Online Instruction for Art History Research

At the City College of New York (CCNY), the Art and Architecture Visual Resources Librarian (VR Librarian) teamed up with the Information Literacy Librarian to design an online tutorial for conducting library research in Art History. The tutorial is created using Google Sites and is linked to the College’s Blackboard site for ease of access by students

Clumpy Structures within the Turbulent Primordial Cloud

The primordial clouds in the mini-halos hatch the first generation stars of the universe, which play a crucial role in cosmic evolution. In this paper, we investigate how the turbulence impacts the structure of primordial star-forming cloud. Previous cosmological simulations of the first star formation predicted a typical mass of around $\mathrm{ 100 \, M_\odot}$, which conflicts with recent observations of extremely metal-poor stars suggesting a lower mass scale of around $\mathrm{25 \, M_\odot}$. The discrepancy may arise from unresolved turbulence in the star-forming cloud, driven by primordial gas accretion during mini-halo formation in the previous simulation. To quantitatively examine the turbulence effect on the primordial cloud formation, we employ the adaptive mesh refinement code $\mathtt{Enzo}$ to model the gas cloud with primordial composition, including artificial-driven turbulence on the cloud scale and relevant gas physics. This artificial-driven turbulence utilizes a stochastic forcing model to mimic the unresolved turbulence inside mini-halos. Our results show that turbulence with high Mach number and compressional mode effectively fragments the cloud into several clumps, each with dense cores of $\mathrm{22.7 - 174.9 \, M_\odot}$ that undergo Jeans instability to form stars. Fragmentation caused by intense and compressive turbulence prevents the runaway collapse of the cloud. The self-bound clumps with smaller masses in turbulent primordial cloud suggest a possible pathway to decrease the theoretical mass scale of first stars, further reconciling the mass discrepancy between simulations and observations.Comment: All comments are welcome. Submitted to MNRAS. (13 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables

Personality Facets and Customer Loyalty in Online Games

Online games have attracted numerous customers and brought stable revenues to game providers. However, some customers frequently switch to other games, and thus, it is important to identify which customers are likely loyal customers. The literature has identified openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion as predictors for loyalty in online games (Teng, Huang, Jeng, Chou, & Hu, 2008). However, the three broad traits contain multiple facets. Thus research addressing the three broad traits may mix the influences of multiple facets. Thus this study investigates the influences of personality facets on online game customer skill, challenge, flow experience, and loyalty. The sample comprised 994 online gamers. This study employed structural equation modeling for analysis, and found that (1) ideas and achievement striving are positively related to skill, (2) achievement striving, competence, and excitement-seeking are positively related to challenge, (3) gregariousness is positively related to interdependence, (4) fantasy, skill, challenge, and interdependence are positively related to customer likelihood of experiencing flow, and (5) experienced flow is positively related to customer loyalty. The study findings suggest managers improve gamer skill and challenge when gamers are in their early stages in online games, boosting their likelihood of experiencing flow and thus building their loyalty. Managers are also suggested to target individuals who are high in personality facets such as ideas, achievement striving, competence, excitement- seeking, to effectively build a loyal customer base. Educators are also suggested to notice students who are high in those personality facets, because these students may continuously play online games when they begin to play

Tea parties in early Georgian conversation pieces

Conversation pieces were produced in large numbers in England from 1730 onward. In contrast to the grand manner of formal portraiture, the conversation piece depicts groups of small full-length figures engaged in conversation, music, tea, or cards within a detailed, naturalistically described landscape or architectural setting. This article examines how tea party conversation pieces, among the most popular subject of the genre, engage contemporary discourses about status. Differences between the actual practices of the tea party and the pictorial representations of it reveal the degree to which these pictures highlight the social standing of those portrayed

From Genre to Portrait: the Etymology of the \u27Conversation Piece\u27

During the late 1720s and early 1730s, a new type of portrait painting, called the conversation piece, became fashionable in England. This article will trace the origin and evolution of the term conversation piece from its earliest appearance in the English language to the present. First used in English for genre pictures in the Dutch tradition as well as Watteau\u27s fetes galantes, the term was adopted for small-scale group portraits around 1730 when this type of portraiture became popular. Long after the rise of the portrait conversation, the term continued to be used for genre pictures. The use of the term to mean only a small-scale painting of a portrait group is a 20th-century invention