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This paper shows how the term 'scientist' carries complex and contradictory cultural meanings for the staff scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA). The primary responsibilities of ESA scientists focus on the coordination of cooperative space science missions rather than scientific research. Consequently, questions of social membership and belonging are part of the daily work of the staff scientists. The analysis, based on 12 months of ethnographic field research, reveals that staff scientists experience a kind of crisis which focuses directly on their social identities as scientists, fitting neither into the 'pure researcher' or the 'pragmatic technologist' categories. The author argues instead that ESA scientists can best be understood as ambassadors of science, and that the ambiguity about their social identity as 'scientist' is in fact an integral and necessary part of the process of social cooperation.

The Gypsy population of Western Europe and North America display an immense range of ethnic variation. To list all sub-groups present in any meaningful way would be impossible in a brief paper; they reflect all the variety of Europe's Gajo population. One broad historical distinction must be drawn, however. The population result from two great East-West migrations, one of which reached Western Europe between about 1420 and 1550, which spread gradually to North America with the European colonists, and one which took place between about 1840 and 1940, reaching Western Europe and North America more or less simultaneously. The First migration established the national population of Gypsies, such as the English Gypsies, the Spanish Cale, the French Manouche, traveling largely within national boundaries, mixing culturally, linguistically and genetically with the local population, and losing contact with the larger Romani communities in Eastern Europe. These groups spread to the Americas, sometimes as colonists, sometimes simply as refugees from the great Gypsy persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which ended the first period of large-scale inter-country migration in Western Europe. The United States court records occasionally mention Gypsies from the end of the seventeenth century.

In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to maintain that the European party systems are stable and that they reflect the societal cleavage structures of the past. One developmental aspect of the party systems is singled out for description and analysis in this paper. It is argued that European party systems in terms of electoral volatility, i.e., rates of net change in the electorates, are drifting away from each other. Some of the party systems which have traditionally been considered volatile, apparently are becoming less so, while some other systems are taking on the character of highly volatile party systems. A simple set of hypotheses, based upon the notion of party space, is proposed in order to account for the variation observed. The data lend support to the hypothesis that electoral volatility is a function of the format of the party system and of short-term changes in that format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article claims that a predator-prey model of cyclical growth is a useful concept for studying the dynamic relationship between wage and salary shares of GDP and employment. The rate of growth of employment is considered as an indicator of union bargaining strength: the change of the wage share is treated as a reflection of an ongoing distributional conflict between profits and wages. The paper discusses some of the analytic properties of the formal model. It continues with an attempt to fit the model to West German data for the period from 1960 to 1985. Given the formal rigidity of the model, this strategy is only partially successful. As a consequence, a more complex model is introduced which also relies heavily on the idea of a predator-prey cycle. As a fully-fledged political-economic model of the OECD type of systems, it allows us to study, among other issues, the implications of different union policies under the constraint of a serious unemployment problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the powers, or more correctly the lack of powers, of the European Parliament. Attention is focused on the legislative powers of the Parliament; its financial powers following the revision of Article 203 of the Treaty of Rome; and its control, or oversight, powers. Comparisons are made between the powers of the European Parliament and those of the national parliaments of the European Community's nine Member States. The detailed examination of the powers of the European Parliament reveals that in no widely accepted comparative sense can it be considered a parliament as it fails to meet a series of basic political, constitutional, and decision-making requirements concerning the performance of legislative, financial, and control functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All political systems must have a means of deciding which issues to consider and which should be left alone. Further, governments must decide what particular conception of the policy they will consider, given that there are often several alternatives. The European Community is no different but has a number of characteristics that influence the manner in which agenda-setting occurs. The fundamental argument of this paper is that these characteristics permit the EC to consider a wider range of policies and policy alternatives than might an individual nation state. The principal factors discussed are the fragmentation of the policy-making system, the presence of a number of influential policy advocates, and the availability of a range of alternatives from member nations. This apparent ability to search for superior alternatives is in contrast to negative characterizations of the implementation in the EC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the new economic and social tendencies of the European civilization. Individual freedom and political rights and national sovereignty and independence have been governing the ideals of the modern world. While they have been conquering public opinion and being given conscious political sanctions, a new set of social and economic conditions have been coming into existence. The age of nationalism has been marked by the growing internationalization of social and economic life. At the time of the French Revolution, each European people was distinct in its culture, its customs, its ways of thought, event its costumes. The victory of political liberalism and the acquisition of individual liberties appear to have been accompanied by an increasing loss of individual independence and initiative in the ordinary business of life. This also is the result of economic causes. It has come about that the center of social gravity has shifted from the political to the economic field. People still preserve the old political forms, but it is the economic issues that control their lives. The true feature of the new society, according to professional historian M. Lucien Romier, is not the class struggle but the growth of great economic interests which transcend the boundaries of nation and class.

