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In this chapter an overview of the research planning and priorities of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) over the next decade is provided. The research, modeling and prediction plans are significantly shaped by the major sponsors of the WCRP, as well as by its international network of scientists and stakeholders. However, major input into the planning process was also derived from sessions and discussions among the more than 1,900 scientists who attended the WCRP Open Science Conference (OSC) in October 2011. This monograph is comprised of position papers emanating from the OSC. They address many of the overall research and intellectual challenges across the WCRP spectrum of activities. A brief overview of these papers is given.

At its first conference in Bremen in 2006, the International Network on Innovative Apprenticeship (INAP) summarized the results of the presentations and discussions in the thesis that the tradition of apprenticeship is currently being rediscovered throughout the world. This hypothesis, at that time tentative, was developed with increased confidence in the proceedings of the second conference in February 2008 in Vienna. Researchers from 13 countries participated in the latter conference and delivered almost 30 contributions, all of which confirmed the assumption that the new interest in dual vocational education and training is stimulating more and more national and international research and development projects as well as policy initiatives towards the re-establishment of dual vocational education. For example, a recent reform initiative of the House of Lords in the UK is a further step in a series of attempts to revive the flagging apprenticeship tradition in the UK. The ‘Apprenticeship Programme in the Mediterranean Region’ coordinated by the European Training Foundation is a remarkable sign of the attractiveness that dual vocational education has for VET policy in a growing range of countries.

The Frontis Workshop on the New Dimensions of the European Landscape was held on 10-12 June 2002. Wageningen University and Research Centre organized this workshop aiming to develop visions on the landscape in Europe, its development and design in the future and to strengthen the international network in landscape planning

This chapter examines advanced producer services and the processes of globalization in Tel-Aviv. More precisely, it focuses on the impact of two major sub-sectors of advanced producer services — advertising and accountancy — on the global processes and changes at play in the emerging node metropolis of Tel-Aviv. ‘Globalization’ is a general term used to refer to the social, political, environmental and, perhaps most significantly, economic phenomena that picked up speed around the globe at the end of the twentieth century. It denotes a situation in which decisions and activities taking place in one part of the world have rapid effect elsewhere by virtue of the diminishing influence of distance and borders..

The study of the naming and classifying of natural dyestuffs and their place in manufactures, factories and laboratories would be incomplete without a thorough appraisal of the achievements of the dramatis personae engaged in the development of the technological system as a whole.2 In fact, the broad cultural context shared by academic chemists, expert dyers, mechanics, printers, calico-printing entrepreneurs, industrial workers, compilateurs of recipes, drysalters, industrial chemists, colourists, and designers, constituted a tightly-knit network of personal contacts, travels, texts, patents, local gatherings, espionage,3 and family connections, in which skills, machines, instruments, theories and recipes circulated widely. The international arena in which the numerous dyeing practices were tried and tested became a sort of “Republic of chemist-dyers”, which can provide a useful historiographic approach to the processes of transfer of knowledge.4 Analogies with the savants of the eighteenth-century Republique des Lettres are inevitable, especially since the priority of the relationships between individuals over national or confessional allegiances was emphatically upheld in both cases.5 The concept of “chemist-dyers” aims here to integrate chemical, mechanical and artistic skills that were shared in different degrees by experts within the international network.

Altogether 50 Balkan specialists on water gathered in Thessaloniki on October 1.1, 1999 at a hotel high above the hilly port city on the Aegean, to discuss transboundary water problems, and to agree on solutions. They came with expectations; all of them recognised a clear need to restore resources damaged by war and by neglect. This was the first time all ten Balkan countries, including the present Yugoslavian Federation and the four former republics, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania, had gathered for such a purpose. The agenda was full of high priority items from coping with war and environmental damage on the river Sava to protecting the coastal waters of the Aegean from untreated waste. The last agenda item, to find a way to work together for the long-term, was preceded by intense discussion. Tension was relieved, in the traditional Balkan way of scientists and technicians, by humour.

