In contrast to other animals, humans are good at mind-reading in the sense that they can represent the contents of the minds of others. In this article, the competence for inter-subjectivity is divided into representing the emotions, the attention, the intentions and the beliefs and knowledge of others. Recent attempts to exploit control theory for modelling various cognitive functions are discussed and it is outlined how this modelling approach can be combined with the analysis of inter-subjectivity.

It is widely accepted that internationalization and the increasing loss of parliamentary control over political power challenge the legitimacy of national democratic systems and their core institutions. We first present results from a study of public communication, which, when examined in the context of theories of legitimation, indicate that these processes do not necessarily lead to the erosion or breakdown of popular support for the nation state. The idea that there is a linear cause-and-effect relationship is overly simple, and a more detailed analysis is called for. Legitimation of a political system through public communication is a back-and-forth process which is determined by the system's specific institutional arrangements and by the fortuitous twists and turns of public debate. Nation states have more extensive, diverse and deeply rooted sources of legitimation than is often assumed.

Through a panel analysis conducted in Bavaria, which covers two adjacent elections – the federal elections and the European elections in 2013 and 2014 – we examine the attitudinal factors that drive citizens’ propensity to turn out. We find that abstainers have generally low levels of knowledge, interest and sense of civic duty. National-level voters have relatively high interest, knowledge and sense of duty in national politics, but not in European affairs. In contrast, European- and national-level voters have high interest, knowledge and a sense of duty for both national and European politics. This finding contextualizes the characterization of European elections as second-order national elections. While prior research has established that voters make their vote choice based on national-level politics, we demonstrate that European elections are not national elections when it comes to citizens’ decision to vote. Rather, knowledge, interest and a sense of duty about national politics are not sufficient conditions for somebody to vote in the European elections. The person needs to have the same positive attitudes about European affairs as they have about national politics to participate in European elections.

The varieties of the national innovation systems among European countries are reflected in the large differences, discrepancies and sometimes unexpected results in the innovation processes and their influence on labor productivity growth. The goal of this paper is to find the differences between the drivers of the innovation systems and their influence on growth of productivity between two groups of countries with different institutional settings in the period of the financial and economic crisis in Europe. The first group consists of a selection of CEE (Central and East European) countries. The second group consists of Germany, Norway, Spain and Portugal. In order to measure the role of innovation on productivity growth we use the CDM (Crépon, Duguet and Mairesse) model of simultaneous equations. The model directly links R&D engagement and intensity to innovation outcomes measured either as process or product innovation, and then estimates the effectiveness of the innovative effort leading to productivity gains. The company-level dataset is drawn from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS10). There is one common result for the two groups, that in general the probability for a typical firm to engage in innovation increases with its size. The other factors influencing the decision process differ. A firm’s productivity increases significantly with innovation output, but only with firms operating in Western Europe. The results for firms in Central and Eastern Europe indicate that these countries’ national innovation systems are vulnerable, and in periods of crises higher level of innovation output leads to lower labor productivity. Therefore, systemic faults in the national innovation systems result in their unsustainability, especially visible in periods of crises, as was the case in 2008–2010. When it comes to Western European countries, the financial and economic crisis did not have negative effects on their innovation systems as innovation activity resulted in higher levels of labor productivity. Regarding the CEE group of countries, the crisis influenced both the innovation process and labor productivity as a whole negatively.

Becoming a native listener is the necessary precursor to becoming a native speaker. Babies in the first year of life undertake a remarkable amount of work; by the time they begin to speak, they have perceptually mastered the phonological repertoire and phoneme co-occurrence probabilities of the native language, and they can locate familiar word-forms in novel continuous-speech contexts. The skills acquired at this early stage form a necessary part of adult listening. However, the same native listening skills also underlie problems in listening to a late-acquired non-native language, accounting for why in such a case listening (an innate ability) is sometimes paradoxically more difficult than, for instance, reading (a learned ability).

