We report our experience, begun in 1998 on a small island in the Dodecanese area of Greece, which has been called TIMTEM. The aim of this project was to improve care for people living on islands, creating a model exportable to other rural areas. The operative setting of the TIMTEM project is the island of Tilos (Greece); local authorities take part in it under the guidance of the only physician available on the island. The University of Pisa-Italy (Department of Surgery, Post-graduate School of Emergency Surgery) manages the scientific and organizational part of the project. Tilos is a rocky Mediterranean island with a surface of 64 km(2) and a population of about 500 inhabitants (with a peak of 2,000 tourists in July and August). A physician and a nurse are responsible for the only medical care on the island, and they also dispense drugs. The project was implemented on three phases. During the first phase, a campaign was held to encourage the population to cooperate with clinical data collection; a temporary telemedicine station was established, and a complete screening of the population was performed. The second phase was focused on the application of telesonography. During the third phase, a telematic and/or direct participation for reference hospital physicians (Regional Medical Society-Dodecanese) and for Greek physicians was planned. As well, a fully equipped central telemedicine station in the reference hospital was established under the local jurisdiction. The results of the third phase are still incomplete; the data presented here are preliminary. But all indicators show that the project is exportable to remote areas elsewhere.

The aim of this study is to examine, by analysing marital origin-related homogamy and mobility, the fluidity of a system of social stratification marked by a heterogeneous working class and likely to lead to increasing social-group solidarity during the phase of a more active labour movement in the early twentieth century. Data from Winterthur, a Swiss town characterized by the expansion of an important engineering industry, reveal that occupational homogamy was most pronounced at the top, among higher managers and professionals, and at the bottom of the social hierarchy, among unskilled factory workers. There is no empirical evidence of increased homogamous behaviour after the nationwide general strike of 1918, which is said to have had a long-term impact on workers' class-consciousness. Our analyses show, however, that the association between the social background of spouses depended on their geographical origin. This result may point to a regionally determined class-consciousness.

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