This paper addresses the general question of the role of emotions in risk management, with an application to the siting of a repository for spent nuclear fuel. Although it is true that such siting has been very difficult to carry out without meeting with strong local opposition, there are some exceptions in recent Swedish experience. This recent experience constitutes an occasion for reconsidering the received message from risk perception research since the 1970s. This research has purportedly demonstrated a very strong impact of emotional processes on risk attitudes, which in turn is supposed to imply that these attitudes are rigid and unchangeable. However, when this assertion is looked at more closely, it is found that a number of questionable assumptions and overly strong generalizations have been made. The central role played by the concept of ‘dread’ is particularly important. Dread, or a ‘gut reaction’, is by no means demonstrated in the traditional selection of hazard attributes, which contain such dimensions as concern for future generations or voluntariness. Such dimensions may have a relationship to emotional processes but they are not emotional per se and their emotional significance remains to be documented. The items that do measure emotional reactions directly, by asking about fear and anxiety, are found in data on nuclear waste repository siting to have only a weak influence on policy attitudes. The most important weight is instead carried by items measuring the ‘expected severity of consequences’. The argument is, in a concluding section, carried to the level of attitudes to technologies, which may or may not be related to perceived risk. It is found that an important role is played by substitutability of a technology. If people see no good substitute for a technology that has important benefits, they are ready to accept the risks. The current situation in Sweden with regard to nuclear power can be understood in this light, since no realistic alternatives are available.

Since the end of the 19th century, social scientists, such as Georg Simmel and Max Weber in particular, have been engaged in developing theoretical concepts aimed at providing insight into the economic and socio-cultural significance of the (European) city. These concepts gained in prominence at the end of the 20th century, with the notion of the European city coming under pressure mainly due to the influence of the globalization of economic processes. The viability of the accepted model of the European city is now at stake.

This article considers the academic profession and academic freedom in light of the results of the Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey in Finland and four other European countries. Academic freedom is examined as a phenomenon that provides a setting for goal determination by members of the academic profession. It has a bearing on both institutional autonomy and individual academic freedom, i.e. the freedom of research and teaching. Academic freedom can be examined on the basis of material from the CAP survey through the questions about the freedom of teaching, the definition of work, working as a member of a community, the power of influence, funding, and the evaluation of quality. The concept of academic freedom varies slightly between countries, in part because of the growth of higher education systems and because of the increasing demand for ‘relevance’ being imposed on universities.

For many years, different patterns of the higher education system existed in various European countries. The patterns were not stable in each country, because pressures for upgrading of the ‘less noble’ sector tended to be strong. Altogether, it was justified, however, to characterize the situation in Europe as a ‘persistence of variety’. Many theories helped to explain a coexistence of inclinations for common approaches or specific options of individual countries. Most recently, though, pressures for convergence seem to have grown in Europe. Although the European Union advocates a respect for variety, some countries tend to adapt themselves to anticipated trends. In addition, efforts are undertaken in various European countries to adapt the programmes and institutions to an Anglo-Saxon model in order to preserve or strengthen their position in the wake of internationalization and globalization.

Speech processing in adults relies on precise and specialized networks, located primarily in the left hemisphere. Behavioural studies in infants indicate that a considerable amount of language learning already takes place in the first year of life in the domains of phonology, prosody, and word segmentation. Thanks to the progress of neuro-imaging, we can move beyond behavioural methods and examine how the infant’s brain processes verbal stimuli before learning. These studies reveal a structural and functional organization close to what is described in adults and suggest a strong bias for speech processing in these regions that might guide infants in the discovery of the properties of their native language, although no evidence can be provided as yet for speech specificity of such networks.

Over a four-decade long period, a health gap has opened up between European countries, in particular along the East/West dimension. One could speak of a European health divide. The divide is growing larger and, at the same time, shifting eastwards, leaving countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova at an increasing health disadvantage. Health inequalities, or differences between social classes, within European countries also seem to have been growing for the last couple of decades. Those countries that were previously led by communist regimes today show larger health inequalities than do countries in Western Europe. The countries that were once part of the Soviet Union demonstrate the most alarming health trends, with large segments of the population actually experiencing falling life expectancies. Reducing global and European health inequalities so that the health chances of a newborn child are not dependent on which country and social class he or she is born in, is a truly formidable task, which implies an entirely new way of seeing human development.

Asymmetry is a fundamental aspect of the biology of all organisms, and has a deep evolutionary history. The fossil record contains evidence of both morphological and behavioural asymmetries. Morphological asymmetry is most commonly expressed as conspicuous, directional asymmetry (either lateral asymmetry or spiral asymmetry) in body fossils. Few examples of fluctuating asymmetry, a form of subtle asymmetry, have been documented from fossils. Body fossil evidence indicates that morphological asymmetry dates to the time of the appearance of the first life on Earth (Archaean Eon). Behavioural asymmetry can be assumed to have been concomitant with conspicuous morphological asymmetry, but more direct evidence is in the form of trace fossils. Trace fossil evidence suggests that behavioural asymmetry, including nervous system lateralization, was in existence by the beginning of the Palaeozoic Era.

