COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is one of the longest-running European instruments supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe. COST is an intergovernmental framework composed of 35 countries, allowing the coordination of research that is otherwise funded on a European level, through the provision of platforms for European scientists to cooperate on a particular project and exchange expertise. As a precursor of advanced multidisciplinary research, COST contributes to reducing the fragmentation in European research investments and to opening the European Research Area to cooperation worldwide. It anticipates and complements the activities of the EU Framework Programmes, constituting a ‘bridge’ towards the scientific communities of emerging countries. It also increases the mobility of researchers across Europe, fostering the establishment of scientific excellence (see www.cost.esf.org). COST Foresight 2030 was an initiative designed to explore a broadly-shared vision for a future world beyond 2030, permeated and shaped by the digital revolution. It consisted of a set of events presenting long-term perspectives in the selected fields – Information and Communication Technologies/Computer and Communication Sciences and Technologies (ICT/CCST), Energy, Food Security, Natural Resources Management, Life Enhancement and Society – which play fundamental roles in human life and which are envisaged to be highly influenced by ICT/CCST-enabling technologies. The workshop ‘Living the Digital Revolution: The European Society in 2030’, the concluding one of the six workshops of the initiative, gathered 20 distinguished scholars and experts from Europe and beyond (AU, NZ, US) for an exploratory brainstorming session. Representing various fields in the social sciences and humanities, such as sociology, education and learning, future studies, law and ethics, economics and business, demography and ICT, the experts focused on the possible trajectories of European societies with regard to the accelerating advancements in ICT/CCST leading up to 2030.

Modern societies are characterised by profound changes in both working conditions and family formation. Today's workplaces are marked by high flexibility, great job instability and variable working hours. A dual-earner family has replaced the traditional male-breadwinner family and the norm is two working adults. However, the pattern of women's involvement in employment differs in all labour markets depending on the gendered division of paid work, unpaid work and care obligations. These differences can be seen as the combined effect of the individual household strategies and the shape of family and labour market policies in the European welfare regimes. The article analyses household strategies in combining paid work, unpaid work and care in four European countries – Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The main conclusion is that the division of paid work, unpaid work as well as caring obligations is gendered in all four countries. Compared with women, men tend to be more flexible, have more secure positions in the labour market and seem to be more involved in unpaid voluntary activities and seem thus more integrated in the society and have a higher level of civic participation. On the other hand, today, an increasing number of women are fully active in the labour market and their level of participation in civic activities becomes more and more similar to men's. However, the burdens of caring for children and other members of the household are still very unevenly divided between men and women, which makes the conflicts between obligations at work and in the households significantly more troublesome for women than for men.

Big data and machine learning techniques are increasingly applied to creative tasks, often with strong reactions of both awe and concern. But we have to be careful about where to attribute the creative agency. Is it really the machine that paints like van Gogh, or is it a human that uses a high-level tool to impart one pattern upon another, based on her aesthetic preferences? In this paper, the author analyses the problem of machine creativity, focusing on four central themes: the inherent convergence of machine learning and big data techniques, their dependence on assumptions and incomplete data, the possibility of explorative search as a new creative paradigm, and the related problem of the opacity of results from such methods. The Google Deep Dream project is brought in as an example to illustrate the discussion. Information and complexity are brought into the discussion as central concepts for both creative processes and the resulting artefacts, concluding that the complexity of the interaction between the creative agent and the environment during the creative process is a crucial parameter for meaningful creative output. Based on the exposed limitations in current technologies, the author concludes that the principal creative agency still lies in the developers and users of the tools, not in the data processing itself. Human effort and input still matters. But we can take a constructive approach, regarding big data techniques as tools one order of magnitude more complex than what was available before, allowing artists to work with abstractions previously unfeasible for computational work.

On the eve of 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the UK voted to withdraw from the EU (so-called Brexit). The implications for European integration and EU policies are far from clear and require further investigation. This paper aims to answer: what does Brexit imply for European integration? What messages were sent to the EU from the UK referendum? Did EU leaders interpret these messages and implications correctly and did they respond with the right policy? After examining the competing interpretations, this paper argues that the sharp divisions between different socio-economic classes shown in voting behaviour highlight the imperative of addressing economic inequality and distributive injustice, which are rooted in the structural flaws of EU governance and have been aggravated by the mismanagement of the Euro crisis. To move European integration forward and to keep a ‘political Europe’ sustainable, a ‘social Europe’ making an ‘economic Europe’ more inclusive and fair is required.

