The art of pain: A quantitative color analysis of the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a Mexican artist who is remembered for her self-portraits, pain and passion, and bold, vibrant colors. This work aims to use her life story and her artistic production in a longitudinal study to examine with quantitative tools the effects of physical and emotional pain (rage) on artistic expression. Kahlo suffered from polio as a child, was involved in a bus accident as a teenager where she suffered multiple fractures of her spine and had 30 operations throughout her lifetime. She also had a tempestuous relationship with her painter husband, Diego Rivera. Her physical and personal troubles however became the texture of her vivid visual vocabulary-usually expressed through the depiction of Mexican and indigenous culture or the female experience and form. We applied color analysis to a series of Frida's self-portraits and revealed a very strong association of physical pain and emotional rage with low wavelength colors (red and yellow), indicating that the expression of her ailments was, consciously or not, achieved by increasing the perceived luminance of the canvas. Further quantitative analysis that used the fractal dimension identified "The broken column" as the portrait with higher compositional complexity, which matches previous critical acclaim of this portrait as the climax of her art. These results confirm the ability of color analysis to extract emotional and cognitive features from artistic work. We suggest that these tools could be used as markers to support artistic and creative interventions in mental health.

An overview of a free-market approach to climate change and conservation.

This paper describes the convergence of environmental and financial markets, reviews the evolution of market-based environmental programmes as an example of the seven-stage evolutionary process witnessed in a variety of markets and summarizes the emergence of greenhouse-gas-mitigation markets and their potential role in advancing land stewardship, biodiversity and other environmental services. Emissions trading has been developed to meet the demand to reduce pollution while avoiding economic disruption. Consistent with the seven-stage pattern of market evolution, the US programme to reduce the damage from acid rain established a standardized environmental commodity, developed 'evidence of ownership' necessary for financial instruments and provided the infrastructure to efficiently transfer title. The success of the system in reducing pollution at low cost has provided a model for other market-based environmental protection initiatives. The demand for cost-effective action to reduce the threat of climate change has initiated the same evolutionary process for markets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Many of the land- and forest-management practices that can capture and store atmospheric CO(2) can also provide other environmental benefits, such as biodiversity preservation and enhanced water quality. The presence of a carbon-trading market will introduce a clear financial value for capture and mitigation of CO(2) emissions, thus introducing a new source of funding for land stewardship and forest rehabilitation. The market is now emerging through a variety of 'bottom-up' developments being undertaken through governmental, multilateral, private-sector and non-governmental-organization initiatives. The extension of markets to other emerging environmental issues is now underway, and the linkages between environmental sustainability and capital markets are being more deeply understood. The early evidence indicates that environmental sustainability can be compatible with maximization of shareholder value.

Carbon sinks and emissions trading under the Kyoto Protocol: a legal analysis.

The controversy over the issues of carbon sinks and emissions trading nearly aborted the Kyoto Protocol. The lengthy and intense debate over the roles that each are to play under the Protocol and the consequent political compromises has resulted in a complex set of provisions and an arcane nomenclature. The distinction drawn between the use of carbon sinks in developed countries under Joint Implementation and their use in developing countries under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a particular source of intricacy. It is at least arguable that key elements of the compromises reached at COP-6 and COP-7 in this regard are inconsistent with the terms of the Protocol and are ultra vires the Convention on Climate Change. This is a source of both uncertainty and potential legal challenge. Not only do the recent decisions create needless complexity, they also clearly discriminate against developing nations. Among the recent political compromises is the creation of a third type of non-bankable but tradeable unit with respect to forest management, which is only available to Annex I countries. The result is an anomalous one in which a variety of otherwise equivalent carbon credits can be generated under three different regimes including one, the CDM, that is subject to an elaborate regulatory overlay that discriminates against carbon sequestration by developing countries. For example, complying developed countries can essentially self-certify sequestration projects. In contrast, projects in developing countries must obtain prior approval from a subsidiary body, the CDM Executive Board, mandated to require detailed information and impose substantive and procedural hurdles not required or imposed by its companion body, the Article 6 Supervisory Committee on Joint Implementation Projects. The parallel and related debate over the third 'flexibility' mechanism, emissions trading, compounded the complexity of an already asymmetric and bifurcated system. The new requirements devoted to 'environmental integrity' not only have raised the costs of compliance of developing country projects but also virtually ignore the fundamental principle of sustainable economic growth and development embodied in the Convention and related international agreements. The regulations for carbon sinks now being formulated at Conferences of the Parties will have a significant impact on their use worldwide. Of key importance, in addition to their successful integration of carbon sinks and emissions trading into other international treaties, is the development of practically achievable and objective standards and an efficient and transparent approval process consistent with the terms of the Convention and the Protocol. Most important of all is a rebalancing that restores the primacy of addressing climate change in the context of sustainable economic growth and development.