This paper is intended as an invitation to continue reflecting on and discussing the concepts of learning and teaching, including the concept of educational environment and the conditions for knowledge construction in that environment. The key concept is communication, which I link to different environments, including face-to-face (f2f) environments, net-mediated environments and various mixtures of these types of communication environments. Furthermore, I implicate learning resources in the concept of the educational environment. Thus, the main purpose of this paper is to contribute to developing our approach to the nexus between teaching and learning, including the concept of environment and the conditions for knowledge construction. I present a case study, which I analyse using a systems theoretical analytical framework, in order to discuss the relation between learning and the environment, including the idea of the possibility of knowledge transfer and knowledge dissemination. The specific focus is on learning resources in specific programs-on-demand (podcasts) and video-on-demand (vodcasts, from now just podcast) – and the students’ approaches to these learning resources and the environment offered. My point of departure is to contribute to scholarly discussion of learning resources and, in particular, of the use of podcasts and students’ approaches to these learning resources in concrete educational contexts. Finally, I suggest that we take the opportunity to reflect on the challenging task: how can we organize teaching and environments for learning, including the choice of learning resources, in order to provide each student with the possibility of developing the concrete educational qualifications that are required?

Starting from a critical review of Knowledge Management initiatives in managerial contexts, this contribution proposes an alternative approach to knowledge management as intertwined sociotechnical circulation. In most organizational settings, Knowledge Management has been driven by ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and has equated knowledge with information, and so faces massive failures and conflicting results. In order to overcome the influence of the managerial debate in Knowledge Management, an alternative approach is proposed. Drawing on the Mobility Paradigm, Science and Technology Studies, and Practice-based Studies, knowledge and its management are re-framed as a collective, situated, heterogeneous and contextual practice, performed through sociotechnical processes embedded in multiple infrastructures. A short agenda of outcomes and consequences of this alternative Knowledge Management is then outlined, in order to emphasize the continuity and dialectic relationship between theory and practice, conceptual and operational levels, in enabling knowledge transformation and circulation.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain, the European Union (EU) has included more and more new member states from Central and Eastern parts of the European continent. This enlargement process has increased the cultural diversity of the European community as new languages and minority groups have been subsumed into the EU. It is the purpose of this article to discuss the challenges that result from the EU's enlargement, together with the added intra-European mobility of cultures, that affect the national knowledge infrastructures. Based on recent social scientific scholarship on mobility and cultures, this article proposes that knowledge management in contemporary Europe is not only a technological or organisational issue but also a cultural question. Since people are free to move within the EU, it becomes of greater importance not only to increase our understanding of other cultures but also to ensure that member states can provide public services for EU citizens arriving from other cultural regimes. The paper shows that, because of the increased mobility of cultures, national knowledge infrastructures have to be opened and remodelled. New forms of collaboration between national knowledge systems are needed to guarantee the equal treatment of people representing different cultures in contemporary Europe.

Scientists work by collecting observable evidence of different phenomena, from which they analyse and construct theoretical explanations. Consequently, science involves systematic efforts to increase human knowledge, a phenomenon that is usually described as ‘cumulativity’. Most scientists would probably agree that (excellent) research should be cumulative, and by this they usually mean that scientists should accommodate and refer to the publications of other scholars. This article suggests that our perception of science would benefit from a broader and more nuanced approach to cumulativity. The article therefore provides a discussion on how contemporary scholars can approach cumulativity by adopting the fundamental ideology of the web 2.0 and web squared concepts. A proposition for an altered approach is posited through web squared cumulativity conceptualization, involving a more open and collaborative approach. The discussion provides a foretaste of contemporary initiatives that suggest the spread of this emerging trend.

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.

The media and political scientists create the impression that the world of Islam and the Occident are two totally different civilizations. The author shows, on the contrary, that life in the 14 centuries of the Christian Middle Ages and the Ancien Régime – Old Europe – was in many ways similar to that of the area's Muslim neighbours, and only moved into the modern world with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The author also examines the chances of an Arab spring heralding, after 14 centuries of Old Islam, the entry into the modern democratic world. He argues that the two civilizations are not fundamentally dissimilar, but that they move through comparable stages of development at different moments in time: a difference in chronology rather than in essence.

The November 2009 Romanian presidential elections illustrate the process through which media exposure to exit polls during the election day allows strategic voting in the least expected situations (i.e. in the first round of a two-ballot setting). Organized in a two-round system in which the first two competitors qualify for the second round, these elections display one unsolved dilemma. The difference registered in elections between the two challengers is twice as large as the average support in the pre-election polls (a comparable difference was never registered in post-communist Romania). Our quantitative analysis uses election results from the past two decades and aggregated poll data from 2009 and reveals that a large share of the Romanian electorate avoids wasting votes and casts them for candidates with real winning chances. This article argues that polls presented to the voters, by the media during the elections, made the difference. They were used as electoral strategies to trigger strategic voting and thus promote specific candidates.