The transition from secondary education to tertiary education is challenging in Finland. Some of the key challenges are related to the competition rates in upper secondary education, gap years, low motivation towards STEM fields and a highly selective admission system to tertiary education; many opt out of STEM fields. In the current article, I approach these challenges in the context of expectancy-value-cost theory taking both a variable and person-oriented approach. Taking a variable-oriented approach we have identified that students’ interest in STEM subjects decreases during secondary education. Taking a person-oriented approach, we can identify three different subgroups. The person-oriented approach reveals that 50% of the students show a decreasing interest in all subjects during secondary education. Additionally, we can identify two gendered pathways. One trajectory is more typical among males; for this group the interest in mathematics increases during secondary education. The other trajectory is more typical for females; with them, interest in mathematics decreases during secondary education while at the same time their interest in languages increases. When these groups are followed later on we can identify that those in the group in which interest in mathematics increases are more likely to pursue studies and to find employment in STEM fields compared with those in the group in which interest towards languages increased. In addition, we could identify four gendered motivational orientations towards work and education after the transition from secondary education: those interested in income (more males), those looking for future prospects, those combining work and family (more females), and those interested in society (more females). Recently, we have developed an intervention programme to promote interest and pathways towards STEM, which I will present as a way to bridge the transition from secondary to further education in STEM.

Robots are no longer confined to factories; they are progressively spreading to urban, social and assistive domains. In order to become handy co-workers and helpful assistants, they must be endowed with quite different abilities from their industrial ancestors. Research on service robots aims to make them intrinsically safe to people, easy to teach by non-experts, able to manipulate not only rigid but also deformable objects, and highly adaptable to non-predefined and dynamic environments. Robots worldwide will share object and environmental models, their acquired knowledge and experiences through global databases and, together with the internet of things, will strongly change the citizens’ way of life in so-called smart cities. This raises a number of social and ethical issues that are now being debated not only within the Robotics community but by society at large.

The declining significance of national borders constitutes a challenge to the capacity of the nation-state to reach unilaterally its governance targets. Effective governance depends upon the spatial congruence of political regulations with socially integrated areas and the absence of significant externalities. As societal interconnectedness across borders increases with globalization, national governments are increasingly confronted with four specific challenges: efficiency pressures, externality and competitiveness problems, and representational deficits. The political responses to these challenges vary significantly. Although globalization is thus neither identical with, nor does it necessarily lead to, the rise of international institutions and governance beyond the nation-state, this article will show to what extent societal denationalization is accompanied by the rise of international institutions and how the myriad of international institutions existing today interact to produce global governance. Globalization also questions a cornerstone of any modern understanding of politics, which considers nation-states as the basis of all politics. As governance beyond the nation-state increases in significance, the separation of political issues into nationally defined territorial units must be conceptualized as a variable rather than a conceptual premise.

Experts agree: higher education has to diversify continuously. Most prominently, Martin Trow had argued that ‘universal higher education’ and ‘mass higher education’ sectors had to serve the ‘new’ students while protecting ‘elite higher education’; Burton Clark pointed out that the university is functionally ‘overburdened’ if it does not become entrepreneurial in pursuing specific strategies. But the countervailing forces to diversification grow as well: ‘academic drift’ and initiative competition for being ranked among ‘world-class universities’ prevail, and intra-institutional diversity according to study programmes and departments has not gained popularity either. Do scholars themselves become key carriers of diversification? Substantial variety in research productivity is by no means new. Is inter-individual diversity within higher education a viable future of diversification? Do the data of the comparative studies on the academic profession suggest that strategic options of individual professors are salient?

Research councils are under pressure and some are responding pro-actively. This has implications for their functioning as ‘aggregation machines’ taking in proposals and churning out judgements and decisions. Five scenarios of possible futures for research councils in the world of strategic science are laid out, with examples

This paper synthesizes findings from two studies the author conducted that examine how engagement in interdisciplinary research (IDR) influences scholars’ careers. Results from these two studies, one large-scale and quantitative and the other small-scale and qualitative, provide a much needed empirical assessment of IDR’s effects on individual careers. In essence, they provide a nice antidote (and some caution) to the rhetoric and enthusiasm surrounding IDR. My co-authors of these studies and I find that engaging in interdisciplinary research increases a scholar’s visibility in terms of citations, but also presents challenges, including reduced productivity, cognitive challenges, lack of support, extra time and commitment, and framing of one’s work. This paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of this research.