The WE-NET (World Energy Network) Program is a project that has been conducted by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) since FY1993 as part of the Japanese government’s New Sunshine Program. The WE-NET Program aims to secure new energy sources and maintain the global environment in good condition by building an international network for hydrogen energy. Over the past four years, steady progress has been made and superb results obtained in R&D activities of each subtask on hydrogen production, transportation, storage and utilization systems.

Ifgene is an international network of people from various disciplines who have questions relating to gene technology and are engaged in the process of forming judgements about it from as broad a perspective as possible. The Ifgene conference The future of DNA was a crystallisation point in this process.

Drawing upon national experiences regarding environmental meta-information and a WHO consultation on a European Metadatabase on Environmental and Health Information Sources (Munich, 8–10 May 1989), the role and elements of a meta-information system in relation to an envisaged European health and environment geographical information system are described. Three essential elements are identified: (i) absolute restriction to meta-information, that is: referral service only; (ii) a human interface; computers are not essential; (iii) a good thesaurus. In addition, the potential for completing national meta-information systems through the forming of an international network is briefly discussed.

This passage from Gena Corea’s book, The Mother Machine typifies the reaction of one important strand of feminist thought to the new technologies of reproduction and birth. It is fairly representative, for example, of the grave suspicion with which feminists associated with FINRRAGE (Feminists International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering) have greeted such possibilities as in vitro fertilization, embryo flushing and transfer, and gene therapy. According to this general line of thinking, the new reproductive technologies should be resisted because they concentrate power in the hands of a predominantly male and patriarchal medical establishment by disembodying procreation. By separating procreation from women’s bodies, reproductive technology simultaneously reduces women to bodies, or body parts, and strips women of one traditional source of power, namely, the power to procreate. Hence Corea’s warning. Previously men were denied direct control over the process of procreation; they might give birth symbolically or intervene medically in this process, but these were only simulacra of control. The existence of in vitro fertilization, however, and the distinct possibility of in vitro gestation turn resemblance into reality. Laboratory conception and gestation are a threat to women.

The International Rice Blast Nursery (IRBN) is one among the biotic stress nurseries organized by the International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER), which is being coordinated by the International Rice Research Institute. Selected cultivars and breeding lines originating from several national agricultural research systems and from the international agricultural research centres are evaluated through this nursery. IRBN tests are conducted under a wide range of environmental conditions and against diverse blast pathogen populations.

Membership of a European or international network allows the smaller firm to offer its clients a broader range of services than before without losing the firm’s personal style and independence.

Governments both in developed and developing countries are exploring means to support comprehensive plant genetic resource programs interactive with the international network coordinating global distribution and conservation of germplasm. National plant genetic resource programs can serve as an effective interface between the conservation of a country’s biological resources and their availability for use in crop improvement. Recent developments in the global exchange of germplasm, molecular characterization of genetic diversity, and conservation biology, and the increasing size of many collections have focused renewed attention on national germplasm capabilities.

Tropical hardwood trade is relatively important in the Netherlands, as compared with other countries (cf. Chapters II-10 and II-12). Moreover, its geographical position at the crossroads of many trade routes makes for an extensive and highly diversified network of hardwood trading. Hence it is interesting to compare the organizational frame in this country with those in the exporting countries (cf. Chapters I-8 and II-14-1), and with the international network in Europe (Section V). The contrasting positions concerning research, as formulated respectively by Van Overbeek (§ 2 of this chapter) and by representatives of tropical hardwood producing countries (e.g. Chapters I-7 and II-14-2,3) are to be noted. (Book editor’s note).

The International Network of Legume Inoculation Trials (INLIT) is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), with the organization, promotion and coordination of the Network assigned to NifTAL. The program was initiated in 1980. The first year, of necessity, was devoted mostly to identifying potential cooperators for the Network, so 1981 was the first year with substantial planting of INLIT experiments. In 1982, results from cooperators started arriving at NifTAL in sufficient quantity for composite analysis.

Preceding the emergence of industrial capitalism, the international economic order was based on mercantile capitalism. In this economic order there already existed an international financial network which found its summit in the internationally organized European merchant banks such as the Rothschild House, with its major branches in Paris, London and Vienna.