Although internationalisation of the scientific world is a key issue in public attention and policy, the actual information base on migration and mobility of ‘teachers in higher education’, ‘scholars’, ‘academics’ or ‘researchers’ has remained weak. Most available statistics focus on ‘foreign’ students or ‘foreign’ scholars rather than persons mobile for purposes of learning and academic/research work, and provide information only on a single moment rather than on the life course of moving between countries. In recent years, some surveys of the ‘academic profession’ and ‘researchers’ have been undertaken primarily in economically advanced countries or especially in European countries that provide an overview on various modes, e.g. migration prior study, short-term student mobility and mobility for the whole degree programme, mobility in the phase of doctoral education and training, professional mobility in various stages of the professional career and finally shorter visits linked to academic and research work. All available information suggests that substantial differences exist by country and that no signs of convergence are visible. Moreover, surveys confirm that international experience is a frequently valuable asset of academic research careers but often is viewed as less beneficial than conventional wisdom suggests.

Television claims to report reality but largely creates its own reality. There is very little autonomy, largely because the competition for ‘market share’ is so intense. The pressure to fill the space is strong; hence, it must be something for everyone. Everyone is looking over their shoulder to see what their rivals are saying; to know what to say, you need to know what everyone else is saying. This leads to homogenization and political conformity. Politics and economics lead to an internal censorship. ‘News’ is selective, favouring the extremes, blood, sex, crime, riots, not what ordinary people experience. Television calls for dramatization and the exaggeration of the importance of events. In debate, the fast, superficial thinker is favoured over the original and profound. Can you refuse to talk on television? There is a desire to be seen that is exploited.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the world's oldest medical systems, having a history of several thousands of years. It is a system of healing based upon the Chinese philosophy of the correspondence between nature and human beings. Its theories refer to yin and yang, the Five Elements, zang-fu, channels-collaterals, qi, blood, body fluid, methods of diagnosis, the differentiation of symptom-complexes, etc. TCM has two main features: a holistic point of view and treatment according to a differentiation of syndromes. The therapeutic methods of TCM involve different approaches, such as acupuncture, moxibustion, tuina bodywork, herbal medicine and qi gong, in order to allow the body to heal itself in a natural way. Western medicine was first introduced into China from the middle of the 17th century. During the first two centuries several different views, related to the future of TCM and the relation between TCM and Western medicine, emerged. Some advocated ‘complete westernization’ of Chinese medicine, others were in favour of keeping it intact, whereas again others recommended the ‘digestion and assimilation of TCM and Western medicine’. Nowadays, more and more people realize that each of the two medical traditions has its own merits and advise that the two systems should benefit from each other's strong points. We offer an argument for integrating Western medicine with TCM. In the 20th century China has maintained and developed three kinds of medical science, that is, TCM, Western medicine, and ‘integrated medicine’. Much has been achieved in clinical, experimental and theoretical research. The development of any science can be furthered by cross-fertilization based on absorption and fusion of whatever useful theory and experience. It is our dream that, in the future, diverse modalities – including TCM, Western medicine and possibly other variants – can work in conjunction with each other as part of a unified team rather than in competition. This integrated approach will ultimately lead to safer, faster and more effective health care.

