These remarks constitute an introduction to this special issue and were made on 21 September 2015, at the opening of a special symposium honouring Professor Erol Gelenbe at Imperial College London, UK. Gelenbe is a Computer Scientist and Computer Engineer, who has been a Fellow of Academia Europaea since 2005. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters of Belgium, as well as of the Science Academies of Hungary, Poland and Turkey, and of the National Academy of Technologies of France.

This text was written for the symposium honouring Erol Gelenbe and to deliver a message from the French academy of engineering, NATF, the National Academy of Technologies of France, in the presence of six of our Fellows, including Erol as an active member. I will explain what our goals were when we created our engineering academy 15 years ago, and how our concept was and still is very different from that of an academy of sciences.

This paper summarises the author’s remarks during a symposium held at Imperial College, London, UK, in honour of Erol Gelenbe. It provides a perspective for the future of the Telecommunications industry in Europe.

In engineering design, constraints can stimulate creativity but are also often cited as obstacles to innovation. So do constraints hinder or foster creativity? Despite a number of studies, the reason why constraints can have a positive or a negative impact on creativity is still unknown. In this paper, we will propose, theoretically and empirically, that the link between creativity and constraints is not determined by the type of constraints, but by the type of ‘design model’ used. Using C-K theory, a well-documented, general, and formalized theory of design, we first prove that the dual impact of constraints on creativity is predictable. Then we use C-K operators to distinguish two different design models: rule-based design and innovative design. We show that the first model organizes a negative link between constraints and creativity while the second model enables a positive effect. We illustrate these mechanisms through the analysis of several product developments based on both secondary and primary sources.

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) systems provide control of external devices by using only brain activity. In recent years, there has been a great interest in developing BCI systems for different applications. These systems are capable of solving daily life problems for both healthy and disabled people. One of the most important applications of BCI is to provide communication for disabled people that are totally paralysed. In this paper, different parts of a BCI system and different methods used in each part are reviewed. Neuroimaging devices, with an emphasis on EEG (electroencephalography), are presented and brain activities as well as signal processing methods used in EEG-based BCIs are explained in detail. Current methods and paradigms in BCI based speech communication are considered.

According to some hypotheses, from a statistical perspective the origin of life seems to be a highly improbable event. Although there is no rigid definition of life itself, life as it is, is a fact. One of the most recognized hypotheses for the origins of life is the RNA world hypothesis. Laboratory experiments have been conducted to prove some assumptions of the RNA world hypothesis. However, despite some success in the ‘wet-lab’, we are still far from a complete explanation. Bioinformatics, supported by biomathematics, appears to provide the perfect tools to model and test various scenarios of the origins of life where wet-lab experiments cannot reflect the true complexity of the problem. Bioinformatics simulations of early pre-living systems may give us clues to the mechanisms of evolution. Whether or not this approach succeeds is still an open question. However, it seems likely that linking efforts and knowledge from the various fields of science into a holistic bioinformatics perspective offers the opportunity to come one step closer to a solution to the question of the origin of life, which is one of the greatest mysteries of humankind. This paper illustrates some recent advancements in this area and points out possible directions for further research.

In this paper we review a number of methods used in video surveillance applications in order to detect and classify threats. Moreover, the use of those methods in wireless surveillance networks contributes to decreasing the energy consumption of the devices because it reduces the amount of information transferred through the network. In this paper we focus on the most popular object extraction and classification methods that are used in both wired and wireless surveillance applications. We also develop an application for identification of objects from video data by implementing the selected methods and demonstrate the performance of these methods on pre-recorded videos using the outputs of this application.

