We compare G7 life expectancies with the existential conditions from 1870 to date, using the real annual outputs of goods and services per capita as a measure of existential conditions. Wars destroy analytic relations, but life insurers eliminate catastrophic losses, and the outputs have an envelope representing the undisturbed existential condition. Both evolutions are S-functions with the same growth parameter of 62 years. Its length bridging three generations and its constancy over two orders of magnitude in output implies biologic pace control. For the first time it is seen that the mean life expectancy precedes the existential condition by a constant 59 years and approaches asymptotically an age of 118. This precedence and the ratio of 2 follow quantitatively from life’s integration over the existential condition. On the conditions of stable environment and openness to new knowledge, the industrial evolution will continue as a stable predictable process, immune to world wars and financial breakdowns.

Two major earthquakes ‘which shook the world’, that of Lisbon of 1755 and that of Aceh/Sumatra of 2004, are compared. Both were catastrophic earthquakes with nearly identical magnitude M≈9 and accompanying destructive tsunamis. They are paradigms for Low Probability Extreme Events (LPEEs) and for the reaction of the societies in which they occurred, although 250 years apart. Modern seismology developed from its birth as disaster management following the Lisbon quake to a mature science, which however, still remains under the obligation to improve its role in enhancing society's preparedness for such catastrophes. The catastrophe of hurricane Katrina, which was predicted, showed that the realm of societal responsibility extends beyond that of scientific technical competence.

The first pogrom documented in history took place in Alexandria in the year 38 CE. The only document describing this event is an eyewitness account by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. It is a problematic source because the concern of the author is largely theological and also because he fails to inform the reader about the causes of the violence. These causes must be sought in the combination of a growing tendency among Alexandrian intellectuals to depict Jews as criminal misanthropes, and the Jewish tendency to side with the Roman occupiers of Egypt.

This article illustrates that due to the complexity of educational practices and of the educational system, their scientific study constitutes a crossroads for dialogue and possible conflicts among a variety of disciplines. The article focuses on school education. A first illustration shows how analyzing and improving classroom practices requires collaboration with and among different sub-disciplines of psychology. In the next section the recent domain of educational neuroscience is discussed as a crossroads of educational science, psychology and neuroscience. Thereafter, it is argued that research on mathematics education calls on the contribution of many disciplines such as mathematics, pedagogy, the psychology of cognition and math-related beliefs, and anthropology. The final example focuses on educational technology that requires interaction between educational science, psychology, computer science, economics, etc.

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.

Electronic publishing has many advantages, including speed, low cost and searchability. It has made most progress in the physical sciences. Peer review remains an essential requirement. The dominance of English should be countered by the use of extended character sets. The preservation of electronic data is a great challenge due to the impermanence of magnetic and optical storage, but even more by the rapid change in both software and hardware.

Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1961) offers a comparison between two types of answers to the same social problems: unemployment, poverty and crime. In the earlier centuries exclusion was the answer. The French Hopital General (1656) replaced it by containment. The institution was a combination of a hospital and jail and offered a solution by isolating insane, unemployed and criminal people at the expense of the society. The 20th century welfare state has a different answer to the same questions. This is, however, challenged by financial limitations. Foucault offers a solution by combining social security and individual autonomy, which was not considered to be important before.

The acquisition of domain-specific knowledge and interdisciplinary skills such as critical thinking is increasingly gaining significance as key learning outcomes in higher education that are crucial for all professionals and engaged citizens and that enable lifelong learning. Despite this socio-political consensus, up until the last decade there have only been a few evidence-based insights into the competencies of higher education students. Therefore, the Germany-wide research program Modelling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHs) was established in 2011 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In the 85 projects, theoretical-conceptual competence models and corresponding assessments were developed for selected large study domains (e.g. economics) to reliably measure the students’ competencies in different phases of higher education (entering, undergraduate, graduate). More than 100 technology-based assessments of both discipline-specific competencies and generic skills were validated across Germany at over 350 universities with over 75,000 students. This article presents findings from the Germany-wide entry diagnostics in the one KoKoHs project (WiWiKom II) with beginning students in business, economic and social sciences that provide evidence-based insights into students’ learning preconditions and their impact on domain-specific knowledge acquisition in bachelor’s degree courses. The results lead to far-reaching practical implications for successful transitions between secondary and tertiary education, including recommendations for the development of mechanisms to support access to tertiary education and to prevent high dropout rates.

