This article aims to capture the relationship between perceived growth barriers and firm size. This aim is pursued by developing a novel data-driven identification strategy that assigns firm size ...groups based on their statistical relationships to perceived growth barriers. The analysis is undertaken using data for approximately 44,000 Swedish SMEs (0–249 employees) for 2011, 2014, and 2017. The results suggest that small firms typically face constraints on equity financing, whereas larger firms face barriers regarding competition and recruitment. As a benchmark, the performance of the developed method is compared with prevailing strategies that use ad hoc firm size groups. The findings show that ad hoc groups fail to accurately capture size thresholds at which firms incur barriers, and they yield a consistently lower model fit compared with the method proposed here. Consequently, there may be a need for methodological rethink in the field regarding the treatment of firm size.
To balance trade-offs between livestock’s negative environmental impacts and their positive contributions (e.g. maintaining semi-natural grasslands, varied agricultural landscapes and crop ...rotations), a better understanding is needed of how the supply of ecosystem services differs across farms. We analysed a suite of indicators for non-provisioning ecosystem services on a large subset of Swedish farms (71% of farms, covering 82% of agricultural land) and related these to farm type, farm size and livestock density. The analysed indicators exhibited clear geographical patterns with hotspots especially in less productive regions. Controlling for this spatial variation we still found that small-scale and ruminant farms were associated with more varied landscapes, small-scale habitats, semi-natural grasslands and better crop sequences compared to nearby farms specialised in crop production, while farms specialising in monogastric livestock were associated with less varied landscapes and inferior crop sequences. Results for cultural ecosystem services indicated that farms with more semi-natural grassland were associated with more visitors and more likely located within designated recreation or nature conservation areas.
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•Effects of limiting livestock to non-edible crops in organic farming were modelled.•This allowed the Nordic region to be self-sufficient in food from organic farming.•Available feeds ...favoured ruminant meat-milk production over pigs and poultry.•There are trade-offs between efficient land use and other environmental objectives.•Proper accounting of grass-legume forages is crucial in food system modelling.
Current food systems are resource-inefficient, as farm animals consume large quantities of human-edible crops and large amounts of external fossil fuel-based inputs are used for energy and fertilisers. In this study, we assessed the production capacity and environmental performance of an alternative theoretical regional food system based on organic production, avoided food-feed competition and agriculture that is self-sufficient in bioenergy. Livestock in the system are reared solely on feeds that do not compete with food production, i.e. grass from permanent pastures, temporary grass-clover leys and food industry by-products. We modelled the effect of this food system on food production, land use, environmental impacts and nutrient flows, using the Nordic region as a case. As crop rotations under organic farming need leguminous forage crops to supply nitrogen and control weeds, substantial amounts of grass biomass suitable for feeding ruminants are produced in the system. Modelling showed that such a food system could feed 109% of the projected Nordic population in 2030 in a scenario where ruminant production is limited by the availability of semi-natural grasslands, and 130% in a scenario in which all grass biomass produced in organic crop rotations is used as animal feed. However, even when all grass biomass is used for animal feed, the associated reduction in meat production led to diets with 81% less meat compared to current consumption in the Nordic region. Using all ley from the organic crop rotations as livestock feed would result in greater total food output and reduced land use per person, but also a larger climate impact per person due to more livestock production. There is thus a trade-off between optimising the food system for efficient land use or for ‘climate efficiency’. Assessments of nutrient supply showed nitrogen and phosphorus deficits in both scenarios, but particularly in the scenario in which all grass biomass is used for animal feed, due to nutrient losses in animal production. Increased recycling from society and other innovative sources of essential soil nutrients are needed to counterbalance removal and losses. Through utilising leftover streams and hence minimising food-feed competition and reducing livestock production, we show that organic agriculture can maintain high food output, sufficient to feed the future Nordic population and more, despite lower yields.
Breastfeeding is one of the foundations of child health, development and survival. Breastmilk substitutes (BMS) are associated with negative influences on breastfeeding practices and subsequent ...health concerns and, as with all foods, production and consumption of BMS comes with an environmental cost. The carbon footprint (CFP) of production and consumption of BMS was estimated in this study. To illustrate regional differences among the largest producers and consumers, the CFP of BMS production in New Zealand, United States (USA), Brazil and France and the CFP of BMS consumption in United Kingdom (UK), China, Brazil and Vietnam were assessed. The CFP values were then compared with the CFP of breastfeeding arising from production of the additional food needed for breastfeeding mothers to maintain energy balance (approximately 500 kcal per day). The CFP of production was estimated to be 9.2 ± 1.4, 7.0 ± 1.0, 11 ± 2 and 8.4 ± 1.3 kg CO2e per kg BMS in New Zealand, USA, Brazil and France, respectively, with the largest contribution (68–82% of the total) coming from production of raw milk. The CFP of consumption, which included BMS production, emissions from transport, production and in-home sterilisation of bottles, and preparation of BMS, was estimated to be 11 ± 1, 14 ± 2, 14 ± 2 and 11 ± 1 kg CO2e per kg BMS in UK, China, Brazil and Vietnam, respectively. Comparison of breastfeeding with feeding BMS showed a lower CFP from breastfeeding in all countries studied. However, the results were sensitive to the method used to allocate emissions from raw milk production on different dairy processing co-products (i.e. BMS, cream, cheese and lactose). Using alternative allocation methods still resulted in lower CFP from breastfeeding, but only slightly for UK, Brazil and Vietnam. Care is also needed when interpreting findings about products that are functionally different as regards child health and development.
