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STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Guide to Stockholm University Library

    Our library offers different types of studying places and provides a good studying environment.

Zones

    The library is divided into different zones. The upper floor is a quiet zone with over a thousand places for silent reading, and places where you can sit and work with your own computer. The reading places consist mostly of tables and chairs. The ground floor is the zone where you can talk. Here you can find sofas and armchairs for group work.

Computers

    You can use your own computer to connect to the wi-fi specially prepared for notebook computers; your can also use library computers, which contain the most commonly used applications, such as Microsoft Office. They are situated in the area known as the Experimental Field on the ground floor.

Group-study places

    If you want to discuss freely without disturbing others, you can book a study room or sit at a table on the ground floor. Some study rooms are for 2-3 people and others can hold up to 6-8 people. All rooms are marked on the library maps.

    There are 40 group-study rooms that must be booked via the website. To book, you need an active University account and a valid University card. You can use a room three hours per day, nine hours at most per week.

Storage of Study Material

    The library has lockers for students to store course literature. When you have obtained at least 40 credits(学分), you may rent a locker and pay 400 SEK for a year's rental period.

Rules to be Followed

    Mobile phone conversations are not permitted anywhere in the library. Keep your phone on silent as if you were in a lecture and exit the library if you need to receive calls.

    Please note that food and fruit are forbidden in the library, but you are allowed to have drinks and sweets with you.

    Digital technology-email and smart phones especially-have vastly improved workers' ability to be productive outside of a traditional office. Even so, most white-collar work still happens in an office. One reason is that, according to findings of a new survey of office workers conducted by Wakefield Research for the IT company Citrix, most bosses arc doubtful about remote working. Half of the workers say their boss doesn't accept it, and only 35 percent say it's tolerated.

    Skeptical bosses will likely have their doubts reinforced (加深) by the same survey, which shows that 43 percent of workers say they've watched TV or a movie while “working” remotely, while 35 percent have done housework, and 28 percent have cooked dinner.

    It is true, however, that working at home makes people much more efficient (高效的), because it allows workers to take care of annoying housework while still getting their jobs done. It's much faster, for example, to shop for groceries at a quarter to three than to stand in line during the after-work rush.

    The fact that such practices remain officially unaccepted reflects how far we haven't come as a society from the days when we expected every full-time worker to be supported by a full-time homemaker.

    More broadly the Wakefield survey suggests that employers may be missing a low-cost way to give workers something of value. Sixty-four percent of those survey participants who haven't worked remotely would rather give up some bonus in order to get even one day a week working from home. Under such circumstances, smart firms need to find ways to let their employees have enough flexibility (灵活性) to manage their time efficiently.

    My children are perfect. All four of them. Perfect and beautiful and clever. I bet yours are, too. Except, of course, they are not. In reality, my children and yours are likely to be reasonably average in terms of looks, behavior, intelligence and charm. That's why it is called average. Your belief in your child being special is more probably a biological thing than a fact.

    A loved one, particularly a loved child, is edited as we observe them. Other people's children are spoiled; ours are spirited. Theirs are naughty; ours are confident.

    This is all natural and even touching when not taken too far. However, it is one thing feeding this idea to ourselves but feeding it to our children may be a little less desirable. We have the idea that — unlike my parents' generation — we should build our children's self-respect as high as we can. Therefore, their random scribble (胡写乱画) is up there with Picasso, their C-minus is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the teacher, and the fact that no one wants to be friends with them is because they are particularly clever or sensitive.

    Children see through this kind of thing very quickly and ignore their parents' praises as a matter of course. As they grow up, they sense that the wider world judges them differently. This leads to a – hopefully gentle – cynicism (猜忌) about anything their parents tell them about their achievements. Perhaps that is OK — but I'm not sure if it is good for them to have the parental praise so overlooked.

    If parents were a little harsher sometimes, this could have two positive effects — first, when praise came, it would be more likely to be believed and, second, it would fit in rather more accurately with the picture of reality that the child is forming in their heads.

