FSE affiliated faculty member Pamela Matson was the keynote speaker at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center at the University of Maine. Her talk focuses on what is needed to transition to a sustainable world. She frames her lecture around FSE's agricultural sustainability research in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico.
Soybean production has become a significant force for economic development in Brazil, but has come at the cost of expansion into non-protected forests in the Amazon and native savanna in the Cerrado. Over the past fifty years, production has increased from 26 million to 260 million tons. Area planted to soybeans has increased from roughly 1 million hectares in 1970 to more than 23 million hectares in 2010, second only to the United States.
A new study out of Stanford University examines the role of institutions and supply chain conditions in Brazil’s booming soybean industry and the relationship between soy yields and planted area. With the demand for soybeans projected to increase far into the future a better understanding of the economic and institutional factors influencing production can help policymakers better manage land use change.
Using county level data the researchers found that soy area and yields are higher in areas with high cooperative membership and credit levels, and where cheap credit sources are more accessible. Cooperatives help producers secure lower prices for inputs or higher prices for outputs through group purchases and sales. They also enable producers to store their grain past the harvesting period and sell it when prices are higher.
“This suggests that soybean production and profitability will increase as supply chain infrastructure improves in the Cerrado and Amazon,” said lead author Rachael Garrett, a PhD student in Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources.
The authors did not find a significant relationship between land tenure and planted area or land tenure and yields. But found that yields decline and planted area actually increases as transportation costs increase. More importantly, the study showed counties with higher yields have a higher proportion of land planted in soy.
“Policies intending to spare land through technological yield improvements could actually lead to land expansion in the absence of strong land use regulations if demand and per hectare profits are high,” said co-author Rosamond L. Naylor, director of Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.
The current Forest Code requires rural land users in the Amazon to conserve 80% of their property in a ‘Legal Reserve’, and landowners in the Cerrado to conserve 20%. Historically, illegal clearings have been common and enforcement of the Legal Reserve requirements remains poor.
While this study focuses on Brazil, the results underscore the importance of understanding how supply chains influence land use associated with cash crops in other countries. Future demand for soybeans, as well as for cash crops like Indonesian palm oil, will continue to grow as demand for cooking oil, livestock feed, and biodiesel increase with income growth and changing dietary preferences in emerging economies.
Applying for a Rhodes Scholarship gave Margaret Hayden a chance to talk about her quest to better understand mental illness.
Hayden, whose older sister committed suicide after a sudden and severe depression, wrote in her essay that she "could not begin to craft a meaningful life without acknowledging and trying to understand her [sister's] experience."
In the spring quarter of her freshman year, she enrolled in a class on the anthropology of mental illness. Later, she began pursuing research related to mental illness, working with faculty at Stanford Health Policy at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Now a senior, Hayden is one of two Stanford students joining 30 other newly minted Rhodes Scholars from the United States who will receive full financial support to pursue degrees in England.
The Rhodes Scholarships are the oldest and most celebrated international fellowship awards in the world. Scholars are chosen for their outstanding scholarly achievements as well as their character, commitment to others and to the common good, and potential for leadership in whatever careers they choose.
Hayden, 21, of Brunswick, Maine, is majoring in human biology. She is writing an honors thesis in the Program in Ethics in Society, with an emphasis on the art and ethics of patient care. She plans to pursue a master's degree in medical anthropology at Oxford.
Margaret Hayden
Margaret Hayden
Her honors thesis, "The Ethical Implications of Biological Conceptions of Mental Illness and Personhood," explores the consequences of viewing mental illness as solely a matter of the brain.
In her Rhodes Scholarship application, Hayden said that approach to mental illness may alleviate responsibility from patients, but it also introduces troubling implications: What kind of person do you become when your brain is "broken?"
"It is here I envision my intellectual future – working at the interface of medicine, anthropology and ethics," she wrote. "Anthropology grounds my ethical investigations, because I believe that without the context of the everyday moral experiences of individuals, without attention to emotional, social and political setting, the practice of ethics risks becoming an abstract academic exercise with little relevance to the day-to-day struggles of real people trying to craft lives in this tenuous, unpredictable world. It is these people and their struggles that motivate my own intellectual ambitions."
Hayden is a co-author of "Parents' Perceptions of Benefit of Children's Mental Health Treatment and Continued Use of Services," published Aug. 1, 2012 in Psychiatric Services.
In one of her studies at Stanford Health Policy, she analyzed Latina women's perceptions of post-partum depression. In another, she assessed the success of a program to improve outcomes of low-birth-weight infants by analyzing the mothers' use of and attitudes toward a web-based information portal and social network.
Since the fall of 2010, Hayden has served as a patient advocate at the Mayview Community Health Center in Palo Alto. At the clinic, she conducted a research project on available mental health resources for clients. Since the fall of 2011, she has been a clinic coordinator at the center, serving as a liaison among student volunteers, Stanford program staff and clinic staff.
Hayden was a member of Stanford's varsity squash team and its varsity sailing team.