In this paper I will illustrate the heuristic value of studying human rights as social representations. Results of cross-national studies are reported after a short presentation of social representation theory. Shared meanings in the field of human rights exist within and between cultural and national groups. Other findings concern dimensions on which individuals differ in their positioning toward human rights, related to respondents' beliefs about their own efficacy and the efficacy of institutions. These beliefs are anchored in national group membership, in value priorities and in experiences of social conflict. Studies in Geneva suggest there is a distinction between a large-scale principled agreement and much more restricted attitudes toward the application of human rights principles in specific situations.

In this paper we propose a methodological critique of the History of Early Modern Journalism. Our proposal recommends a review of the ‘micro’ concept applied to research in The History of Early Modern Journalism. The current study on the Gazeta de Roma in Valencia (1618–1620) is a sample of this microscopic procedure, and is an important and revealing example that enables us to reinterpret the concept of periodicity. We will discuss the value of periodicity as a demarcation. The contemporaries of the first European newspapers applied characteristics and criteria other than periodicity: a ‘newspaper’ was then a serial document that informed progressively about the news from a certain area at that time, the continuity of which was recognizable thanks to certain typographical resources, in the absence of the header concept.

The Nordic achievements in the visual arts in the age of romanticism were first and foremost accomplished by Danish artists. The great initiator was C. W. Eckersberg, who observed reality with great scrutiny and demanded of himself a faithful rendering of all the details. However, at the same time, he stuck to the classical principles of composition and omitted all accidental and ugly aspects of the motif that did not fit into his concept of an ideal picture. The principles he laid down in his art in around 1815 formed the basis of Danish (and Norwegian) painting until 1850. He introduced open-air painting as part of the tuition at the Royal Academy of Copenhagen and was, in this respect, a pioneer in a European context. During the 1820s and 30s almost all the young Danish painters were pupils of Eckersberg, and he also influenced the Norwegian J. C. Dahl. The subjects of the Danish paintings are very down-to-earth – they are first and foremost taken from everyday life. In the first decades of nineteenth century, Copenhagen had the status as the most important art centre in Northern Europe, and the art academy attracted many German artists. However, around 1840, a growing nationalism separated the Danish and German artists, and many Danish landscape painters devoted their art to the praise of Denmark. The nationalist artists, however, still stuck to the reality they had actually seen.

Even agents possessed of free will must—if rational—be substantially predictable. However, there will be some situations where the act-choices of rational agents will not be predictable—for example, in circumstances of underdetermination due to insufficient information. And moreover, unpredictability can also result in situations of analysis overdetermination that arise when equally cogent analyses yield disparate results, as in the example of Dr. Psychic Psycho. The Prisoner's Dilemma affords yet another instance of this. Clearly, when determination fails even after rationality has had its say, then rationality's predictive power is exhausted! Fortunately, however, that does not mean that our human resources of issue-resolution are at the end of their tether.

Historians have long found it difficult to deal with fascism as a generic, Europe-wide, political phenomenon. The historiographic pendulum has swung from including virtually every right-wing movement under the label of fascism to denying altogether that generic fascism ever existed. Neither approach is historically valid. The fascists did not see themselves as a species of Conservatives; they looked upon themselves as a unique, international political phenomenon. Moreover, many of their non-fascist contemporaries accepted this claim. Both were right and, for this reason, it is necessary to renew efforts to delineate the ideological and stylistic parameters of generic fascism. An important aid in understanding fascism as a generic phenomenon is the analysis of the relations between the German Nazis and French and Dutch fascists in the years from 1933 to 1939, a topic that has been little studied until now.