Web services that are free of charge to users typically offer access to online information based on some form of economic interest of the web service itself. Advertisers who put the information on the web will make a payment to the search services based on the clicks that their advertisements receive. Thus, end users cannot know that the results they obtain from web search engines are exhaustive, or that they actually respond to their needs. To fill the gap between user needs and the information presented to them on the web, Intelligent Search Assistants have been proposed to act at the interface between users and search engines to present data to users in a manner that reflects their actual needs or their observed or stated preferences. This paper presents an Intelligent Internet Search Assistant based on the Random Neural Network that tracks the user’s preferences and makes a selection on the output of one or more search engines using the preferences that it has learned. We also introduce a ‘relevance metric’ to compare the performance of our Intelligent Internet Search Assistant against a few search engines, showing that it provides better performance.

Within Europe, there has been the emergence of an EU-wide nanotechnology regulatory regime with regional authorities gaining greater decision-making power over a wide range of policy areas. However, despite the development of more comprehensive European nanotechnology policies, considerable variation remains in how member states implement these rules and regulations. In this article, we utilize a multi-level governance approach, to explore this seeming paradox in order to explain cross-national policy variation within a common European regulatory framework. This broader analytical approach allows us to account for the wide range of actors involved in European nanotechnology governance including, national governments, international organizations, research institutes, firms, and advocacy groups. Case study analysis of Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands emphasizes how differences in domestic policy styles explain variation in the implementation of nanotechnology regulations across states. At the same time, the engagement of national governments with European and international regulatory efforts highlights the important role that states play in contributing to the development of a common nanotechnology regime in Europe.

The 2007 Law of Historical Memory, which aimed to excise the spatial remnants of Francoism from the Spanish landscape, and to recognise Republican victimhood, was blatantly inadequate, and left victims in the same legal position as before.1 In the immediate aftermath of the law, the Spanish state institutionally divorced itself from the recuperation of Republican memory by closing down the Office for Victims of the War and Dictatorship,2 and reducing the funding devoted to historical memory from 6.5 to 2.5 million in 2011. This article will examine the subsequent transnationalisation of Republican memory, in the form of its Argentinisation, and economic protest movements’ appropriation of the memory of the Second Republic. Relatedly, it seeks to answer overarching questions concerning the reach and scope of global memory edicts in national memory debates.

This article empirically examines the relationship between alternative measures of financial development and the unemployment rate in a selected group of ten EU countries. Using annual data for the sample period of 1991–2012, we first perform different panel regressions (using averaged and non-averaged versions of data) for unemployment rate. These panel regressions are based on a regression equation that includes inflation rate and growth rate of GDP, in addition to the level of financial development, as explanatory variables. Secondly, we apply Granger causality tests to investigate the nature of the causality between financial development and the unemployment rate for each country in our sample. The empirical findings suggest that unemployment rate and financial development are negatively correlated, and there is a statistically significant causal effect of financial development on unemployment in certain countries. However, the results are not robust to the choice of proxy measure for financial development.

This article argues that the effects of high-level corruption scandals on the future of a dominant party depend on the existence of a rule of law system based on the separation of powers. The article will study two examples from a comparative perspective to concretise its theoretical claims: the Christian Democracy Party in Italy, which was the dominant party from 1948 to 1992, and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. The comparison will be based on an institutionalist perspective. The first part tries to provide a theoretical clarification of the concepts of predominant party systems and corruption. The second part discusses whether the Turkish and Italian party systems can be classified as predominant and the characteristics of these systems. The final section seeks to draw out similarities and differences between these two systems and the effects corruption has on them.

The number, scale and variety of threats to the safety of the contemporary world are forcing multilateral cooperation to tighten. The United Nations is the main forum of such cooperation and has a vast spectrum of powers. In addition the European Union tries to act in a similar way, although on a much smaller scale. Both organizations, then, seem to have much in common and appear to be mutual partners. Is this cooperation really going as well as one would expect? Do they treat each other as equal partners? This article tries to answer these questions and more.

This article studies the formation of the European Union as a technological discourse. It traces the technological narrative from the origins of the Community until the current debates around the internet and the future of the Union. In search of a renewed telos, the European rhetoric of an open internet could express the commitment of the EU to re-link its popular legitimacy away from liberal abstractions and closer to the concrete, subjective experience of individuals, actively sharing a peaceful, dense and diverse democratic life.