Half a century after its end, the Second World War is still an object of enormous public interest. This essay tries to indicate in which respects the present style of commemorating it differs from the ways that former generations shaped the memories they wished to preserve of the historical events that were then thought relevant.

The tenth century was when the spread of Christianity through Europe commenced the transformation of various state and tribal formations into the form that persisted and that we can recognize today. The political and economic development of Islam created a demand for people from which the new states also derived material resources. Trade and plunder led by the Vikings stimulated the formation of states and strengthened them, this was aided further by the existence of a stable network of roads.

This article discusses the problems inherent in writing a short historical survey of South Africa. Such surveys are periodically necessary in order to provide a perspective for monographic studies. This one is organized around the argument that South Africa, for all its internal divisions, has become a single country, and traces the processes of colonial conquest, economic integration and the ideological importance of mission Christianity through which this has come about. Furthermore, the recent changes in the South African governmental system provide a narrative conclusion that was not there in the past and which soon will be no more.

People identify with other people on many different grounds: family, locality, religion, professional interests, even hobbies. But the group identity that has had particular influence over the past century or so has been the nation – and this has drawn especially on the identity of language. With the development of global commerce and the establishment of regional blocs like Asean, Nafta, and of course the EU, languages least associated with nationality may well be seen as best fitted to provide the requisite linkage.

Linguistic obstacles to common European Union action are overcome by a system of official languages (currently 11) for translation of official texts and interpretation at meetings. In practice, flexibility in language use is frequently required. Here, political tensions arise because of the onward march of English as a language of European Union dialogue; some Member States feel the status of their language is being threatened. In this context, education, culture and other programmes having language provisions can have a compensatory role: their multilingual approach reinforces the cohesion of the Union. Their significance will be even greater if enlargement brings 11 further languages into the Union.

The analysis of the moral questions involved in the exercise of power by Machiavelli never seems to lose its topicality. It remains as immediate and penetrating as when it was first conceived.

Science as part of an open society cannot flourish if science becomes the exclusive possession of a closed set of specialists. The problem of scientific rhetoric, however, is that scientific knowledge cannot be everybody's knowledge in volume or in the concepts used and that therefore a loss of information content occurs when scientific knowledge is projected onto the screen of everyday knowledge: science then appears only as a silhouette. Even so silhouettes can convey an important message in relation to a special context under discussion. The particular silhouette selected then becomes a question of truthfulness in scientific rhetoric.

Scientific research, a common heritage that laid the foundations of the modern world, stands as a unifying principle of Europe and is, among other values, a binding bridge to all nations. Being an inalienable part of humanity, the striving after knowledge embodied in scientific research is a necessary precondition if mankind is to handle successfully the consequences of globalized economies, a still growing world population with increasing life expectancies and the need for sustainable development. The European Science Foundation, with its flexible structure for promoting European cooperation in research can play an active part in supporting national governments and the European Union in formulating research policies and educational standards and in intensifying exchange and cooperation with the non-European countries.

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.

The implosion of the Soviet empire undermined most theories concerning International Relations. Only a few political scientists have conceded afterwards the weakness of their theories, which were mostly ahistorical, based on the deformation of politics with history omitted. The question asked in this article is what kind of International Relations as a discipline may be more reliable and helpful in the future.

Created in 1974, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has achieved renown for outstanding research, training and methodology development. It has also provided crucial services to European molecular biology. Its headquarters are in Heidelberg and it is funded by 15 member states. The combination of the Visitors Programme, Outstations and International PhD Programme provides access to resources rarely available in national laboratories. EMBL was conceived as a magnet to hold quality scientists in Europe or to attract them back after an education elsewhere, and has been signally successful in this. Its open international style sets a standard for the way that research is done in molecular biology in Europe.