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The purpose of this scoping review is to critically examine previous research that connects three selected model-based practices (MBPs) to social and emotional learning (SEL) outcomes in K-12 physical education (PE) settings to inform a future research agenda for the field. A methodological framework involving the processes of inductive analysis and constant comparison was followed. Sixty-three studies (teaching personal and social responsibility = 26; cooperative learning = 24; and outdoor and/or adventure education = 13) across 14 countries adopting qualitative (26), quantitative (23), and mixed methods (14) in elementary (17), middle (27), and high school (19) settings presented evidence connecting these three MBPs explicitly, but more often implicitly, with SEL outcomes. While it is possible to say SEL skills and outcomes were observed, it would be more appropriate to suggest that there is evidence of only some key skills and elements of SEL outcomes occurring. Similar to general education, we do not know as much about if and how these three MBPs deliver such outcomes comprehensively. The educational and political rhetoric surrounding SEL is not matched by a body of empirical research that dedicates itself solely to investigating SEL in PE using a contemporary theory, framework, and assessment. Aligning future research involving these three MBPs and other pedagogical approaches with a suitable framework and theory involving teachers and students can advance future research on SEL in PE and is necessary in order to develop a common language and understanding within the field.

Fomes fomentarius (L.) Fr., (commonly known as Tinder fungus) is an abundant fungus in European beech old-growth forests and is important for nutrient cycles, food web dynamics, and biodiversity. The species was heavily reduced during the last centuries by forestry. Modern silviculture strategies in Central Europe aim to balance both the extraction of wood and promoting dead wood habitats. Such an approach is key to sustaining Fomes fomentarius as well as up to 600 saproxylic arthropods associated with the fungus. The aim of this study was to assess how dead wood type in combination with microclimate, resulting from different forest management strategies, affect the presence (occupancy) and abundance (percent cover occupied) of Fomes fomentarius fruit bodies at the stand- and dead wood object-scale. We experimentally extracted a standardized proportion of trees within 50 m by 50 m patches creating stumps, logs, snags, and logs with snags under two microclimate treatments (open canopy gap versus closed canopy) in a random block design. As a control, we defined cut stumps under closed canopies, as this is the common thinning approach in mature beech production forests. We tested the effects of alternative management strategies against the control using Generalized Linear Mixed-effects Models. At the stand-scale, our model revealed a significantly lower occupancy of Fomes fomentarius in control stands compared to treatments in which dead wood was not removed. The average cover of Fomes fomentarius on snags under a closed canopy, at both the stand- and dead wood object-scale, was higher than in control plots. However, effect size was weak at the object-scale. To increase this principal decomposer and boost important microhabitats for many arthropods, silviculture should aim to increase snags while maintaining dense forest canopies. Yet, at landscape scale, diversifying dead wood types and light conditions may boost overall saproxylic diversity. [Display omitted] • Fomes fomentarius is a key fungal decomposer in European beech forests. • Its occupancy is promoted on logs and snags under open and closed canopies. • We observe low F. fomentarius occupancy on cut stumps. • F. fomentarius abundance is most promoted by snags under closed canopy conditions. • Snag enrichment under closed canopies promotes microhabitats and nutrient cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biting midges of the genus Culicoides (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) are the principal vectors of several notable viral pathogens infecting animal livestock. Sickness and animal deaths caused by the Culicoides-transmitted bluetongue virus, as well as the recent Schmallenberg virus outbreak, have threatened the livestock industry in Europe. Recent studies highlight how, in the near future, the application of "dry" fungal conidia of Metarhizium anisopliae in animal shelters and microenvironment (e.g., dung, manure, leaf litter, and livestock surroundings) may be used to control the Culicoides vector, thus, reducing the incidence of Culicoides-borne diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cladi and Locatelli's conceptualization of CSDP as an instance of bandwagoning on US power has significant analytical leverage; however, their analysis fails to outline an alternative systemic explanation to the balance of power. This contribution argues that European defence cooperation is best understood by using a neoclassical realist analysis that integrates the insights of Stephen Walt's ‘balance of threat’ theory. Furthermore, it is argued that the analysis presented by Pohl neglects the role of the Atlantic Alliance in European security. In doing so, Pohl misses the nature of CSDP as the central element of the ‘reform’ of western Europe's Cold War bandwagoning on US power. One should not, therefore, expect CSDP operations to necessarily be about frustrating or helping US strategic objectives. CSDP is instead an institution that is designed primarily to meet security challenges within Europe's geopolitical neighbourhood that the US is unwilling or unable to tackle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the relationship between demographic transition and democracy. According to the author, shifts from high to low birth and death rates played a significant role in the development of democracy in Europe and North America. It is suggested that conditions created by fertility decline, including population aging and changes in the lives of women, contribute towards the conditions required for socio-political stability.

