The literatures that have emerged from post-war Turkish migration to Europe have become a topic of discussion since the 1980s. However, studies comparing the emergence of these literatures in different European contexts are rare. This article compares Sweden and West Germany, two contexts where migration from Turkey has a similar history, but where the resulting literatures differ massively due to different political and literary conditions. Multicultural, and in particular multilingual, public policies in Sweden have facilitated the emergence of a Kurdish diaspora literature; this then became a major impetus for the emergence of a Kurdish literature in Turkey when it was finally possible to write and publish in Kurdish there in the 1990s. The emergence of the New Left in West Germany, reflected in a re-awakened workers’ literature and new left-wing publishing houses in the German literary field, has provided publishing opportunities for Turkish migrant writers influenced by a socialist internationalist tradition in the 1970s. These works laid the foundation for a literary tradition that has since come to be regarded as having changed the understanding of what it means to be German.

One can find many proposals for policy responses to global environmental problems. Different disciplines – notably economics, geography, innovation studies, policy and political sciences, psychology and sociology – offer partly inconsistent advice. This undermines the social-political acceptance of policies as voters and politicians are likely to be left confused. To decide about an adequate sustainability policy mix we need to concur on the core problems such a mix has to tackle. I address four of these hereafter. Each one involves important issues of disagreement as well as unresolved questions.

The interconversion of military and civilian scientific research has been discussed in various contexts. Fritz Haber was concerned with the military application of poison gas research in the First World War. It is less well known that, simultaneously, he also initiated modern pest control by toxic substances, thus taking advantage of the military development for civilian purposes. However, the case of Haber shows that, in the Age of Mass Extermination, such conversion cannot be easily kept under control.

The nature of liberal arts education merits renewed attention and consideration, especially in the context of the modern university in both Hong Kong and mainland China, where there is growing recognition that quality education standards should be improved, and an interdisciplinary approach to education and research is the way forward. The liberal arts spirit is an illustration of the power of inspiration and transformation, and through engaging with different perspectives, students are enabled and encouraged to pursue independent study, which boosts their creativity and critical thinking. As a catalyst and facilitator, liberal arts education that encompasses fresh global perspectives and connections has proved its worth over the years. However, since it is sometimes easy to lose sight of some of the fundamental principles essential to university education, we need to realize that too little interaction between science and the humanities has widened the two-culture divide, and the question is how to reconcile, or better still combine, the two. The two-culture debate, although suffering neglect for a long time in China, is of profound relevance and implications for the modern university. It can be observed that participatory interaction inherent in the dynamism of pedagogical engagement is increasingly promoted as the preferred mode of teaching students, who have benefited from broad-based learning as the embodiment of liberal education. Overcoming rigid disciplinary exclusiveness is positively correlated with empowering students with broad knowledge and skills to succeed in the future.

Although the notion of God as the legislator of nature was already known in the Jewish-Christian tradition, the modern concept of laws of nature was established only in the seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy of nature, particularly by Descartes and Newton, and remained largely confined to that tradition before it became seriously questioned in quantum mechanics. After a brief historical survey, I first discuss various examples of so-called laws of nature in chemistry and physical chemistry proposed in the nineteenth century to conclude that none of them really correspond to the original concept, but that they rather comprise a variety of epistemologically different statements. More recent philosophical approaches to extend the concept of laws, so as to cover chemical cases, all result in inacceptable consequences. The deeper reason of the comparatively little importance of natural laws, I finally argue, is that chemistry as the original epitome of the experimental or Baconian science has largely followed methodological pluralism in which a variety of models to be chosen from for pragmatic reasons are preferred over universal laws of nature as in mathematical physics.

Genetic engineering (GMO-technology) offers great opportunities to contribute to the public good by improving public health, e.g. by improving the micro-nutrient status of poor populations, cost effectively and – therefore – sustainably. The prime example for such a project from the public domain for public good is ‘Golden Rice’ (www.goldenrice.org). There are exclusive public funds involved (from altruistic organizations), no dependence from industry except for in-kind support and help in acquiring free licenses for humanitarian use. There is no financial reward for anyone involved. The only beneficiaries are the poor in developing countries. Theoretically, when considering the arguments of the anti-GMO lobby, this is an ideal application of GMO-technology. However, Golden Rice is considered a Trojan Horse, which must be prevented under all circumstances. The consequence: millions of avoidable blind and dead children. The author considers those who are responsible for this avoidable suffering of many innocent children (and mothers at childbirth) a crime to humanity. There are those who commit this deliberately and those who are participating passively, such as numerous ‘humanitarian organizations’ and ‘decision makers’ in politics and elsewhere. There is a wealth of scientific information and broad consensus that GMO-technology is at least as safe as any other technology involved in any context with our food or our environment. What we experience here is an example of ‘unreason’ and a perfect example in the context of The March of Unreason. Our ‘enlightenment’ and science-based successful European culture is on the verge of being replaced by unreason-based failure and lack of culture.