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) election resulted in the rise of populist right-wing parties (PRPs). This paper aims to answer: why PRPs were able to rise in the 2014 EP election; what messages were delivered by the election results regarding European integration; and whether or not policy-makers addressed the messages correctly with the right policy responses? After examining the competing interpretations, this paper argues that a deep disillusionment and crisis of trust in the political establishment, which derived from the long neglect of deteriorating distributional justice and fairness in European integration, which became acute after the euro crisis mismanagement, explains the 2014 EP election results. This paper, accordingly, argues that policy redirection of EU economic governance and the addressing of a ‘social Europe’ are required to regain political trust. After assessing the policy responses taken by the EU, an economic Europe is expected to revive, but the required social Europe will still remain absent.

As one of the building blocks of the fourth industrial revolution, artificial intelligence has attracted much public attention and sparked protracted discussions about its impact on future technological, economic and social developments. This contribution conveys insights into artificial intelligence’s basic methods and tools, its main achievements, its economic environment and the surrounding ethical and social issues. Based on the announced and taken measures of the EU organs in the area of artificial intelligence, the contribution analyses the position of Europe in the global context.

What is the ‘virtual’ and what types of phenomena can be so described? This article tries to establish the context within which this unclear and ideological term can be constructive. Phrases such as ‘virtual community’ are paradoxical and weak, but ‘virtual’ applied cognitively to simulated phenomena, such as virtual worlds or computer games, has validity and represents an alternative discourse mode to narratives and storytelling in conveying experience and knowledge.

Symmetry across the midline is present in many animals, together with the left/right asymmetry of several organs, such as the heart in vertebrates. The development of such asymmetries during embryonic development requires first the specification of the midline and then specification of left/right. One model proposes the transfer of molecular asymmetry to the multicellular level. Nodal expression on the left side in mammals and chicks is a key event, and is due to the release of calcium on the left possibly involving an ion pump and the Notch pathway

Historically, static symmetric bodies and ornaments are geometric idealizations in the Platonic tradition. Actually, symmetries are locally and globally broken by phase transitions of instability in dynamical systems generating a variety of new order and partial symmetries with increasing complexity. The states of complex dynamical systems can refer to, for example, atomic clusters, crystals, biomolecules, organisms and brains, social and economic systems. The paper discusses dynamical balance as dynamical symmetry in dynamical systems, which can be simulated by computational systems. Its emergence is an interdisciplinary challenge of nonlinear systems science. The philosophy of science analyses the common methodological framework of symmetry and complexity.

At the time of writing, more than 20 novels have been written that deal directly or indirectly with the events of 9/11. In broad outlines, they fall under four categories: the novel of recuperation, the novel of first-hand witnessing, the great New York novel, and the novel of the outsider. It is the last category of novels – written by non-Americans – that demonstrates the extent to which 11 September has penetrated deep into the European psyche and thus has become a European event. What is surprising is that the gap between the continents seems smaller in fiction than in politics. Even Luc Lang's onze septembre mon amour, a strident anti-American screed, is characterized by a sense of solidarity for the victims and for an alternative America, antithetical to the official one. In Frédéric Beigbeder's Windows on the World (a French novel with an English title), Europe and the US remain united in the overarching concept of the West, sharing a common destiny. In Ian McEwan's Saturday, finally, the events in the US have become part and parcel of the protagonist's existence, even though he lives thousands of miles away in the posh part of London.

At the end of the 15th century, Italian painters explored the new effects made possible by the use of the oil medium. They created a sense of depth and relief by following the Flemish technique of glazes, which allowed the spreading of very thin and translucent layers, rich in medium and with low pigment content. A striking example is given by the realization of the shadows in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci: the Master used the so-called ‘sfumato’ technique based on the use of glazes to obtain a ‘smoky’ aspect for the creation of flesh tones, with very subtle contours that seem to have no hard edges. Since the 16th century, his technique was famous due to the perfection of the works of art that glazes have allowed artists to reach. Analytical characterizations of painting materials have helped us to improve our knowledge about this technique. X-ray fluorescence measurements were carried out on seven paintings by Leonardo da Vinci preserved in the Louvre museum. This technique is widely used for qualitative determination of the pigments but it is very difficult to interpret the data quantitatively in the case of layered structures such as easel paintings. As well as the characterization of the palette, we obtain in-depth information on how Leonardo modelled his shadows. Comparisons between the different paintings of Leonardo highlight the specific features in the Leonardo technique.