    A lot of pressure is put on children who are told they are beautiful, special and perfect. Because then, where is there to go? Only downwards. They become too much aware of their status in your eyes, and a danger must be that they fear failing you. To be over-praised by your parents is the counter side of being criticized all the time. Both can have negative consequences.

    It is important to give your children the freedom to be flawed (缺点) — to know that it's OK to be imperfect, and that, in fact, we often love people for their flaws — perfect people (whom we can only imagine, as they do not exist) are easy to respect, but hard to love.

    Now I am nearly 60, my main insight is that I am much less special than I once believed. This knowledge has actually been helpful in leading a more well-balanced life.

    I certainly wouldn't like to go back to attitudes that my parents, particularly my father, held, that to praise the child was to "spoil them" or make them bigheaded. However, the history of families is like the history of everything else — the story of overreactions. We praise our children to the skies, partly because we think it makes them feel good, but also because it makes us feel good. And perhaps it is more the latter than the former.

    Too much love can be as big a burden as a shortage of it. My advice is to limit your praise. Then every piece of praise will count, rather than being just ignored.

    Samuel Osmond is a 19­year­old boy student from Cornwall, England. He never studied the piano. However, he can play very difficult musical pieces by musicians such as Chopin and Beethoven just a few minutes after he hears them. He learns a piece of music by listening to it in parts. Then he thinks about the notes in his head. Two years ago, he played his first piece Moonlight Sonata (奏鸣曲) by Beethoven. He surprised everyone around him.

    Amazed that he remembered this long and difficult piece of music and played it perfectly, his teachers say Samuel is unbelievable. They say his ability is very rare, but Samuel doesn't even realize that what he can do is special. Samuel wanted to become a lawyer as it was the wish of his parents, but music teachers told him he should study music instead. Now, he studied law and music.

    Samuel can't understand why everyone is so surprised. "I grew up with music. My mother played the piano and my father played the guitar. About two years ago, I suddenly decided to start playing the piano, without being able to read music and without having any lessons. It comes easily to me—I hear the notes and can bear them in mind—each and every note." says Samuel.

    Recently, Samuel performed a piece during a special event at his college. The piece had more than a thousand notes. The audience was impressed by his amazing performance. He is now learning a piece that is so difficult that many professional pianists can't play it. Samuel says confidently, "It's all about super memory—I guess I have that gift."

    However, Samuel's ability to remember things doesn't stop with music. His family says that even when he was a young boy, Samuel heard someone read a story, and then he could retell the story word for word.

    Samuel is still only a teenager. He doesn't know what he wants to do in the future. For now, he is just happy to play beautiful music and continue his studies.

    The dangers of drowsy (昏昏欲睡) driving have been widely known. Now several companies have developed face-tracking technology that can tell when drivers become dangerously sleepy.

    Here is how it might work: A camera in your car monitors your facial expression, compares it to a database of expressions and determines if you are likely sleepy or distracted. The car then alerts you to pay attention or pull over.

    Affectiva has developed emotion recognition technology that aims to detect when people are just starting to get tired. The idea is to catch the warning signs before drowsiness really strikes. "Actually, when someone is drowsy, that is too late." Gabi, vice president of Affectiva said. "What if you can see trends in someone's face about five minutes before they become sleepy?" Affectiva's program can recognize seven different emotions and 15 facial expressions. Its standards were developed by sifting (筛选) through a database of 4 million faces from 75 counties, said Zijderveld. She suggested that carmakers could coordinate (协调) the program's facial recognition data with oral reminders, such as sound warnings, or (nonverbal) alerts, like a change of temperature and vibrations (continuous slight shaking movements).

    Eyeris is another company working in facial analytics. Modar Alaoui, the company's CEO, said that its software detects "eye openness" in addition to other facial indicators. The software can also read head position, which may indicate when someone begins to nod off.

    These technologies aren't the first attempt to fight drowsiness behind the wheel. Inventors came up with the similar device "sleeper beeper" to prevent sleep in cars back in 1983. The sleeper beeper was attached to a driver's ear and would issue a noisy warning when the driver's head nodded past a certain point. But the latest software would intervene (干涉) earlier and more effectively.