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This paper draws on findings from a European project, 'Rights through Alliances: Innovating and Networking Both Within Homes And Schools' (RAINBOW-HAS), conducted in 2013-15. It built collaboration between six EU countries to analyse and improve the rights of children and youth regarding sexual orientation and gender identity in educational settings. The main focus of discussion derives from a secondary discourse analysis following thematic analyses of the qualitative interviews undertaken with a range of different families, schools and community associations across these European countries, which provide a snapshot of contemporary practice. We discuss the relative silence of social work in challenging homophobic and transphobic bullying, given their potential in promoting family and young people's engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has contributed to confirming the link between education and health in developed countries. The analysis is based on 11 European Union countries. We estimate country-specific health functions, where the dependent variable is self-reported health status and the education attainment is one of the main inputs. All eight waves (1994–2001) of the European Community Household Panel are deployed. A random effects ordered probit is estimated in order to control, to a given extent, for unobserved heterogeneity. Explanatory variables are both time invariant (education attainment and gender) and time varying (gross wages, hours of work, age and living alone). Results confirm the positive impact of secondary education on health in most cases and tertiary education in all cases, even after controlling for other inputs in the health function and taking unobserved heterogeneity into account. Secondary education has an impact on health in all countries in the sample except for The Netherlands and UK. The effect does not differ between secondary and tertiary education in France, Ireland and Greece. The correlation between education and health is interpreted in different but complementary ways by diverse approaches and we may not disentangle the precise mechanism that connects health with education from our results. Anyway, it seems clear that better coordination is needed between education and health policies to effectively improve health literacy. Other relevant results from our study are that women register poorer health than men, age contributes to worsening health status and wages contribute positively to health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ireland and neighbouring Britain share much of their tectonic history and are both far from active plate boundaries at present. Their seismicity shows surprising lateral variations, with very few earthquakes in Ireland but many low-to-moderate ones in the adjacent western Britain. Understanding the cause of these variations is important for our understanding of the basic mechanisms of the intraplate seismicity distributions and for regional hazard assessment. The distribution of microseismicity within Ireland and its underlying causes have been uncertain due to the sparsity of the data sampling of the island, until recently. Here, we use the data from numerous recently deployed seismic stations in Ireland and map its seismicity in greater detail than previously. The majority of detectable seismic events are quarry and mine blasts. These can be discriminated from tectonic events using a combination of the waveform data, event origin times, and the epicentres' proximity to quarries and mines, catalogued or identified from the satellite imagery. Our new map of natural seismicity shows many more events than known previously but confirms that the earthquakes are concentrated primarily in the northernmost part of the island, with fewer events along its southern coast and very few deeper inland. Comparing the seismicity with the recently published surface wave tomography of Ireland and Britain, we observe a strong correspondence between seismicity and the phase velocities at periods sampling the lithospheric thickness. Ireland has relatively thick, cold and, by inference, mechanically strong lithosphere and has very few earthquakes. Most Irish earthquakes are in the north of the island, the one place where its lithosphere is thinner, warmer and, thus, weaker. Western Britain also has relatively thin lithosphere and numerous earthquakes. By contrast, southeastern England and, probably, eastern Scotland have thicker lithosphere and, also, few earthquakes. The distribution of earthquakes in Ireland and Britain is, thus, controlled primarily by the thickness and mechanical strength of the lithosphere. The thicker, colder, stronger lithosphere undergoes less deformation and features fewer earthquakes than thinner, weaker lithosphere that deforms more easily. Ireland and Britain are tectonically stable and the variations in the lithospheric thickness variations across them are estimated to be in a 75–110 km range. Our results thus indicate that moderate variations in the lithospheric thickness within stable continental interiors can exert substantial control on the distributions of seismicity and seismic hazard—in Ireland, Britain and elsewhere around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An evaluation of prospective shale gas reservoir intervals in the Bowland Shale is presented using a wireline log data set from the UK's first shale gas exploration well. Accurate identification of such intervals is crucial in determining ideal landing zones for drilling horizontal production wells, but the task is challenging due to the heterogeneous nature of mudrocks. This heterogeneity leads to stratigraphic variations in reservoir quality and mechanical properties, and leads to complex geophysical behaviour, including seismic anisotropy. We generate petrophysical logs such as mineralogy, porosity, and organic content and calibrate these to the results of core studies. If 'reservoir quality' is defined by combined cut-offs relating to these parameters, we find that over 100 m of reservoir quality shale is present in the well, located primarily within the upper section. To examine the link between geophysical signature and rock properties, an isotropic rock physics model is developed, using effective medium theories, to recreate the elastic properties of the shale and produce forward-looking templates for subsequent seismic inversion studies. We find that the mineralogical heterogeneity in the shale has a profound impact on modelled elastic properties, obscuring more discrete changes due to porosity, organic content and water saturation and that the best reservoir quality intervals of the shale bear a distinctive response on rock physics cross-plots. Finally, we consider