Chemistry has developed from molecular chemistry, mastering the combination and recombination of atoms into increasingly complex molecules, to supramolecular chemistry, harnessing intermolecular forces for the generation of informed supramolecular systems and processes through the implementation of molecular information carried by electromagnetic interactions. Supramolecular chemistry is actively exploring systems undergoing self-organization, i.e. systems capable of spontaneously generating well-defined functional supramolecular architectures by self-assembly from their components, on the basis of the molecular information stored in the covalent framework of the components and read out at the supramolecular level through specific molecular recognition interactional algorithms, thus behaving as programmed chemical systems. Supramolecular entities as well as molecules containing reversible bonds are able to undergo a continuous change in constitution by reorganization and exchange of building blocks. This capability defines a Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry (CDC) on both the molecular and supramolecular levels. CDC introduces a paradigm shift with respect to constitutionally static chemistry. It takes advantage of dynamic constitutional diversity to allow variation and selection and thus adaptation. The merging of the features of supramolecular systems – information and programmability; dynamics and reversibility; constitution and structural diversity – points towards the emergence of adaptive chemistry. A further development will concern the inclusion of the arrow of time, i.e. of non-equilibrium, irreversible processes and the exploration of the frontiers of chemical evolution towards the establishment of evolutive chemistry, where the features acquired by adaptation are conserved and transmitted. In combination with the corresponding fields of physics and biology, chemistry thus plays a major role in the progressive elaboration of a science of informed, organized, evolutive matter, a science of complex matter.

The ‘transnational turn’, which is challenging bounded views on national belonging, also opens up promising perspectives for memory studies. It fosters a rethinking and reconfiguring of national memories in the context of transnational connectedness. My sketch of seven types of transnational memories points to different empirical contexts in which states, politicians, jurists, activists, artists and scholars go beyond national borders and interests to conceptualise new forms of belonging, solidarity and cultural identification in a world characterised by streams of migration and the lingering impact of traumatic and entangled pasts.

Symmetry and beauty are often claimed to be linked, particularly by mathematicians and scientists. However philosophers and art historians seem generally agreed that although symmetry is indeed attractive, there is also a somewhat sterile rigidity about it, which can make it less attractive than the more dynamic, less predictable beauty associated with asymmetry. Although a little asymmetry can be beautiful, an excess merely results in chaos. As Adorno suggested, asymmetry probably results most effectively in beauty when the underlying symmetry upon which it is built is still apparent. This paper examines the ways in which asymmetries, particularly left-right asymmetries, were used by painters in the Italian Renaissance. Polyptychs often show occasional asymmetries, which are more likely to involve the substitution of a left cheek for a right cheek, than vice-versa. A hypothesis is developed that the left and right cheeks have symbolic meanings, with the right cheek meaning ‘like self’ and the left cheek meaning ‘unlike self’. This principle is evaluated in pictures such as the Crucifixion, the Annunciation and, the Madonna and Child. The latter is particularly useful because the theological status of the Madonna changed during the Renaissance, and her left–right portrayal also changed at the same time in a comprehensible way. Some brief experimental tests of the hypothesis are also described. Finally the paper ends by considering why it is that the left rather than the right cheek is associated with ‘unlike self’, and puts that result in the context of the universal ‘dual symbolic classification’ of right and left, which was first described by the anthropologist Robert Hertz.

This article addresses the sudden and somewhat unexpected rise of populist parties in West, Central, and Eastern Europe. The first section highlights the core characteristics of populism through the construction of an ideal type. Subsequently, the focus is on the opportunity structures that give rise to populism, emphasizing the end of the post-war settlement, post-industrialism, the gradual erosion of party politics, and frustrations emanating from the consolidation of liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. The final section examines three distinct forms of populism, focusing on radical-right populism (parties such as the French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party), center-right populism (Forza Italia), and left populism (the German Party of Democratic Socialism).

Among OECD countries there are two clusters of old-age security systems: (1) ‘Social insurance’ countries had, by the end of the 1960s, fashioned the core of old-age security as public, contributory, earnings-related and unfunded insurance schemes; (2) a diverse collection of countries that, after 1970, topped up their basic pension arrangements with funded occupational pension schemes with (almost) universal coverage. ‘Social insurance’ countries, on which this essay focuses, reveal at least six common trends in pension reform, all about improving the financial sustainability of public schemes. Although the repertoire of incremental adjustment strategies is quite limited, policy changes since the early 1980s have not led to a clear convergence among ‘social insurance’ countries (or across the two clusters). Their original diversity has been somewhat diminished, but it has for the most part merely taken a different form. Public pension reforms regularly harmed (future) beneficiaries. Nevertheless, most reforms were actually based on broad political consensus. The success of attempts to introduce retrenchment policies depends on prior negotiation with – and support obtained from – collective actors above and beyond a simple parliamentary majority. This peculiar prerequisite ensures success in the sense of a sustained implementation of the measures taken and of actual improvement in public trust in ‘reliable’ pension schemes.

