Prime, Perform, Recover

This thesis examines the formal and conceptual framework of my artistic practice as it culminated in the installation of my thesis exhibition, Prime, Perform, Recover. My exhibition seeks to operate as an analysis and critique of the separation inherent in media presentation and rhetoric surrounding natural disasters. I utilize the aesthetics and vocabulary of disaster capitalism and prepping culture in order to pose direct questions about ecological and social change. I examine the role of images within mass media image production as an all encompassing Now-Time. In this paper I describe frameworks that my practice proposes as potential solutions to these problems, and I position my research in the context of artists and artworks that have influenced me and operate within similar channels as my own

Recollected in tranquility : FE teachers’ perceptions of their initial teacher training

"The main research question posed by the project was: ‘What are FE teachers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of initial training in helping them to teach and to support learning?’" -- page 1

On acoustic cavitation of slightly subcritical bubbles

The classical Blake threshold indicates the onset of quasistatic evolution leading to cavitation for gas bubbles in liquids. When the mean pressure in the liquid is reduced to a value below the vapor pressure, the Blake analysis identifies a critical radius which separates quasistatically stable bubbles from those which would cavitate. In this work, we analyze the cavitation threshold for radially symmetric bubbles whose radii are slightly less than the Blake critical radius, in the presence of time-periodic acoustic pressure fields. A distinguished limit equation is derived that predicts the threshold for cavitation for a wide range of liquid viscosities and forcing frequencies. This equation also yields frequency-amplitude response curves. Moreover, for fixed liquid viscosity, our study identifies the frequency that yields the minimal forcing amplitude sufficient to initiate cavitation. Numerical simulations of the full Rayleigh-Plesset equation confirm the accuracy of these predictions. Finally, the implications of these findings for acoustic pressure fields that consist of two frequencies will be discussed.Comment: 14 pages, Presented at APS/DFD conference in Philadelphia 199

What checkers actually check: an eye tracking study of inhibitory control and working memory

<p>Background - Not only is compulsive checking the most common symptom in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) with an estimated prevalence of 50–80% in patients, but approximately ~15% of the general population reveal subclinical checking tendencies that impact negatively on their performance in daily activities. Therefore, it is critical to understand how checking affects attention and memory in clinical as well as subclinical checkers. Eye fixations are commonly used as indicators for the distribution of attention but research in OCD has revealed mixed results at best.</p> <p>Methodology/Principal Finding - Here we report atypical eye movement patterns in subclinical checkers during an ecologically valid working memory (WM) manipulation. Our key manipulation was to present an intermediate probe during the delay period of the memory task, explicitly asking for the location of a letter, which, however, had not been part of the encoding set (i.e., misleading participants). Using eye movement measures we now provide evidence that high checkers’ inhibitory impairments for misleading information results in them checking the contents of WM in an atypical manner. Checkers fixate more often and for longer when misleading information is presented than non-checkers. Specifically, checkers spend more time checking stimulus locations as well as locations that had actually been empty during encoding.</p> <p>Conclusions/Significance - We conclude that these atypical eye movement patterns directly reflect internal checking of memory contents and we discuss the implications of our findings for the interpretation of behavioural and neuropsychological data. In addition our results highlight the importance of ecologically valid methodology for revealing the impact of detrimental attention and memory checking on eye movement patterns.</p&gt

Book review: Picturing Algeria by Bourdieu, Pierre

A review of the 2012 English translation of Pierre Bourdieu\u27s Picturing Algeria.Picturing Algeria presents passages from the French sociologist\u27s texts on Algeria with photographs taken during his period of national service in Algeria as a young academic and his subsequent appointment as a university lecturer in Algiers, and an interview conducted towards the end of his career. <br /

A cognitive examination of compulsive checkers' working memory and inhibitory performance

Checking is one of the most common symptoms observed in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) with 50-80% of patients (Antony, Downie, & Swinson, 1998; Henderson & Pollard, 1988; Rasmussen & Eisen, 1988) and an additional ~15% of the general population demonstrating subclinical checking compulsions (Stein et al., 1997). A common finding is that checking actually impairs the memory of those items checked (van den Hout & Kindt, 2003a, 2003b), even though the mechanism underlying checking-related memory impairment has remained elusive. This is a shortcoming that we presently address in a series of short-term memory experiments and attentional tasks comparing high and low checkers (see VOCI; Thordarson et al., 2004). Generally, our memory tasks required stimuli to be remembered in their locations, which was designed to engage the episodic buffer (EB) of working memory (WM) (Baddeley, 2000). The key manipulation was to present an intermediate probe (between encoding and recall) in the form of a resolvable or misleading challenge which questioned an aspect of the encoding set; this was either present or absent, respectively. As expected, misleading probes specifically (Exp. 1, 2, extreme meta-comparison 3 & 9; Harkin & Kessler, 2009; 2011a; Harkin, Rutherford, & Kessler, 2011) and intermediate probes generally (Exp. 4; Harkin & Kessler, 2011a) tap into the inhibitory impairments of high (not low) checkers, which hampers EB functionality and impairs their memory. Indeed, it was only during misleading trials that high checkers made more unnecessary eye movements specifically to empty locations (Exp. 5; Harkin & Kessler, subm). Furthermore, for ecologically valid stimuli high checkers were impaired in inhibiting attention to threatening ‘ON’ states (Tasks 6 & 7; Harkin & Kessler, in press) and in their ability to recall if an appliance was ‘ON’ or ‘OFF’ (Exp. 8; Harkin, Rutherford, & Kessler, 2011). High checkers’ intact performance on baseline no-probe-1 trials excludes a capacity-based explanation of their WM impairments. Overall, confidence measures revealed a general task-independent impairment which was attenuated by an intermediate probe. These findings were then used to create a classification system based upon Executive-Functioning, Binding Complexity and Memory Load (EBL) to explain otherwise discrepant findings from 58 memory studies (Harkin & Kessler, 2011b). Thus, the contribution of this research is not only to (Exp. 1-9) indicate an actual mechanism (i.e., episodic buffer of WM) of memory impairment in checking/OCD but it also provides a new research platform on which to base where we will and will not observe memory impairments in OCD participants. The conclusion summarizes the main findings with respect to the development and maintenance of OCD symptoms, highlights limitations and provides solutions to these through future research