This article examines Turkish politics and policies during the 1980s and 1990s in light of occurrences in Turkey and neighboring states, with particular attention to the impact of the 1980’s PKK revolt and the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990. In doing so, it outlines the political debates among the major political parties and the perspectives of the Turkish army generals on the important political issues of the period. These events, and those of the subsequent decade, have led to the emergence of a new status quo in Turkey that has had major political and economic repercussions.

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal secular institutions (SES), whereas less developed civilisations often rely on informal, often religious, institutions (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between different enforcement systems, and their implications for society development using an example of two different enforcement models: one informal (RES) and one formal (SES). We find that, because the RES is based on beliefs, its efficiency depends heavily on its credibility, making it hardly flexible and highly susceptible to conflicts in dynamic environments. In contrast, because under the SES societal rules are enforced through a formal legal enforcement sector, the SES is more flexible, although also more costly than the RES. The empirical evidence strongly supports our findings that wealthy, dynamic and fast growing economies typically choose the SES for enforcing societal norms and rules.

The paper deals with the definition of eligibility criteria for regions and states to draw resources within the Convergence objective and the Regional Competitiveness and Employment objective of the EU Cohesion Policy funds. It proposes which regions and countries should be regarded as poor ones and to what extent they should be eligible for financing. The paper proposes that support would only go to regions in Member States poorer than the EU average and, within these countries, support would only be available to NUTS 2 regions poorer than the EU average. In addition, the difference between the region's GDP per capita in PPS and the EU average would be reflected by setting a ceiling for maximum admissible allocation to eligible regions between 1 and 4% of the region's GDP in EUR. The paper also proposes to abolish the Cohesion Fund. Finally, eligible regions and countries are identified based on a numerical model, where support going to regions with lower-than-average GDPpc PPS belonging to countries with lower-than-average GNIpc PPS is also calculated.

Almost a generation has gone by since the end of the Cold War, a time that has brought many changes. It has become steadily clearer that not the affirmation of the centrality of the democratic West – as asserted by Francis Fukuyama in his famous essay – but the opposite has occurred. There has been continuous erosion of the power of the West. First, the economic and geopolitical balance has increasingly shifted to Southeast Asia, where quite a few states have authoritarian, even totalitarian, socioeconomic arrangements. China is, of course, the best-known example. Second, the demographic and cultural tides have changed. In the past, Europe sent waves of émigrés all over the world. Now the West has become the destination of millions from non-European countries. The pattern of cultural adaptation has also undergone dramatic changes. A considerable number of non-Europeans have no desire to assimilate, or at least they wish to preserve their heritage. All these processes – especially as they relate to the fact that the West is losing its economic competitiveness – cause a response that often leads to racism and neo-fascism. Those who study European neo-fascists almost instinctively compare them with pre-Second World War fascists and Nazis. This temptation is reinforced by the fact that these neo-fascists often use Nazi symbols and trappings. However, a close look at these European neo-fascists/neo-Nazis and their prewar counterparts indicates that their similarities are usually deceptive and they actually belong to quite different species. Present-day neo-fascists/neo-Nazis are not imperialists, as were the German Nazis who dreamed about a worldwide empire. Current European right-wingers are parochial isolationists. They want not an empire but the cleansing of their state from newcomers, especially those of non-European origin. Many are even suspicious of European unity; they see the European Union as the key that opens the gates of their countries, not just to Asians/Africans but to East Europeans, seen as almost an alien race. Second, their view of Jews is different from that of the Nazis. They may be anti-Semitic, but their dislike of Jews is hardly the central element of their worldview. Moreover, they are similar to many of the general public who differentiate between ‘their’ native Jews – against whom they have no grudges – and newcomers from, say, Eastern Europe, whom they consider parasitic aliens. Furthermore, they have problems with the church. Some may be neo-pagans; in this they are also quite different from the Nazis, who had a tense relationship with the church but did not openly oppose it. Russian rightists in many ways follow the model of the European far right. This is due not only to direct ideological borrowing but also to similar conditions. Russia's heartland, for example, is also a major destination for non-European migrants. Still, the Russian far right's views unquestionably have elements arising from the country's specific conditions. As a result, they have developed several peculiar ideological characteristics. They are often pagan and quite hostile to the Orthodox Church. They also see Jews as part of an unholy cabal of Asiatics set on Russia's destruction.

This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy – the discovery some 15 years ago of the first planets around other stars (referred to as exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own solar system, with its planets, planetary satellites, asteroids, and comets. The surprising diversity of exoplanets, of which more than 500 have already been discovered, has required new models to explain their formation and evolution. In turn, these models explain, rather naturally, a number of important features of our own solar system, amongst them the masses and orbits of the ‘terrestrial’ and ‘gas giant’ planets, the presence and distribution of asteroids and comets, the origin and impact cratering of the Moon, and the existence of water on Earth.