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Volume 21, Issue 1 (2024)Read More

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Journal Article
29 June 2024

A Comparative Review of Soil Carbon Sequestration Methods in Brazil’s Agriculture

Skylar Cheng
Brazil is under unique pressure to adopt sustainable agricultural practices due to its intricate biodiversity and globally dominant agricultural sector. Increasing soil degradation, agricultural land expansion, and rising levels of atmospheric carbon are nationwide concerns that require multifaceted solutions. Integrated agricultural systems, which rehabilitate soils through crop, forage, and livestock rotation as well as biochar—a carbon-rich soil amendment—can address such concerns. These sustainable farming practices improve carbon sequestration and soil fertility; however, uptake remains minimal due to environmental, economic, and policy barriers. Accordingly, this paper proposes a comprehensive model of integrated systems and biochar, in which the benefits of one system can counteract the impediments of the other: biochar can reduce the volatility of integrated systems while integrated systems can reduce the costliness of biochar. This paper will first discuss the environmental impacts of integrated systems and biochar before noting how such impacts are affected in the comprehensive model. The next section will similarly discuss economic impacts in the same manner, and the last section will outline integrated systems policy and the demand for creating biochar policy. This paper offers a holistic review of integrated systems and biochar and encourages further improvements through the combination of both methods.
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Journal Article
23 March 2024

Review of the Safety and Efficacy of Trauma-Focused Treatment Among Patients With Psychosis

Mary Eggers
Among people who experience psychosis, many have comorbid post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is frequently undiagnosed and untreated. Symptoms have long-term implications, such as hallucinations, posttraumatic intrusions, and an increased risk of physical health conditions, like heart disease and respiratory issues. Many clinicians believe that diagnosing and treating PTSD in this population will be dangerous, so these patients are often excluded from trauma-focused treatment based on their psychosis symptoms. This paper will review current data regarding the rates of undiagnosed PTSD among this population as well as the safety and efficacy of treatment options. PubMed was used to identify peer-reviewed, academic journal articles pertaining to, “PTSD,” “psychosis,” “trauma-focused treatment,” “content of first episode psychosis,” and “schizophrenia.” Eleven empirical studies were identified and included in this review. The results showed rates of PTSD among psychosis patients are much higher than currently identified, with one study finding that 16% of participants suffered from comorbid PTSD with only 0.5% of the population having been diagnosed previously. Data also showed that treatment for PTSD was safe and decreased both PTSD and psychosis symptoms in this population. These results strongly indicate that additional studies should be conducted in order to determine which trauma-focused treatments are the most safe and effective for this population. Clinicians working with psychosis patients should be informed of the results of these studies in order to encourage them to diagnose and treat the PTSD of their patients along with their psychosis.
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Journal Article
23 March 2024

U.S. Public Equity ESG Fund Composite and Parnassus Core Equity Fund: Performance and Factor Attribution

Karthik Nemani, Barrett Buhler
This is the first paper to examine all U.S. public equity Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) funds offered by the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment’s (SIF) institutional member firms from 2005 to 2020. For ease of communication, this will be called the ESG Composite. With a Net Asset Value (NAV) over $150 billion, these funds comprise nearly half of the U.S. public equity ESG investment landscape. The article finds that the ESG Composite maintains performance with the Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 total return index on an overall returns basis with lower volatility, indicating greater risk-adjusted returns. Factor analysis reveals that the ESG Composite returns are primarily driven by underleveraged exposure to market returns as well as prevalence of mid-to-large cap and high beta stocks. When isolating the largest fund in the ESG Composite — the Parnassus Core Equity Fund (PRBLX) portfolio — this study finds significant outperformance over the S&P 500 on an overall returns basis. Factor analysis reveals greater emphasis on underleverage to the market and greater preference for large cap, high beta stocks. When compared to the global mutual fund universe, the ESG Composite outperforms in annualized returns and Sharpe ratios, whereas the PRBLX portfolio outperforms in annualized returns, annualized Sharpe ratios, annualized alphas, and annualized information ratios. Conclusions drawn from this study will (1) supplement the discussion on ESG usefulness and (2) present actionable investment insights.
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