite-based Real-Time System for Detection of Deforestation (DETER), launched in 2004, suggests that a 50 percent annual increase in its use in municipalities created a 25 percent reduction in deforestation from 2006 to 2016.

How precisely politics matters may depend on the context. In a 2021 paper, Balboni and Olken (with three colleagues) found that deforestation actually decreased around elections in Indonesia. Conversely, in Brazil, one study found that deforestation rates were 8 to 10 percent higher where mayors were running for re-election between 2002 and 2012, suggesting incumbents had deforestation industry support. 

“The research there is aiming to understand what the political economy drivers are,” Olken says, “with the idea that if you understand those things, reform in those countries is more likely.”

Looking ahead, Balboni and Olken also suggest that new research estimating the value of intact forest land intact could influence public debates. And while many scholars have studied deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, fewer have examined the Democratic Republic of Congo, another deforestation leader, and sub-Saharan Africa. 

Deforestation is an ongoing crisis. But thanks to satellites and many recent studies, experts know vastly more about the problem than they did a decade or two ago, and with an economics toolkit, can evaluate the incentives and dynamics at play. 

“To the extent that there’s ambuiguity across different contexts with different findings, part of the point of our review piece is to draw out common themes — the important considerations in determining which policy levers can [work] in different circumstances,” Balboni says. “That’s a fast-evolving area. We don’t have all the answers, but part of the process is bringing together growing evidence about [everything] that affects how successful those choices can be.” 

###

Written by Peter Dizikes, MIT News

Paper: “The Economics of Tropical Deforestation”

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-economics-090622-024705