Despina Stratigakos

University at Buffalo architectural historian Despina Stratigakos has been invited to advance her research on the wide-ranging architectural influences of Germany’s Third Reich as a 2016-17 member of the Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey.

A bastion for academic freedom, the institute is one of the world’s leading centers for “curiosity-driven” research.
Stratigakos, associate professor and interim chair of architecture at UB, will focus her research on the massive construction schemes undertaken in Norway following Germany’s invasion in 1940 and what they reveal about the National Socialist vision of colonial territories in the postwar world Adolf Hitler imagined.

“Norway provides us with a unique view of what much of the world might have looked like had the Nazi regime succeeded in its global colonization plans: Cities designed to enforce in their very structures Nazi ideology, vast transportation systems meant to move resources to the metropole and special cities reserved for German occupiers, who would have ruled from their protected enclaves,” Stratigakos said.

“While it sounds like science fiction, this disturbing plan was partially realized in Norway, and remains a ghost presence in the Norwegian landscape.”

Founded in 1930 by education reformer Abraham Flexner, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton has served as a model for protecting and promoting independent inquiry.

The institute’s community of scholars has grown to more than 7,000 historians, mathematicians, natural scientists and social scientists. Among its faculty and members are 33 Nobel Laureates, including Albert Einstein.

As a historian and writer interested in the intersection of architecture and power, Stratigakos has produced award-winning scholarship related to Germany, modernism and 20th-century architecture. In 2008, she released “A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City.”

Stratigakos’ critically acclaimed “Hitler at Home” (Yale University Press, 2015) reveals how Hitler’s domestic spaces became part of the National Socialist cultural imagination and the basis of a propaganda campaign that shaped a softer image of the Führer in Germany and abroad.

Stratigakos has also published widely on issues of diversity in architecture.

Her just-published book, “Where Are the Women Architects?” (Princeton University Press, 2016), uses the architectural profession as a lens into issues affecting women across male-dominated occupations, arguing that the emergence of a third wave of feminism in architecture provides opportunity for concrete change.
(buffalo.edu)

Researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway have examined the associations between workaholism and psychiatric disorders among 16,426 working adults.

“Workaholics scored higher on all the psychiatric symptoms than non-workaholics,” says researcher and Clinical Psychologist Specialist Cecilie Schou Andreassen, at the Department of Psychosocial Science, at the University of Bergen (UiB), and visiting scholar at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

Workaholics score higher on all clinical states

The study showed that workaholics scored higher on all the psychiatric symptoms than non-workaholics. Among workaholics, the main findings were that:

32.7 per cent met ADHD criteria (12.7 per cent among non-workaholics).
25.6 per cent OCD criteria (8.7 per cent among non-workaholics).
33.8 per cent met anxiety criteria (11.9 per cent among non-workaholics).
8.9 per cent met depression criteria (2.6 per cent among non-workaholics).
“Thus, taking work to the extreme may be a sign of deeper psychological or emotional issues. Whether this reflects overlapping genetic vulnerabilities, disorders leading to workaholism or, conversely, workaholism causing such disorders, remain uncertain,” says Schou Andreassen.

The pioneering study, published in the open-access journal PLOS One, is co-authored by researchers from Nottingham Trent University and Yale University.

Affects identification of disorders

According to Schou Andreassen, the findings clearly highlight the importance of further investigating neurobiological deviations related to workaholic behaviour.

“In wait for more research, physicians should not take for granted that a seemingly successful workaholic does not have ADHD-related or other clinical features. Their considerations affect both the identification and treatment of these disorders,” says Schou Andreassen.

Seven diagnostic criteria for workaholism

The researchers used seven valid criteria when drawing the line between addictive and non-addictive behaviour.

Experiences occurring over the past year are rated from 1 (never) to 5 (always):

You think of how you can free up more time to work.
You spend much more time working than initially intended.
You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness or depression.
You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.
You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.
You deprioritize hobbies, leisure activities, and/or exercise because of your work.
You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.
Scoring 4 (often) or 5 (always) on four or more criteria identify a workaholic.

Accordingly, the Bergen Work Addiction Scale operationalizes workaholism by the same symptoms as traditional addictions: salience, mood modification, conflict, tolerance, withdrawal, relapse and problems.

In line with previous research, 7.8 per cent of the current sample classified as workaholics, which is close to an estimate (8.3 per cent) found in a (and, to date, only) nationally representative study conducted by Dr. Andreassen and colleagues in 2014.

Source:
The University of Bergen

Plans are underway for the US and its military as well as Norway to seek to have access to the PRS signal from the Galileo constellation.

Now that the latest two satellites, Danielé and Alizée have been launched to join the Galileo satellite constellation family, word has it that the US and US military and Norway have asked to have access to its secure PRS signal.

The European Commission will probably give their permission to open negotiations on the use by these two nations of the secure PRS signal on June 7. Once that has occurred, the commission will open its own negotiations with US and Norwegian authorities to discuss terms of access to PRS.

At a Galileo meeting this month, those in attendance shared that Galileo’s owners were uncomfortable that the largest user of the PRS signal would be the European national military forces. Yet, thus far the Galileo’s Commercial Service is planned in the future and will not be a part of the services that are to be offered this year, and furthermore, the technical services have yet to be defined.

Work is underway on the software upgrades for the 30 satellites, while the launches of the remaining 12 satellites are planned with four satellites launched each time. The next upcoming launch is scheduled for November 17 and the remaining two launches fall onto the the 2017 and 2018 calendar. With 24 satellites, the Galileo Constellation is considered fully operational, but the European officials want to launch 30 satellites to provide sufficient in-orbit backup.

If you need help getting to sleep, this live video stream might do the trick. The Norwegian Consumer Council, a government-funded rights group, has organized an event to read aloud the terms and conditions governing the use of 33 of Norway’s most popular apps. All that legalese amounts to over 250,000 words. It will take about 30 hours.
The reading, held in English and Norwegian at the council’s office in Oslo, started at 9am CET, and it was in its third hour at the time of writing. Some 40 people form the relay team for the reading, including politicians, government officials, students, and digital rights experts. “Different reading tempos” might prolong the ordeal beyond the estimated 30 hours, says Finn Myrstad, who heads the council’s digital services section.

The absurdity of the event showcases the outsized burdens consumers bear when trying to understand their digital rights. Reams of opaque terms and conditions placed by app makers make it difficult for users to understand exactly what they’re agreeing to when they fire up an app. “When you actually sit down and read these terms, you realize how ridiculous they are,” says Myrstad.

Myrstad and his team of four have won consumer rights battles against global tech giants. The council lodged a complaint with the Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman in 2014 about Apple’s iCloud storage service, which it said didn’t notify users about changes to the terms of use. Several months later, Apple published a new set of terms that included language about notifying users if changes were made to the terms. It has also lodged complaints against Tinder and Runkeeper around how those apps deal with customer data, prompting quick responses from management.

What does the consumer council have planned when the reading draws to an end? “Just thank you and good night,” Myrstad says, before adding: “We’re not looking forward to the iTunes terms. It’s about 50 pages, so it will take quite a few hours.”

(qZ)