Permanent grasslands (PG) provide multifunctional ecosystem services (ES) in Europe and globally, which are threatened by both increased farming intensity and land use change in marginal areas. Farm management decisions can represent critical thresholds, or behavioural “tipping points”, in the agricultural system. Decisions are influenced by a combination of agronomic, policy and social factors. Transformation of PG systems can be facilitated through positive tipping points and relevant policy implementation to ensure sustainable PG systems. The aim of this research was to understand the drivers of decisions regarding land use changes and management towards critical positive and negative tipping points across five biogeographic zones in Europe. Interview methodology assessed farmers’ preferences and priorities regarding the adoption of sustainable PG systems. Participants were selected from five case study countries, each representing a different biogeographic zone in Europe (Continental/Pannonian: Czech Republic, Boreal: Sweden, Mediterranean: Spain, Alpine: Switzerland, and Atlantic: UK). The sample also covered three farming intensity types within these biogeographic zones: high input/intensive conventional farms (≥1.0 LU/ha); low input/extensive conventional farms (<1.0 LU/ha); and certified organic farms. In total, 373 farm interviews were obtained from the case study countries between October 2020 and October 2021. The analysis focuses on drivers of change and considers tipping points across these countries, considering case studies of land use changes (specifically land abandonment) and land management practices (specifically changes in stocking rates). The most common reasons for PG management changes towards either intensification or extensification were economic. Farmers require policy support to increase provision of non-market ES, while rebalancing subsidies can deliver environmental ES at scale through abandonment (e.g., through the creation of specific habitats that support some threatened species). Agri-environment schemes (AES)and subsidies could be more flexible to allow farmers to better adapt grassland management to local production conditions and unpredictable circumstances such as droughts, floods, or market shocks. To maintain PG that delivers more goods and services, financial compensation for ES delivery was perceived to be the most significant support mechanism needed, while easier access to ES provision expertise through extension or consultancy services is considered important factor.

Permanent grasslands (PG) feature in the European rural landscape and represent a major agricultural production resource. They support multiple non-provisioning ecosystem services (ES), including climate regulation, flood control, biodiversity, and pollination. PG are at risk of loss or degradation due to agricultural land use and land management changes. The objective of this systematic review is to identify the main economic influences shaping management and maintenance of PG, and the risks and opportunities for delivery of a range of ES. A total of 51 papers were included. Relevant policy interventions and economic drivers are identified in relation to how they shape the management of EU grasslands over time and across farming systems, countries, or biogeographic zones. A high reliance on public payments from the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with uneven impact on mitigating PG losses and associated ES provisions, was identified, which needs to be considered in relation to ongoing CAP reform. There is a gap in the literature regarding economic tipping points for change. Future research needs to identify and map ES provisions by PG along with trade-offs and synergies, and link this to policy. There are substantive challenges to maintaining Europe's PG area and management, which must be addressed through EU-wide instruments.

Permanent grassland (PG) is an important agricultural land use for the delivery of multiple ecosystem services (ES), including carbon sequestration, water quality protection, food production, habitat provision, and cultural activities. However, PG environments are threatened by sub-optimal management, cultivation, and abandonment that are influenced by context, land manager’s attitudes and societal demand for ES. Therefore, the perceptions and attitudes of key decision-makers (farmers) and other stakeholders (non-farmers, including citizens and consumers of the products of permanent grasslands, and ES) need to be understood to ensure the sustainability of PGs and the ES they provide. A systematic review of the literature identified 135 scholarly articles. Application of thematic analysis, allowed the organization, and synthesis of current research related to (different) stakeholder attitudes, and how these influence PG management and the delivery of ES. The results suggest that different stakeholders hold different views towards permanent grassland, with farmers in particular having to balance economic with other (potentially conflicting) drivers. The types of knowledge held by different groups of stakeholders, access to sources of information, as well as the influence of knowledge on behaviour; and environmental values (for example in relation to aesthetics or conservation of biodiversity) explained why certain motivations for attitudes and behaviours are held. A major gap, however, was identified in relation to PG as opposed to other types of landscape.

AIMSTacrolimus has a narrow therapeutic window and shows significant interindividual difference in dose requirement. In this study we aim to first identify genetic factors that impact tacrolimus dose using a candidate gene association approach, and then generate a personalized algorithm combining identified genetic and clinical factors to predict individualized tacrolimus dose.MATERIALS & METHODSWe screened 768 SNPs in 15 candidate genes in metabolism, transport and calcineurin inhibition pathways of tacrolimus, for association with tacrolimus dose in a discovery cohort of 96 patients.RESULTSFour polymorphisms in CYP3A5 and one polymorphism in CYP3A4 were identified to be significantly associated with tacrolimus stable dose (p < 8.46 × 10(-5)). The same SNPs were identified when dose-normalized trough tacrolimus concentration was analyzed. The CYP3A5*1 allele was associated with significantly higher stable dose, bigger dose increase, higher risk of being underdosed and lower incidence of post-transplant hyperlipidemia. ABCB1 polymorphisms were not associated with stable dose. No significant difference was found between CYP3A5 expressers and nonexpressers in incidence of acute rejection and time to first rejection. Age, ethnicity and CYP3A inhibitor use could predict 30% of tacrolimus dosing variability. Adding the identified genetic polymorphisms to the algorithm increased the predictability to 58%. In two validation cohorts of 77 and 64 patients, the algorithm containing both genetic and clinical factors produced correlation coefficients of 0.63 and 0.42, respectively. This algorithm gave a prediction of the stable doses closer to the actual doses when compared with another algorithm based only on the CYP3A5 genotype.CONCLUSIONCYP3A5 genotype is the most significant genetic factor that impacts tacrolimus dose among the genes studied. This study generated the first pharmacogenomics model that predicts tacrolimus stable dose based on age, ethnicity, genotype and comedication use. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating both genetic and clinical, demographic factors into dose prediction.

