‘Forget everything you have ever learned about art, and start from the beginning’: charismatic leadership and art school teaching

This article explores the nature of the art and design lecturer’s role in relation to Weber’s definition of charismatic leadership, and to more recent theories of transformational leadership. By reference to historical examples, the author analyses the process by which the charismatic art and design lecturer can influence students, and when necessary overcome their resistance to change. Using French and Raven’s model of social power, the author goes on to investigate the contribution made by charisma to the lecturer’s power to persuade, even when the lecturer may be committed to using a constructive model of the educational process. Finally, the article explores the potential of ‘frame alignment’ as a strategy by which charismatic lecturers can overcome the reluctance of some students to open themselves to new ways of thinking and working

Wood Conservation at the Gray Fossil Site in Northeastern Tennessee

The Gray Fossil Site in northeastern Tennessee preserves materials from a 5-million-year-old ecosystem, including wood from nearby trees. When excavated, the wood is saturated due to a modern local high water table. Moisture in the wood prevents further dendroecological research, which would provide important, annual-scale climate information from tree rings visible in the wood. In order to analyze climate-sensitive wood variables, wood samples must be dried with minimal cracking prior to further research. To test the best method for drying wood samples, a variety of methods were studied. Cotton string, wrapped firmly around a sample, and a sandbox, comprised of a sample surrounded equally on all sides by sand within a five gallon container, were both be used to test the effects of minimizing expansion and contraction during drying. A vacuum oven, a microwave, and a refrigerator were used to monitor the rate at which the wood dries under different temperature conditions, and a control sample was dried in a fume hood as a comparison. An alcohol replacement test provided data on the rate of non-water evaporation. Drying methods were evaluated by measuring the drying speed of each sample and the degree of visible surface cracking. Of the methods tested, wrapping wood samples in cotton string at an even pressure, then allowing the sample to dry in a fume hood is the best practice for drying the wood from the Gray Fossil Site. The string resulted in the least cracking, and one of the shorter drying times without destroying the sample, as the vacuum oven and microwave tests did. This work not only provides a comparison of standard drying methods for saturated fossils of the non-wood varieties, but lays the groundwork for further studies examining the wood, tree rings, and climate at the Gray Fossil Site

Golf Club Cleaner

Cleaning golf clubs can be a tedious process, however a necessary one to maintain equipment. Clubs are normally cleaned by filling a bucket with soap and water, soaking all the clubs to be cleaned, then scrubbing each one individually. An automatic club cleaner would make this process much easier and more enjoyable. Using electric motors, the club cleaner would have spinning brushes in soap and water to quickly and easily clean the club head. The machine would have different sections for cleaning the club head, polishing the club face, and cleaning the grip. The cleaner should be inexpensive and easy to clean, using a good system for adding clean water and draining dirty water. This project would combine the knowledge learned through coursework with design skills, market research, cost analysis, and testing

Facts about glyphosate-resistant weeds

"This publication describes the status and potential consequences of glyphosate-resistant weeds; and the primary factors that increase the risk of glyphosate resistance, and it encourages growers to use practices that reduce the selection for glyphosate-resistant weeds."--Extension website, viewed October 31, 2022.Reviewed by Kevin Bradley (Division of Plant Sciences). Chris Boerboom (University of Wisconsin), Micheal Owen (Iowa State University)Reviewed 10/22Includes bibliographical reference

Defects via Factorization Algebras

We provide a mathematical formulation of the idea of a defect for a field theory, in terms of the factorization algebra of observables and using the BV formalism. Our approach follows a well-known ansatz identifying a defect as a boundary condition along the boundary of a blow-up, but it uses recent work of Butson-Yoo and Rabinovich on boundary conditions and their associated factorization algebras to implement the ansatz. We describe how a range of natural examples of defects fits into our framework.Comment: 19 pages. Comments welcome

Using facial electromyography to detect preserved emotional processing in disorders of consciousness: A proof-of-principle study

Objective To examine whether emotional functioning can be observed in patients who are behaviourally non-responsive using peripheral markers of emotional functioning. Method We tested two patients, both diagnosed as being in a vegetative state (VS) following hypoxia secondary to cardiac arrest. Thirty-seven healthy participants with no history of neurological illness served as a control group. The activity of two facial muscles (zygomaticus major, corrugator supercilii) was measured using facial electromyography (EMG) to probe for patterned responses that differentiate between auditorily presented joke and non-joke stimuli in VS patients. Results One of the two VS patients we tested demonstrated greater zygomatic and reduced corrugator activity in response to jokes compared with non-jokes. Critically, these responses followed the pattern and temporal profile of muscle activity observed in our healthy control sample. Conclusions Despite their behaviorally non-responsive profile, some patients diagnosed as VS appear to retain some aspects of emotional experience. Significance Our findings represent, to our knowledge, the first demonstration that a patient diagnosed as VS can exhibit intact emotional responses to humor as assessed by facial EMG. Therefore, our approach may constitute a feasible bedside tool capable of providing novel insight into the mental and emotional lives of patients who are behaviourally non-responsive