There is probably no other country like Turkey whose inhabitants succumbed so thoroughly to state interventions as to how to cover or uncover their heads and hair. Suppression and enforced alterations characterize the last two centuries. The headscarf has become an important topic for the Turkish press since the 1950s. Today, the headscarf plays a major role in the discussion about the ‘maturity’ of Turkey to become a member of the European Union.

The last few decades have seen a significant growth of economists’ interest in studying institutions. They are generally preoccupied with explaining institutions using instruments that are specific for an economist, and especially with discerning the significance of institutions for both economic development and development economics. Therefore, the integration of institutions into economic theory is an essential step in our continuous attempt to refine and improve scientific explanations. The neoclassical theory of economic growth only identifies the conditions needed for material production growth, such as capital accumulation and technical progress. In order to explain ‘why’ people save, invest, learn and seek useful knowledge, special attention must also be paid to institutional and value systems.

The concept of ‘symbolic interactionism’ has been particularly compelling since its inception as a method for studying human group life and human behaviour. Symbolic interactionism represents one of the most sociological reserach projects in social psychology, and the founders of communication, such as Lazarsfeld, Lewin, and Hovland, are all related to social psychology. Therefore, this article will attempt to answer the following questions through a historical review of the development of social psychology in the United States: symbolic interactionism is so closely related to communication studies, but why is it gradually missing in the establishment of communication studies? Can symbolic interactionism have a new academic resonance with contemporary communication research?

Any definition of Central Europe based on geographical and/or historical facts causes difficulties. The line dividing Europe during the Cold War has a very limited use because it does not take into account Central Europe as a special part of the continent. Historians such as Geoffrey Barraclough, Hugh Seton-Watson and Oskar Halecki discussed the idea of a separate identity of Central Europe during the Cold War. Especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this discussion was re-opened. From a historian's point of view, the most important contributions came from Piotr Wandycz and Jenő Szűcs. An imaginary centre of Europe can only be found in the continent's common history.

There is a belief, rather widespread in English-speaking countries, that the eastern half of Europe is inhabited by a number of endlessly quarrelling small nations whose conflicts keep endangering the quiet and comfort of Anglophones. (Hugh Seton-Watson)

This essay deals with cultural studies, including elite culture and its products (literature and the performing arts), as well as studies of film and TV and other expressions of popular culture in the mainland of China. It lays particular emphasis on the currently prevailing concept of Cultural Studies introduced from the West at the beginning of the 1990s. The author addresses the following issues: how Cultural Studies was introduced into the Chinese context, how it was integrated with existing practices of cultural history and comparative literature studies, how it was institutionalized in China, and how it was developing into a position from where it can engage in a dialogue with Western scholarship against the background of increasing globalization. According to the author, Cultural Studies has much in common with literary studies, especially in the Chinese context. Therefore, these two branches of learning should not necessarily be seen as opposed to one another. Literary and cultural studies are complementary rather than exclusionary towards each other.

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake produced huge and diversified reactions in Portuguese literature. This paper aims at analysing some of the issues raised by these reactions, namely: the recognition of the disturbance, beginning as geographical and architectural, but soon becoming symbolic and anthropological; the effects on the understanding of a phenomenon which, because it goes beyond the frontiers of what is known, soon becomes a paradigm of the incomprehensible, with the consequent debates on how to make God compatible with the destruction that occurred, and the confirmation of fear and terror as the major effects of the event. The paradoxical relation between seeing (too much) and saying (too little) is stressed, as well as the visual, theatrical, and melodramatic components of several descriptions of the event.

In 2005 the European Union (EU) began formally to negotiate Turkey's application to become a full member. Today, the EU is a very different organization, Turkey has also experienced major changes, and the Arab Spring has dramatically impacted the Middle East. In sum, there is a changed context for the evolving relationship between Turkey and the EU. This article explains that context and concludes that, for the foreseeable future, Turkey is unlikely to become a full EU member, although close ties with respect to economic matters and immigration will persist.