Brazil's Amazon Soy Moratorium reduced deforestation.

Between 2004 and 2012, multiple policies contributed to one of the great conservation successes of the twenty-first century-an 84% decrease in the rate of Brazilian Amazon deforestation. Among the most prominent of these policies is the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM), an agreement by grain traders not to purchase soy grown on recently deforested land. The ASM inspired widespread adoption of similar zero-deforestation commitments, but its impact is poorly understood due to its overlap with other conservation policies. Here, we apply an econometric triple-differences model to remotely sensed deforestation data to isolate the ASM's impact within Brazil's Arc of Deforestation. We show that the ASM reduced deforestation in soy-suitable locations in the Amazon by 0.66 ± 0.32 percentage points relative to a counterfactual control, preventing 18,000 ± 9,000 km2 of deforestation over its first decade (2006-2016). Although these results highlight potential benefits of private conservation policies, the ASM's success was dependent on complementarities with public property registries and deforestation monitoring.

Mapping the cattle industry in Brazil's most dynamic cattle-ranching state: Slaughterhouses in Mato Grosso, 1967-2016.

The state of Mato Grosso is Brazil's agribusiness powerhouse with a cattle herd of 30.2 million head in 2017. With land use patterns heavily influenced by beef production, which requires substantial land inputs, the state is a key target for environmental conservation. Yet the spatial and temporal dynamics of slaughterhouses in Mato Grosso remain largely unknown due to data limitations. Here, we provide a novel method to map slaughterhouse expansion and contraction. We analyzed the opening and closing of 133 plants between 1967 and 2016 in Mato Grosso and estimated the geographic locations and slaughter volumes. This was achieved by triangulating across multiple data sources including a registry of 21 million companies, government records of three million slaughter transactions (Portuguese acronym GTA), and high resolution satellite imagery. Our study is the first to include longitudinal information and both inspected (for food quality) and uninspected slaughterhouses. The results show that 72 plants operated in 2016 through 52 holding companies. By measuring geographic distances between active plants and pasture areas, we documented a 29% increase in the density of plants during 2000-2016, showing an expansion of the cattle slaughter infrastructure. We identified three periods of expansion: 1967-1995, with 15.1% of the plant openings; 1996-2003, with 24.6%; and 2004-2016, with 60.3%. While closings likely occurred throughout the period studied, no data were available prior to 2002. We estimated a minimum value for the volume of uninspected slaughter as 2-3% for 2013-2016. We conclude by discussing potential applications of the data, a deidentified version of which is made available through an online repository. The method developed here can be replicated for the whole country, which would increase our understanding of the dynamics of cattle slaughter and their impact on land use.

Mammalian laryngseal air sacs add variability to the vocal tract impedance: physical and computational modeling.

Cavities branching off the main vocal tract are ubiquitous in nonhumans. Mammalian air sacs exist in human relatives, including all four great apes, but only a substantially reduced version exists in humans. The present paper focuses on acoustical functions of the air sacs. The hypotheses are investigated on whether the air sacs affect amplitude of utterances and/or position of formants. A multilayer synthetic model of the vocal folds coupled with a vocal tract model was utilized. As an air sac model, four configurations were considered: open and closed uniform tube-like side branches, a rigid cavity, and an inflatable cavity. Results suggest that some air sac configurations can enhance the sound level. Furthermore, an air sac model introduces one or more additional resonance frequencies, shifting formants of the main vocal tract to some extent but not as strongly as previously suggested. In addition, dynamic range of vocalization can be extended by the air sacs. A new finding is also an increased variability of the vocal tract impedance, leading to strong nonlinear source-filter interaction effects. The experiments demonstrated that air-sac-like structures can destabilize the sound source. The results were validated by a transmission line computational model.

Frequency response of the skin on the head and neck during production of selected speech sounds.

Vibrations within the vocal tract during speech are transmitted through tissue to the skin surface and can be used to transmit speech. Achieving quality speech signals using skin vibration is desirable but problematic, primarily due to the several sound production locations along the vocal tract. The objective of this study was to characterize the frequency content of speech signals on various locations of the head and neck. Signals were recorded using a microphone and accelerometers attached to 15 locations on the heads and necks of 14 males and 10 females. The subjects voiced various phonemes and one phrase. The power spectral densities (PSD) of the phonemes were used to determine a quality ranking for each location and sound. Spectrograms were used to examine signal frequency content for selected locations. A perceptual listening test was conducted and compared to the PSD rankings. The signal-to-noise ratio was found for each location with and without background noise. These results are presented and discussed. Notably, while high-frequency content is attenuated at the throat, it is shown to be detectable at some other locations. The best locations for speech transmission were found to be generally common to males and females.