The paper examines the implications of the extensive and increasingly significant Chinese knowledge diaspora for the Europe of Knowledge. Based on extensive fieldwork, the paper examines the size, significance and key issues surrounding the growth of the Chinese Knowledge Diaspora. A portrait is developed of a highly-skilled group (bi-lingual and bi-cultural) who have the capacity to contribute to teaching and research both in China and their host nations, and who are often willing and eager to act as a bridge between both sides. Reference is also made to China’s numerous Overseas Talent Recruitment Schemes, which often target such individuals, and to the significance of this group to China’s dramatic, and ongoing, scientific rise. Key issues are discussed, as well as some limitations and the prospects for the future. Based on available information, data on PRC students and academics in Europe are presented and an assessment made of both the potential, and of the relatively limited impact, compared with major English-language countries of migration, such as the US, Canada and Australia. The analysis concludes with an assessment of prospects for a new epistemic Silk Road, and some of the barriers to its development.

Presented here is an overview of migration flows and demographic structures of Turks in Europe over the past 50 years. Large-scale labour migration from Turkey to Europe occurred between 1961 and 1974. After that, it gave way to family migration, which today has more or less ended. Recently, there is slightly more emigration than immigration from the European point of view. Thus, stable migrant stocks developed in the receiving countries, especially Germany, Austria, France, and the Netherlands. The migrant stocks lag in many respects behind developments in the receiving countries, yet nonetheless they slowly but surely adapt to these. Despite their low status and feelings of exclusion, most Turkish immigrants are content with their lot and do not plan to leave their new homes in Europe.

This contribution summarizes some typical features of complex systems such as non-linear interactions, chaotic dynamics, the ``butterfly effect’’, phase transitions, self-organized criticality, cascading effects, and power laws. These imply sometimes quite unexpected, counter-intuitive, or even paradoxical behaviors of socio-economic systems. A typical example is the faster-is-slower effect. Due to their tendency of self-organization, complex systems are often hard to control. Instead of trying to control their behavior, it would often be better to pursue the approach of guided self-organization, i.e. to use the driving forces of the system rather than to fight against them. This is illustrated by the example of hierarchical systems, which need to fulfill certain principles in order to be efficient and robust in an ever-changing environment. We also discuss the important role of fluctuations and heterogeneity for the adaptability, flexibility and robustness of complex systems. The presentation is enriched by a number of examples ranging from decision behavior up to production systems and disaster spreading.

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami had one of the highest magnitudes in the history of Europe. The source mechanism requires generation at a subduction zone. Intensity distribution and tsunami modelling excludes the Gorringe Bank as a source area and suggests generation by the incipient convergence of the Atlantic with the Southwest Iberia and Morocco margin rather than at the less active Gulf of Cadiz Accretionary Prism. The comparison with the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami supports this interpretation. A tsunami warning alert system is urgent for the Atlantic.

The theory of nonlinear complex systems has become a proven problem-solving approach in the natural sciences from cosmic and quantum systems to cellular organisms and the brain. Even in modern engineering science self-organizing systems are developed to manage complex networks and processes. It is now recognized that many of our ecological, social, economic, and political problems are also of a global, complex, and nonlinear nature. Modern evolutionary economics can be modelled in the framework of complex systems and nonlinear dynamics. Historically, evolutionary economics was inspired by Schumpeterian concepts of business cycles and innovation dynamics. What are the laws of sociodynamics? What can we learn from nonlinear dynamics for complexity management in social, economic, financial and political systems? Is self-organization an acceptable strategy to handle the complexity in firms, institutions and organizations? The world-wide crisis of financial markets and economies is a challenge for complexity research. Misleading concepts of linear thinking and mild randomness (e.g. Gaussian distributions of Brownian motion) must be overcome by new approaches of nonlinear mathematics (e.g. non-Gaussian distribution), modelling the wild randomness of turbulence at the stock markets. Systemic crises need systemic answers. Nevertheless, human cognitive capabilities are often overwhelmed by the complexity of nonlinear systems they are forced to manage. Traditional mathematical decision theory assumed perfect rationality of economic agents (homo oeconomicus). Herbert Simon, Nobel Prize laureate of economics and one of the leading pioneers of systems science and cognitive science, introduced the principle of bounded rationality. Therefore, we need new insights into the factual microeconomic behaviour of economic agents by methods of humanities, cognitive and social sciences, which are sometimes called ‘experimental economics’. Social and economic dynamics are interdisciplinary challenges of modern complexity research.

In the 20th century, European countries had marked declines in mortality rates, initially at younger ages, and subsequently at older ages. This resulted in ‘rectangularization’ of the survival curve: large proportions of the population surviving to older ages, at which point mortality rates increase sharply. The extent to which this will be accompanied by increases in the proportions of older people suffering morbidity has been debated. There are marked differences in life expectancy at older ages among European countries. France, Italy, Spain, and Sweden have better than average life expectancy at age 65. Denmark, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands have lower. Within countries, there are marked socio-economic differences in morbidity and mortality at older ages. The impact of illness is also likely to differ according to an individual's social circumstances. It is essential to have longitudinal studies examining the determinants and impact of health and well-being in ageing populations. Ideally, these should be carried out in a way that facilitates international comparisons