International mobility of academics has risen over the last few decades, especially among PhD students and post-docs. This may be the result of deliberate policies to stimulate such mobility on the one hand and of growing imbalances in academic career opportunities on the other. The general belief that attracting international talents helps to ensure that a country plays a leading role in research and innovation, stimulates countries to develop initiatives to attract international students to doctoral programmes or to attract researchers who emigrated back to the country of origin. More traditional intercontinental mobility patterns from the south to the north and the east to the west, are now paralleled within Europe, where the disparities between countries in terms of R&D investment and skills shortages increase, related to the economic crisis. Consequently, brain circulation may easily turn into brain drain, and cultural diversity may decline. Related policy questions are whether this will unavoidably result in a (further) concentration of the minds in a limited number of regions or hubs and how this should be considered from the point of view of quality, competitiveness, diversity, and the future of the comprehensive research university in Europe.

This article focuses on two major questions concerning the changing role of the state in the healthcare systems of OECD countries. First, we ask whether major changes in the level of state involvement (in healthcare systems) have occurred in the past 30 years. Given the fact that three types of healthcare system, each of which is characterized by a distinct role of the state, evolved during the ‘Golden Age’, we discuss how this distinctiveness – or more technically, variance – has changed in the period under scrutiny. While many authors analysing health policy changes exclusively concentrate on finance and expenditure data, we simultaneously consider financing, service provision and regulation. As far as financing is concerned, we observe a small shift from the public to the private sphere, with a tendency towards convergence in this dimension. The few data available on service provision, in contrast, show neither signs of retreat of the state nor of convergence. In the regulatory dimension – which we analyse by focusing on major health system reforms in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States – we see the introduction or strengthening of those coordination mechanisms (hierarchy, markets and self-regulation) which were traditionally weak in the respective type of healthcare system. Putting these findings together we find a tendency of convergence from distinct types towards mixed types of healthcare systems.

As a result of various political and non-political developments, the socio-culturally anchored and well structured character of European party systems has come under strain. This article assesses the overall social embeddedness of modern party politics and identifies newly emerging conflict-lines. It draws attention to phenomena that do not fit into the trend of dealignment, and discusses the relationship between group-based politics and democratic representation.

Structural and functional asymmetry in the human brain and nervous system is reviewed in a historical perspective, focusing on the pioneering work of Broca, Wernicke, Sperry, and Geschwind. Structural and functional asymmetry is exemplified from work done in our laboratory on auditory laterality using an empirical procedure called dichotic listening. This also involves different ways of validating the dichotic listening procedure against both invasive and non-invasive techniques, including PET and fMRI blood flow recordings. A major argument is that the human brain shows a substantial interaction between structurally, or ‘bottom-up’ asymmetry and cognitively, or ‘top-down’ modulation, through a focus of attention to the right or left side in auditory space. These results open up a more dynamic and interactive view of functional brain asymmetry than the traditional static view that the brain is lateralized, or asymmetric, only for specific stimuli and stimulus properties.

We envisage a transport system producing zero emissions and sparing the surface landscape, while people, on average, range hundreds of kilometres daily. We believe this prospect of ‘green mobility’ is consistent in general principles with historical evolution. We lay out these general principles, extracted from widespread observations of human behaviour over long periods, and use them to explain past transport and to project the next 50 to 100 years. Our picture emphasizes the slow penetration of new technologies of transport, adding speed in the course of substituting for the old ones in terms of time allocation. We discuss in increasing detail railroads, cars, aeroplanes, and magnetically levitated trains (maglevs).