Hayden will be studying at Oxford with Rachel Kolb, '12, who is currently pursuing a master's degree in English at Stanford
Kolb, 22, of Los Ranchos, N.M., earned a bachelor's degree in English with honors and a minor in human biology in 2012 from Stanford.
Rachel Kolb
Rachel Kolb
Kolb, who was elected as a junior to Phi Beta Kappa, wrote an honors thesis titled, "Grains of Truth in the Wildest Fable: Literary Illustrations, Pictorial Representation, and the Project of Fantasy in Jane Eyre."At Oxford, Kolb plans to pursue a master's degree in contemporary literature and a master's degree in comparative social policy.
In her Rhodes Scholarship application, Kolb, who was born with a profound bilateral hearing loss, wrote: "As someone who understands the different forms communication can take, from spoken to sign language, I understand the value of flexibility in transmitting ideas.
"I see well-rounded, effective communication as essential to ideas, creativity and progress. I want to be a writer committed to exploring issues of access, equality and difference, and the nature of communication itself. Our world often does not know how to talk about these things, just as it does not know how to talk about disability, about differing abilities and strengths, distinct personal styles and challenges."
Kolb, who was active with Christian ministries, wrote a weekly opinion column for The Stanford Daily in 2011. She is themanaging editor of Leland Quarterly, a campus literary magazine.
She is a member of the on-campus student advocacy group, Power to ACT: Abilities Coming Together, and was one of several students featured in a new video that welcomes students with disabilities to Stanford. The university's Office of Accessible Education released the video last month.
Kolb won several prizes for her writing at Stanford, including the Marie Louise Rosenberg Award for her honors thesis and the 2011 Creative Nonfiction Prize for her essay, "Seeing at the Speed of Sound."
Kolb is co-president of Stanford's equestrian team and represented the university at the 2010 and 2011 Intercollegiate Horse Show Association National Finals.
Kathleen J. Sullivan is a writer for Stanford's University Communications.
A government-backed panel of medical experts says everyone between the ages of 15 and 65 in the United States should be tested at least once in their lives for HIV, a policy that Stanford’s Douglas K. Owens says could have a substantial impact on the course of the epidemic.
Owens, a professor of medicine and director of Stanford Health Policy at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, is a member of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which issued its draft recommendation on Nov. 19.
Currently, there are an estimated 1.2 million people in the nation infected with HIV, and some 20 to 25 percent of them aren’t aware they carry the virus that causes AIDS. If they were diagnosed, they could get into treatment programs, which would benefit them as well as helping to prevent the spread of the disease.
“We think it’s important for everyone to be screened once because treatment helps people live longer, healthier lives and also prevents transmission to others,” said Owens, who is also a senior investigator at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.
Those at very high risk, including gay men and injection drug users, should be tested every year, while others considered at increased risk also should undergo repeat testing with the frequency depending on risk, the task force recommends. In addition, the panel said practitioners should screen all pregnant women for the virus; the practice, now common in this country, has helped virtually eliminate the incidence of mother-to-child transmission, Owens noted.
In 2005, the task force strongly recommended HIV screening in adolescents and adults considered at increased risk for HIV, but it stopped short of recommending a universal testing program. The new recommendation for widespread screening reflects the changing world of AIDS science, Owens said.
For instance, studies have shown that an early diagnosis — even before symptoms begin to emerge — followed by effective antiretroviral treatment, can help prevent individuals from developing life-threatening complications. Moreover, HIV-infected individuals who are treated with antiretroviral drugs are much less likely to pass on the virus to others. A landmark study published in August 2011 and involving 1,763 heterosexual couples (in which one was HIV-positive and the other was not) found that treating the infected partner reduced his or her chance of transmitting the virus by 96 percent.
In addition, once people are diagnosed, they can be counseled about changing their behaviors to help prevent the spread of the disease. Observational studies have shown that people who know their HIV status are more likely to take precautions, for instance, by using condoms, avoiding sex with sex workers or having sex in exchange for money or drugs, the task force noted.
In 2006, the federal Centers for Disease Control recommended routine voluntary screening for everyone aged 13 to 64, but allowed them to opt out of testing. Many other professional groups, such as the American College of Physicians, also advise routine patient screening. Yet universal screening, followed by treatment, has never been achieved in this country.
Owens said the task force did consider the potential harms of screening and testing. One potential drawback is a false-positive test result, though the screening test is highly accurate, so this risk is quite small, he said. Treatment also may carry side effects, including the possibility of a slightly increased risk for heart problems. Stigmatization and labeling are other potential downsides of testing, he said.
But on balance, he said, “We feel the benefits are so substantial that they far outweigh the potential harm.”
He said the task force also emphasized the importance of prevention: “The best way to reduce HIV disease and death is to avoid becoming infected. So we want people to take actions to reduce their risk behaviors, such as using safe sex practices and avoiding other behaviors that put them at risk.”
“This suggests that soybean production and profitability will increase as supply chain infrastructure improves in the Cerrado and Amazon,” said lead author 
Margaret Hayden
Rachel Kolb
