Puppets on a String in a Theatre of Display? Interactions of Image, Text, Material, Space and Motion in The Family of Man (ca.1950s-1960s)

In the past few decades, increasing attention has been devoted within various disciplines to aspects previously considered trivial, among which are images, material objects and spaces. While the visual, the material and the spatial are receiving ever more consideration and the myriad issues surrounding them are being tackled, their convergence in educational settings across time and space has thus far remained underexplored. A travelling photo exhibition, The Family of Man, will serve as a starting point in this paper for addressing some of the complexities inherent in this convergence and thus highlight an essential yet neglected feature of education: its reliance on, and creative use of, multiple “modes” of communication and representation when attempting to produce learning effects. As a particular educational constellation that went on to travel throughout the world and interact with the contexts in which it moved, The Family of Man was anything but neutral in design. The paper will show just how carefully it was composed to promote meaning-, power-, and knowledge-making in accordance with its mission. This border-crossing installation thus constituted a spectacle of different interacting views, forms, surfaces, lighting effects, panoramas, movements, captions and other factors that aimed to create order among things and people. Nevertheless, the paper argues, “theatres of display” in education such as this do not imply determination and causality of effects, but rather provide “uncertain conditions” within a spectrum of “actors” and “actants”. The paper relates this to the manifold affordances of objects, images, places and so on, to disruptions of meaning in their convergence across time and space and to “emancipation” on the part of learners

Puppets on a String in a Theatre of Display? Interactions of Image, Text, Material, Space and Motion in The Family of Man (ca.1950s-1960s)

In the past few decades, increasing attention has been devoted within various disciplines to aspects previously considered trivial, among which are images, material objects and spaces. While the visual, the material and the spatial are receiving ever more consideration and the myriad issues surrounding them are being tackled, their convergence in educational settings across time and space has thus far remained underexplored. A travelling photo exhibition, The Family of Man, will serve as a starting point in this paper for addressing some of the complexities inherent in this convergence and thus highlight an essential yet neglected feature of education: its reliance on, and creative use of, multiple “modes” of communication and representation when attempting to produce learning effects. As a particular educational constellation that went on to travel throughout the world and interact with the contexts in which it moved, The Family of Man was anything but neutral in design. The paper will show just how carefully it was composed to promote meaning-, power-, and knowledge-making in accordance with its mission. This border-crossing installation thus constituted a spectacle of different interacting views, forms, surfaces, lighting effects, panoramas, movements, captions and other factors that aimed to create order among things and people. Nevertheless, the paper argues, “theatres of display” in education such as this do not imply determination and causality of effects, but rather provide “uncertain conditions” within a spectrum of “actors” and “actants”. The paper relates this to the manifold affordances of objects, images, places and so on, to disruptions of meaning in their convergence across time and space and to “emancipation” on the part of learners

Body_Machine? Encounters of the Human and the Mechanical in Education, Industry and Science

This paper unveils the body_machine as a key element of dynamic mental maps that have come to shape both educational praxis and research. It traces and analyses instances in which the human and the mechanical encountered each other in metaphorical, material and visual forms, thereby blurring to some extent the boundaries between them while capturing and mobilising specific forms of knowing and acting. The paper studies, first, how certain ‘orienting frames of reference’ and associated ‘experimental systems’ managed to materialise around the body_machine and penetrate theory and praxis; and, second, what visual and textual sources related to a vocational school may reveal about where and how the body_machine has come to operate in education, industry and science. The paper centres on early twentieth-century photographs and analyses these not only as media presenting, representing and interrogating common thought and practice but also as agents of meaning-making around the body_machine

