How will better data (and better use of data) enable us to save the planet?

The potentially catastrophic loss of biodiversity happening around the globe is largely caused by economic activity that is not connected to its environmental impacts. To improve positive and reduce negative outcomes for nature, investment decision-makers in companies, governments, and the finance sector need data on the impacts of economic activity, especially production of food and other commodities, on biodiversity, at fine geographical scales. This Essay argues that the data allowing us to identify the most important factors causing biodiversity loss are already available. However, we need more data to track impacts on biodiversity up value chains into pathways, toolkits, and approaches that will facilitate verified, concrete actions by companies and consumers to reduce threats to biodiversity in particular places. Our current knowledge is insufficient to deliver complete responses to the biodiversity crisis, but this is no excuse for delaying action.

Bottom-up global biodiversity metrics needed for businesses to assess and manage their impact.

Ensuring that companies can assess and manage their impacts on biodiversity will be crucial to solving the current biodiversity crisis, and regulatory and public pressure to disclose these impacts is increasing. Top-down intactness metrics (e.g., Mean Species Abundance) can be valuable for generating high-level or first-tier assessments of impact risk but do not provide sufficient precision or guidance for companies, regulators, or third-party assessors. New metrics based on bottom-up assessments of biodiversity (e.g., the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration metric) can accommodate spatial variation of biodiversity and provide more specific guidance for actions to avoid, reduce, remediate, and compensate for impacts and to identify positive opportunities.

Cuantificación vertical de la biodiversidad mundial necesarias para que las empresas evalúen y gestionen su impacto Resumen Para resolver la actual crisis de biodiversidad, es importante asegurar que las empresas puedan evaluar y gestionar su impacto sobre la biodiversidad. Además, cada vez es mayor la presión pública y legislativa para divulgar este impacto. La cuantificación vertical de la integridad (p. ej.: Abundancia Media de Especies) puede ser valiosa para producir evaluaciones de alto nivel o primera categoría del riesgo de impacto, pero no proporcionan suficiente precisión o guía para las empresas, los reguladores o los asesores de terceros. Las nuevas medidas basadas en evaluaciones verticales (p. ej.: la medida de Abatimiento y Restauración de Amenazas de Especies) pueden acomodar la variación espacial de la biodiversidad y proporcionar una guía más específica para las acciones necesarias para evitar, reducir, remediar y compensar los impactos e identificar las oportunidades positivas.

Quantifying and mapping species threat abatement opportunities to support national target setting.

The successful implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity's post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will rely on effective translation of targets from global to national level and increased engagement across diverse sectors of society. Species conservation targets require policy support measures that can be applied to a diversity of taxonomic groups, that link action targets to outcome goals, and that can be applied to both global and national data sets to account for national context, which the species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric does. To test the flexibility of STAR, we applied the metric to vascular plants listed on national red lists of Brazil, Norway, and South Africa. The STAR metric uses data on species' extinction risk, distributions, and threats, which we obtained from national red lists to quantify the contribution that threat abatement and habitat restoration activities could make to reducing species' extinction risk. Across all 3 countries, the greatest opportunity for reducing plant species' extinction risk was from abating threats from agricultural activities, which could reduce species' extinction risk by 54% in Norway, 36% in South Africa, and 29% in Brazil. Species extinction risk could be reduced by a further 21% in South Africa by abating threats from invasive species and by 21% in Brazil by abating threats from urban expansion. Even with different approaches to red-listing among countries, the STAR metric yielded informative results that identified where the greatest conservation gains could be made for species through threat-abatement and restoration activities. Quantifiably linking local taxonomic coverage and data collection to global processes with STAR would allow national target setting to align with global targets and enable state and nonstate actors to measure and report on their potential contributions to species conservation.

HIV Prevention Programs for Racial and Ethnic Minority Communities: Do The Right Thing 4LIFE: An African American Prevention/Outreach Program Utilizing Barbershops and Beauty Salons.

Using the Popular Opinion Leader Model to develop and implement new creative, innovative, and effective programs reaching the African American community.

Investigation of microfilarial periodicity

Clinical studies showed that Hetrazan given during the day caused an increase in blood parasite count, while exercise and administration of oxygen lead to a decrease. No significant changes were noted when vagal function was altered (AU)