A culture of speed: anticipation, acceleration and individualization in academic science

Ruth Müller draws attention to the social and epistemic effects of a culture of speed in academia. Her research looks at how this wider culture has produced in particular two modes of being and relating for researchers: anticipatory acceleration and latent individualization. These modes could have significant effects on the type of research questions explored and on scientific networks of collaboration. To whose benefit is it that we are racing

Im Alter auf die Couch? : Psychosoziale Beratung und Psychotherapie im Alter ; [Rezension]

Rezension zu: Meinolf Peters : Psychosoziale Beratung und Psychotherapie im Alter. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-46259, 296 Seiten, 34,90 Euro

Stability of the Enhanced Area Law of the Entanglement Entropy

We consider a multi-dimensional continuum Schr\"odinger operator which is given by a perturbation of the negative Laplacian by a compactly supported potential. We establish both an upper and a lower bound on the bipartite entanglement entropy of the ground state of the corresponding quasi-free Fermi gas. The bounds prove that the scaling behaviour of the entanglement entropy remains a logarithmically enhanced area law as in the unperturbed case of the free Fermi gas. The central idea for the upper bound is to use a limiting absorption principle for such kinds of Schr\"odinger operators.Comment: Changes in v2: result extended from cubes to Lipschitz domains with piecewise smooth boundar

Der epigenetische Körper : Zwischen biosozialer Komplexität und Umweltdeterminismus

Die Umweltepigenetik erforscht, wie sich Umweltfaktoren auf die Expression des Genoms auswirken und damit auf Körper, Gesundheit und Krankheit. Dabei geht es um den Einfluss materieller Faktoren, wie etwa von Umweltgiften und Nahrungsmitteln, aber auch darum, wie soziale Erfahrungen die Genexpression verändern können. Die Umweltepigenetik konzipiert den Körper damit als ‚biosozial‘ und schafft Möglichkeitsräume, um die Auswirkungen unterschiedlicher Lebensumwelten auf die Biologie des Körpers zu untersuchen. Am Beispiel von Experimenten, die die epigenetischen Effekte ‚mütterlicher Fürsorge‘ erforschen, untersucht dieser Artikel die Potentiale, aber auch die Herausforderungen einer solchen epigenetischen Perspektive auf den Körper. Der Artikel zeigt, dass trotz eines Aufweichens der Grenzen zwischen Biologie und Sozialem traditionelle Kategorien sozialer Differenz, wie etwa Geschlecht und Schichtzugehörigkeit, häufig überraschend statisch und deterministisch gefasst werden

Wissen und Forschen in einer globalisierten Welt: Vorstellung des neuen Forschungsschwerpunkts "Internationale Wissenschafts‐ und Technologiepolitik" am oiip

"Wissenschaft und Technologie nehmen eine zunehmend bedeutende Rolle im Leben von Individuen wie auch im Kontext gegenwärtiger globaler wirtschaftlicher und politischer Entwicklungen ein. Diese Bedeutung von Wissenschaft und Technologie spiegelt sich auch im steigenden Bedarf nach strategisch‐koordinierter und analytisch fundierter Wissenschafts‐ und Technologiepolitik wieder. Das oiip hat einen Forschungsschwerpunkt neu gegründet, der sich diesem Fragenkomplex widmet." [Autorenreferat

Dichloridobis(di-tert-butyl­methyl­phosphine oxide-κO)diphenyl­tin(IV)

The complete mol­ecule of the title compound, [Sn(C6H5)2Cl2(C9H21OP)2], is generated by crystallographic inversion symmetry, the Sn atom is located on a special position of site symmetry . The Sn atom adopts an all-trans SnC2O2Cl2 octa­hedral geometry. As a consequence of the bulky substituents at the O atom, the P—O—Sn bond angle is 163.9 (3)°

Understanding the Relationship Between People and Their Environments Using Smartphone Data: A Study of Personality, Places Visited, and Emotional Experiences

Much has been theorized about the relationship between people and their environments. Certain people may be more inclined to visit certain types of places (e.g., campus, pub) and display different patterns of mobility as they move among them (e.g., number of places visited, distances traveled). Moreover, even the same place may affect people differently, depending on their psychological characteristics (e.g., personality). In this dissertation, I draw upon recent technological advances in smartphone-sensing methods to investigate the relationship between people’s psychological characteristics and their physical movements through space. I begin by reviewing the existing psychological literature. I next describe features that can be extracted from GPS data and categorize them to provide a framework for collecting, analyzing, and discussing mobility. Then, I conduct an empirical investigation demonstrating this methodology at work. One-hundred and eighteen participants provided ecological momentary assessments, reporting their places visited and emotional states (e.g., feeling stressed, relaxed, sad) four times per day for two to four weeks. In addition to these ecological momentary assessments, place and mobility data were also automatically collected for forty students using their smartphone’s GPS sensors. I supplemented these data by collecting place attributions from an independent sample of 267 participants who evaluated the situational characteristics (e.g., sociality, positivity) of the most commonly visited locations. Lastly, I look at how people perceive places and whether their judgments about a location (e.g., predictions about the personality of those most likely to visit a location) demonstrate consensus or accuracy. A lens model analysis highlights the cues underlying these perceptions. The results show how places visited (based on self-reported places) and mobility patterns (based on sensed GPS data) are related to people’s in-the-moment emotional experiences and their enduring psychological characteristics, such as their personality and wellbeing. I also examine how one’s personality interacts with the situational characteristics of a place to affect emotional states. For instance, one key finding reveals that, in general, participants experienced more positive emotions in social places (e.g., common rooms, pubs) but that this was especially true for more extraverted individuals. Lastly, I find that though people demonstrate consensus in their judgments when virtually visiting a place, they do not show significant accuracy. My discussion focuses on the benefits of using place and GPS-based mobility measures to understand the relationship between people and their environments, as well as the unique methodological and logistical challenges inherent to this. I conclude by discussing potential implications for privacy and research ethics and point to promising directions for future research

The UK has just held a General Election – but how democratic are we as a country?

Democratic Audit UK has long led the way in assessing the health, strength and durability of UK democracy, with the 2012 Audit of Democracy showing worrying trends and highlighting the numerous systemic problems with the UK’s constitutional and political settlement. Here, Karima Bousbah, Miriam Hänni, Lea Heyne, Lisa Müller and Saskia Ruth apply a new method for calculating the democratic strength of different countries to the UK, finding a modest upswing in our credentials as a country since the late 1990s