The University of Bergen has been instrumental in promoting the establishment of the subject Culture and Dissemination of Culture at the West-Norwegian Academy of Culture at Voss. The Academy will be opening in the township of Voss, a centre of rural traditions 100 km east of Bergen, in the autumn of 1996. The West-Norwegian Academy of Culture will be doing some pioneering teaching work, linking together knowledge, tradition and work, says Professor Knut Venneslan at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Bergen, to the newspaper Hordaland. This will be a meeting place between the university environment and those who carry on local traditions. Venneslan believes that this programme of studies can prove useful for the development of the economy in Voss and in the region in general. Bjørn Christensen, the administrative manager of the Voss Forum for Trade and Industry, believes the Academy can play an important role in the growth of the economy and the establishment of new jobs. Culture is in itself economic development, says Christensen, who has also been a member of the working group that set up the course programme for Culture and the Dissemination of Culture. The new programme will be offered to twelve students as a trial project, and will provide students with credits for a half-year course within the University of Bergen degree system.
The explosion of the Ariane 5 rocket was a tremendous disappointment to European space research. Scientists at the Institute of Physics at the University of Bergen had spent ten years working on the project. Ariane 5 was to place four satellites in space for the so-called Cluster project, one of the most extensive schemes in the European space organisation's scientific programme. The objective of the Cluster project was to acquire more knowledge about the effects of all the electrically charged particles hurled into space by the sun. The experiment was unique. Four identical satellites were to monitor the transportation of energy between the sun and earth. Through four different measuring points it is possible to record variations in time and space, say Stein Ullaland and Finn Søraas, Professors of Physics at UiB. They believe it may be a long time before a new experiment of this nature can be carried out. Building four satellites of the same quality is a very demanding task. This accident was extremely regrettable and will have a significant impact on our work at this Institute. Students at hovedfag level as well as doctoral candidates were involved in the preparations, and the progress of this type research may well be set back several years, say Ullaland and Søraas.
Unique objects found during the excavations of the famous Bryggen or Hanseatic Wharf in Bergen were lost when a rope walk in which they were stored was burnt to the ground in May this year. Many structural details and much timber from the 12th and 13th centuries were lost in the fire. We feel particularly bitter that this loss should have occurred at just this time. In March we were told that the unique material, which was unparalleled in a European perspective, could be housed in a different location. Unfortunately, we did not have time to move anything at all, says Kåre Hesjedal, Director of Bergen Museum. We had been working for a long time to provide and improve safe storage facilities for objects of great historical value. Paradoxically, it would seem that events such as this must occur before funds are allocated to these measures, says Egil Reimers, lecturer with the Medieval Collections.
The new National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Centre is to be set up at Haukeland University Hospital. This Centre has been given particular responsibility for carrying out research that can contribute towards shedding light on MS, the mysterious illness that affects 200 new, often young, patients every year. Those affected suffer an inflammation in the brain and other parts of the central nervous system.
We reckon the Centre can be ready to start work in the summer of 1997, says Harald Nyland, consultant physician at Haukeland Hospital, to the Bergens Tidende newspaper. Work is already being carried out on several major related research projects, both national and international, at the University of Bergen. So far, fourteen doctoral theses on MS have been submitted at UiB.
MS, and other illnesses originating in the brain, have been designated national priority areas for medical research. An important part of the work of the MS Centre will probably be to set up a national register containing the names of and information on all of Norway's approximately 5000 MS victims.
The Norwegian census of 1801 has become popular reading material on Internet. Over the past six months, 700,000 people have retrieved documents from the pages of the network, writes the newspaper Sunnhordland. The Institute of History at the University of Bergen is responsible for the source material, in which people can search for information on which of their relatives emigrated in the last century.
EDC at UIB The University of Bergen was given its European Documentation Centre (EDC) in April 1996. This is an information centre for teaching and research in the European Union, and is linked to more than fifty data bases within the EU. Most of the official publications and documents issued by the EU's institutions are to be found here. EDC in Bergen was set up on the basis of a cooperation agreement between UiB and the European Commission, and is located in the High-Tech Centre at the University.
The Norwegian Research Council has asked the University of Bergen to secure quotations for a new national high performance computing resource. Scientific computing is used in several areas, and the machines have become an important research tool for physicists, chemists, marine biologists, geophysicists and mathematicians. And now medical and social scientists are waiting their turn to make use of this technology. The new computer will mean tremendous technological progress. UiB was the first Norwegian university to make use of parallel supercomputers, and now we want to take yet another step forward, to allow us to lead the way in high performance computing in Norway, says UiB's IT director, Tom Therkildsen.
Dr.juris. Erling Husabø and dr.scient. Rolf Mjelde shared this year's Meltzer award from the University of Bergen. The NOK 50,000 prize is awarded every year to young researchers at UiB whose work has attracted particular attention.
Erling Husabø was given the prize for his work on ethical and legal issues related to the end of life and euthanasia. His doctorate deals will legal issues linked both to the active termination of life, such as suicide and homicide, and passive termination of life, such as the refusal to accept medical help. Husabø's work is pioneering jurisprudence in an area generally considered to lie outside the sphere of juridical analysis. Rolf Mjelde received the award for his work in the field of seismic waves and the analysis of seismic data. He has carried out fundamental research in the field of anisotropy of rock species and the importance of fluid content and microstructures for the dispersal of seismic waves. Mjelde's work has led to interesting structural and development models of the continental shelf outside Lofoten and Mid-Norway.
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