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.

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.

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.

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.

The aim of the paper is to present the current trends in the migration flows of Central and Eastern-European (CEE) countries in the light of socio-economic transition and core-periphery relations. To view migration as a broader process of social and economic development, post-accession mobility information will be analysed within a multi-scalar approach, across time and space, considering first the migration pattern from the CEE countries towards other EU regions in general, and then with a special emphasis on Romania in the light of the 2007 EU enlargement process. The spatial variation of migration was investigated using Moran’s I and Gi* statistics, which is a useful tool for identification of spatial patterns. Alongside the analysis of migration processes between receiving and sending areas (core and periphery regions) the author will discuss how the position of the core and periphery could change, with economic development taking place in a number of periodic waves. Based on the transnationalism paradigm, the author will also highlight the impact of migrants’ changed mobility practices and behaviour on the locality of origin.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

‘Eurafrica’, the continental-scale fusion of Europe and Africa into one political entity, was first developed as a political concept in the 1920s by the Pan-European Union, and named as such in a 1929 article by its founder and leader Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. Within five years, this neologism had become a commonplace, as Eurafrica exploded across public political discourse. This paper unpacks what Eurafrica entailed in its original expression, what made it a useful concept for the Pan-European Union to employ, and what made it so appealing to a wider (European) public. It does so with particular reference to the way in which Eurafrica was presented as a means of opening up colonialism to those European states that lacked their own colonies. Partly, this meant appealing to German colonialists resentful at the stripping of Germany’s colonies at Versailles. Crucially, however, it also meant appealing to the broader ‘historical injustices’ that meant that Central European countries did not have access to colonies, and promising a future in which these intra-European ‘injustices’ could be transcended and Central Europeans could thus become equal partners in Europe’s mission civilisatrice in Africa.

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.

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.

The immigration pattern in Germany has changed from emigration to immigration. The state has yet to recognize this fact and to come to terms with the social requirements that this entails. Public attitudes emphasize the difficulties that emigrants bring but are insufficiently attuned to the positive economic and cultural aspects of emigration.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has finally reached most people on our planet thanks to generative AI tools for text and other media. This has started a controversy about the possible benefits and risks, where responsible AI is key. Hence, we introduce the concept of responsible AI, its relation to AI ethics, and why the terms ethical or trustworthy AI should not be used. We then cover the three main relevant aspects of this new field: principles governance and regulation.