Magnetic Pulse Spot Welding: Application to Al/Fe Joining

Magnetic pulse welding is a rapid process (takes place within few micro seconds) that joins both homogeneous and heterogeneous materials in the solid state. The process involves applying variable high current on an inductor to generate Lorentz forces on to the conductive primary part (flyer). To realize the weld it is necessary to accelerate the flyer to impact on to the secondary stationary part (base material) at a very high velocity attained over the distance, called air gap, between the parts. It is typically possible to perform welding of tubes and sheets provided there is an optimized air gap between the parts to be welded. As part of our work we have developed an innovative approach (Magnetic Pulse Spot Welding-MPSW) that eliminates the delicate task of maintaining the aforementioned air gap between the plates. The proposed method opens better viable perspectives for heterogeneous assembly of automotive structures or connecting batteries in a quasi-cold state. The developed approach has been validated on the heterogeneous assembly Al/Fe by tensile tests (quasi-static and dynamic) that attested the quality of welds

Prion protein self-peptides modulate prion interactions and conversion

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Molecular mechanisms underlying prion agent replication, converting host-encoded cellular prion protein (PrP^C) into the scrapie associated isoform (PrP^Sc), are poorly understood. Selective self-interaction between PrP molecules forms a basis underlying the observed differences of the PrP^Cinto PrP^Scconversion process (agent replication). The importance of previously peptide-scanning mapped ovine PrP self-interaction domains on this conversion was investigated by studying the ability of six of these ovine PrP based peptides to modulate two processes; PrP self-interaction and conversion.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Three peptides (octarepeat, binding domain 2 -and C-terminal) were capable of inhibiting self-interaction of PrP in a solid-phase PrP peptide array. Three peptides (N-terminal, binding domain 2, and amyloidogenic motif) modulated prion conversion when added before or after initiation of the prion protein misfolding cyclic amplification (PMCA) reaction using brain homogenates. The C-terminal peptides (core region and C-terminal) only affected conversion (increased PrP^resformation) when added before mixing PrP^Cand PrP^Sc, whereas the octarepeat peptide only affected conversion when added after this mixing.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study identified the putative PrP core binding domain that facilitates the PrP^C-PrP^Scinteraction (not conversion), corroborating evidence that the region of PrP containing this domain is important in the species-barrier and/or scrapie susceptibility. The octarepeats can be involved in PrP^C-PrP^Scstabilization, whereas the N-terminal glycosaminoglycan binding motif and the amyloidogenic motif indirectly affected conversion. Binding domain 2 and the C-terminal domain are directly implicated in PrP^Cself-interaction during the conversion process and may prove to be prime targets in new therapeutic strategy development, potentially retaining PrP^Cfunction. These results emphasize the importance of probable PrP^C-PrP^Cand required PrP^C-PrP^Scinteractions during PrP conversion. All interactions are probably part of the complex process in which polymorphisms and species barriers affect TSE transmission and susceptibility.</p

What Do Computer Scientists Tweet? Analyzing the Link-Sharing Practice on Twitter

Twitter communication has permeated every sphere of society. To highlight and share small pieces of information with possibly vast audiences or small circles of the interested has some value in almost any aspect of social life. But what is the value exactly for a scientific field? We perform a comprehensive study of computer scientists using Twitter and their tweeting behavior concerning the sharing of web links. Discerning the domains, hosts and individual web pages being tweeted and the differences between computer scientists and a Twitter sample enables us to look in depth at the Twitter-based information sharing practices of a scientific community. Additionally, we aim at providing a deeper understanding of the role and impact of altmetrics in computer science and give a glance at the publications mentioned on Twitter that are most relevant for the computer science community. Our results show a link sharing culture that concentrates more heavily on public and professional quality information than the Twitter sample does. The results also show a broad variety in linked sources and especially in linked publications with some publications clearly related to community-specific interests of computer scientists, while others with a strong relation to attention mechanisms in social media. This refers to the observation that Twitter is a hybrid form of social media between an information service and a social network service. Overall the computer scientists’ style of usage seems to be more on the information-oriented side and to some degree also on professional usage. Therefore, altmetrics are of considerable use in analyzing computer science