Analysing structural conditions for interdisciplinarity, this paper focuses on the characteristics of four factors in the organization of the sciences: disciplines, institutions, rewards and funding. It is argued that interdisciplinarity is less likely to involve disciplines that are strongly integrated, i.e. where task uncertainty is low and the dependence among researchers is high. Likewise, it is claimed that interdisciplinarity is likely to be hampered by strong departmental organization structures. Interdisciplinarity is also considered to become less likely as quality control is specifically discipline oriented and also when funding is concentrated and in the hands of scientific elites. In contrast, interdisciplinary research may be found in research environments with weakly integrated disciplines in institutions with weak or no departmental structures, and where disciplinary reward systems are weak in systems with a variety of funding.

According to some hypotheses, from a statistical perspective the origin of life seems to be a highly improbable event. Although there is no rigid definition of life itself, life as it is, is a fact. One of the most recognized hypotheses for the origins of life is the RNA world hypothesis. Laboratory experiments have been conducted to prove some assumptions of the RNA world hypothesis. However, despite some success in the ‘wet-lab’, we are still far from a complete explanation. Bioinformatics, supported by biomathematics, appears to provide the perfect tools to model and test various scenarios of the origins of life where wet-lab experiments cannot reflect the true complexity of the problem. Bioinformatics simulations of early pre-living systems may give us clues to the mechanisms of evolution. Whether or not this approach succeeds is still an open question. However, it seems likely that linking efforts and knowledge from the various fields of science into a holistic bioinformatics perspective offers the opportunity to come one step closer to a solution to the question of the origin of life, which is one of the greatest mysteries of humankind. This paper illustrates some recent advancements in this area and points out possible directions for further research.

An international rule of law complementing modern states' domestic rule of law seems to be emerging. At least in the four issue areas of international law considered here – international trade, security, labour, and environmental law – empirical evidence suggests that relevant dispute settlement procedures have been judicialized and their use by complainants as well as their acceptance by defendants have increased in practice. Albeit still far from what we are used to from the domestic rule of law, the emergence of an international rule of law can be regarded as indicative of a fundamental transformation of modern states.

Suggestive or misleading interrogation techniques may have the effect that innocent people start to remember having committed a serious crime. Confessions are therefore not the best possible evidence, especially not when it is obvious that the interrogation contained elements of suggestion and deception. The problem is illustrated by a case that has become famous in The Netherlands, because two innocent men were imprisoned for about eight years, after obviously false confessions. The confessions were obtained during long and repeated interrogations in which various types of psychological deception were used. In the end, the amount of contradiction, and even of sheer impossibilities, made it clear that the confessions were false and the men innocent. Some of the literature on the creation of false memories is reviewed. It is argued that the practice of criminal investigation may elicit even stronger effects, because empirical research is constrained by ethical limits. The objective of criminal investigation seems to put no limit on what is deemed acceptable, even though we know quite well that the elicitation of false confessions is a serious risk. European agreements about criminal interrogation techniques may provide an effective protection against undesirable practices; but it will not be easy to convince the European legislators of this.

Despite its postmodern articulation, the spatial turn is productive for literary studies because, paradoxically revisiting Kant’s modern attempt to base the structure of knowledge on the presumably scientific character of geography and anthropology, it has improved methods of historical contextualization of literature through the dialectics of ontologically heterogeneous spaces. The author discusses three recent appropriations of spatial thought in literary studies: the modernization of traditional literary geography in the research of the relations between geospaces and fictional worlds (Piatti, Westphal), the systemic analysis of the genre development and diffusion with the help of analytical cartography (Moretti), and the transnational history of literary cultures (Valdés, Neubauer, Domínguez, and so on). In conclusion, the author presents the tentative results of the research project ‘The Space of Slovenian Literary Culture: Literary History and the GIS-Based Spatial Analysis’, which might represent a matrix for further developments of the spatially-oriented literary science. Using GIS technologies, the project maps and analyses data about the media, institutions, and actors of Slovenian literature in order to explain how the interaction between ‘spaces in literature’ and ‘literature in spaces’ has historically established a nationalized and aesthetically differentiated literary field.

