REXUS 2 - The first Eurolaunch Project

Sounding rocket and balloon launches have been conducted since more than 30 years at Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), ESRANGE. MORABA, the Mobile Rocket Base of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), has planned and performed sounding rocket and balloon launches throughout the world since the late sixties. With the creation of EuroLaunch, the long-lasting co-operation of the two complementary technical centres ESRANGE and MORABA is being enhanced and intensified. The REXUS 2 student rocket was the first project to be designed, built and launched under the EuroLaunch cooperation. A driving force in research by means of sounding rockets, has been the German Aerospace Center, which through its Mobile Rocket Base team, has conducted launches and operations all over the world. The Swedish Space Corporation and the German Aerospace Center have now entered into a deeper relationship by establishing a joint co-operation called EuroLaunch. On December 8th, 2003, a co-operation agreement was signed at ESRANGE. The agreement will strengthen the long-lasting and ongoing relationship between SSC and DLR within the area of sub-orbital services for upper atmosphere and microgravity research as well as future fields of research interest. EuroLaunch is currently involved in several projects which aim at strengthening the co-operation and also providing new possibilities to the scientific communities. The first EuroLaunch project was the REXUS 2 student rocket, which was successfully launched on October 28th, 2004 at ESRANGE. Within the REXUS 2 project the flexible work sharing of EuroLaunch has been put to its first test, as personnel from the two organisations have supported each other during heavy workload periods

Student Education During The REXUS/BEXUS Projects

The new DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen has established a project office to support and manage German student activities related to the preparation of the BEXUS and REXUS (Balloon/Rocket Experiments for University Students) flights. This paper primarily describes the student mentoring and the educational activities undertaken by DLR and SSC with the aim of encouraging and promoting student knowledge throughout the first year of the REXUS/BEXUS student programme

Mapping the global structure of Antarctic research vis-à-vis Antarctic Treaty System

boration links and widths indicate size of the frequency. Bonacich power centrality3 is used to indicate the posi- tion of the countries in the network. ANTARCTICA is a continent of science and peace, a common heritage of mankind. This fifth largest continent is gov- erned by a set of guiding principles, the Antarctica Treaty System (ATS)1. The ATS is the basic instrument for managing the activities in this icy continent. Conducting science is occupying a central place in ATS. Currently, there are 45 treaty member nations: 28 consultative (voting) and 17 acceding states. This icy, coldest and windiest continent is covered with a sheet of ice with more than 2 km average thickness (4.7 km at its thickest point). Locked up in thick ice sheet is a record of past climate for the last 500,000 years. Antarctica provides an ideal setting for conducting frontier science (Figure 1). It has a scanty flora, but a rich fauna, including many species of fish, birds and mammals. It has no permanent human population. Today, there are 37 year-round research stations, run by 20 nations, op- erating in the continent. Belgium, The Netherlands, Ecua- dor, etc. (Consultavive Parties) do not have any permanent bases, but instead use the infrastructure of other nations in collaborative efforts. In this paper we have attempted to visualize the structure of science that is being pursued by the countries in the framework of the AT

Bibliometric Study of Academic Interaction: IT, Organization, and Change

This paper explores the degree and nature of the research interaction between the academic fields of Information Technology, Organization, and Organizational Change. This is done so as to see if, and how, the highly digitized modern business world is reflected in related research. The paper analyses 9.669 articles published in 1995-2006 that are derived from major journals within each field. Then the articles are reviewed through the use of the bibliometric methods: frequency, cross-reference, cocitation, shared references, and network analyses. The findings detect a dearth of consistent research interaction between the fields of Information Technology, Organization, and Organizational Change. This fact is critiqued on the basis of previous practical and academic calls for interactional research. The paper provides important insights about the degree and nature of the research interaction and, in addition, recommendations and guidelines for future cross-fertilization between the academic fields are provided

Gender quotas and the crisis of the mediocre man

Quotas aren't anathema to meritocracy: they increase competence levels by displacing mediocre men, write Tim Besley, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson and Johanna Rickn

Gender quotas and the crisis of the mediocre man: theory and evidence from Sweden

We develop a model where party leaders choose the competence of politicians on the ballot to trade off electoral success against their own survival. The predicted correlation between the competence of party leaders and followers is strongly supported in Swedish data. We use a novel approach, based on register data for the earnings of the whole population, to measure the competence of all politicians in seven parties, 290 municipalities, and ten elections (1982-2014). We ask how competence was affected by a "zipper" quota, requiring local parties to alternate males and females on the ballot, implemented by the Social Democratic party in 1993. Far from being at odds with meritocracy, this quota raised the competence of male politicians where it raised female representation the most. We argue that resignations of mediocre male leaders was a key driver of this effect

Who becomes a politician?

Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life. Moreover, if elites have more human capital, selecting on competence may lead to uneven representation. This article examines patterns of political selection among the universe of municipal politicians and national legislators in Sweden, using extraordinarily rich data on competence traits and social background for the entire population. We document four new facts that together characterize an "inclusive meritocracy." First, politicians are on average significantly smarter and better leaders than the population they represent. Second, this positive selection is present even when conditioning on family (and hence social) background, suggesting that individual competence is key for selection. Third, the representation of social background, whether measured by parental earnings or occupational social class, is remarkably even. Fourth, there is at best a weak trade-off in selection between competence and social representation, mainly due to strong positive selection of politicians of low (parental) socioeconomic status. A broad implication of these facts is that it is possible for democracy to generate competent and socially representative leadership