Plant traits co-vary with altitude in grasslands and forests in the European Alps

Biological traits that are advantageous under specific ecological conditions should be present in a large proportion of the species within an ecosystem, where those specific conditions prevail. As climatic conditions change, the frequency of certain traits in plant communities is expected to change with increasing altitude. We examined patterns of change for 13 traits in 120 exhaustive inventories of plants along five altitudinal transects (520-3100 m a.s.l.) in grasslands and in forests in western Switzerland. The traits selected for study represented the occupation of space, photosynthesis, reproduction and dispersal. For each plot, the mean trait values or the proportions of the trait states were weighted by species cover and examined in relation to the first axis of a PCA based on local climatic conditions. With increasing altitude in grasslands, we observed a decrease in anemophily and an increase in entomophily complemented by possible selfing; a decrease in diaspores with appendages adapted to ectozoochory, linked to a decrease in achenes and an increase in capsules. In lowlands, pollination and dispersal are ensured by wind and animals. However, with increasing altitude, insects are mostly responsible for pollination, and wind becomes the main natural dispersal vector. Some traits showed a particularly marked change in the alpine belt (e.g., the increase of capsules and the decrease of achenes), confirming that this belt concentrates particularly stressful conditions to plant growth and reproduction (e.g. cold, short growing season) that constrain plants to a limited number of strategies. One adaptation to this stress is to limit investment in dispersal by producing capsules with numerous, tiny seeds that have appendages limited to narrow wings. Forests displayed many of the trends observed in grasslands but with a reduced variability that is likely due to a shorter altitudinal gradient.

Annual Review of the European Football Players' Labour Market / Etude annuelle du marché du travail européen des footballeurs

The key reference on the labour market and the logics of squad formation in the big-5 European leagues. One hundred richly coloured pages, illustrated by graphics, maps, rankings, statistical models and analysis in French and English which inform managers about potential strategies to put their clubs on the road to success help managers of federations and players' unions to understand current trends and to take decisions ... suggest to journalists new lines of investigation likely to interest the general public allow researchers and students to benefit from reliable and comparable sources, developed with the greatest possible rigour ... give fans the possibility to understand in detail the dynamics at work in their favourite sport and club.

Between pluralism and majoritarianism: the European Court of Human Rights on religious symbols and education

How is it possible to square the development of a consistent Europeanapproach to religious diversity with the recognition of the sometimes-conflictiveplurality of state-religion models? The Court´s support of the liberalprinciples of separation and neutrality have either been deplored by Christianconservatives as the result of European Christophobia, or celebratedby secularists as contributing to the formation of a Europe free of religion.In contrast, the present chapter argues for a differentiated approach toEuropean jurisprudence, outlining how the Court has been oscillating betweenan appealing liberal-pluralist perspective or framework, and a questionablemajoritarian one. Both perspectives are illustrated by focusing onrepresentative decisions in the area of religious education and symbols.

The externalisation of the asylum function in the European Union

This paper aims to identify and assess the main items in the strategy followed by the EU and its member states on the externalisation of their asylum function. First, it analyses the European harmonisation of the return to safe third countries and to countries of first asylum, which is carried out by means of readmission agreements. Second, it refers to the strategies defined by the Hague and the Stockholm programs concerning the External Aspects of the European Union Asylum Policy, on the detention centres for illegal immigrants abroad, and on the proposals for delocalisation of asylum applications processing centres beyond the EU borders. Finally, this paper considers whether the strategy of externalisation of the function of asylum sometimes lacks legitimacy, and to what extent there is a fair balance between the interests of the states and the protection of the human rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

The European Union and refugees: towards more restrictive asylum policies in the European Union?

Several scholars have argued that European countries have decided to cooperate on asylum and migration matters at the EU level in order to develop more restrictive policies. In particular, it has been argued that European states have ‘venue-shopped’ to a new policy-venue in order to escape national constraints. This paper puts this argument to the test by assessing the extent to which the development of EU cooperation on asylum matters has indeed led to the adoption of more restrictive asylum standards. The paper argues that, actually, EU asylum cooperation has led to an overall increase in protection standards for asylum-seekers and refugees. This outcome is explained by two main factors: the increasing ‘judicialisation’ of asylum in the EU and institutional changes in the EU asylum policy area that have strengthened the role of more ‘refugee-friendly’ institutions.

Continuing declines in cancer mortality in the European Union

BACKGROUND: From 1988 to 1997 age-standardised total cancer mortality rates in the European Union (EU) fell by around 9% in both sexes. Available cancer mortality data in Europe up to 2002 allow a first check of the forecast of further declines in cancer mortality. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We considered trends in age-standardised mortality from major cancer sites in the EU during the period 1980-2002. RESULTS: For men, total cancer mortality, after a peak of 191.1/100,000 in 1987 declined to 177.8 in 1997 (-7%), and to 166.5 in 2002. Corresponding figures for females were 107.9/100,000, 100.5 and 95.2, corresponding to falls of 7% from 1987 to 1997, and to 5% from 1997 to 2002. Over the last 5 years, lung cancer declined by 1.9% per year in men, to reach 44.4/100,000, but increased by 1.7% in women, to reach 11.4. In 2002, for the first year, lung cancer mortality in women was higher than that for intestinal cancer (11.1/100,000), and lung cancer became the second site of cancer deaths in women after breast (17.9/100,000). From 1997 to 2002, appreciable declines were observed in mortality from intestinal cancer in men (-1.6% per year, to reach 18.8/100,000), and in women (-2.5%), as well as for breast (-1.7% per year) and prostate cancer (-1.4%). CONCLUSIONS: Despite the persisting rises in female lung cancer, the recent trends in cancer mortality in the EU are encouraging and indicate that an 11% reduction in total cancer mortality from 2000 to 2015 is realistic and possible.