•Feeding breastmilk substitutes has a larger carbon footprint than breastfeeding.•Dairy farming contributes most to the carbon footprint of breastmilk substitutes.•Sterilisation of bottles contributes most to consumption phase emissions.•The results are sensitive to the allocation method used for dairy co-products.
Based on a review of 700+ peer-reviewed articles since 1990, identified using text mining methodology and supervised machine learning, we analyze how neo-Schumpeterian growth theorists relate to the ...entrepreneur-centered view of Schumpeter Mark I and the entrepreneurless framework of Schumpeter Mark II. The literature leans heavily toward Schumpeter Mark II; innovation returns are modeled as following an ex ante known probability distribution. By assuming that innovation outcomes are (probabilistically) deterministic, the entrepreneur becomes redundant. Abstracting from genuine uncertainty, implies that central issues regarding the economic function of the entrepreneur are overlooked such as the roles of proprietary resources, skills, and profits.
Food systems are increasingly being understood as driving various health and ecological crises and their transformation is recognised as a key opportunity for planetary health. First-food systems ...represent an underexplored aspect of this transformation. Despite breastfeeding representing the optimal source of infant nutrition, use of commercial milk formula (CMF) is high and growing rapidly. In this review, we examine the impact of CMF use on planetary health, considering in particular its effects on climate change, water use and pollution and the consequences of these effects for human health. Milk is the main ingredient in the production of CMF, making the role of the dairy sector a key area of attention. We find that CMF use has twice the carbon footprint of breastfeeding, while 1 kg of CMF has a blue water footprint of 699 L; CMF has a significant and harmful environmental impact. Facilitation and protection of breastfeeding represents a key part of developing sustainable first-food systems and has huge potential benefits for maternal and child health.
Polymeric nanoparticles have tremendous potential to improve the efficacy of therapeutic cancer treatments by facilitating targeted delivery to a desired site. The physical and chemical properties of ...polymers can be tuned to accomplish delivery across the multiple biological barriers required to reach diverse subsets of cells. The use of biodegradable polymers as nanocarriers is especially attractive, as these materials can be designed to break down in physiological conditions and engineered to exhibit triggered functionality when at a particular location or activated by an external source. We present how biodegradable polymers can be engineered as drug delivery systems to target the tumor microenvironment in multiple ways. These nanomedicines can target cancer cells directly, the blood vessels that supply the nutrients and oxygen that support tumor growth, and immune cells to promote anticancer immunotherapy.
The development of future food systems will depend on normative decisions taken at different levels by policymakers and stakeholders. Scenario modeling is an adequate tool for assessing the ...implications of such decisions, but for an enlightened debate, it is important to make explicit and transparent how such value-based decisions affect modeling results. In a participatory approach working with five NGOs, we developed a future food vision for the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) through an iterative process of defining the scenario, modeling, and revising the scenario, until a final future food vision was reached. The impacts on food production, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions, and the resulting diets in the food vision, were modeled using a mass flow model of the food system. The food vision formulated was an organic farming system where food is produced locally and livestock production is limited to “leftover streams,” i.e., by-products from food production and forage from pastures and perennial grass/clover mixtures, thus limiting food-feed competition. Consumption of meat, especially non-ruminant meat, was substantially reduced compared with current consumption in the Nordic countries (− 81%). An estimated population of 37 million people could be supplied with the scenario diet, which uses 0.21 ha of arable land and causes greenhouse gas emissions of 0.48 tCO
2
e per diet and year. The novelty of this paper includes advancing modeling of sustainable food systems by using an iterative process for designing future food visions based on stakeholder values, which enables results from multidisciplinary modeling (including agronomy, environmental system analysis, animal and human nutrition) to be fed back into the decision-making process, providing an empirical basis for normative decisions and a science-based future vision of sustainable food systems.
Abstract
Why do consolidated democracies incorporate international human rights law (IHRL) treaties into national law? Existing research suggests contrastive accounts of the participation of ...democracies in IHRL regimes. While overall more likely to ratify, consolidated democracies are sometimes reluctant to accept demanding human rights commitments and less likely than both newly democratic and authoritarian regimes to incorporate international law in their constitutions. To theorize why established democracies commit to IHRL, this paper provides a comparative process tracing of the decisions to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into national law in Denmark and Sweden in the early 1990s. Why did these solid democracies with an exceptional commitment to human rights wait over 40 years to give domestic effect to a treaty they had helped create? Assessing rival theories of state commitment to human rights norms, the findings suggest that contextual developments in European law provided an opportunity for domestic political elites to seek insurance by incorporating the ECHR to place constraints on executive power. The argument qualifies claims about material strategizing or socialization to European norms as the primary drivers of incorporation.
Identifying active compounds for a target is a time- and resource-intensive task in early drug discovery. Accurate bioactivity prediction using morphological profiles could streamline the process, ...enabling smaller, more focused compound screens. We investigate the potential of deep learning on unrefined single-concentration activity readouts and Cell Painting data, to predict compound activity across 140 diverse assays. We observe an average ROC-AUC of 0.744 ± 0.108 with 62% of assays achieving ≥0.7, 30% ≥0.8, and 7% ≥0.9. In many cases, the high prediction performance can be achieved using only brightfield images instead of multichannel fluorescence images. A comprehensive analysis shows that Cell Painting-based bioactivity prediction is robust across assay types, technologies, and target classes, with cell-based assays and kinase targets being particularly well-suited for prediction. Experimental validation confirms the enrichment of active compounds. Our findings indicate that models trained on Cell Painting data, combined with a small set of single-concentration data points, can reliably predict the activity of a compound library across diverse targets and assays while maintaining high hit rates and scaffold diversity. This approach has the potential to reduce the size of screening campaigns, saving time and resources, and enabling primary screening with more complex assays.
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