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Chemistry normally deals with the predictable behaviour of matter – how atoms form molecules, and how the molecules react when introduced to one another. But how do those same molecules behave in unpredictable conditions? Trygve Ulf Helgaker, professor of theoretical chemistry at the University of Oslo, is aiming to find out.

Today nearly everyone walks around with a device capable of translating the world’s major languages. But where some see opportunity, Dag Trygve Truslew Haug and Stephan Oepen, professors of classics and informatics, respectively, at the University of Oslo, see limitations.

War! What is it good for? Absolutely something, according to Hans Jacob Orning and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, professors of history at the University of Oslo.

According to the YoungCAS researchers, the future risk of infection in implants may be too high for some surgical procedures to be carried out, but they also believe there is a better solution.

– It is not like a disease, such as Ebola or swine influenza virus (SIV), but antibiotic resistant bacteria are spreading around the world like an invisible pandemic; it will cause big problems the day they make us sick and we do not have antibiotics that work.

In this talk, philosopher Levi R. Bryant talks about the history of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. He then moves into a brief discussion of Graham Harman’s object-oriented philosophy, and an alternative vision he would like to propose.

The academic year of 2016/2017 is just about to come to an end, and CAS is looking forward to the next. In August, we will welcome three new research groups working on computational linguistics, molecular chemistry, and the Nordic “civil wars”. No doubt next year’s groups will be as versatile as their predecessors.

In autumn 1944, Norddal, in the north of Troms County, was occupied by German army forces in retreat. They had brought with them an unknown number of Soviet prisoners, who were distributed among four prisoner-of-war (POW) camps. When the war ended, the camps were abandoned and their stories almost lost in time.

Karen Thornber argues that humanities can help improve human health and in particular can alert us to the need to tackle persistent stigmas against diseases.

April 6 2017 writer and scholar Robert Macfarlane gave the talk Deep Time, Thin Place And Thick Speech in the Anthropocene at Litteraturhuset in Oslo.