After a long and snowy winter, spring on campus felt fabulous.
At the opening of "The Beauty of Kukruse" exhibition at the UT History Museum. During renovation of the Tallinn–Narva highway two years ago an excavator driver stumbled upon a bronze knife case, which led to the discovery of the 13th century burial in Kukruse.
At the end of November, all major news agencies were reporting on the elections – not in Russia, but in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But then – all of a sudden – when the results of the parliamentary election in Russia came in, and especially when the public protests started, everyone turned their heads towards Russia.
Professor Viacheslav Morozov giving his inaugural lecture at UT. Photo by Andres Tennus.
Viacheslav Morozov, University of Tartu professor of EU–Russia studies, finds this example a clear indication of how unexpected the scale of protests and demonstrations demanding fair elections in Russia was for experts and journalists, and no less so for the Russian authorities.
The public demonstrations were largely organised on social networks. Although Russia aims to protect its sovereign rights in regulating internal cyberspace, it is technologically very difficult to censor the Internet. Morozov points out that censorship would also require repression and punishment not just in cyberspace, but in real life, which would be problematic. Continue reading
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On 5 December, a bunch of international students at UT decided to share some love and positiveness with random people around the city. Five brave guys: Lexo (Georgia), Bram (Belgium), Miky (Spain), Vignesh (India) and Jan-Hendrik (Netherlands) headed to the Town Hall square carrying posters saying ‘Free Hugs’ and the Estonian equivalent: ‘Jagan kallistust‘. The girls Andrea (Slovakia), Joanna (Poland) and Daria (Russia) joined in later. Mirac (Turkey) captured the whole endeavor and produced an adorable video:
After the video was released, I interviewed Jan-Hendrik, one of the huggers, on Twitter:
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Tatyana is from Donetsk, Ukraine – “a place of mines and steel, strange things we call home.” She has been living in Estonia for 5 years and assures us that she has loved every moment of it. She likes dance, caffè latte, books, orange juice, trains, cats, languages and autumn, and dislikes indifferent people. This is the essay she submitted to the UT Student Journalist contest earlier this autumn.
Cleaning autumn leaves is like cleaning up after a party – a summer garden party with colourful straws, popped balloons, plastic packaging, cups, knives, glitter from summer dresses, and a bow tie from someone’s fancy party costume. A lot of summer colours mixed with the autumn background radiate an energy somewhat unknown to me, unexplored, a bit unreal. Continue reading
Alvo Aabloo is Professor of Polymer Materials Technology at the University of Tartu, where he leads the Intelligent Materials and Systems Laboratory. This story also appeared in The Irish Times as a part of the Atomium Culture project.
Most man-made machines are based on motors for their operation. Nature, however, is both more complex and subtle, and functions much smoother and with larger flexibility. With the help of novel materials, we can let biology inspire us when constructing new devices.
Biological processes for movement have been developed through evolution over millions of years, and are thus often significantly complicated. Man-made machines, on the other hand, are definitely both more powerful and faster than many biological counterparts, but their simplicity renders them less universal.
Alvo Aabloo, a creator of artificial muscles, together with Imre Vähi, an Estonian bodybuilder. Image credit: Lauri Kulpsoo / Wikipedia.
Six girls, all of them international students at the University of Tartu this autumn semester, have been tweeting from a collective account @Raatuse349351. Here are some of their tweets, highlighting different sides of international student life enjoyed in Tartu by Elīna from Latvia, Daine from Lithuania, Mariam and Tamo from Georgia, Elena from Italy and Ana from Hungary.
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Halliki works as a volunteer at the Foundation for Science and Liberal Arts Domus Dorpatensis, nominated as the Civil Society of the Year 2011 in Tartu and Tartu county.
TED talks have always been very inspiring to me, so I was quite excited when I was walking to TEDxTartu last Saturday morning. I was wondering what kinds of interesting ideas I would hear and what people I would meet. However, I was also a little bit nervous that my expectations might be too high and that I might be disappointed in the end, but fortunately that was not the case.
Speeches varied from very concrete ideas on what you can do for your own health every day, to more complicated issues, like how to save the planet.
Do you think that great ideas come from just sitting down and thinking until something strikes you? Perhaps not. Steven Johnson can tell you how ideas are formed. It’s a good introduction to something which has the punchline “Ideas worth spreading“.
Photo: Maanus Kullamaa