the density of natural fractures in the shale by developing an anisotropic rock physics model to reflect high-angle fractures observed on micro-imagery logs. We invert crack density using shear wave splitting well log data and find a crack density of up to 4 per cent which correlates well with micro-imagery observations. Our work further supports previous authors' core-based studies in concluding that the Bowland Shale holds good reservoir characteristics, and we propose that there are multiple intervals within the shale that could be targeted with stacked horizontal wells, should those intervals' mechanical properties also be suitable and there be adequate stress barriers between to restrict vertical hydraulic fracture growth. Finally, our rock physics templates may provide useful tools in interpreting pre-stack seismic data sets in prospective areas of the Bowland Shale and picking the best locations for drilling wells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article offers a European perspective on the pluralistic, principles-based model of intellectual property (IP) advanced by Robert Merges in his book Justifying Intellectual Property. After introducing Merges’s model and theory of IP with reference to IP theories generally, other pluralistic legal models, and patterns of judicial reasoning in the patent and copyright fields, the article argues that European jurisprudence offers broad support for Merges’s operational model of IP, while also challenging certain aspects of his wider analysis. They include his ‘one size fits all’ foundational theory of IP, his account of key IP rules and practices, and his choice and conception of IP’s midlevel principles. Through this critique the article draws attention to the utilitarian bias of Merges’s model; a bias which undermines its pluralistic claims, in part by undermining Merges’s own foundational theory of IP. The result is to underline the limits of a regime unconcerned with its own normative basis, and the need for more rather than less discussion of IP theory, including more work of the type that Merges’s book undertakes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two independent continuous global positioning system (CGPS) processing strategies, based on a double-difference regional network and a globally transformed precise point positioning solution, provide horizontal and vertical crustal motion estimates for Great Britain. Absolute gravity and geological information from late Holocene sea level data further constrain the vertical motion estimates. For 40 CGPS stations we estimate station velocities and associated uncertainties using maximum likelihood estimation, assuming the presence of white and coloured noise. Horizontal station velocity estimates agree to <1 mm yr−1 between the two CGPS processing strategies and closely follow predicted plate motions. Residual velocities, generally <1 mm yr−1, follow no regular pattern, that is, there is no discernible internal deformation, nor any dependence on station monumentation or time-series length. Vertical station velocity estimates for the two CGPS processing strategies agree to ∼1 mm yr−1, but show an offset of ∼1 mm yr−1 with respect to the absolute gravity (AG) estimates. We attribute this offset to a bias related to known issues in current CGPS results and correct for it by AG-alignment of our CGPS estimates of vertical station velocity. Both CGPS estimates and AG-aligned CGPS estimates of present-day vertical crustal motions confirm the pattern of subsidence and uplift in Great Britain derived from Holocene sea level data for the last few thousand years: ongoing subsidence on Shetland, uplift in most areas of Scotland, and subsidence in large areas of England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine European corporate governance with respect to the relationship between shareholder value and capital investment. Based upon Europe's largest listed companies, it is shown that Anglo-American conceptions of shareholder value are increasingly important for European firms whatever their home jurisdictions and inherited traditions. Using annual capital expenditures (CAPEX) as a proxy for corporate managers' commitment to shareholder value, it is shown, contra arguments to the effect that the map of European corporate governance regimes is fixed and virtually immutable, even large firms from paradigmatic stakeholder regimes believed focused upon long-term value increasingly act to maximize short-term shareholder value. We divide Europe into three regions based on ownership concentration, legal systems, board structures and the presence of corporate governance codes. In this multi-jurisdictional setting, we compare the effects of different elements of corporate governance on CAPEX in each region. Our analysis shows that the overall effect of investor-sensitive corporate governance on CAPEX is consistently negative notwithstanding differences in the formal nature and quality of governance standards between regions. We explain this finding by reference to the governance standards of the United Kingdom: a market for corporate governance that has come to dominate its continental European neighbours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two centuries, age at menarche has decreased in several European populations, whereas adult height has increased. It is unclear whether these trends have ceased in recent years or how age at menarche and height are related in individuals. In this study, the authors first investigated trends in age at menarche and adult height among 286,205 women from nine European countries by computing the mean age at menarche and height in 5-year birth cohorts, adjusted for differences in socioeconomic status. Second, the relation between age at menarche and height was estimated by linear regression models, adjusted for age at enrollment between 1992 and 1998 and socioeconomic status. Mean age at menarche decreased by 44 days per 5-year birth cohort (β = −0.12, standard error = 0.002), varying from 18 days in the United Kingdom to 58 days in Spain and Germany. Women grew 0.29 cm taller per 5-year birth cohort (standard error = 0.007), varying from 0.42 cm in Italy to 0.98 cm in Denmark. Furthermore, women grew approximately 0.31 cm taller when menarche occurred 1 year later (range by country: 0.13–0.50 cm). Based on time trends, more recent birth cohorts have their menarche earlier and grow taller. However, women with earlier menarche reach a shorter adult height compared with women who have menarche at a later age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Support for the return to work of working-age adult cancer survivors is a major theme for occupational health professionals in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]