Humans and technology are not in symbiosis. They are one species, not two. Humans, enveloped in artefacts of many kinds and ages (from writing, to airplanes), are evolving as one species, the ‘human & machine species’. This evolution is visible and recorded in our lifetime. Here, I illustrate the evolution of the human & machine species by focusing on commercial aircraft, the cooling of electronics, and modern athletics, which is a special laboratory for witnessing the evolution of animal locomotion. I show that these evolutionary forms of flow organization are in accord with, and can be predicted based on the law of physics that governs evolution in nature, bio and non-bio: the constructal law. Evolution, life and the human & machine species are physics.

This paper describes the evolution of wine in Spain from Phoenician times to the present, within a historical context. Each of the six main sections deserves more careful analysis, but the broad overview given here could be of interest to the curious (and thirsty) reader.

A major challenge for education and educational research is to build on our present understanding of learning to design environments for education that are conducive to fostering students’ self-regulatory and cooperative learning skills, transferable knowledge, and a disposition toward competent thinking and problem solving. Using the CLIA-model (Competence, Learning, Intervention, Assessment) as a framework for developing learning environments, and taking the growing knowledge base on self-regulated learning as a background, this article discusses an intervention study that aimed at the design and evaluation of a powerful learning environment for fostering self-regulated learning in university freshmen, thereby improving their learning proficiency. More specifically, the intervention in this environment focused on the trainability of four cognitive (orienting, planning, self-testing, and reflecting), and four complementary affective self-regulation skills (respectively self-judging, valuing, coping, and attributing). The effects of the learning environment were investigated using a pre-test – post-test design with a control group. The participants were 141 first-year students of business economics. The positive effects of the intervention on students’ self-regulated learning and on their academic performance is illustrated for two of the eight self-regulation skills, namely orienting (preparing one’s learning process by examining the characteristics of a learning task) and self-judging (evaluating one’s competences in view of an accurate appraisal of the efforts needed to approach and accomplish a learning task).

By looking at science as a search process, disciplinary demarcations become secondary, and new combinations—which occur all the time—can be better recognized. The practices of natural science contain social science components (to discipline the world) and humanities components (telling of stories), and the quality of these components can be enhanced. The search perspective unifies science and scholarship; the important differences are not between natural science, social science and humanities, but between ‘grammar’, ‘(hi)story’ and ‘nomology’, three ideal–typical approaches in search processes. Existing scientific/scholarly developments and new combinations can be located on this map. An integrated science policy should create a stimulating environment for new combinations.

Within the framework of a general discussion of ‘the state of the welfare state’ in economically advanced West European democracies, this paper offers an account and interpretation of how the Nordic welfare states, often perceived as the most comprehensive and ‘generous’ welfare states, met a number of challenges in the 1990s. Economic problems were most critical in Finland and Sweden in the early 1990s, and social policy reform activities with the aim of modifications of programmes and cutbacks in expenditure have been most pronounced in these countries. A single common denominator for Nordic welfare state development in the 1990s is a somewhat less generous welfare state, but Norway is generally an exception. The basic structure of the welfare systems has been preserved, and social, health and welfare issues are consistently of high priority for governments and voters. The welfare state is highly valued in Scandinavia, but more space for market and other non-governmental welfare solutions is likely to grow in the future.

There are 7.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Syria, and an additional 5 million people have taken refuge in Syria’s immediate neighbourhood: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Among these countries, due to its open border policy, Turkey has received the largest number of Syrian refugees. As of 31 August 2016, there are more than 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. This article will concentrate on the findings of a recent qualitative and quantitative study conducted among Syrian refugees in Istanbul, with a particular focus on their strong attachment to this city. I shall claim that historical, cultural and religious forms of affinity are likely to particularly attach the Sunni-Muslim-Arab-Syrians originating from Aleppo province to Istanbul. This article is expected to contribute to the discipline of Refugee Studies by shedding light on the historical and human elements, which are often the missing elements in such analysis.