Deterrence has been the prevalent strategy to enforce tax revenue both throughout history and in economic theory. This approach is, however, problematic because it is inconsistent with empirical reality. I wish to consider a new way of thinking about taxation, following psychological economics. I submit that individuals have a substantial amount of civic virtue and tax morale. Taxation is ‘quasi-voluntary’ and cannot reasonably be enforced by deterrence. Tax morale is lowered when the citizens have little trust in their state, and feel badly treated by the tax office. According to official surveys, the European Union is faced with a ‘democracy deficit’ and dwindling support from the citizens. At the EU-level, civic virtue and tax morale can be improved by offering more (direct) political participation rights and raising taxes in a decentralized way.

Sociology is currently undergoing an interesting theoretical and methodological turn. A number of recent and influential works of sociology deal with the seemingly trivial phenomena of everyday life. The standard mass surveys are being replaced by in-depth, interpretative, and qualitative procedures that focus on the visual surface of society. They do so by means of observation and its extension – photography. The author believes that this is not a new fashion but rather signals a true paradigmatic shift. For the author, it heralds the emergence of a ‘third’ sociology, after the ‘first sociology’ of social organisms and systems, and the ‘second sociology’ of behaviour and action. The new focus is on social existence manifested by social events of various scales. This sociology of social existence provides a new angle of vision, which promises to advance considerably our understanding of several perennial riddles of human society.

This essay discusses, from a historical and contemporary perspective, the processes of state and nation building. The difficulties of making every nation a state and every state a nation, and the fact that people live intermingled within the borders of states and have different and often dual identity leads to arguments for multi-national states, states which abandon the dream of becoming nation states and ‘nations’ willing to live in a multi-national democratic liberal state.

Party patronage is generally associated with social, economic and political underdevelopment, and is hence seen as largely irrelevant in the context of contemporary European politics. In this article, we argue to the contrary, proposing that patronage reappears on the stage of European politics as a critical organizational and governmental resource employed by political parties to enhance their standing as semi-state agencies of government. In order to illustrate our main contention, we first define party patronage, disentangling it from other notions of political particularism that are often used synonymously in the literature. Second, we provide a brief overview of the literature on the past and present of patronage practices in Europe, arguing that rather than declining, patronage is still likely to be a relevant feature of contemporary party politics in Europe. Finally, we analyse the role of party patronage in the light of recent developments in several European countries, identifying three distinct patterns of patronage practices in the region.

Over the past 30 years, researchers and practitioners have discussed the importance of risk communication in solving disputes ranging from the public outcry regarding importing GMO foods from the United States to Europe, the siting of waste incinerators in many parts of Europe to the building a permanent high level nuclear waste facility in the United States. In this paper the history of risk communication is discussed, focusing particularly on the importance of the social amplification of risk and trust. This is followed by a detailed discussion on trust as it relates to public perception of risk, where it is argued that trust is composed of three variables. The third section covers the theoretical debate of how to best deal with the decline in public trust. This is followed by a short analysis in which it is concluded that there is no simple solution to increasing public trust (and thereby assuring greater risk communication successes).

In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.

This article explores the national and global significance and impact of Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 summer Olympic Games. The discussion is organized into four main parts. First, I locate the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the context of wider processes of globalization; in particular, I explore how China ‘glocalized’ the Olympics, by giving the event distinctive meanings that were then experienced by global television audiences. Second, I employ the concept of ‘soft power’ to explore how, in hosting the event, China sought to advance its international influence and appeal; I introduce the concept of ‘soft disempowerment’ to examine how there may have been some negative impacts for China in staging the Olympics. Third, I discuss issues of security surrounding the Beijing Olympics, given the growing focus on such questions for sport mega-events in general following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Fourth, I outline some of the key issues regarding sporting legacies for China, following the 2008 Olympics, with particular reference to Chinese football.