The article presents information on various research papers from Europe published in an earlier issue of the journal "International Migration Review". "Family Planning Among Different Ethnic Groups," by R.E.D. Simpson. In this extract, from his much longer report "A Medico-Social Study of a Group Practice with a High Proportion of Immigrants," the author describes the increasing use made of family planning in his practice in Bristol, England. "France's Portuguese Workers," by Marie-Claire Viguer is based on Statistics from the Ministry of Social Affairs and the National Immigration Office and on results of investigations made at Toulouse at the Sociology of Labor Center by French and Portuguese research workers.

Climate services have emerged as a research and operational field in recent years. This development has been underpinned and supported by significant research, funding and agenda‐setting efforts such as the Global Framework for Climate Services internationally and the Roadmap for Climate Services and the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe. The fast pace at which this field is developing raises a number of key challenges that need to be critically examined and addressed to ensure the future development and sustainability of climate services in Europe. This opinion piece highlights a number of challenges currently threatening the viability of climate services including the complexity of the concept of climate services; the complex landscape of complementary research and development areas relevant to climate services; existing rights to freely access and use climate services; current limitations to funding structures and mechanisms and how that impacts on the development of climate services; the emphasis on co‐production as a precondition to climate services development; and the limited role of the social sciences in the research and operational field of climate services. Effectively addressing these challenges will require a commitment from the scientific and practitioner communities to engage in critical and reflective debates around the future conceptualization and operationalization of climate services in Europe. This paper aims to provide critical input to stimulate a necessary and overdue debate around the sustainability and future of climate services in Europe. This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers hints for prospective authors of KYKLOS, one of the best ranked general economics journals in Continental Europe. The paper must address succinctly with a topical economic and/or social issue of interest to general readers. Analyses on a certain topic must bear originality and the paper must go beyond the narrow boundaries of prevailing economics. Theoretical propositions should be backed by econometric tests and historical or circumstantial evidence.

Resistance to antibiotics is a major public health problem and antibiotic use is being increasingly recognized as the main selective pressure driving this resistance. Yearly and quarterly data on outpatient antibiotic use were collected by the European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption (ESAC) project for the period 1997–2009 from 33 and 27 European countries, respectively, and expressed in defined daily doses per 1000 inhabitants per day. Since repeated measures were taken for the countries, correlation has to be taken into account when analysing the data. This paper illustrates the application of mixed-effects models to the study of country-specific outpatient antibiotic use in Europe. Mixed models are useful in a wide variety of disciplines in the biomedical, physical and social sciences. In this application for outpatient antibiotic use, the linear mixed model is extended to a non-linear mixed model, allowing analysis of seasonal variation on top of a global trend, with country-specific effects for global mean use and amplitude, and trends over time in use and in amplitude. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the editorial policy of KYKLOS, one of the best ranked general economics journals in Continental Europe. A refereed economics review, the journal provides significant advantages to the authors, apart from the high quality and wide publicity. In accepting manuscripts for publication, based on the referee reports, the editors decide whether the paper is, in principle, suitable for publication.

One of the more complex policy issues accompanying developments in genetic knowledge relates to how personal genetic information, such as the results of genetic tests, are to be used. To discuss these issues as they relate to insurance and employment and produce recommendations from the professional point of view, the Public and Professional Policy Committee (PPPC) of the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) organized a workshop in February, 2000 in Manchester, England, to which 47 experts from 14 European countries were invited. They received, prior to the meeting, a working paper developed by the PPPC, which was revised after the meeting to take into account the points of view expressed by the participants. Following the workshop, the ESHG issued statements and recommendations that are expected to reflect the views of the scientific community and that were endorsed by the ESHG membership.

This paper explores the limits and possibilities of research in the sociology of generation by taking the 'thirtysomething' cohort as a case study. The concept of 'generation' has been mobilised in a range of ways, but the primary divide here has been between generation as kinship, and generation as a socio-political force, sometimes called socio-historical generations. While familial generativity has long characterised human societies, and its constitutive power of state, economy and culture has been well documented, the development of modernity in Europe, grew urbanised, secularised and institutionalised modes of generational formations which were new and peculiar to modern society. While familial generativity has long characterised human societies, and its constitutive power of state, economy and culture has been well documented, the development of modernity in Europe, grew urbanised, secularised and institutionalised modes of generational formations which were new and peculiar to modern society. These generational flows were characterised by extra-familial relationships, and their organisation by, and of, the processes and systems of modernity: e.g. in its institutions, its highly commodified regime, and the emergence of specifically modern forms of the state.

The article presents news briefs on several social science publications as of December 1972. The 1972 edition of the book "Statistical Abstract of the United States," was issued by the U.S. Bureau of Census. This 93rd annual edition of the "Abstract" includes a more comprehensive section of statistics from the 1970 U.S. Census of Population and Housing than was possible in 1971. "Current Research" booklet published in English, is now available from the Centre for European Society. The American Academy of Political and Social Science will publish a special monograph of papers and proceedings presented at a two day conference on Integration of the Social Sciences Through Policy Analysis.