The contribution of patch topology and demographic parameters to PVA predictions: the case of the European tree frog

Population viability analyses (PVA) are increasingly used in metapopulation conservation plans. Two major types of models are commonly used to assess vulnerability and to rank management options: population-based stochastic simulation models (PSM such as RAMAS or VORTEX) and stochastic patch occupancy models (SPOM). While the first set of models relies on explicit intrapatch dynamics and interpatch dispersal to predict population levels in space and time, the latter is based on spatially explicit metapopulation theory where the probability of patch occupation is predicted given the patch area and isolation (patch topology). We applied both approaches to a European tree frog (Hyla arborea) metapopulation in western Switzerland in order to evaluate the concordances of both models and their applications to conservation. Although some quantitative discrepancies appeared in terms of network occupancy and equilibrium population size, the two approaches were largely concordant regarding the ranking of patch values and sensitivities to parameters, which is encouraging given the differences in the underlying paradigms and input data.

The European dimension for the mouse genome mutagenesis program.

The European Mouse Mutagenesis Consortium is the European initiative contributing to the international effort on functional annotation of the mouse genome. Its objectives are to establish and integrate mutagenesis platforms, gene expression resources, phenotyping units, storage and distribution centers and bioinformatics resources. The combined efforts will accelerate our understanding of gene function and of human health and disease.

Determinants of organizational form: Transaction costs and institutions in the European trucking industry

We explain why European trucking carriers are much smaller and rely more heavily on owner-operators(as opposed to employee drivers) than their US counterparts. Our analysis begins by ruling outdifferences in technology as the source of those disparities and confirms that standard hypothesesin organizational economics, which have been shown to explain the choice of organizational form inUS industry, also apply in Europe. We then argue that the preference for subcontracting oververtical integration in Europe is the result of European institutions particularly, labor regulationand tax laws that increase the costs of vertical integration.

The European Social Survey. Methodological aspects

From a scientific point of view, surveys are undoubtedly a valuable tool for the knowledge of the social and political reality. They are widely used in the social sciences research. However, the researcher's task is often disturbed by a series of deficiencies related to some technical aspects that make difficult both the inference and the comparison. The main aim of the present paper is to report and justify the European Social Survey's technical specifications addressed to avoid and/or minimize such deficiencies. The article also gives a characterization of the non-respondents in Spain obtained from the analysis of the 2002 fieldwork data file.

An analysis of the accounting principles applied by the European Farm Accountancy Data Network

In spite of its relative importance in the economy of many countriesand its growing interrelationships with other sectors, agriculture has traditionally been excluded from accounting standards. Nevertheless, to support its Common Agricultural Policy, for years the European Commission has been making an effort to obtain standardized information on the financial performance and condition of farms. Through the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), every year data are gathered from a rotating sample of 60.000 professional farms across all member states. FADN data collection is not structured as an accounting cycle but as an extensive questionnaire. This questionnaire refers to assets, liabilities, revenues and expenses, and seems to try to obtain a "true and fair view" of the financial performance and condition of the farms it surveys. However, the definitions used in the questionnaire and the way data is aggregated often appear flawed from an accounting perspective. The objective of this paper is to contrast the accounting principles implicit in the FADN questionnaire with generally accepted accounting principles, particularly those found in the IVth Directive of the European Union, on the one hand, and those recently proposed by the International Accounting Standards Committee’s Steering Committeeon Agriculture in its Draft Statement of Principles, on the other hand. There are two reasons why this is useful. First, it allows to make suggestions how the information provided by FADN could be more in accordance with the accepted accounting framework, and become a more valuable tool for policy makers, farmers, and other stakeholders. Second, it helps assessing the suitability of FADN to become the starting point for a European accounting standard on agriculture.

Thirteen polymorphic microsatellite markers for the European green toad Bufo viridis viridis, a declining amphibian species.

We report 13 new polymorphic microsatellite markers for the European green toad Bufo viridis viridis (B. viridis subgroup), a declining amphibian from Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe. Diversity at these loci estimated for 19 individuals ranged from two to ten alleles. Most of these primers also cross-amplify in related West-Mediterranean green toad species (Bufo balearicus, B. siculus and B. boulengeri). These microsatellites will be useful for conservation genetics of threatened Bufo viridis viridis populations and evolutionary studies of green toad taxa in secondary contact to examine hybridization.