There are powerful limits to international humanitarian law. With reference to theories of international relations and to empirically observable patterns, this article shows the inability of legal norms and structures to influence the behaviour of the world's most powerful states and their allies. There are also restrictions on the capacity of trials conducted according to humanitarian law to fulfil the social functions increasingly attributed to them, including the re-education of populations complicit in mass crimes, some measure of catharsis for the victims of such crimes, and the reintegration of erstwhile ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ communities.

We imagine crystals as Platonic ideals of perfection, but real ones are always faulty and impure. Most could not even have formed without faults. The endless variety of crystalline nature, leading for example to mechanical strength, brittleness, plasticity, transparency, reflectivity, colour, electrical conductivity, transistor behaviour, phosphorescence and photographic sensitivity, is largely brought about by faults and impurities.

This paper examines the potential impact of East–West migration of talent on the innovative capital and hence the long-run growth prospects in Eastern sending countries. Complementing previous studies, we examine the impact of high-skill migration not only on the formation of human capital, but also consider migration’s impact on knowledge capital in the sending countries. In line with previous studies, we find that, in the short- to medium-term, high-skill migration strictly reduces national innovative capital and hence increases the gap between East and West. However, these effects might be mitigated by factors such as reinforced education of workers, productive investment of remittances, return migration and increased knowledge transfer. Given that the emigration of highly skilled labour affects human capital differently than it does knowledge capital, differentiated policies are required for human capital and knowledge capital in order to efficiently address the adverse impact of the most talented and highly skilled workers.

The Nordic or Scandinavian countries represent variations on general European patterns of state and nation-building and political culture. Denmark and Sweden rank among the oldest and most typical of nation-states together with France, Britain and Spain and should be studied with the same questions in mind. Today, however, a sort of trans-state common Nordic identity coexists with independent national identifications among the Scandinavians. Nordic unity is regarded as a viable alternative to European culture and integration by large numbers of the populations. There has never existed a ‘Scandinavian model’ worthy of the name ‘model’. Because of a series of changes in great power politics in the 18th and 19th centuries, the major conflicts in Europe were relocated away from Northern Europe. This resulted in a virtual ‘neutralization’ of the Scandinavian countries north of the Baltic Sea. Today, the much promoted ‘Nordic identity’ reveals itself only through the nation-states. The ‘Association for Nordic Unity’ (Foreningerne Norden) was set up in 1919 only after all five Nordic countries had achieved independent nationhood: Norway in 1905, Finland in 1917, and Iceland in 1918 (the latter only as home rule to be followed by independence in 1944). The very different roads to independent nationhood among the Nordic countries and the idea of a common Nordic identity can be traced back to its beginnings in the 19th century

In his huge ‘Pharmacognosy’ the universal scholar al-Bīrūnī (973–1048) equates, in 1116 paragraphs, about 4500 names of medicinal plants, and also foodstuffs, in 27 languages. Before the introduction of an internationally recognised botanical nomenclature this kind of literature served a practical need. Al-Bīrūnī’s work is now a mine of information for the linguist and also for world history. It testifies, for example, to the fact that the spoken Greek vernacular of the time had become already quite different from the classical language. Thus, the Byzantine emperors in their efforts to defend their state helped to conserve a cultivation of the humanities, which would have disappeared under Muslim rule. In the article on ‘capers’, al-Bīrūnī also offers a rare insight into a seemingly relaxed bit of small talk between Constantinus VII and an Arab ambassador.

In order to silence the resistance, the Soviet Union under Stalin kept the population in permanent fear and uncertainty by recurrent purges of innocent citizens, ‘Old Bolsheviks’ and Red Army commanders, thus terrorizing the entire population. Similar conspiracy narratives are used under Putin. In order to keep his grip on power, after the Beslan massacre, Putin’s administration discourse hints at the operation of an international conspiracy of states using terrorism as an instrument to weaken Russia.