Background Recent research in the USA and UK indicates that person-centred planning (PCP) can lead to improvements in lifestyle-related outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities (ID). It is clear, however, that the introduction of PCP does not have an equal impact for all participants. The aim of the present paper was to identify factors associated with the probability of delivering a plan and with improvements in outcomes for those who did receive a plan.Methods Information on the life experiences of participants was collected over a period of approximately 2 years for a cohort of 93 adults with ID.Results There were powerful inequalities in both access to and the efficacy of PCP in relation to participant characteristics, contextual factors and elements of the PCP process.Conclusions Results are discussed in relation to implications for policy and practice for increasing the effectiveness of PCP and reducing inequalities in the life experiences of people with ID.

Joseph A. Schumpeter is recognized, along with John Maynard Keynes, as one of the giants of economic thought of the first half of the twentieth century. But, like such pillars of economic thinking as David Ricardo, James and John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx before him, Schumpeter also contributed significantly to political theory, for example on such topics as imperialism, social classes, and democracy. Indeed, on the last of these subjects, political scientists identify Schumpeter as a seminal thinker and profoundly influential figure. Political philosopher C. B. Macpherson, for instance, characterizes Schumpeter, in his classic work first published in 1942, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, as the founder and first systematic formulator of a pluralist elitist equilibrium model of democracy which, as subsequently elaborated, became predominant in much of the political theory of the second half of the twentieth century (1977, p. 77).1 Because of the compelling importance of democracy for social economics, Schumpeter's theory of democratic politics, relatively neglected by economists (See Coe and Wilber, 1985), deserves our attention in a volume devoted to Schumpeter as a social economist. This paper examines Schumpeter's democratic theory, notably as presented in his 1942 classic,2 and (briefly) compares Schumpeter's

During the first decades of the 20th century, German Reformer Silvio Gesell (1862‐1930) championed with a certain success the reforming wave of the epoch by complementing ingenious solutions to some of the most important economic issues of his time with theoretical insights that were as radical as they were penetrating. The purpose of this paper is to offer an introduction to such intuitions, whose validity had been recognized even by a few distinguished academics of the 1930s, but which, owing to the extreme complications that eventually mired German intellectual production in its quasi‐entirety before WWII, failed to preserve the deserved consideration, however slight, they had earned when first formulated. A reappraisal of Gesell's contributions, considering the importance of his main themes, may be worthwhile, all the more so as these deal with questions unsolved to this day.

John Stuart Mill has traditionally been portrayed as self-contradictory and failing to construct a unified social theory. Recent scholarship, however, has challenged this view, finding Mill's work to be creatively synthetic in bridging the antinomies inherent in liberal democratic thought. This revisionist interpretation of Mill is advanced by an understanding of his theory of justice and its role in shaping his policy positions on issues such as welfare, education, voting rights, property rights, taxation, government intervention, and the future of capitalism.

In this paper, we analyze power in five modes of social organization, as can be found in Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Specifically, we analyze Smith’s presentations of pre‐capital accumulation and private appropriation of land; feudalism; a system of perfect liberty; late eighteenth century England; and the American colonies, and examine how wealth power, monopoly power, employer power, and political power is manifested within each. We conclude, as does Smith, that modes of social organization can neither be found nor analyzed separately from power.

Those who believe that the free market is positively related to both economic efficiency and individual freedom are prone to regard resistance to the establishment of the global market essentially free from any serious sociopolitical constraint as a politically insignificant expression of impatience, ignorance, and hypocrisy. This article attempts to endow the manifestation of discontent with the status quo evident in public protests in Seattle and Washington DC with political significance through explicating it as an expression of a fundamental conflict between economic efficiency and individual freedom inherent in the global implementation of the principle of self-regulating markets. This analysis of the antiglobalization movement is conducted from the perspective of the theoretical foundation of the evaluation of the dynamics of capitalism by Polanyi, Hayek, and Keynes, and its conclusions are brought to bear upon the validity of their contesting views of the relationship between economic efficiency and individual freedom.

This paper argues that Adam Smith is a/the "founding father figure" of modern social/political economy as well as economics. Smith wrote extensively and insightfully on the subject of power , and thereby class and stratafication in society. This paper explicates four main types of power relations in Smith's analysis, notably drawing on the Wealth of Nations : wealth power, monopoly power, employer power, and political power. Smith's focus on power helps to differentiate his broader vision and rich discourse from that of many contemporary neoclassical writers and sharpens our appreciation for his contributions to social and political economy.