For the most part, modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge have been shaped and predominantly influenced by the West. Since the modern Chinese knowledge system is an integral and inseparable part of that dominant western system, an immanent critique will view Chinese problems not as extraneous, but as intrinsic to modernity, to the world-system or globalization. This article traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’, as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to question the relationship between (Eurocentric) universalism and Chinese exceptionalism within the dominant modern Western institutions and modes of knowledge today.

A brief summary of sociological theories concerning the development of identity states that it emerges through the interactions between individuals and society, implying that the individual is unable to attain an identity in an autonomous manner. An identity is therefore constructed and formed through contact with other individuals, groups and cultures in one’s socio-cultural environment. The concept of symbolic interactionism plays a fundamental role here. Societies establish and form social roles by means of linked expectations. In turn, an individual is introduced to these and is exposed to them throughout their socialisation. They are internalised and emerge as critical elements of identity. Explained another way, there are numerous identities in a society that are already fixed and established. The individual is confronted by those identities and must adapt to them. Individuals are seen as active participants in this process, capable of reflecting on it even constructing it and forming their own identity independently. A tension therefore exists between established social identities and the capacity of individuals to construct their own identities. This is a dynamic process that goes on throughout various life stages and differs according to social milieu. With this is mind; identity may be defined as one’s personal awareness of being a distinctive individual, with a unique life-story and being in constant confrontation with the environment in order to attain a balance between individual claims and the expectations of this environment.1

The paper offers a conceptual framework for interpreting the actions, rhetoric and decisions of the Hungarian communities living in neighbouring countries. Its main topic is covering how post-communist social transformations have been linked to the images these different communities have of the future, including expectations, principles and strategic goals.

Equality of opportunity is a central aim in the political agenda of many nations, and political leaders consequently speak about the importance of reducing differences in educational attainment between young persons from differing social origins. Such differences are apparent at two educational steps – the transition from compulsory school to upper secondary and at the transition from upper secondary school to tertiary institutions. Both steps have to be considered if the interest lies in attainment of university degrees, since the outcome at the first transition affects that at the second. Differences in educational attainment by parental origin appear through two separate mechanisms. Children from higher origins tend to perform better at school than other children, and consequently they more than others continue to higher educational levels. However, also among children who did perform equally well, children from more advantaged origins more often than other children choose to continue to higher and more academically oriented tracks. Children of immigrants tend to perform less well at school than native-born children, but given performance, they tend more than the native-born to choose to continue in academically oriented school tracks.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a vital element for building a long-term relationship with a company’s stakeholders. Different dimensions of a company’s social initiatives in terms of internal and external CSR activities influence the satisfaction of employees with the purpose of improving the CSR application. The aim of this research is to examine the level of employees’ awareness of the implementation of CSR in Serbian and Russian companies. A comparative analysis between these two countries was carried out in order to perceive the differences in attitudes of employees, their job satisfaction, and consequently the implementation of CSR. The hypotheses of the developed model were tested by using the Multi-group Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The obtained results offered several implications for scholars and practitioners that should be considered when formulating and implementing CSR actions.

Charles Darwin has had an extraordinary impact on many aspects of human affairs apart from revolutionizing biology. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Cambridge Darwin Festival in July 2009 celebrated these contributions to the humanities, philosophy and religion and the approach to medicine, economics and the social sciences. He is a man to revere. It is no discredit to him that the science of evolutionary biology should continue to evolve. In this article I shall consider some of the ways in which this has happened since his day.

A long history of analysis has taken apart organisms into molecular structures. However, the understanding of how biological forms are put together in development and evolution has eluded biologists until very recently. Comparative molecular data on genes in different phyla is uncovering an extraordinary conservation since Precambrian times of gene structures associated with functions. The implications of these findings and our increasing knowledge of how genes control development in a few model organisms, invites a consideration of possible approaches to tackle the problem of how organismic forms are constructed and evolve.