The unification of European law – if it is ever achieved – belongs to the future, but much of this present article will be devoted to the past. This makes me look like the ancient Roman king Janus, upon whom the god Saturn bestowed the gift of seeing the future as well as the past, which led to his famous representation, in his Roman temple, as a man with two faces. As a professional historian I am, of course, concerned with past centuries, but the future of Europe and European law concerns me as a citizen of the Old World.

This article outlines the lecture presented by Robert Zorec at the Academia Europea meeting in Liverpool on 19 September 2008, four decades after the Sherrington Lecture of Bernard Katz who, together with his colleagues, developed a number of paradigms addressing vesicles in chemical synapses. Vesicles are subcellular organelles that evolved in eukaryotic cells 1000 to 2000 million years ago. They store signalling molecules such as chemical messengers, which are essential for the function of neurons and endocrine cells in supporting the communication between tissues and organs in the human body. Upon a stimulus, the vesicle-stored signalling molecules (neurotransmitters or hormones) are released from cells. This event involves exocytosis, a fundamental biological process, consisting of the merger of the vesicle membrane with the plasma membrane. The two fusing membranes lead to the formation of an aqueous channel – the fusion pore – through which signalling molecules exit into the extracellular space or blood stream. The work of Bernard Katz and colleagues considered that vesicle cargo discharge initially requires the delivery of vesicles to the plasma membrane, where vesicles dock and get primed for fusion with the plasma membrane, and that stimulation initiates the formation of the transient fusion pore through which cargo molecules leave the vesicle lumen in an all-or-none-fashion. However, recent studies indicate that this may not be so simple. Here we highlight the novel findings which indicate that fusion pores are subject to regulations, which affect the release competence of a single vesicle. At least in pituitary lactotrophs, which are the subject of research in our laboratories, single vesicle release of peptide signalling molecules involves modulation of fusion pore diameter and fusion pore kinetics.

The main aim of this article is to analyse J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) from a posthumanist perspective. By focusing on the character David Lurie, this article analyses the complex materiality of bodies and the agentic powers of nonhuman entities in coping with individual trauma, where agency is no longer considered to be the distinguishing quality unique to humans. In so doing, it highlights the interdependence of the human and the nonhuman and the idea that environment is not a mere canvas onto which characters’ traumas are being reflected. On the contrary, it is a material-affective matrix which becomes a catalyst for making sense of the world in post-apartheid South Africa. At the same time, as this article argues, it decentres the sovereignty of the human subject.

This article aims to open a theoretical space to address the variation of migrant settlement and transnationalism in time and space beyond the national scale and ethnic lens. On the basis of the emergent homeland ties and Hometown Associations of Syriac migrants from Mardin (Turkey) in Europe it approaches migrant dynamics through the lens of the repositioning struggles Mardin has undergone within the context of neo-liberal development agendas.

The paper considers the growing diversity of higher education systems and institutions by exploring three main trends of expansion, differentiation and globalisation together with linked features concerning new forms of governance and more responsive relationships with other social institutions. At the heart of this expansion and differentiation are a number of tensions concerning the role of modern higher education systems: to do with balancing autonomy and responsiveness, reproductive and transformative functions, public and private benefits, economic and broader socio-political agendas. The paper goes on to ask whether future knowledge societies will continue to need separate institutions of ‘higher’ education and, if the answer is yes, what form these will take.

In this article, an attempt is made to explain the homogenization of world dress, particularly for men, and at the same time to understand why – in a number of places – that homogenization has been resisted, and specific forms of supposedly local clothing have been used as markers of identity. The argument revolves around two main themes. First, the development of continent, and later worldwide, systems of manufacturing and distribution of clothing, beginning in New York in the middle of the 19th century, allowed the spread of particular forms of dress. Secondly, this dress was seen as being modern. In some cases this led to its enthusiastic, or to its enforced, adoption, in the hope that it would bring about socio-economic modernization. Elsewhere, it was rejected as being a part of imperial domination.

Human migration has a long and complicated history. A survey of the various migration streams reveals that between 1492 and the present, Europeans have benefitted in much greater numbers from the ‘migration escape hatch’ than have Africans and Asians.