Women's movements in the late Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey are explored in an international context. The international contacts of individual and organized women in both the first and the second waves of ‘feminist’ activism are considered. It is necessary to determine the influence, on the one hand, of Turkish women on the international scene of the women's movement and, on the other hand, the influence of the international organizations on Turkish policies vis-à-vis women. In this way a little light can be shed on the indirect ways Turkish women, through international networks, were and are able to exert influence on the changing policies of the Turkish government regarding the position of women in their society.

This article argues that the question of national perspectives is a fundamental problem in the writing of European sports history. It does so by demonstrating that France has an equal pedigree, in terms of diffusion and exceptionalism, as Britain, and pleads for a less skewed approach to the history of the subject in general. The article shows, first, that France contributed significantly to the internationalization of sport in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with French networks facilitating the spread of sports across the globe. It considers the impact of French universalism on the institutional structures of world sport and assesses the importance of sport to governmental diplomacy. Second, it proposes that France occupies a special place in the history of European sport, halfway between that of the British on the one hand and other continental sporting cultures on the other. It discusses the role of central and regional administrations in the creation of a sports space that is distinctly marked by a lack of football hegemony. French sport, the article concludes, is characterized by a peculiar mix of anglomanie, invented traditions, internationalism, state interventionism and eclecticism.

Great earthquakes and tsunami can have a tremendous societal impact. The Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755 caused tens of thousands of deaths in Portugal, Spain and NW Morocco. Felt as far as Hamburg and the Azores islands, its magnitude is estimated to be 8.5–9. However, because of the complex tectonics in Southern Iberia, the fault that produced the earthquake has not yet been clearly identified. Recently acquired data from the Gulf of Cadiz area (tomography, seismic profiles, high-resolution bathymetry, sampled active mud volcanoes) provide strong evidence for an active east dipping subduction zone beneath Gibraltar. Eleven out of 12 of the strongest earthquakes (M>8.5) of the past 100 years occurred along subduction zone megathrusts (including the December 2004 and March 2005 Sumatra earthquakes). Thus, it appears likely that the 1755 earthquake and tsunami were generated in a similar fashion, along the shallow east-dipping subduction fault plane. This implies that the Cadiz subduction zone is locked (like the Cascadia and Nankai/Japan subduction zones), with great earthquakes occurring over long return periods. Indeed, the regional paleoseismic record (contained in deep-water turbidites and shallow lagoon deposits) suggests great earthquakes off South West Iberia every 1500–2000 years. Tsunami deposits indicate an earlier great earthquake struck SW Iberia around 200 BC, as noted by Roman records from Cadiz. A written record of even older events may also exist. According to Plato's dialogues The Critias and The Timaeus, Atlantis was destroyed by ‘strong earthquakes and floods … in a single day and night’ at a date given as 11,600 BP. A 1 m thick turbidite deposit, containing coarse grained sediments from underwater avalanches, has been dated at 12,000 BP and may correspond to the destructive earthquake and tsunami described by Plato. The effects on a paleo-island (Spartel) in the straits of Gibraltar would have been devastating, if inhabited, and may have formed the basis for the Atlantis legend.

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, various European Masonic obediences set up lodges throughout the Ottoman empire, many in Istanbul, while another important centre was Smyrna. Freemasons were also active in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus and Macedonia. Lodges were established in the main political, economic and cultural centres of the Empire. There was a strong parallelism between the Ottoman Masonic geography and that of European colonial expansion. It is easy to delineate the social and ethnic structure of lodges, but we know less about what was going on behind the walls of Masonic temples. For sure, Ottoman Freemasons, like their brethren in other parts of the world, when not busy with ‘table works’ or ceremonies, dedicated themselves to philanthropic activities. A considerable part of the annual income of the lodges was used to finance various charitable works (assistance to orphans, to brethren in distress …) and to fund educational institutions. The lodges were also places for the discussion and exchange of ideas about current themes: socialism, feminism, venereal diseases, progress of science, etc. Some mingled with politics, displaying a highly nationalistic discourse. The politicization of Ottoman/Turkish freemasonry climaxed during the years of the Young Turk revolution (1908–1914), when an autochthonous obedience was created. One of the goals of the new organization, coldly received by most European freemasonries, was to rid the Ottoman Empire of foreign penetration. After the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, this national freemasonry continued to flourish, except for 13 years between 1935 and 1948 when Masonic activity was banned.