In the wake of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union the legitimacy of European institutions and their law-making powers are questioned in all Member States. These questions are related to the understanding of sovereignty as the final arbiter of right and wrong in the democratic nation state. The role of law in this context is analysed by relying on European thinkers of the enlightenment who have shaped our understanding of law and legal systems to this day: Jeremy Bentham, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. An analysis of the case law of the European Court of Justice reveals the constitutionalization of European law. The chain that bound sovereignty and law together was broken when the Court ruled that the Treaty confers upon citizens the right to enforce specific Treaty obligations of Member States in their domestic Courts of law. The task for the Community is to develop standards of Community law that limit the Community's jurisdiction just as it limits the power of Member States.

A long history of analysis has taken apart organisms into molecular structures. However, the understanding of how biological forms are put together in development and evolution has eluded biologists until very recently. Comparative molecular data on genes in different phyla is uncovering an extraordinary conservation since Precambrian times of gene structures associated with functions. The implications of these findings and our increasing knowledge of how genes control development in a few model organisms, invites a consideration of possible approaches to tackle the problem of how organismic forms are constructed and evolve.

The history of research on nerve conduction and muscle contraction shows many interesting parallels not only in the development of ideas about the underlying mechanisms but also in over-emphasis on certain ‘principles’ and in the loss of valid discoveries made at the turn of the century.

Relations between universities and industry have become very important. Universities have a clear mandate for providing good basic education, but this is not always appreciated by industry, which is looking for technological training.

Two men, as different in personality as it is possible to be, Paul Rosbaud and Robert Maxwell, each played a part in forming Pergamon Press, one of today's leading scientific publishers. This article outlines the tale.

This article argues that, just as science and technology policies played a key role in the early 1980s in dispelling Euro-pessimism and establishing a new momentum towards European integration, so, in the early 1990s, science and technology policies offer a viable way to confront Europe's present crisis of confidence. The agenda has shifted. Today the issues of unemployment, the environment and how best to assimilate the countries of Eastern and Central Europe jostle for priority alongside the older issues of competitiveness and globalization. In spite of the pessimism, none of these challenges is insuperable. On the contrary, it is argued, a co-ordinated supply-side response which gives priority, East and West, to encouraging investment in new equipment, new skills and energy-saving clean technologies, provides a route both out of recession and to increased competitiveness in the global market place.

In this paper, the role of co-operative agreements in R&D, as a strategic option for firms confronted with the globalization of markets and the multiplication of sources of new technology is examined within the European context. It is argued that a plausible case can be made for co-operative R&D ventures, especially where positive and large technological spillovers exist, when the fixed component of technology-development cost is high and the hedging of risk is an important incentive, and when participating firms produce complementary products. The empirical evidence of a significant multiplication of R&D partnerships in Europe illustrates, from this perspective, the strategic option that firms were confronted with as competition ‘Europeanized’ and ‘globalized’ and technology changed rapidly and unpredictably. Co-operative agreements in R&D also create problems. One such problem is that the agreements could be a vehicle for reducing competition in the downstream product market and for creating barriers to entry. From that point of view, existing EC regulations seems well adapted, but this leaves open the question of conflicts between differing competition policies at the world level. The growing web of international coalitions makes it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to implement a European technology policy whose results are not accessible to companies and countries competing with Europe.

The main difference between unemployment in the US and Europe is due to the way productivity is incorporated into real wages and the extent to which output and employment are demand determined.

Scientific literacy should not be taken to mean the knowledge of a lot of science, but rather the understanding of how science really works.