Seen from the perspective of the interconnected excessive imbalances, banking, and sovereign debt crises that beset the Euro Area from 2007, the central inadequacy of the Maastricht Treaty was the failure to address the problem of the inherent imperfections of any provisions for crisis prevention and management in Economic and Monetary Union. The inadequacy stemmed from a cluster of naïve assumptions: about state capacity to comply with Treaty-based rules to prevent crises; about the tractability of economic and political cultures; about the adequacy of moral hazard as a design principle for monetary union; and about putting in place monetary union without economic, fiscal, banking, and political union. Consequently, managing crises of sovereign and bank creditworthiness had not been a problem on the Maastricht agenda. Subsequent failures to be prepared to manage compound crises were compounded by the complacency induced by the ‘political economy of good times’ into which the Euro Area was launched. EMU posed questions about the dominant teleological assumption underpinning the Maastricht Treaty. It risked exposing not just the limits of Europeanization but also serving as a catalyst for ‘de-Europeanization’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite several post-Cold War reforms which have promised far-reaching change, the Bundeswehr faces a set of deficits in force structures, capabilities, doctrines and military adaptation, which leave it in danger of slipping permanently behind its European partners. The study examines the extent to which reforms proposed by the Commission on Structural Reform of the Bundeswehr will remedy these deficiencies. It finds that the proposals of the Commission include several important measures which will accelerate German convergence with the reforms of its European partners. However, the Commission fails to address several fundamental problems which impair the Bundeswehr's capacity to adapt to ongoing operations. The article critically engages with the existing theoretical literature on German defence policy and highlights the utility of neoclassical realism in explaining the process and outcome of German defence reform. The study also points to the urgent requirement for further comparative scholarship on post-Cold War European military adaptation and civil–military relations in defence planning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses original and secondary archival sources to examine the value of the distinction between creditor and debtor states in explaining the behaviour of domestic elites in international and European macroeconomic and monetary cooperation, compared to variables like size and trade. It highlights the paradox and tension between changes in institutional forms and stronger incentives to cooperate (Montagu Norman's 'new Europe') and persisting patterns in strategic behaviour across space and over time. Central to this continuity is a fundamental asymmetry of power between creditor and debtor states. The imbalances that underpin creditor-debtor state relations also reveal the structural underpinnings of arguments from economic principle, 'who argues what' and receptiveness to economic ideas and thinkers. Not least, the case studies and arguments in the article offer fresh and different insights into British and French attitudes to European coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ambivalent character of time in European economic governance and how it is conceptualized, especially by its constituent expert elites. On the one hand, it serves to rationally order and stabilize power relationships; on the other, it provokes contest about its appropriate use, focused on fiscal and economic reform policies. The article also highlights the different functional specificities in temporal governance in monetary, fiscal, financial stability and economic reform policies and the differences in potential of issues to mobilize political opposition and to produce problems of synchronization. In particular, monetary union forms an inner circle within European economic governance. Its discursive, regulative and strategic effects radiate with varying results into its other circles. Nevertheless, European economic governance is not a single 'time-rule' exercise. Finally, the article examines how, through its 'compression' effects on European states, European economic governance raises serious issues about the quality of modern democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the interaction between the institutional, strategic and cognitive dimensions of the Franco-German relationship on economic and monetary union. Factors that have shaped the relationship and the design and content of the union; Cognitive dimension and nature of the relationship; Nature of the political theory that influenced the economic and monetary union.

This article focuses on a new agenda for Government-industry relations. The effective management of public policy depends, to a significant degree, on achieving a match between the strategy being pursued and a structure that can ensure the implementation of that strategy. In practice, this match is one of the most difficult to achieve or sustain in government. And when it does occur, one is tempted to credit government with good fortune rather than unusual prescience or will. For instance, the effective functioning of the 'social market economy' in post-war Germany has a good deal more to do with the inheritance of a network of institutions than with the special qualities of statesmanship of the British governments have not been visited by the fortune of a benign inheritance.

Paradoxically, though the Treaty on European Union underlines the power of EC central bankers, they have been neglected in the literature on European integration. Central bank independence provides the key connection between changes in global financial markets and the new Treaty provisions on economic and monetary union (EMU). In recent years EC central bankers have been subjected to ever more volatile and competitive markets and new political pressures related to EMU. Central bank independence has offered a means of reconciling these twin changes. This article seeks to explain why central bank independence has strengthened its grip in Europe and the nature of the role of central bankers in European integration. The adequacy of existing theories of central bank behaviour is examined - public interest, personality, public choice and bargaining theories. Emphasis is given to explanations that focus on external factors: the structural power of the 'anchor' currency in the exchange rate mechanism (ERM); deep-seated change in the nature of capitalism; the role of economic crisis; the policy style of the European Community (EC); and the unique relationship of central bankers to the state and consequent capacity to pursue their corporate interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]